03 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Dungeon was in fact the name of the popular 1978 Fortran port of Zork by a guy named Bob. Zork was never officially named Dungeon. Zork's wikipedia article claims different, but that article is unsourced and obviously put together by a bunch of noobs.

According to the history of Zork, as written by one of the authors, Zork was officially renamed to Dungeon, then "Bob the lunatic" released a FORTRAN version (using the at-the-time current name of "Dungeon"), then due to legal threats it was renamed back to Zork.

Reference: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/N...

"As a result of the purloined sources at DEC, a lunatic there decided to translate Zork into FORTRAN. We had always assumed this would be impossible: Muddle is very (oops, very) different from FORTRAN, and much more complicated, and we'd used most of its features in designing Zork. The guy who did it was mostly a hardware person, so perhaps he didn't know what he was up against. At any rate, shortly after the Great Blizzard of '78 he had a working version, initially for PDP-11s. Since it was in FORTRAN, it could run on practically anything, and by now it has.

Unfortunately, at some point in the preceding year we (no one will now admit to suggesting the idea) had decided to change the name of the game. Zork was too much of a nonsense word, not descriptive of the game, etc., etc., etc. Silly as it sounds, we eventually started calling it Dungeon. (Dave admits to suggesting the new name, but that's only a minor sin.) When Bob the lunatic released his FORTRAN version to the DEC users' group, that was the name he used. I'm sure many people have noticed a curious similarity between the Dungeon game they played on their friendly IBM 4341 and the Zork I they played on their equally friendly IBM PC; now you know why.

Fortunately for us, a certain company (which shall remain nameless) decided to claim that it had trademark rights to the name Dungeon, as a result of certain games that it sold. We didn't agree (and MIT had some very expensive lawyers on retainer who agreed with us), but it encouraged us to do the right thing, and not hide our "Zorks" under a bushel."
03 Dec, 2009, Skol wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
If you want the 'start' start of them, check out:
A history of 'Adventure'

The first version I played was the one Micro$oft had stolen and then released on their own (they did that with a number of fonts as well). The 'Colossal Cave Adventure'. I hear the original didn't have monsters, but William Crowther added those to make it fun for his kids.

Eventually 'advent' was used an inspiration for Zork by the guys who then took that and formed Infocom. They didn't use the code, so it wasn't a Mercthievia moment.

As I started on Colossal Cave as a kid, I actually have it in my log-in sequence along with Zork, as influences. And have helpfiles on them in game. If you walk without a light, sometimes it tells you you're going to get eaten by a grue heh, and… The standard 'brass lantern' has the exact same strings. A little homage.

If you want to try them out, type in my game's website /if/. I'd link it directly but I don't want bots or people who would get grumpy to go agro. Note, it DOES take a few seconds for them to start.
03 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Skol said:
If you want to try them out, type in my game's website /if/.

I'm not sure what exactly your instructions are saying to do here?
I don't think you need to worry about people getting grumpy if you post a link, and if they do, other people can tell them to be quiet already. :tongue:
If you care about bots, that's another story I suppose.


EDIT: Twisol pointed out that what is meant is to take the game website's URL, and add "/if" to the end of it. That is, something like www.SkolsNiftyGameUrl.com/if
03 Dec, 2009, Skol wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Exactly David.
I just didn't want it being found in a google search and all that ;).

Ps. The applet running it is Zplet, although I set up a PHP program to search for games/add to the pulldown etc.
03 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm reading the "History" section of the Adventure game – it's pretty cool actually. I didn't know that calling places "rooms" even if they're not actually rooms dates back to 19th- and early 20th-century spelunkers, including this Stephen Bishop fellow (whom I hadn't heard of either).
03 Dec, 2009, Skol wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Yeah, when I found that site (well after I'd gotten into Mudding) I was like 'omg there it is!'.
Great history there isn't it? I hadn't known about the 'rooms' as well. I found the entire thing fascinating though how he turned his love of caving and his fun with D&D into the game.

I find the game a kind of great-granddad of things, or maybe a great-granduncle heh.

