Notes on  ADVENT 

The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will
Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented
game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the
authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal
Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only
six-letter filenames in uppercase. See also VADDING, ZORK, and
INFOCOM.

Figure 1. Screen shot of the original ADVENT game
Orange River Chamber
You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of
orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west
sidesof the chamber.

A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.

>drop rod
Dropped.

>take bird
You catch the bird in the wicker cage.

>take rod
Taken.

>w
At Top of Small Pit
At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage end
s
here except for a small crack leading on.

Rough stone steps lead down the pit.

>down

In Hall of Mists
You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west.
There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads
downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almos
t
as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top
of a dome behind you.

Rough stone steps lead up the dome.

This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the
way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of
twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of
twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' XYZZY and
PLUGH also derive from this game.

Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth
& Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a Colossal Cave and a
Bedquilt as in the game, and the Y2 that also turns up is cavers'
jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.

ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z.
You can also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of
resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.

The ADVENT vocabulary (word list) can be found here:

ADVENT VOCABULARY

You can play ADVENT as a Java Applet Here:

ADVENT GAME

J3N Research Labs

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