RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past and present is available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/
Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?
My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens@wvwc.edu] Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54 To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)
I don't know what an RPG is
Or an old "programming language." Actually more accurately a set of coding sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files. Used many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much real "coding." A later version was called RPG II.
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:17 PM +0200 7/29/01, G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past and present is available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/
Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?
My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens@wvwc.edu] Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54 To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)
I don't know what an RPG is
Or an old "programming language." Actually more accurately a set of coding sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files. Used many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much real "coding." A later version was called RPG II.
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
This is related to an area of special interest to me: digiTALES. A digital text adventure learning experience, or digiTALE for short, is a form of interactive fiction in the spirit of the old Infocom text adventures (e.g., Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). It differs in two significant regards:
1) The puzzles are based on a unit of study in the extended science curriculum (e.g., including geography and health just as much as biology or physics). Students must apply principles of science to situations to achieve a goal and move further along in the adventure.
2) The text adventures can be played inside a web browser or on their own.
I have an HTML/JavaScript sample in action maze format if anybody is interested.
Picture a school web page that contains background information about electrical circuits, spatial volume, or some other unit of study. At the bottom of the page would be a digiTALE to reinforce concepts. Right now, however, it seems that the only way to play a text adventure within a browser is via ZPlet. (Examples: http://games.igateway.net/adventure/.)
ZPlet is a Java interpreter allowing games created with Inform to be played in a web browser (see http://www.pond.com/~russotto/zplet/ifol.html). Unfortunately, that means writing interactive fiction with Inform, which is pretty intimidating (see http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/DM4.pdf). Moreover, the result is a Java-based text adventure with mixed and many limitations (e.g., slow, no save/restore). ZPlet adds its own limitations (e.g., font, color scheme), but Matt Russotto has opened the ZPlet source code in hopes of improvements (http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/Zplet.htm).
The Cloak of Darkness site (http://homepages.tesco.net/~roger.firth/cloak/) is a good place to compare the various text adventure languages. Inform is the most powerful, but not very friendly. ALAN is the most friendly, but not very visual. Adrift is easy and visual, but Windows only. A digiTALE implemented in Squeak might be a better way of going about browser-based text adventures.
--
R. Kenyon
|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
Just for the clarity: Today, "RPG" usually means something different than "interactive fiction" (IF). While IF is usually text-based and allows you to "give axe to goblin" or "carefully examine the mushroom, then eat it". On the other hand, "RPG" usually doesn't have extensive vocabulary (or no vocabulary at all) and is centered around numeric "stats" (strength, wisdom, dexterity etc...) of player and enemies. The RPG style I'm specifically interested in porting to Squeak, is graphical tile RPG like Angband (have a look at http://thangorodrim.angband.org/angband.html), although there are several dozens of these for different platform. The interesting factor of these games is that they are different each time you play so there's a reason to come back once you finish it (IF you finish it). The graphics/sound part of these games is usually very simple but OO programming could be used to program interesting AI stuff very easily, I think...
G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... [...] Core of these programs is handling natural language [...]
As Frantisek already pointed out, he was talking about tile-based games like Angband and NetHack rather than language-based interactive fiction. (These are commonly called Roguelike games, after the classic prototype of the genre, Rogue.)
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Frankly, I don't see much point to this. If you mean implementing a z-code interpreter in Squeak, it might be a fun project, but there are already fine z-code interpreters available for more platforms than Squeak runs on. If you mean compiling Squeak to the z-machine, I don't in fact think that Squeak would be any more powerful or convenient than top IF languages because it lacks convenience features (that while not actually necessary, are *extremely* convenient) for writing IF. Furthermore, compiling to the Z Machine places severe memory constraints on a program which Squeak would be hard pressed to satisfy.
More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to z-code). An etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction kit could fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely cross-platform compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a complete and flexible underlying system.
Roger Kenyon wrote:
The Cloak of Darkness site (http://homepages.tesco.net/~roger.firth/cloak/) is a good place to compare the various text adventure languages. Inform is the most powerful, but not very friendly.
That's a bold unilateral statement. Inform has, hrm, Very Strong Competition for that title from TADS, at the very least. I would certainly direct interested Squeak programmers to TADS before Inform, because it has a much higher-level object model that I think would appeal more to Squeak programmers. The object model is, in fact, rather reminiscent of Self; it's basically prototype-based and has a remarkably sensible multiple inheritance scheme. With TADS 3 are coming many other high-level features Smalltalkers will like, such as anonymous functions (ie, Blocks).
