NAME

       advent - Colossal Cave Adventure

SYNOPSIS

       advent [-l logfile] [-o] [-r savefile] [-a savefile] [script...]

DESCRIPTION

       The original Colossal Cave Adventure from 1976-1977 was the origin of all later text
       adventures, dungeon-crawl (computer) games, and computer-hosted roleplaying games.

       This is the last version released by Crowther & Woods, its original authors, in 1995. It
       has been known as "adventure 2.5" and "430-point adventure". To learn more about the
       changes since the 350-point original, type 'news' at the command prompt.

       There is an 'adventure' in the BSD games package that is a C port by Jim Gillogly of the
       1977 version. To avoid a name collision, this game builds as 'advent', reflecting the fact
       that the PDP-10 on which the game originally ran limited filenames to 6 characters.

       This version is released as open source with the permission and encouragement of the
       original authors.

       Unlike the original, this version has a command prompt and supports use of your arrow keys
       to edit your command line in place. Basic Emacs keystrokes are supported, and your up/down
       arrows access a command history.

       Some minor bugs and message typos have been fixed. Otherwise, the "version" command is
       almost the only way to tell you’re not running Don’s 1977 version until you get to the new
       cave sections added for 2.5.

       To exit the game, type Ctrl-D (EOF).

       There have been no gameplay changes.

OPTIONS

       -l
           Log commands to specified file.

       -r
           Restore game from specified save file

       -a
           Load from specified save file and autosave to it on exit or signal.

       -o
           Old-style. Reverts some minor cosmetic fixes in game messages. Restores original
           interface, no prompt or line editing. Also ignores new-school one-letter commands l,
           x, g, z, i. Also case-smashes and truncates unrecognized text when echoed.

       Normally, game input is taken from standard input. If script file arguments are given,
       input is taken from them instead. A script file argument of '-' is taken as a directive to
       read from standard input.

BUGS

       The binary save file format is fragile, dependent on your machine’s endianness, and
       unlikely to survive through version bumps. There are version and emdianness checks when
       attempting to restore from a save.

       The input parser was the first attempt ever at natural-language parsing in a game and has
       some known deficiencies. While later text adventures distinguished between transitive and
       intransitive verbs, Adventure’s grammar distinguishes only between motion and action
       verbs. Motions are always immediate in their behavior, so both ACTION MOTION and MOTION
       ACTION (and even MOTION NOUN and MOTION MOTION) are invariably equivalent to MOTION (thus
       GO NORTH means NORTH and JUMP DOWN means JUMP). Whereas, with actions and nouns, the
       parser collects words until it’s seen one of each, and then dispatches; if it reaches the
       end of the command without seeing a noun, it’ll dispatch an "intransitive" action. This
       makes ACTION1 ACTION2 equivalent to ACTION2 (thus TAKE INVENTORY means INVENTORY), and
       NOUN ACTION equivalent to ACTION NOUN.

       Thus you get anomalies like "eat building" interpreted as a command to move to the
       building. These should not be reported as bugs; instead, consider them historical
       curiosities.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to Eric S. Raymond esr@thyrsus.com. The project page is at
       http://catb.org/~esr/open-adventure

SEE ALSO

       wumpus(6), adventure(6), zork(6), rogue(6), nethack(6).

                                            2024-05-26                                  ADVENT(6)