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Fantasy Game

A

aslauga

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 14, 2004
30
0
I remember when I was a kid playing this silly little game on my dad's PC, it had a DOS-like interface and you had to type things like 'go north' and it would tell you you were in a wood etc., and you could pick things up and use the things you'd picked up to do other things but it was all done through textual description. I'd really like to have another copy of something like this to while away the hours when I should be writing dissertations, does anyone know where I could find one for my mac? I know this type of game has a name but I can't remember it.

Thanks x
 
aslauga said:
I remember when I was a kid playing this silly little game on my dad's PC, it had a DOS-like interface and you had to type things like 'go north' and it would tell you you were in a wood etc., and you could pick things up and use the things you'd picked up to do other things but it was all done through textual description. I'd really like to have another copy of something like this to while away the hours when I should be writing dissertations, does anyone know where I could find one for my mac? I know this type of game has a name but I can't remember it.

Thanks x
Click to expand...

Sounds like something like Zork. A quick Google turned up this:
http://www.loveablan.com/experiments/zork/

Hope this helps!
 
"you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

even if you're not thinking of Zork, find it anyways. it was the best of the bunch, at that time. i had a ROM that ran on an Apple IIe emulator a while ago; shouldn't be too hard to find one.
 
sonofslim said:
"you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

even if you're not thinking of Zork, find it anyways. it was the best of the bunch, at that time. i had a ROM that ran on an Apple IIe emulator a while ago; shouldn't be too hard to find one.
Click to expand...

I'm trying so hard to download it, but they all come as .hqx files, which I've never seen before and nothing seems to want to open/expand them...
 
stuffit should handle those... that's just BinHex. about as basic as it gets on a mac. what have you tried uncompressing it with?
 
sonofslim said:
stuffit should handle those... that's just BinHex. about as basic as it gets on a mac. what have you tried uncompressing it with?
Click to expand...

Stuffit... I've tried downloading some different versions (of zork) so I'll see if they work.
 
If you like text based fantasy RPG's try www.gemstone.net. I've been playing it for years. It's subscription based and requires internet connection. And yes, you can while alot of hours playing this game. I know I have. :D

Good luck
 
Snowy_River said:
Perhaps you're thinking of the original, classic Adventure: Colossal Caves. It's another fun one. It runs fine under Classic...
Click to expand...

Funny you mentioned that - I just found it and am well into it already. Oddly enough it was the one I remember playing all those years ago, but I still didn't remember that the rod scares the bird! I do keep getting killed but dwarves and getting lost in a maze of twisty passages, all alike, though! I think I need a bit more practice!

Thanks everyone

PS. Still couldn't get Zork to unstuff. However, Adventure downloaded as a .hqx file and worked fine, so I dunno what's up.
 
does anyone know the provenance of "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?" it seems to pop up in so many old text-adventure games. and i run into it from time to time in weird places, like books and stuff.
 
sonofslim said:
does anyone know the provenance of "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?" it seems to pop up in so many old text-adventure games. and i run into it from time to time in weird places, like books and stuff.
Click to expand...

More interesting is the origins of the Magic Word XYZZY. Apparently it seems to pop up everywhere, like in the mathematical formula for finding the cross product of two vectors. Fascinating!
 
aslauga said:
More interesting is the origins of the Magic Word XYZZY. Apparently it seems to pop up everywhere, like in the mathematical formula for finding the cross product of two vectors. Fascinating!
Click to expand...

Also look at this website: http://www.ifarchive.org/

There are a number of people who make text adventures for free, for fun, and you can download a player. Some of the contest winners are really good, although the ones from Infocom are the best.

There used to also be a collection of all the infocom games (Zork, Planetfall, etc) for a fairly reasonable price, although I'm not sure its available anymore....
 
There is a game in the terminal EXACTLY like this....ill try to remember the code
 
got it!

from the terminal: emacs -batch -l dunnet

this runs the game in batch mode so you don't have to know any emacs commands to get to it.
 
sonofslim said:
got it!

from the terminal: emacs -batch -l dunnet

this runs the game in batch mode so you don't have to know any emacs commands to get to it.
Click to expand...

That's so cool! But I'm not entirely sure what to do with it...!
 
I remember a DOS-based game similar to this. It was called SLEUTH. You had to solve a murder by interviewing suspects and finding clues. Anyone know if there is a MAC version of this?
 
Heh... a text based adventure in emacs. Can't say I'm surprised there's one in there--I'd be disappointed if there wasn't--but having a believable VAX simulator as part of it is a nice additional touch.

Not that I managed to get very far on my own...
 
Did you get farther than me?

Makosuke said:
Heh... a text based adventure in emacs. Can't say I'm surprised there's one in there--I'd be disappointed if there wasn't--but having a believable VAX simulator as part of it is a nice additional touch.

Not that I managed to get very far on my own...
Click to expand...

[Therrell-G5:~] scottthe% emacs -batch -l dunnet

Dead end
You are at a dead end of a dirt road. The road goes to the east.
In the distance you can see that it will eventually fork off. The
trees here are very tall royal palms, and they are spaced equidistant
from each other.
There is a shovel here.
>get shovel
Taken.
>inv
I don't understand that.
>dig
Digging here reveals nothing.
>go n
You can't go that way.
>go e
E/W Dirt road
You are on the continuation of a dirt road. There are more trees on
both sides of you. The road continues to the east and west.
There is a large boulder here.
>go bould
I don't understand where you want me to go.
>dig
Digging here reveals nothing.
>climb boulder
You can't climb that.
>go boulder
I don't understand where you want me to go.
>look boulder
It is just a boulder. It cannot be moved.
>go e
Fork
You are at a fork of two passages, one to the northeast, and one to the
southeast. The ground here seems very soft. You can also go back west.
>dig
I think you found something.
>look
Fork
You are at a fork of two passages, one to the northeast, and one to the
southeast. The ground here seems very soft. You can also go back west.
There is a CPU card here.
>get card
Taken.
>look card
The CPU board has a VAX chip on it. It seems to have
2 Megabytes of RAM onboard.
>eat card
You forcefully shove a computer board down your throat, and start choking.

You are dead.
You have scored 0 out of a possible 90 points.
[Therrell-G5:~] scottthe%
:D
 
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