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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!classic.iinet.com.au!news.uoregon.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!in2.uu.net!ulowell.uml.edu!nova.avid.com!news From: david_lebling@avid.com (Dave Lebling) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: xyzzy Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 19:50:19 GMT Organization: AVID Technology, Inc. Tewksbury, MA Lines: 45 Message-ID: <43prg4$mmc@nova.avid.com> References: <43ld3a$2ka@ub.d.umn.edu> <43m79t$86k@crl4.crl.com> <43mi05$2h6@newsflash.concordia.ca> <43n91t$4nh@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <43njv6$s0e@crl5.crl.com> <badger.811556737@phylo.life.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: whiplash.avid.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99a.107 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au alt.folklore.computers:87925 rec.games.int-fiction:7337 comp.unix.bsd.misc:221 badger@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) wrote: >jawells@crl.com (Jason A. Wells) writes: >> To my knowledge, when Zork was first released, Infocom boasted >>that their command handling, complex puzzles, and such could not be >>handled in FORTRAN. Infocom never said such a thing. In fact, the gentleman who translated Zork into FORTRAN had already done so before Infocom existed, and with the (post-hoc) approval of the Zork authors. >> Which caused DECUS (DEC Users Society) develop Dungeon >>to prove Infocom wrong. I think he did it so he could play Zork on his PDP-11. It wasn't given to DECUS until much later, when he got tired of people calling him up asking for it. >> DECUS apparently did a nice job (never played it, >>myself) however Dungeon is said to fall short in its command handling. That's true. The Dungeon parser was never quite as good as the original. This was primarily, as I recall, because the translator was using a version of FORTRAN for PDP-11s that didn't support really large executables. He used some unholy number of overlays to get it to work as it was. >Yes and no. True, the Fortran version of Zork (a.k.a. Dungeon) was >written after Infocom published the split up Zork trilogy for micros, No. See above. > [snip] > I'm not sure when the unsplit version of "Zork" was renamed >"Dungeon" -- at the time of the FORTRAN conversion? Zork was renamed Dungeon by the authors, and then re-renamed Zork. The FORTRAN effort started during the (brief) period when the game was called Dungeon, and the name stuck to that version. Dave Lebling (Original Implementor(tm)) david_lebling@avid.com