"You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded
front door.
There is a small mailbox here."
These are the immortal opening lines of the legendary Text Adventure Zork…….
A game that introduced us to the beautiful world
of Role Playing Games back when text and imagination were the tools of
an RPG fan.
The descriptive language and the leading wording bought about the formation of these amazing thoughts into a player's mind.
You could be taken to far afield places with a simple sentence to describe where you were and what was in front of you
A true masterclass in how to write for computer games….
"> look in mailbox
The mailbox is closed.
> open mailbox
Opening the mailbox reveals:
A leaflet.
> look at leaflet "
Zork is one of those games that players will
never stop playing, it only needs a keyboard and a grasp of the English
language and you are ready to play.
Simple yet complex it's a gaming marvel!
As you may be able to tell, we absolutely adore the Zork Series.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been playing ONLINE ZORK through this LINK it has been created as a side project by a guy who wanted to create a cool 404 Error page with a difference…..
This has then led to many an hour searching the labrynth for treasure and monsters to slay
We'd just love all of our readers to take a look
at Zork again and get involved in the online community that is currently
133423 strong!
The guy who created this online version of Zork
has a really interesting story so why don't you read all about it by
typing in ABOUT
Also we'd recommend finding out what the premise of Zork is by typing INFO
In order to prepare you for the battle ahead we
would like to take you through the training that is required for all
Zork players in order that they can battle their way through the
dungeons & monsters whilst discovering treasures and artefacts.
Your Training begins NOW!
Zork Commands Training:
The 'BRIEF' command suppresses printing of long room descriptions
for rooms which have been visited.
The 'SUPERBRIEF' command suppresses
printing of long room descriptions for all rooms.
The 'VERBOSE' command restores long descriptions.
The 'INFO' command prints information which might give some idea of what the game is about.
The 'ABOUT' command prints information as to why this site is here.
The 'LOGIN ' command allows you to log in, or
or create a new account if you have never logged in before.
The 'ACTIVE' command shows the number of active users playing Zork
The 'SAVE' command saves the state of the game for later continuation.
You must LOGIN before you are allowed to save.
The 'RESTORE' command restores a saved game.
You must LOGIN before you are allowed to restore.
The 'RESET' command restarts the game.
The 'INVENTORY' command lists the objects in your possession.
The 'LOOK' command prints a description of your surroundings.
The 'SCORE' command prints your current score and ranking.
The 'TIME' command tells you how long you have been playing.
The 'DIAGNOSE' command reports on your injuries, if any.
Command abbreviations:
The 'INVENTORY' command may be abbreviated 'I'.
The 'LOOK' command may be abbreviated 'L'.
Containment:
Some objects can contain other objects.
Many such containers can be opened and closed.
The rest are always open.
They may or may not be transparent.
For you to access (e.g., take) an object which is in a container, the container must be open.
For you to see such an object, the container must be either open or transparent.
Containers have a capacity, and objects have sizes; the number of objects which will fit therefore depends on their sizes.
You may put any object you have access to (it need not be in your hands) into any other object.
At some point, the program will attempt to pick
it up if you don't already have it, which process may fail if you're
carrying too much.
Although containers can contain other containers, the program doesn't access more than one level down.
Fighting:
Occupants of the dungeon will, as a rule, fight back when attacked.
In some cases, they may attack even if unprovoked.
Useful verbs here are 'ATTACK <villain> WITH <weapon>', 'KILL', etc.
Knife-throwing may or may not be useful. You have a fighting strength which varies with time.
Being in a fight,getting killed, and being injured all lower this strength.
Strength is regained with time. Thus, it is not a good idea to fight someone immediately after being killed.
Other details should become apparent after a few melees or deaths.
Command parser:
A command is one line of text terminated by a carriage return.
For reasons of simplicity, all words are distinguished by their first six letters.
All others are ignored. For example, typing 'DISASSEMBLE THE ENCYCLOPEDIA' is not only meaningless, it also creates excess effort for your fingers.
Note that this truncation may produce ambiguities in the intepretation of longer words.
You are dealing with a fairly stupid parser, which understands the following types of things--
Actions:
Among the more obvious of these, such as TAKE, PUT, DROP, etc.
Fairly general forms of these may be used, such as PICK UP,PUT DOWN, etc.
Directions:
NORTH, SOUTH, UP, DOWN, etc. and their various abbreviations.
Other more obscure directions (LAND, CROSS) are appropriate in
only certain situations.
Objects:
Most objects have names and can be referenced by them.
Adjectives:
Some adjectives are understood and required when there are two objects which can be referenced with the same 'name' (e.g.,
DOORs, BUTTONs).
Prepositions:
It may be necessary in some cases to include
prepositions, but the parser attempts to handle cases which aren't
ambiguous without. Thus 'GIVE CAR TO DEMON' will work, as will 'GIVE DEMON
CAR'. 'GIVE CAR DEMON' probably won't do anything interesting.
When a preposition is used, it should be appropriate; 'GIVE CAR WITH DEMON' won't parse.
Sentences:
The parser understands a reasonable number of syntactic construc-tions.
In particular, multiple commands (separated by commas) can be placed on the same line.
Ambiguity:
The parser tries to be clever about what to do in the case of actions which require objects that are not explicitly specified.
If there is only one possible object, the parser will assume that it should be used.
Otherwise, the parser will ask.Most questions asked by the parser can be answered.
YOUR TRAINING IS NOW COMPLETE…….GO FORTH AND EXPLORE THE WORLD OF ZORK!
ENTER ZORK HERE
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| Zork World Map |
You can also explore the world of Zork via the following link:
iFiction
