

Kindle gets text-based adventure games - pietrofmaggi
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/07/kindle-games-adventure-text

======
teilo
FTA:

"Before computer games arrived on the scene, kids amused themselves with
choose-your-own-adventure books that allowed you to explore fantastic worlds
that were described without the aid of fancy graphics.

"As computers became a little more powerful, these were translated into text-
only adventure games that retained the spartan aesthetic, but allowed the
player a little more control over their exploration of the world. For example,
you'd type "north" to move north, where you'd then "look" around a scene
before deciding how to interact further."

Uh... No.

"Colossal Cave", the first text based Adventure game: 1976, by William
Crowther, running on a PDP-10. By '77 it had been ported to Unix.

"The Cave of Time", the first Choose Your Own Adventure book: 1979.

~~~
teilo
Correction: The first interactive novel was Sugarcane Island, published in
'76. Two others ones, rather obscure and unknown, were published in '77, and
'78: "Deadwood City" and "Third Planet from Altair". The idea didn't really
kick off, however, until the Choose Your Own Adventure series began in 1979.

It seems clear that the development of Adventure-style games and the
interactive novel were independent of one another.

~~~
8ren
The article's version of events yields a more intuitive narrative flow.

> ...the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died
> as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said
> "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting
> tourists" instead of "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal
> _of_ visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version of the sentence
> was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify
> under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove
> that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or
> true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was
> in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present
> before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf.
> <http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html>

~~~
stcredzero
In other words, the Wired author just made up stuff that sounded good.

------
Groxx
Someone correct me if I'm missing something, but this has _nothing_ to do with
the Kindle.

It's a website that lets you play the games[1]. A minimalist website,
_slightly_ more minimal than any I've seen which does this, but a website
nonetheless. Any _device_ which has a web browser has access to this website,
the Kindle is just an example of one.

They could've labelled it for the Nook, or Sony's e-readers, or _anything_.
The iPhone has access to it as well. It's news only because someone decided
such websites are worthy of news, and made one into a high-profile example.

The only thing which has any relevance to the Kindle is that there's a
referral link to buy one on the site.

[1]: <http://www.portablequest.com/>

~~~
blahedo
The Kindle connection is really just setup for this (fantastic) closing
paragraph:

> _Of course, with the e-readers' lack of a backlight, you won't be able to
> play in the dark. But that's probably just as well. You might get eaten by a
> grue._

~~~
Groxx
Then you should light lantern first.

------
mquander
Note that there is already a very high-quality Z-machine interpreter in
Javascript available to any device that has a modern web browser (e.g.
tablets:)

<http://parchment.toolness.com/>

------
aw3c2
While we are on the topic of text games, I highly recommend Jason Scott's
(textfiles.com, BBS Documentary) documentary on text adventures: GET LAMP

<http://www.getlamp.com/>

It might seem expensive compared to the latest hollywood movie but think of it
as enabling a computer nostalgist to preserve our history.

~~~
tibbon
I just got done watching the 2nd DVD from Get Lamp and I was throughly
impressed. I'd watched it at PAX East prior, and then the 1st DVD a few weeks
ago. The 2nd DVD goes into some excellent depth.

Plus he isn't just making movies, but like you say, preserving history with
his massive archives.

------
8ren
If it works for text adventure games, then it will work for the command line,
vi and other tools of that era (apart from the missing "ESC" key), with multi-
_week_ battery life.

~~~
stcredzero
But with a large keypress lag. I wonder how it would do for Nethack? Perhaps
MUDs will make a comeback?

~~~
8ren
Nethack maybe also too laggy? but MUDs could be great, esp since it has
wifi/3G...

I guess twitter/SMS also :(

~~~
msg
It's ideal for Nethack. Infinite thinking time is enforced by the platform.

------
ja27
There's a port of Frotz for iPhone / iOS and an app named Twisty on Android
that are z-Machine interpreters (so they can play these games offline.)

------
jmspring
This might almost be a reason to get a Kindle.

I'm a big fan of playing games I find on the Interactive Fiction Archive --
<http://ifarchive.org>

Good stuff.

------
jonhendry
It would be much better as a kindle app.

I applied to enter the kindle developer program, saying I was interested in
doing an interactive fiction interpreter, but I've heard nada.

------
bcl
For more Interactive Fiction, including a mirror of the IF archive and Infocom
game packages check out <http://guetech.org>

------
davidmurphy
When I was in middle school, someone had a TI calculator that was programmed
with a rudimentary choose your own adventure style game. It was really cool!

------
mootothemax
Here's the website they're talking about: <http://www.portablequest.com>

~~~
michaels0620
I played it for 5 minutes and then seriously considered getting a pencil and
paper to start drawing out a map like I used to do. I forgot how addictive
these games were!

------
mcantor
Did a Hacker News post just give me warm fuzzies...?

I think it did.

~~~
stcredzero
"You are in a maze of twisty little book reviews, all alike."

------
zavulon
Sorry to rain on Kindle's parade... but iPhone/iPad has been able to do it
since the beginning of time: <http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/>

------
charlesju
Can you play MUDs from the Kindle?

