"FYI, it is now possible to play all of the Infocom games with a phenomenal parser using LampGPT, with just ./lampgpt.py -O gamename."
I feel like this could really open them up to a new generation.
I think it's spiritually an Infocom game. If the company had persisted and there were any future in adventure games, Circuit’s Edge is exactly what they would have produced.
These days you can probably vibe code an engine using SpaCy for commands and some kind of word salad LLM or something to make the output more flowery
I get that the interface is a little fiddly at first, but it is highly conventional. Once you have spent a few minutes learning it, you unlock all other text adventures, of which there are many amazing ones.
I see many suggestions for using LLMs to improve the experience. I have tried that myself[2] and played others' attempts[3], and LLMs' world modeling abilities are currently insufficient for that[4]. They invent details that don't exist, they assume things have effects they don't, etc. They add more frustration than they remove.
Text adventures are often puzzle-paced, meaning they tell their story in drips separated by puzzles. These puzzles can be difficult. Best is to play with a friend -- you might get ideas from each other. If you have no interested friend, don't feel shame over looking at hints, or outright looking the solution up. But do let the puzzle simmer for a day first to make sure you've tried everything you can think of.
[1]: An Infocom game but rather different from the others.
[2]: https://entropicthoughts.com/evaluating-llms-playing-text-ad...
[3]: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=6nn0ihhejq2hrvh2&review=86904
[4]: More systematic paper on arXiv I've lost the link to but will post when I find it.
Generally yes, however Hitchhiker is the one huge exception to that. Its very accessible, well written and the BBC released a version for the web:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...
https://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT4.4.pdf
The comic pokes fun at the ridiculously cruel babelfish puzzle. Which, I'm proud to say, I solved back in the day without assistance, after a full day's worth of effort, and requiring at one point to completely restart the game because of an apparently useless item I didn't pick up at the very beginning of the game (if you've solved it, you'll know the item I'm referring to).
But...while that was a nice achievement, I still got stuck later in the game, trying to fix the Nutrimatic.
... but I'm pretty sure my game copy had "Invisiclues" or whatever installed.
I'm curious why some of the games in the 90s re-releases had this and some did not.
The re releases I played they were under "hint" or "hints" or "help" or something.
There was an are you sure / really sure admonishment, then breadcrumb bit by bit hints towards solution.
They amused me for a time at 9-10, then later at maybe 14-15 or so I got into them again playing on a Palm VIIx with a folding Stowaway keyboard. I also read through HHGTTG on that same device.
https://archive.org/details/sci-fi-collection-the-usa/ and the like.
You really can't go wrong browsing our list of the best games of all time. https://ifdb.org/search?browse
All of the top-rated games have walkthroughs or other hints for when you get stuck. My top advice for new players: use the hints.
You can, because those games are the best according to the preferences of interactive fiction connaisseurs, and the preferences of connaisseurs never match those of the masses.
E.g. beer connaisseurs love IPAs, while most people find them way too bitter.
If I played that as my first text adventure I’d think text adventures with like advanced scrabble or wordle.
> do not start with infocom games
Yeah, the filfre.net historian described how most Infocom games sold in tiny numbers to their fanbase. They are text adventures for the hard-core text-adventure enthusiast. (And that includes Zork II and III.)
> Plundered Hearts
> Hitchhikers Guide
Both these seemed super-linear. If you can't solve a puzzle, you are stuck and you die. Not recommended for newbies imo. (Plundered Hearts is a 'romance novel' rather than the usual d&d shit.)
"I got the Babel Fish T shirt"
How did the infamous Babel fish puzzle originate?
The basic idea was by Douglas, and I added some refinements (like the Upper-Half-Of-The-Room Cleaning Robot). More interesting is how close the puzzle came to being removed from the game; most of Infocom’s testing group thought it was too hard. I was going into a meeting with them just as Douglas was leaving for the airport at the end of his final trip to Infocom, and I asked him, “What should I tell them about the Babel fish puzzle?” He said, “What should you tell them? Tell them to fuck off!” So the puzzle stayed… and its very hardness became a cult thing. Infocom even sold T-shirts that said “I got the Babel fish.”
-- Steve Meretzky
Humans also get stuck, to be fair, but tend to be more inventive and methodical in trying to get unstuck, and more intelligent in what to pay attention to. LLMs play like a three year old with advanced vocabulary and infinite patience.
LLMs also by nature don't learn from their experiences. Even within the same context window their past mistakes only increase the propensity of generating similar mistakes.
Those were before my time. I played many of these as part of the "Comedy Collection", "Sci Fi Collection" etc re-releases when I was 9-10 or so. Later searching for free "games" for my Palm VIIx, I found a Z machine interpreter and played a few of them on my PDA. Comment from a few days ago pasted below.
---
First time (only time?) a game made me cry, Floyd's death. 13-15 or so, Up way too late, hiding under my blanket to muffle the noise from the folding Stowaway keyboard, playing on a glowing green 160x160 LCD display on a Palm VIIx running a Z machine interpreter.
Apparently the author still gets emails now and then to this day about how Floyd’s death affected players. He used to have a personal site but I can’t find it now. A lot of players have written about this moment.
I think the other one I beat was Bureaucracy, by Douglas Adams. Got somewhat deep in Beyond Zork and HHGTTG, but don’t think I completed them.
I remember my father getting excited when he saw those Infocom compilations on Walmart store shelves.
I’ve also considered introducing those to my son. He’s 5 now. Lately having him play Mario RPG, Zelda, and Final Fantasy to practice reading.
—-
“Perhaps the most amazing thing about the creation of Floyd was how easy it was. The entire code and text for the character, if printed out, would perhaps run to ten pages. What’s amazing is not that I was able to create a computer game character that touched people so deeply, but how infrequently the same thing has been accomplished in the intervening two decades.”
Steve Meretzky
WantonQuantum•4mo ago
BTW, this site is likely not set up to handle a HN hug of death of downloads so consider throttling your downloads if you can.
LexiMax•4mo ago
ghaff•4mo ago
jhbadger•4mo ago