5 ms·

When I was 14 or so, in the early 1980s, a friend and I who had been playing Zork thought it would be fun to design a game ourselves. We actually wrote to Infoc

When I was 14 or so, in the early 1980s, a friend and I who had been playing Zork thought it would be fun to design a game ourselves. We actually wrote to Infocom with a proposal that we write a new game for them and they let us use ZIL and the Z-machine to implement it. Surprisingly, they actually wrote back to us and politely declined our offer. In hindsight, while we knew how to program in BASIC and assembly language on our Apple IIs, we would have been lost making a game with ZIL. That’s to say that Infocom made the right call. Still, it said something about the company that they treated a couple kids with respect and didn’t laugh in our faces. I wish I still had the letter.

reticulated 1y ago
My goodness, I could have written this word-for-word. Similar age, same Apple II BASIC and 6502 upbringing (roll sleeves and call -151) and also wrote to Infocom. We were in the UK so even more surprised to get a reply similar to yours several weeks later. Sadly my letter is also lost to various house moves. Or eaten by a grue.
- drob518 1y ago
  Ha! They probably assigned an intern to reply to all the kids wanting to help them write the “next one.” Too funny! They had class, Infocom did.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Me too, except my letter was to Sierra On-Line and my experience was on TRS-80 6809. Really classy reply asking me to write back when I finished school.
  - drob518 1y ago
    Nice.
  - brandall10 1y ago
    Lovely to hear this about Infocom and SOL. The former was my obsession throughout the mid-late 80s on my Atari 800XL, and then the latter for the next few years after getting a 386SX in '89.
  - eej71 1y ago
    I recall sending a letter to them asking them for information on how they compressed their images for their hi-res adventure games. While they replied, they said it was a trade secret. I was kind of bummed. But being a 12 year old kid who barely understood the 6502, it probably would have gone over my head.
  - stavros 1y ago
    Recruiter pipelines back then were long, huh?
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  I wrote them, and after a while I received a brochure in my mailbox, with this stamp: ---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 < | | ---^----^----^----^----^--- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114927 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2016/05/zork-victory-sort-of.html https://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2016/05/zork-victory-sor...
chihuahua 1y ago
In the 1980s, I was interested in text adventure games, and had a kind of book/magazine on the topic of how to write them. In BASIC, obviously (groan) because that's what was easily accessible back then. I remember figuring out the mechanisms that the book introduced: what kind of rudimentary data structures to use to represent the state of the world, the locations of objects, etc. I got some simple stuff to work, you could navigate the world, pick up and drop objects, etc. but then my motivation gradually ran out because I didn't have a clearly defined design for the game I was going to build. I had a few pirated games (C64, Amiga): "Death in the Caribbean", "The Pawn", etc but never had the motivation to stick with them past the first or second puzzle. The puzzles seemed like if the answer didn't arrive via a flash of divine inspiration, there was no way to figure it out based on logical reasoning. Maybe that part of my brain wasn't developed back then.
- drob518 1y ago
  Nice. Yep, we wrote our own adventure games in BASIC as well. There were a couple problems with that, however. First we weren’t able to come up with a sophisticated parser like Infocom had. We ended up with basic “verb object” parsers, ala Scott Adams adventures. Second, we didn’t have many rooms as it was difficult to fit it all into memory and we didn’t have the sophisticated incremental loading that Infocom did with the Z-machine. Still, it worked.
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    Writing a terrible "verb object" parser in BASIC was certainly a rite of passage for many of us. I recall making more than one. I also recall my best one having rudimentary "verb object preposition subject" support, but that being about my limit at the time in BASIC. But also I had access to TADS and early Inform (at home) and still wound up building a couple in BASIC (because school computer labs would have that available).
    - vrighter 1y ago
      I did that in brainfuck once. I am a masochist apparently
jmward01 1y ago
'as a kid I....' Man. This brings back memories. I got into the BBS world and started programming in earnest because I wanted to write shells for the MUDs out at the time. A friend and I built some amazing things all in the name of auto-mapping, adding graphics, etc etc. Simple games really help confine a problem to the point that you can grow your curiosity easily with them.
noduerme 1y ago
That's really nice. I remember when I was 8 or so, I phoned up NASA and told them I'd drawn up plans for a spaceship. The lady on the phone sweetly took me very seriously and asked questions about where such a thing would launch (answer: any big airport). She encouraged me to send them in. Around the same time (1988) my best friend and I started making our first game in HyperCard. Getting more immediate results from that is probably how I ended up a SWE instead of in aerospace.

