Ah. The world of interactive fiction. Brings back so many memories.
For "newer" folk, who are interested, you should try to get your hands on a copy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp and watch it. It covers the history of the games and everything else. Everyone relevant is interviewed with the notable exception of Graham Nelson (author of the Inform language). The tag line sums it up pretty well - "before the first person shooter, there was the second person thinker."
Plotkin himself is a bit of a heavyweight in the IF world. I'm not surprised that this was by him.
I tinkered with the language and environment a little. Inform 7, with it's natural language style of writing, is a fascinating environment.
Hey, that door wasn't there last time you walked by this spot. What the heck?
Lists And Lists
An Interactive Tutorial
Copyright 1996 by Andrew Plotkin.
(First-time players should type "about".)
Release 3 / Serial number 960823 / Inform v1502 Library 5/12
Standard interpreter 1.0
A Familiar Place
Everything here is just like it always is, except for that door.
>Cool
That's not a verb I recognise.
>Ok and
That's not a verb I recognise.
>Hows that my problem
That's not a verb I recognise.
>I dont like your tone.
I only understood you as far as wanting to inventory.
>No inventory
I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>Fuck off
That's not a verb I recognise.
>You arent a verb I recognise
That's not a verb I recognise.
>No u
I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>No u
I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>No u
I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
In order to truly appreciate what you are looking at you may need to: acquire a teletype machine, purge your memory of everything you know about computers (except FORTRAN and COBOL), and travel back to 1976. I guarantee you that you will be astonished by this amazing leap in technology.
More seriously though, Lists and Lists is a concept game from 1996 based upon the text adventure games that were popular in the 1980's. It implements a subset of Scheme for the z-machine, which was an early virtual machine in the JVM sense of a virtual machine (both from a technical perspective, and the "write once, run anywhere" perspective). While it's ability to interpret language was quite limited, it was certainly sufficient for exploring complex virtual worlds.
The door to the north is ancient, stained, knotted wood. It looks terribly out of place here. In fact, it is out of place here. The door is closed.
>OPEN DOOR
You push the door open. It doesn't creak at all.
>ENTER DOOR
White Room
This is a comfortably cluttered room. Cluttered with bookshelves, mostly. To one side is a large desk, on which a computer squats regally. A lumpy couch is the only other furniture of note.
Beside the computer is a small glass box.
Resting on the couch, and snoring in a manner which you suspect infringes copyrights owned by several local earthquakes, is a huge genie. Honest.
From there the world's your oyster. I recommend examining (abbreviated X) any noun mentioned (shelves, desk, computer, box, genie, toys, puzzles, keyboard) and otherwise interacting with things as you might expect. This cheat sheet may help: https://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/play-if-card.pdf
Maybe try PRESS GREEN to launch into a REPL. To get to learn the objective, BREAK BOX might be necessary.
Ah. The world of interactive fiction. Brings back so many memories.
For "newer" folk, who are interested, you should try to get your hands on a copy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp and watch it. It covers the history of the games and everything else. Everyone relevant is interviewed with the notable exception of Graham Nelson (author of the Inform language). The tag line sums it up pretty well - "before the first person shooter, there was the second person thinker."
Plotkin himself is a bit of a heavyweight in the IF world. I'm not surprised that this was by him.
I tinkered with the language and environment a little. Inform 7, with it's natural language style of writing, is a fascinating environment.
Took me a while to realise it is based on Scheme and not the Lisps I have used in the past. Did not occur to me to try ~define~ to setq variables!
Also this appears to be more of a set of logic puzzles, right? Going off of the flavour of the second challenge, which is
Define values for cat and dog so that cat and dog are equal? but not eqv?. Furthermore, cdr(cat) and cdr(dog) must be eqv?.
One is assumed to know the difference between equal? and eqv? and the challenge is in coming up with data that satisfies the constraints given.
I did the same thing, used setq and set ' before I did :r and saw the “define” verbiage.
> assumed to know the difference
:m for the manual and it’s under Comparisons
Hey, that door wasn't there last time you walked by this spot. What the heck?
Lists And Lists An Interactive Tutorial Copyright 1996 by Andrew Plotkin. (First-time players should type "about".) Release 3 / Serial number 960823 / Inform v1502 Library 5/12 Standard interpreter 1.0
A Familiar Place Everything here is just like it always is, except for that door.
>Cool That's not a verb I recognise.
>Ok and That's not a verb I recognise.
>Hows that my problem That's not a verb I recognise.
>I dont like your tone. I only understood you as far as wanting to inventory.
>No inventory I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>Fuck off That's not a verb I recognise.
>You arent a verb I recognise That's not a verb I recognise.
>No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
>No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
The website is being mean to me.
In order to truly appreciate what you are looking at you may need to: acquire a teletype machine, purge your memory of everything you know about computers (except FORTRAN and COBOL), and travel back to 1976. I guarantee you that you will be astonished by this amazing leap in technology.
More seriously though, Lists and Lists is a concept game from 1996 based upon the text adventure games that were popular in the 1980's. It implements a subset of Scheme for the z-machine, which was an early virtual machine in the JVM sense of a virtual machine (both from a technical perspective, and the "write once, run anywhere" perspective). While it's ability to interpret language was quite limited, it was certainly sufficient for exploring complex virtual worlds.
Suggestions for first commands:
>I
You are carrying nothing.
>X ME
As good-looking as ever.
>X DOOR
The door to the north is ancient, stained, knotted wood. It looks terribly out of place here. In fact, it is out of place here. The door is closed.
>OPEN DOOR
You push the door open. It doesn't creak at all.
>ENTER DOOR
White Room
This is a comfortably cluttered room. Cluttered with bookshelves, mostly. To one side is a large desk, on which a computer squats regally. A lumpy couch is the only other furniture of note.
Beside the computer is a small glass box.
Resting on the couch, and snoring in a manner which you suspect infringes copyrights owned by several local earthquakes, is a huge genie. Honest.
From there the world's your oyster. I recommend examining (abbreviated X) any noun mentioned (shelves, desk, computer, box, genie, toys, puzzles, keyboard) and otherwise interacting with things as you might expect. This cheat sheet may help: https://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/play-if-card.pdf
Maybe try PRESS GREEN to launch into a REPL. To get to learn the objective, BREAK BOX might be necessary.
How do you get the genie to check your answer?
Exit REPL with :q, run CHECK.