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C00002 00002	"Adventure" is effectively a problem-solving solitaire game,  in which
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"Adventure" is effectively a problem-solving solitaire game,  in which
the player  searches  for treasure  in  a magical  cave.   The  player
directs the program with  commands of one or  two words each, and  the
program acts as  "eyes and  hands", describing what  is happening  and
carrying out the desired  actions.  The problems  faced by the  player
tend to get more difficult as one goes along, though hopefully none of
them are insurmountable!

Adventure has, much to my surprise, become incredibly widespread since
its original  "release" in  mid-1977.  It  has turned  up in  England,
Sweden, France, and Germany  (and I've heard  rumors of an  Australian
copy), and it  seems that  just about  any major  (or minor)  computer
manufacturer has  converted it  to run  on its  machine.  The  various
versions are, for the  most part, identical,  though some people  have
extended theirs.   The  version  here,  which is  in  some  sense  the
"original", has been extended somewhat since it first began spreading,
so it may have sections in it which are unfamiliar to people who  have
encountered it elsewhere.

Historical info:  War  games begat "Dungeons  & Dragons", which  begat
"Tales of Middle Earth"  at BBN, which  begat "Adventures", the  first
computerised game  in this  family  tree.  It  was written  by  Willie
Crowther, then at BBN, and contained 5 treasures.  I (Don Woods) found
it at SUMEX, found Crowther, got the source, and reworked it into  the
350-point version which sprang to  overnight popularity.  That was  in
1977.  In August 1978,  I extended it to  430 points.  Meanwhile,  the
concept has caught on and has led to similar programs such as  Dungeon
(a.k.a. Zork) at MIT-DMS, Haunt at CMU, etc.

The program is not intended to be any significant advance in  language
understanding.  About all that can be said about it in this regard  is
that one might be  able to point to  it as an example  of the sort  of
ambiguities which can arise in  even the most restricted universes  of
discourse.  In particular, many difficulties arise from the  structure
of the program, which (with very few exceptions) requires that no word
be both a noun and a verb.

But enough of these attempts at justification.  It's fun, so what  the
heck.  The program is self-instructing, and is run by saying R ADVENT.



[Note: A SAV-format file, which should  run on most TENEX and  TOPS-10
systems, and probably even TOPS-20, is ADVENT.SAV[1,3].   That file is
slightly out of date, being Version II; R ADVENT offers Version 2.5.]