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 at 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 at wvwc.edu]
>>  >Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54
>>  >To: squeak-dev at 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.
>>
>>
>>  --
>>


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