reticulated 1y ago

My goodness, I could have written this word-for-word. Similar age, same Apple II BASIC and 6502 upbringing (roll sleeves and call -151) and also wrote to Infocom. We were in the UK so even more surprised to get a reply similar to yours several weeks later. Sadly my letter is also lost to various house moves. Or eaten by a grue.

drob518 1y ago
Ha! They probably assigned an intern to reply to all the kids wanting to help them write the “next one.” Too funny! They had class, Infocom did.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
Me too, except my letter was to Sierra On-Line and my experience was on TRS-80 6809. Really classy reply asking me to write back when I finished school.
- drob518 1y ago
  Nice.
- brandall10 1y ago
  Lovely to hear this about Infocom and SOL. The former was my obsession throughout the mid-late 80s on my Atari 800XL, and then the latter for the next few years after getting a 386SX in '89.
- eej71 1y ago
  I recall sending a letter to them asking them for information on how they compressed their images for their hi-res adventure games. While they replied, they said it was a trade secret. I was kind of bummed. But being a 12 year old kid who barely understood the 6502, it probably would have gone over my head.
- stavros 1y ago
  Recruiter pipelines back then were long, huh?
DonHopkins 1y ago
I wrote them, and after a while I received a brochure in my mailbox, with this stamp: ---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 < | | ---^----^----^----^----^--- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114927 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Z1cKUxD9c https://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2016/05/zork-victory-sort-of.html https://crpgadventures.blogspot.com/2016/05/zork-victory-sor...

chihuahua 1y ago

In the 1980s, I was interested in text adventure games, and had a kind of book/magazine on the topic of how to write them. In BASIC, obviously (groan) because that's what was easily accessible back then. I remember figuring out the mechanisms that the book introduced: what kind of rudimentary data structures to use to represent the state of the world, the locations of objects, etc. I got some simple stuff to work, you could navigate the world, pick up and drop objects, etc. but then my motivation gradually ran out because I didn't have a clearly defined design for the game I was going to build. I had a few pirated games (C64, Amiga): "Death in the Caribbean", "The Pawn", etc but never had the motivation to stick with them past the first or second puzzle. The puzzles seemed like if the answer didn't arrive via a flash of divine inspiration, there was no way to figure it out based on logical reasoning. Maybe that part of my brain wasn't developed back then.

drob518 1y ago
Nice. Yep, we wrote our own adventure games in BASIC as well. There were a couple problems with that, however. First we weren’t able to come up with a sophisticated parser like Infocom had. We ended up with basic “verb object” parsers, ala Scott Adams adventures. Second, we didn’t have many rooms as it was difficult to fit it all into memory and we didn’t have the sophisticated incremental loading that Infocom did with the Z-machine. Still, it worked.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  Writing a terrible "verb object" parser in BASIC was certainly a rite of passage for many of us. I recall making more than one. I also recall my best one having rudimentary "verb object preposition subject" support, but that being about my limit at the time in BASIC. But also I had access to TADS and early Inform (at home) and still wound up building a couple in BASIC (because school computer labs would have that available).
  - vrighter 1y ago
    I did that in brainfuck once. I am a masochist apparently

jmward01 1y ago

'as a kid I....' Man. This brings back memories. I got into the BBS world and started programming in earnest because I wanted to write shells for the MUDs out at the time. A friend and I built some amazing things all in the name of auto-mapping, adding graphics, etc etc. Simple games really help confine a problem to the point that you can grow your curiosity easily with them.

noduerme 1y ago

That's really nice. I remember when I was 8 or so, I phoned up NASA and told them I'd drawn up plans for a spaceship. The lady on the phone sweetly took me very seriously and asked questions about where such a thing would launch (answer: any big airport). She encouraged me to send them in. Around the same time (1988) my best friend and I started making our first game in HyperCard. Getting more immediate results from that is probably how I ended up a SWE instead of in aerospace.