ALAN is the most friendly, but not very visual. Adrift is easy and visual, but Windows only. A digiTALE implemented in Squeak might be a better way of going about browser-based text adventures.
I've never understood why someone would want to run a text adventure in a browser.
-Jesse
No question. I was pointing out the limits of current IF authoring environments in favor of something, as you say, entirely Squeak-based.
More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to z-code). An etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction kit could fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely cross-platform compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a complete and flexible underlying system.
On the other hand, my reference to Game Maker (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html) was to suggest not limiting the tool to text-based adventures. Take a look at the Game Maker documentation (that's about all us Mac folk can do with it). Now imagine something like this for the omniuser -- a step up from eToy tiles; a set down from actuall Smalltalk code.
Frankly, I think kids would eat it up. Judging from how active the Game Maker forum is, I am sure they would.
--
R. Kenyon
|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
You might be interested in the interview with Dave Lebling:
http://www.adventurecollective.com/articles/interview-davelebling.htm
He talks quite a bit about the limits of text adventures, both in the past and today.
He also has some comments on the early work and object oriented coding.
It's interesting that even Infocom has some remote influence from Spacewar. :)
On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:33:40AM -0400, Roger Kenyon wrote:
No question. I was pointing out the limits of current IF authoring environments in favor of something, as you say, entirely Squeak-based.
More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to z-code). An etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction kit could fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely cross-platform compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a complete and flexible underlying system.
On the other hand, my reference to Game Maker (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html) was to suggest not limiting the tool to text-based adventures. Take a look at the Game Maker documentation (that's about all us Mac folk can do with it). Now imagine something like this for the omniuser -- a step up from eToy tiles; a set down from actuall Smalltalk code.
Frankly, I think kids would eat it up. Judging from how active the Game Maker forum is, I am sure they would.
--
R. Kenyon
|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
My remarks hold, but moreso, with respect to graphic games purporting to be IF. To me, the problem isn't puzzle-sense or game-sense (all that goes to the smoke-and-mirrors to which I referred), the problem is gamemaster control of storytelling versus player control of the simulation. You can't have the first without compromising the latter, and vice-versa.
Many interesting solutions have been posited in many formats. Infocom narrowly circumscribed simulation for storytelling, but compromised quite a bit. Wizardry narrowly circumscribed stroytelling for simulation, but compromised quite a bit. First person shooters, well, you know where they sit. Graphics adventures don't really address the question at all.
My personal favorite (albeit my critically best-received and commercially worst-received) deliverable after Wizardry was Star Saga, a storytelling single-platform multi-player game which used off-line books of text and a game board -- a sort of a play-your-own-adventure book with computer-managed state. What I liked about the product is that players reported a strong sense of simulation experience in a game that actually dramatically controlled the story-telling. Moreover, the game had puzzles and boundaries but no dead ends. It was my first product built on the "IF oxymoron" thesis, and I think it was critically great for that reason alone.
Despite its virtues, and the perceptions to the contrary, Star Saga was not, of course, "interactive fiction." For reasons previously stated, there's no such thing.
On Monday, July 30, 2001, at 03:11 PM, Kevin Fisher wrote:
You might be interested in the interview with Dave Lebling:
http://www.adventurecollective.com/articles/interview-davelebling.htm
He talks quite a bit about the limits of text adventures, both in the past and today.
He also has some comments on the early work and object oriented coding.
It's interesting that even Infocom has some remote influence from Spacewar. :)
On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:33:40AM -0400, Roger Kenyon wrote:
No question. I was pointing out the limits of current IF authoring environments in favor of something, as you say, entirely Squeak-based.
More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to z-code). An etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction kit could fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely cross-platform compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a complete and flexible underlying system.
On the other hand, my reference to Game Maker (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html) was to suggest not limiting the tool to text-based adventures. Take a look at the Game Maker documentation (that's about all us Mac folk can do with it). Now imagine something like this for the omniuser -- a step up from eToy tiles; a set down from actuall Smalltalk code.
Frankly, I think kids would eat it up. Judging from how active the Game Maker forum is, I am sure they would.
