Provided by: open-adventure_1.18-1_amd64 
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)