![]() ![]() ![]() The prose of the game itself has become part of hacker lore. It has been said that once Woods' version became known and available, regular work on many ARPANET computers stopped for two weeks as users tried to solve it (to counter this phenomenon a blocking routine was introduced so that the game could only be played outside office hours). Crowther's original game did not feature a points system, Woods' version awarded a maximum of 350 points, and later games were expanded to 430 points, or 550 points, or 551 points, et cetera. Different versions were often referred to by the number of points a player could earn by finding treasure. At the same time it evolved into many different versions with rooms and elements added by other programmers. Initially with the relative few who had access to machines like the PDP-10 that were connected to the ARPANET, but eventually the Colossal Cave Adventure was ported to smaller machines such as mini computers and home computers. From then on, the game found fame and success. This was also the first version of the game to be called the Colossal Cave Adventure. The game was subsequently encountered by and expanded upon (with permission from Crowther) by Don Woods, a student at Stanford University, who added rooms as well as functionality. From the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica (now in the public domain). Map of Colossal Cavern, with "Bedquilt route" in the right and middle of the map. This form of gaming where the player's input resembles natural language became known as a "text adventure", and later "interactive fiction". ![]() In it, the player could travel between locations (now referred to as "rooms") and manipulate objects in order to solve puzzles by entering one or two-word commands through the computer keyboard. Will Crowther, a computer programmer and caving enthousiast, played a significant role in mapping these caves and subsequently wrote a game in FORTRAN on a DEC PDP-10 mimicking the lay-out of the caves as an amusement for his daughters. The Colossal Cave adventure is a digital version of the Bedquilt Cave, part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky USA (not the Colossal Cave near Tucson, Arizona, despite the name). The history of the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game has been related in great detail elsewhere ( here, here and here, for example), but here follows an abridged outline. The object is to compare their geographical lay-outs it's a work in progress, and it's done for my own amusement. On this page, a number of variants of this game are enumerated and discussed briefly. The entire genre of text adventures, or interactive fiction as it is called nowadays, rests on this game. what are you waiting for? Let's go on an Adventure! "Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who enter are never seen again. Here is how the game's introduction starts: This is a faithful reproduction of the original game, ported to work on your Windows device. The game was later expanded and improved in collaboration with Don Woods who introduced additional fantasy elements like elves and a troll. The game was created by Will Crowther, a caving enthusiast, who combined a faithful simulation of his cave explorations and elements of fantasy role playing (he was a fan of Dungeons and Dragons), to create an adventure game for his daughters. While there were other text based computer games before Adventure like STARTREK (incidentally our first release - Star Trek Classic), this was the first text based "interactive fiction" game. Colossal Cave Adventure brings to Windows the game that started it all - the game that pioneered the computer adventure game genre. ![]()
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