--
R. Kenyon
|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
"Interactive fiction" itself sounds like the oxymoron. How can something be interactive for the user, and be fiction...isn't it fact? The player did this, and that, under a set of constraints (an imaginary world). There is no story in that, but the factual one that the user actually experiences.
What about a sort of interactive non-fiction? You could conceivably create a game where the experiences of the player(s) are recorded and easily reproduced, even allowing a sort of top down navigation of those experiences. From that, an interesting non-fictional (or fictionalized) tale could be written, augmented with clips, or scenes from the actual events.
It would be an multi-media tale about fictional or non-fictional events in an imaginary world. The question is, would something like that be entertaining to people?
- Stephen
-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Andrew C. Greenberg Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 3:51 PM To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and Squeak
My remarks hold, but moreso, with respect to graphic games purporting to be IF. To me, the problem isn't puzzle-sense or game-sense (all that goes to the smoke-and-mirrors to which I referred), the problem is gamemaster control of storytelling versus player control of the simulation. You can't have the first without compromising the latter, and vice-versa.
Many interesting solutions have been posited in many formats. Infocom narrowly circumscribed simulation for storytelling, but compromised quite a bit. Wizardry narrowly circumscribed stroytelling for simulation, but compromised quite a bit. First person shooters, well, you know where they sit. Graphics adventures don't really address the question at all.
My personal favorite (albeit my critically best-received and commercially worst-received) deliverable after Wizardry was Star Saga, a storytelling single-platform multi-player game which used off-line books of text and a game board -- a sort of a play-your-own-adventure book with computer-managed state. What I liked about the product is that players reported a strong sense of simulation experience in a game that actually dramatically controlled the story-telling. Moreover, the game had puzzles and boundaries but no dead ends. It was my first product built on the "IF oxymoron" thesis, and I think it was critically great for that reason alone.
Despite its virtues, and the perceptions to the contrary, Star Saga was not, of course, "interactive fiction." For reasons previously stated, there's no such thing.
On Monday, July 30, 2001, at 03:11 PM, Kevin Fisher wrote:
You might be interested in the interview with Dave Lebling:
http://www.adventurecollective.com/articles/interview-davelebling.htm
He talks quite a bit about the limits of text adventures,
both in the
past and today.
He also has some comments on the early work and object oriented coding.
It's interesting that even Infocom has some remote influence from Spacewar. :)
On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:33:40AM -0400, Roger Kenyon wrote:
No question. I was pointing out the limits of current IF authoring environments in favor of something, as you say, entirely Squeak-based.
More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to
z-code). An
etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction
kit could
fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely
cross-platform
compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a complete and flexible underlying system.
On the other hand, my reference to Game Maker (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html) was
to suggest
not limiting the tool to text-based adventures. Take a look at
the Game
Maker documentation (that's about all us Mac folk can do with it). Now imagine something like this for the omniuser -- a step up from
eToy tiles; a
set down from actuall Smalltalk code.
Frankly, I think kids would eat it up. Judging from how active the Game Maker forum is, I am sure they would.
--
R. Kenyon
|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
Sorry, but the recent thread used a term that just makes me boil over. It is, in my view, the quest for "interactive fiction" that has held back gaming now for decades.
The reason for this is simple. Interaction is an anathema to excellent storytelling. A storyteller, at least per the Poetics, is concerned above all things, with timing. The tempo of a story is everything. The manner and velocity with which the characters are introduced and developed is essential to obtaining the necessary suspension of disbelief -- the tempo of building conflicts ultimately yielding a climax or climaxes drives the reader to continue, and the effectiveness of the denoument to finish, explain and justify the story are all measured along a timescale -- and the tempo between these elements is essential.
It is the nature of a simulation, or interactive game, to permit the user control over his environment. Should he enjoy prowling around an arena for hours, so be it. If he wants to wander aimlessly through a jungle or search the interstices of irrelevant subject matter to the game -- again, so be it. The more detail, the more interesting the scenario -- but the far less effective the story. As an extreme example, while a simulation can sustain dead ends to make a game work, no story can survive that. On the other hand, if you have no dead ends at all, players feel a grave loss of challenge. (Enter the love-hate relationship between gamers, game designers and their game "cheats," walkthoughs and "cheat books.")