I know most won't, but I do encourage people to share the history. IE:
\   Credits: (read: where we're from and all that)             \
| |
| History: Crowther and Woods "Collossal Cave" Adventure –> |
/ Zork –> IT Games were the inspiration for Copper->Alfa Mud |
| DikuMUD –> Merc 2.1 –> Rom 2.4b2 –> Ansalon /
\ AnsalonMud derived from ROM with many years of changes. \
| Ansalon started as AlphaMUD in 1996, 1997 became Ansalon |
| DikuMUD by Hans Staerfeldt, Katja Nyboe, Tom Madsen, |
| Michael Seifert, and Sebastian Hammer |
/ MERC 2.1 code by Hatchet, Furey, and Kahn. /
| ROM 2.4 copyright © 1993-1998 Russ Taylor |
| |
/ /| /| |\ /
\_/ \_-/\_-/\_-/ \-/\_-__-_/\/\_-/ \-/\_-__\\_-/ \-/\-/ \-_\_\
03 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
Skol said:
| History: Crowther and Woods "Collossal Cave" Adventure –> |
/ Zork –> IT Games were the inspiration for Copper->Alfa Mud |
| DikuMUD –> Merc 2.1 –> Rom 2.4b2 –> Ansalon /

Well technically Adventure and Zork were inspiration for MUD, which inspired AberMUD, which inspired Diku. Likewise Adventure was inspired by D&D, which drew inspiration from various authors such as Tolkien (who in turn drew inspiration from earlier authors such as Lord Dunsany, etc). I guess the question is, how many names do you want to squeeze in? ;)
04 Dec, 2009, Skol wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Lol too true Richard hehe.
04 Dec, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Skol said:
| History: Crowther and Woods "Collossal Cave" Adventure –> |
/ Zork –> IT Games were the inspiration for Copper->Alfa Mud |
| DikuMUD –> Merc 2.1 –> Rom 2.4b2 –> Ansalon /

Well technically Adventure and Zork were inspiration for MUD, which inspired AberMUD, which inspired Diku. Likewise Adventure was inspired by D&D, which drew inspiration from various authors such as Tolkien (who in turn drew inspiration from earlier authors such as Lord Dunsany, etc). I guess the question is, how many names do you want to squeeze in? ;)


And Alfa is DikuMud… and Copper was a DikuMud that was the source of MercMud…
And no mention of Dungeons & Dragons, Tolkien, Jack Vance, Homer and Hesiod. *sigh*
04 Dec, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
According to the history of Zork, as written by one of the authors, Zork was officially renamed to Dungeon, then "Bob the lunatic" released a FORTRAN version (using the at-the-time current name of "Dungeon"), then due to legal threats it was renamed back to Zork.

It doesn't say anywhere that Zork was 'officially' renamed to Dungeon in that source. http://www.malinche.net/zork.html sheds some more light on the issue. I guess at one point of time they did change the name to Dungeon, promptly got a letter from the D&D lawyers, and changed it back to Zork. Anyways, it was the FORTRAN version of Zork called Dungeon that MUD was inspired by.

So that makes Adventure -> Zork -> Dungeon -> MUD -> MIST -> AberMUD.
04 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
It doesn't say anywhere that Zork was 'officially' renamed to Dungeon in that source. http://www.malinche.net/zork.html sheds some more light on the issue. I guess at one point of time they did change the name to Dungeon, promptly got a letter from the D&D lawyers, and changed it back to Zork.


… your link agrees with KaVir. Just sayin'.

The link Scandum posted said:
At this Zork tribute page you can check out some super-rare pictures, try your hand at the original Zork (called Dungeon at the time)

(Emphasis mine)


EDIT:
Also,
Quote
According to Grandmaster Tim Anderson "Zork was originally called Zork. It was renamed to Dungeon in a fit of tastelessness later on, then renamed back

I don't know what requirements you have for an "official" renaming, but it seems pretty clear that it was indeed a renaming.
04 Dec, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
… your link agrees with KaVir. Just sayin'.

Does it?

The link Scandum posted said:
At this Zork tribute page you can check out some super-rare pictures, try your hand at the original Zork (called Dungeon at the time)

When you click on the 'play the original' the greeting screen says 'Welcome to Zork' ..?

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/dungeon.ht...

Quote
Dungeon was created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling. It was inspired by the Adventure game of Crowther and Woods, and the Dungeons and Dragons game of Gygax and Arneson. The original version was written in MDL (alias MUDDLE). The current version was translated from MDL into FORTRAN IV by a somewhat paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous (a C translation of this now exists as well).

It's the usual case of a lack of primary sources and people getting their facts wrong, next people repeating the incorrect facts. Everything indicates there was never a MDL version of Zork that was released as Dungeon, and since Dungeon wasn't written by the authors of Zork, credits should be given to Bob. Hard to tell if Roy Trubshaw would have played Zork since the MDL version required a mainframe to be ran back in 1978. Anyways, so far no source that indicates a MDL version of Zork that was named Dungeon was ever released.

Same issue we got with the release date of DikuMUD, it's unknown, but Samson (Not 100% sure if it was actually Samson) at one point edited the first DikuMUD release to have it say that it was released on March 1, 1991. Other copies of DikuMUD lack that mention.
04 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
It doesn't say anywhere that Zork was 'officially' renamed to Dungeon in that source.

