5 ms·

I was the one who excavated these files from MIT's tape archives.

by larsbrinkhoff 6y ago

Scarblac 6y ago
Thank you!
brightball 6y ago
I’ve been curious to play Zork ever since the first episode of Chuck.
DonHopkins 6y ago
This seems to be an earlier version than the one that included the One Lousy Point Donald Woods Stamp (a tribute to one of the authors of Adventure). Isn't there another version of the later Zork source code in MDL floating around, that has the Don Woods Stamp? I worked with him at Sun on NeWS -- he's a great PostScript hacker! When you logged into his workstation, /etc/motd said "Welcome to Adventure. Would you like instructions?" -- but don't type "yes" to the Unix shell or you'll regret it. Here's his implementation of QuickSort in PostScript, and he also wrote the Spider card game for NeWS that shipped with OpenWindows (which is a nice clean well documented example of NeWS PostScript code), and he wrote a bunch of Open Look widgets and user interface plumbing for The NeWS Toolkit, too: https://donhopkins.com/home/code/quicksort.ps.txt https://donhopkins.com/home/code/quicksort.ps.txt https://donhopkins.com/home/news-tape/fun/spider/spider.ps https://donhopkins.com/home/news-tape/fun/spider/spider.ps http://www.icynic.com/~don/ http://www.icynic.com/~don/ Here's a great interview with Don Woods from GET LAMP, in which he mentions playing Zork at MIT over the ARPANET. He describes the point at which he stopped playing Zork, when he had almost solved the entire game, but then they added a whole bunch of new stuff to the game that night. So he realized he would never completely solve it, and finally stopped playing. I presume the "One Lousy Point" stamp is a cheeky tribute to Don Woods' ordeal playing Zork, because it's so damned hard to figure out how to find it (which I won't spoil): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c ---v----v----v----v----v--- | _______ | > One / \ G < | Lousy / \ U | > Point | ___ | E < | | (___) | | > <--)___(--> P < | / / \ \ o | > / / \ \ s < | |-|---------|-| t | > | | \ _ / | | a < | | | --(_)-- | | g | > | | /| |\ | | e < | |-|---|_|---|-| | > \ \__/_\__/ / < | _/_______\_ | > | f.m.l.c. | < | ------------- | > < | Donald Woods, Editor | > Spelunker Today < | | ---^----^----^----^----^---
- larsbrinkhoff 6y ago
  It's a very early version. Zork development began arund June 1977, so this is just six month in. I believe the officially final version is from 1981, and is the one Bob Supnik distributes. Macsyma developer Eric Swenson made off with a 1979 version, but it's virtually identical. I'm not aware of any more preserved versions beyond these three.
  - GetLampVR 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/z0-86M6DOqM https://youtu.be/z0-86M6DOqM I worked with Palmer luckey in 2009, he credits me for the idea of the rift in the Blake Harris book, history of the future. Chapter 33, William (bill) Wallace. I got scared when I found out he lied about making the rift open source as he promised for years. The day the Kickstarter went live, he removed all references to open source. He also had accepted 17 million from people like Stanford rapist Joe Lonsdale before the Kickstarter, causing Kickstarter to be sued and forcing them to change several official policies. I remember telling Palmer in 2010 about an old ad that Activision used to run about the infocom games, a picture of a brain that said no graphics processor could ever match human imagination. I just watched the get lamp documentary and found the Crawford and Pinsky interviews deeply spiritual. Have you ever watched a movie called world on a wire? It's an old German film about the simulation hypothesis.

I was the one who excavated these files from MIT's tape archives.

Scarblac 6y ago

Thank you!

brightball 6y ago

I’ve been curious to play Zork ever since the first episode of Chuck.

DonHopkins 6y ago

This seems to be an earlier version than the one that included the One Lousy Point Donald Woods Stamp (a tribute to one of the authors of Adventure). Isn't there another version of the later Zork source code in MDL floating around, that has the Don Woods Stamp? I worked with him at Sun on NeWS -- he's a great PostScript hacker! When you logged into his workstation, /etc/motd said "Welcome to Adventure. Would you like instructions?" -- but don't type "yes" to the Unix shell or you'll regret it. Here's his implementation of QuickSort in PostScript, and he also wrote the Spider card game for NeWS that shipped with OpenWindows (which is a nice clean well documented example of NeWS PostScript code), and he wrote a bunch of Open Look widgets and user interface plumbing for The NeWS Toolkit, too: https://donhopkins.com/home/code/quicksort.ps.txt https://donhopkins.com/home/code/quicksort.ps.txt https://donhopkins.com/home/news-tape/fun/spider/spider.ps https://donhopkins.com/home/news-tape/fun/spider/spider.ps http://www.icynic.com/~don/ http://www.icynic.com/~don/ Here's a great interview with Don Woods from GET LAMP, in which he mentions playing Zork at MIT over the ARPANET. He describes the point at which he stopped playing Zork, when he had almost solved the entire game, but then they added a whole bunch of new stuff to the game that night. So he realized he would never completely solve it, and finally stopped playing. I presume the "One Lousy Point" stamp is a cheeky tribute to Don Woods' ordeal playing Zork, because it's so damned hard to figure out how to find it (which I won't spoil): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c ---v----v----v----v----v--- | _______ | > One / \ G < | Lousy / \ U | > Point | ___ | E < | | (___) | | > <--)___(--> P < | / / \ \ o | > / / \ \ s < | |-|---------|-| t | > | | \ _ / | | a < | | | --(_)-- | | g | > | | /| |\ | | e < | |-|---|_|---|-| | > \ \__/_\__/ / < | _/_______\_ | > | f.m.l.c. | < | ------------- | > < | Donald Woods, Editor | > Spelunker Today < | | ---^----^----^----^----^---

larsbrinkhoff 6y ago
It's a very early version. Zork development began arund June 1977, so this is just six month in. I believe the officially final version is from 1981, and is the one Bob Supnik distributes. Macsyma developer Eric Swenson made off with a 1979 version, but it's virtually identical. I'm not aware of any more preserved versions beyond these three.
- GetLampVR 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/z0-86M6DOqM https://youtu.be/z0-86M6DOqM I worked with Palmer luckey in 2009, he credits me for the idea of the rift in the Blake Harris book, history of the future. Chapter 33, William (bill) Wallace. I got scared when I found out he lied about making the rift open source as he promised for years. The day the Kickstarter went live, he removed all references to open source. He also had accepted 17 million from people like Stanford rapist Joe Lonsdale before the Kickstarter, causing Kickstarter to be sued and forcing them to change several official policies. I remember telling Palmer in 2010 about an old ad that Activision used to run about the infocom games, a picture of a brain that said no graphics processor could ever match human imagination. I just watched the get lamp documentary and found the Crawford and Pinsky interviews deeply spiritual. Have you ever watched a movie called world on a wire? It's an old German film about the simulation hypothesis.