This inherent conflict, the war between storytelling and interaction is, to me, the locus where all games (including my own efforts in this regard) have failed. Of course, some merging of interaction and storytelling is possible without one destroying the other, but the more of one formulation is added, the more the other suffers. The trick, of course, is to recognize that interactive fiction is an oxymoron. To design the game well, first realistically design it as either a simulation-with-a-bit-o-story, or a story-with-a-bit-o-simulation. Then use smoke-and-mirrors, plain old theatre tricks plus new tech tricks, to make the game SEEM more storytelling, or more interactive, than it really is.
Sorry, but this is one of my soft spots.
Agreed. I wrote one years ago, and don't remember it being very challenging.
I regret I am fluffed to capacity with projects at the moment, but if someone else is excited enough to play, there is an on-Line spec:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if- archive/infocom/interpreters/specification/zmach06e.pdf
On Sunday, July 29, 2001, at 05:11 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
MMmmm...infocom... Strange that this should come up, as I've been diving back into nostalgia of late, digging up my old Infocom games and replaying them (on my Palm III, no less). I've been enjoying the heck out of Enchanter and The Lurking Horror. I fondly remember my Zork days back in the early 80's. :)
Did Adams do Bureacracy as well as Hitch Hiker's Guide? I remember playing that game and thinking "this is pure Douglas Adams"...but I don't remember him being credited anywhere for it....it was quite a clever, cynical little game..
If you can find it, the Activision Classic Text Adventure Masterpiece CD is a real treasure if you like Infocom stuff. I picked it up years ago...it seems to be a real collecter's item these days, being sold for insane prices on E-Bay.
I believe last week slashdot.org had a link to an interview with Dave Lebling (co-author of Zork, author of Enchanter and so much more). Made for some really interesting reading...
On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 01:11:11PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:17 PM +0200 7/29/01, G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past and present is available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/
Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?
My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens@wvwc.edu] Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54 To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)
I don't know what an RPG is
Or an old "programming language." Actually more accurately a set of coding sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files. Used many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much real "coding." A later version was called RPG II.
--
At 7:20 AM -0400 7/30/01, Kevin Fisher wrote:
MMmmm...infocom... Strange that this should come up, as I've been diving back into nostalgia of late, digging up my old Infocom games and replaying them (on my Palm III, no less). I've been enjoying the heck out of Enchanter and The Lurking Horror. I fondly remember my Zork days back in the early 80's. :)
Did Adams do Bureacracy as well as Hitch Hiker's Guide? I remember playing that game and thinking "this is pure Douglas Adams"...but I don't remember him being credited anywhere for it....it was quite a clever, cynical little game..
I think he had a hand in it. He consulted for them for quite a stretch ...
Cheers,
Alan
If you can find it, the Activision Classic Text Adventure Masterpiece CD is a real treasure if you like Infocom stuff. I picked it up years ago...it seems to be a real collecter's item these days, being sold for insane prices on E-Bay.
I believe last week slashdot.org had a link to an interview with Dave Lebling (co-author of Zork, author of Enchanter and so much more). Made for some really interesting reading...
On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 01:11:11PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:17 PM +0200 7/29/01, G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past and present is available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/
Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?
My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer
built in the
1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The
usefulness
of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens@wvwc.edu] Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54 To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)
I don't know what an RPG is
Or an old "programming language." Actually more accurately a set of coding sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files. Used many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much real "coding." A later version was called RPG II.
--
Just in case any of you feel like killing some time, I had a look around and discovered that most of the old infocom games (including hitchhiker), plus a few others, can all be played online...
telnet eldorado.elsewhere.org login: zork
Time was when I could play hitchhiker and get myself as far as the pub without needing to look at the screen. (What does that say about me?)
Regards, Nick
On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:11:11 -0800, you wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.
Cheers,
Alan
At 8:17 PM +0200 7/29/01, G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past and present is available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/
Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?
My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens@wvwc.edu] Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54 To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)
I don't know what an RPG is
Or an old "programming language." Actually more accurately a set of coding sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files. Used many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much real "coding." A later version was called RPG II.
Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also like in Smalltalk & Squeak:
"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."
There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic scenes....
Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual Z-machine?
Oh yes. Words fail -- I spent a LOT of time playing these games. (And losing them. "Hey, I both have tea and don't have tea. But, I see you have tea....". Adams had a delightful evil streak sometimes!) A Z-machine in Squeak would be really fun! Here are some specs for it:
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpretersXspecif ication.html
By the way, Squeak ought to make an excellent system for adventure games, too....
Lex Spoon
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