Looking for several versions of Adventure

[c***@gmail.com]

I maintain a catalog and family tree of Adventure ports and variants (www.jenandcal.familyds.org/adventure/Adventure.html).

While searching for versions of Adventure, I ran across a Z80 emulator called Z80pack (http://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/). The author has made available a 500-point port of Adventure (possibly of the original Woods code), written in UCSD Pascal by Ted Beck. I was able to extract the following from the game docs:
===============================
ADVENTURE

The history of this version of Adventure has been lost, and I am
unable to credit the originator. This program was converted to UCSD
Pascal from a PL/1 version found on our local computer system. This
version was obviously converted from a Fortran version (it said so in
the comments) but any history was not indicated. If you need
assistance with this program, you can write me. My address is:

Michael R. Turner
1622 Colonial Way
Frederick, Md. 21701
(301)-663-9181

Extended by Ted Beck. The changes to make the 500-point version were
converted from a CDC CYBER 74 FORTRAN program written by Tony Jarrett
and Paul Zemlin. It in turn was modified from an early DEC PDP-11
FORTRAN version of Adventure.

Some bugs fixed by George Schreyer.
===============================

These are all versions I haven't encountered before. The only PL/1 version I am aware of is an anonymous port of Woods to VM/CMS. The "early DEC PDP-11 FORTRAN version" may or may not be Woods' code. The "CDC CYBER 74 FORTRAN" version I am not familiar with at all.

If anyone has further information on these (or even links to source or executables!) I'd appreciate it.

--Nathanael

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by c***@gmail.com
I maintain a catalog and family tree of Adventure ports and variants
(www.jenandcal.familyds.org/adventure/Adventure.html).

[]

Post by c***@gmail.com
These are all versions I haven't encountered before. The only PL/1
version I am aware of is an anonymous port of Woods to VM/CMS. The
"early DEC PDP-11 FORTRAN version" may or may not be Woods' code. The
"CDC CYBER 74 FORTRAN" version I am not familiar with at all.
If anyone has further information on these (or even links to source or
executables!) I'd appreciate it.

Sadly all I can recall with certainty is that I played a version on an MVS
IBM mainframe, not VM/CMS.
I don't recall the total, but I suspect it was 350 or thereabouts, it had
the spectacular view room.
A more senior chap claimed he'd go to the end, but only by hacking it to
get an extra plover's egg.
I lost touch with him some decades ago, I don't know if he's still alive.

At the start it claimed it was outside opening hours , but I could have a
trial run. (this may have been disabled, I never got kicked out, but maybe
because I never spent long enough in the cave)


I never saw any source code, and/but the data table was "encoded"

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Kerr Mudd-John
Sadly all I can recall with certainty is that I played a version on an MVS
IBM mainframe, not VM/CMS.
I don't recall the total, but I suspect it was 350 or thereabouts, it had
the spectacular view room.
A more senior chap claimed he'd go to the end, but only by hacking it to
get an extra plover's egg.
I lost touch with him some decades ago, I don't know if he's still alive.
At the start it claimed it was outside opening hours , but I could have a
trial run. (this may have been disabled, I never got kicked out, but maybe
because I never spent long enough in the cave)
I never saw any source code, and/but the data table was "encoded"

Melinda Varian used to have the VM/CMS versions up, although since she
retired I don't know if they're still around. They were clearly a port
of an OS/360 version, because the FILEDEFs were set up to make 'em look
like OS.

Adam

[Nathanael Culver]

Post by Adam Thornton
Melinda Varian used to have the VM/CMS versions up, although since she
retired I don't know if they're still around. They were clearly a port
of an OS/360 version, because the FILEDEFs were set up to make 'em look
like OS.

If those were the sources posted at http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc or http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/colossal/colossal.zip then the entire site is now offline.

--Nathanael

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Nathanael Culver

Post by Adam Thornton
Melinda Varian used to have the VM/CMS versions up, although since she
retired I don't know if they're still around. They were clearly a port
of an OS/360 version, because the FILEDEFs were set up to make 'em look
like OS.

If those were the sources posted at
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc or
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/colossal/colossal.zip then the entire site
is now offline.

Bummer. That sounds like them.

Adam

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Nathanael Culver

Post by Adam Thornton
Melinda Varian used to have the VM/CMS versions up, although since she
retired I don't know if they're still around. They were clearly a port
of an OS/360 version, because the FILEDEFs were set up to make 'em look
like OS.

If those were the sources posted at
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc or

http://web.archive.org/web/20020831214411/http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc
can be had.(though I can't read it)

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Nathanael Culver
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/colossal/colossal.zip

can't (AFAICS)

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Nathanael Culver
then the entire site
is now offline.

Bummer. That sounds like them.
Adam

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Kerr Mudd-John
http://web.archive.org/web/20020831214411/http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc
can be had.(though I can't read it)

VMARC is kind of like zip or tar for VM/CMS.

Leland Lucius wrote an upacker. http://www.homerow.net/zvm/vma/

Adam

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Kerr Mudd-John
http://web.archive.org/web/20020831214411/http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc
can be had.(though I can't read it)

VMARC is kind of like zip or tar for VM/CMS.
Leland Lucius wrote an upacker. http://www.homerow.net/zvm/vma/

Aaaaand here's the README converted from EBCDIC:

COLOSSAL VMARC should contain the following files:
=====================================================================
COLOSSAL EXEC ***
A REXX procedure for loading and running the adventure game in
full screen mode. This could be improved / adapted to suit the
environment in which the game is to be played and the players.
(With luck, if you've un-archived these files onto something you
have accessed as your A disk, typing COLOSSAL should put you
into a game.)
COLNONFS EXEC ***
Another REXX procedure for playing the game.
COLOSSAL PLIOPT
PL/I source code for adventure "playing" program.
If you intend to set the game up so that folks other than yourself
are going to play it, I suggest that you make a minor change to
this and recompile it using the command PLIOPT COLOSSAL .
The program has hard-wired into it the filename, filetype and filemode
of the database file. You'll see that I've chosen these to be
ADVENTUR SAVEFILE A . I suggest that you change the filemode from
"A" because that'll be the disk where the players may well want to be
saving their own versions of this file - their saved games.