What I meant by "officially" is that they explicitly chose to name the game "Dungeon" - as opposed to "Zork", which was a general term applied to an unfinished program.

From the link I posted:

"Zork, by the way, was never really named. "Zork" was a nonsense word floating around; it was usually a verb, as in "zork the fweep," and may have been derived from "zorch." ("Zorch" is another nonsense word implying total destruction.) We tended to name our programs with the word "zork" until they were ready to be installed on the system."

Scandum said:
It's the usual case of a lack of primary sources and people getting their facts wrong, next people repeating the incorrect facts.

The articles I've referenced were written by Tim Anderson, one of the original Zork/Dungeon developers, and were published in The New Zork Times in 1985. Are you suggesting he made it up? If so, do you have any sources to back up your view?
04 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Everything indicates there was never a MDL version of Zork that was released as Dungeon

Not sure how reliable this link is, but it seems to answer your question:

"While the authors of Zork were at MIT, a programmer from DEC broke into MIT's computer systems and stole the MDL source code to the original Dungeon. (Dungeon was at the time playable over ARPANET, but its source code was not made available.) This programmer translated the MDL into Fortran, and distributed it. Infocom later agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on it, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This FORTRAN version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions."

Emphasis mine. Looks like they released it under the name Dungeon, but didn't release the source code. Bob got hold of the source code and ported it to FORTRAN, then released his version under the same name that was being used at the time - Dungeon.
04 Dec, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
The guy who stole the MDL source code is called 'Ted' in Tim's source, so that quote (which is from an old Wikipedia entry for Zork) appears incorrect.

According to bartle: http://listlibrary.net/mud-dev/2002/02/0...

Quote
ZORK was written in a language called MDL ("Method Definition
Language", 1975) which was all the rage at MIT's AI lab but which
wasn't used a great deal at institutions with punier computing
facilities. ZORK was ported to ForTran and renamed "Dungeon"
(ie. DUNGEN for a sixbit file name), for use on less computationally
endowed systems.

So that makes it at least clear that the version MUD was named after was the FORTRAN port.

Still no proof that the MDL version was ever released under the name Dungeon btw.
04 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
So that makes it at least clear that the version MUD was named after was the FORTRAN port.

I don't disagree with that. But I don't personally consider the distinction very important, as both the original and the port were called Dungeon, and MUD was only named that way as a tribute based on the gameplay.

Quote
Still no proof that the MDL version was ever released under the name Dungeon btw.

Other than an article by one of the original developers of the MDL version that was published in The New Zork Times in 1985, you mean?

By the way, from the same link that you posted earlier:

"Zork was written in a language called MDL (pronounced muddle and is short for MIT Design Language), a descendent of the Lisp programming language. In the brief time that Zork was known as Dungeon, the Fortran version of Dungeon was widely circulated which caused the name Dungeon to stick in some circles and sectors to this day."

Ergo, the Dungeon FORTRAN port was based the MDL version release of Dungeon.
04 Dec, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Quote
Still no proof that the MDL version was ever released under the name Dungeon btw.

Other than an article by one of the original developers of the MDL version that was published in The New Zork Times in 1985, you mean?

The 1985 New York Times article doesn't speak of a release, it does however shed some light on why the FORT port was named Dungeon, and why they stuck with Zork for their 1980 commercial release.

Once again, there's not a single source that clearly states that there was a MDL version named Dungeon.

edit:

Quote
In the brief time that Zork was known as Dungeon, the Fortran version of Dungeon was widely circulated which caused the name Dungeon to stick in some circles and sectors to this day."

That pretty much sums up my position, with an emphasis on brief.
04 Dec, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Quote
In the brief time that Zork was known as Dungeon, the Fortran version of Dungeon was widely circulated which caused the name Dungeon to stick in some circles and sectors to this day."


That pretty much sums up my position, with an emphasis on brief.

I appreciate that 'brief' is more accurate than 'never', but do you have any actual dates?

We know from Tim Anderson that Zork was named Dungeon "at some point" in 1977, and that Bob Supnik had translated it into FORTRAN in late January 1978. We also know that Infocom was formed on 22nd June 1979, and presumably the name had changed back before that point (because the comment about MIT lawyers).

I've seen a save file datestamped 7-Aug-1978, which states "Welcome to Dungeon. This version created March 30": http://www.plex86.org/Computer_Folklore/...

Have you found anything later than that?
04 Dec, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/i... Has a December 8 stamp for "Welcome to Zork", not sure what year though.

Anyways, that proves there were indeed MDL releases under the title Dungeon. In twisty little passages the author states the period was a few months on page 98.
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