Post by Adam Thornton
COLOSSAL: PROC OPTIONS (MAIN);
DCL
FN CHAR(8) INIT('ADVENTUR') , /* FILENAME ... */
FT CHAR(8) INIT('SAVEFILE') , /* FILETYPE ... & */
FM CHAR(8) INIT('A ') , /* FILEMODE OF ... */
/* ENCODED DATABASE */

| change this to whatever suits
COLOSSAL TEXT ***
The results of compiling COLOSSAL PLIOPT. Note the comments above.
ADVTXT TXTLIB ***
This library contains the results of assembly of the ASSEMBLE routines
listed below, together with the TEXT from compiling RANDU FORTRAN.
ADSETUP PLIOPT
PL/I source code for database set-up program. You probably won't need
to use this. There's a copy of its output in ADVENTUR SAVEFILE .
ADSETUP TEXT
Compiled ADSETUP program.
CAVES DATA
Raw database - input to ADSETUP program. Useful for cheating.
GETFL ASSEMBLE,ITIME ASSEMBLE, RANDU FORTRAN, SAVEFL ASSEMBLE,
TREAD ASSEMBLE, TWRITE ASSEMBLE
These are non-PL/I routines used by the PL/I programs. ADVTXT TXTLIB
contains the results of assembly/compilation.
ADVENTUR SAVEFILE ***
Output from ADSETUP program. This is the database used by the playing
program.
COLOSSAL README
You are!
======================================================================
If you decide to share the game with others, the disk to be accessed
by other players should hold only those files (COLOSSAL TEXT modified?)
which are marked by three asterisks.
I suggest that after re-compiling COLOSSAL PLIOPT, having changed
where it's to find ADVENTUR SAVEFILE from A to something else,
you modify the EXECs to suit your fancy, and, finally, plant all the
files required by the player on one of your disks to be linked to
and accessed as something other than "A".
=======================================================================
This *really* is the original adventure. The program has been translated
into PL/I,but should play just the same as the FORTRAN from which it was
was derived.(I doubt whether there's a modern FORTRAN compiler for
VM/CMS can find its way around the twisty little maze of GOTOs of
the original in the way that IBM's old "G" compiler could?)
It's probably worth playing if for no other reason than to understand
some of the jokey references in its successors.

[Adam Thornton]

I've just put the thing up on Github. It's got the vmarc file in the
main directory, and unpacked in ASCII and EBCDIC:

https://github.com/athornton/vmcms-adventure

I suspect that if you had a PL/I compiler it wouldn't be too hard to get
going, although I'm not sure if you'd want to given that it appears to
be a completely standard 350-point Adventure.

Adam

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Adam Thornton
I suspect that if you had a PL/I compiler it wouldn't be too hard to get
going, although I'm not sure if you'd want to given that it appears to
be a completely standard 350-point Adventure.

P.S. The Cave Data was only encoded by being in EBCDIC. It's just a
room number starting in column 1, and then room data starting at column
9, going to column 80 (so, just FORTRAN-style sequence data, if you want
to get right down to it); if there's more than one line of text, it gets
the same room number as its predecessor. ASCII version is at:
https://github.com/athornton/vmcms-adventure/blob/master/ASCII/CAVES.DATA.A1

Adam

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Adam Thornton
I suspect that if you had a PL/I compiler it wouldn't be too hard to get
going, although I'm not sure if you'd want to given that it appears to
be a completely standard 350-point Adventure.

P.S. The Cave Data was only encoded by being in EBCDIC. It's just a
room number starting in column 1, and then room data starting at column
9, going to column 80 (so, just FORTRAN-style sequence data, if you want
to get right down to it); if there's more than one line of text, it gets
https://github.com/athornton/vmcms-adventure/blob/master/ASCII/CAVES.DATA.A1
Adam

Yup that looks like the data file I saw. (it may indeed have been encoded
by being in ASCII; I was reading it in EBCDIC at the time!)

[Nathanael Culver]

Post by Adam Thornton
I've just put the thing up on Github.

Great! Another piece of history rescued.

Now if anyone has any info on the other versions in my OP, particularly the Jarrett and Zemlin version, that would be wonderful as well!

--Nathanael

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Kerr Mudd-John

Post by Nathanael Culver
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc or

http://web.archive.org/web/20020831214411/http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc
can be had.(though I can't read it)

Hm. I get a zero length file from that.

Adam

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by Adam Thornton

Post by Kerr Mudd-John

Post by Nathanael Culver
http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc or

http://web.archive.org/web/20020831214411/http://risc.ua.edu/pub/games/cms/colossal.vmarc
can be had.(though I can't read it)

Hm. I get a zero length file from that.
Adam

Well I got 210kb. Sorry.

Ah, I see you've found some source now, excellent!

[nootrac90]

There s a lot of history of this game available on this page:

http://rickadams.org/adventure/

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by nootrac90
http://rickadams.org/adventure/

I'm glad you found google's search engine, even if it took nearly 6 months!