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88-443: Interactive fiction ( IF ) is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives , either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations . These works can also be understood as a form of video game , either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game . In common usage,

176-497: A clause complex . A clause simplex represents a single process going on through time. A clause complex represents a logical relation between two or more processes and is thus composed of two or more clause simplexes. A clause (simplex) typically contains a predication structure with a subject noun phrase and a finite verb . Although the subject is usually a noun phrase, other kinds of phrases (such as gerund phrases) work as well, and some languages allow subjects to be omitted. In

264-532: A provider and accessed over the Internet . The process of developing software involves several stages. The stages include software design , programming , testing , release , and maintenance . Software quality assurance and security are critical aspects of software development, as bugs and security vulnerabilities can lead to system failures and security breaches. Additionally, legal issues such as software licenses and intellectual property rights play

352-555: A rhetorical question . A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate , e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark." Other examples of minor sentences are headings, stereotyped expressions ("Hello!"), emotional expressions ("Wow!"), proverbs, etc. These can also include nominal sentences like "The more,

440-509: A vulnerability . Software patches are often released to fix identified vulnerabilities, but those that remain unknown ( zero days ) as well as those that have not been patched are still liable for exploitation. Vulnerabilities vary in their ability to be exploited by malicious actors, and the actual risk is dependent on the nature of the vulnerability as well as the value of the surrounding system. Although some vulnerabilities can only be used for denial of service attacks that compromise

528-520: A web application —had become the primary method that companies deliver applications. Software companies aim to deliver a high-quality product on time and under budget. A challenge is that software development effort estimation is often inaccurate. Software development begins by conceiving the project, evaluating its feasibility, analyzing the business requirements, and making a software design . Most software projects speed up their development by reusing or incorporating existing software, either in

616-457: A change request. Frequently, software is released in an incomplete state when the development team runs out of time or funding. Despite testing and quality assurance , virtually all software contains bugs where the system does not work as intended. Post-release software maintenance is necessary to remediate these bugs when they are found and keep the software working as the environment changes over time. New features are often added after

704-486: A code's correct and efficient behavior, its reusability and portability , or the ease of modification. It is usually more cost-effective to build quality into the product from the beginning rather than try to add it later in the development process. Higher quality code will reduce lifetime cost to both suppliers and customers as it is more reliable and easier to maintain . Software failures in safety-critical systems can be very serious including death. By some estimates,

792-478: A collection containing most of Infocom's games, followed in 1996 by Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom . After the decline of the commercial interactive fiction market in the 1990s, an online community eventually formed around the medium. In 1987, the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction was created, and was soon followed by rec.games.int-fiction . By custom, the topic of rec.arts.int-fiction

880-531: A divorce, he was looking for a way to connect with his two young children. Over the course of a few weekends, he wrote a text based cave exploration game that featured a sort of guide/narrator who spoke in full sentences and who understood simple two word commands that came close to natural English. Adventure was programmed in Fortran for the PDP-10 . Crowther's original version was an accurate simulation of part of

968-623: A former Implementor at Infocom, started a new game company, Cascade Mountain Publishing, whose goals were to publish interactive fiction. Despite the Interactive Fiction community providing social and financial backing, Cascade Mountain Publishing went out of business in 2000. Other commercial endeavors include: Peter Nepstad's 1893: A World's Fair Mystery , several games by Howard Sherman published as Malinche Entertainment , The General Coffee Company's Future Boy!, Cypher ,

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1056-546: A game, and caused a growth boom in the online interactive fiction community. Despite the lack of commercial support, the availability of high quality tools allowed enthusiasts of the genre to develop new high quality games. Competitions such as the annual Interactive Fiction Competition for short works, the Spring Thing for longer works, and the XYZZY Awards , further helped to improve the quality and complexity of

1144-638: A graphically enhanced cyberpunk game and various titles by Textfyre . Emily Short was commissioned to develop the game City of Secrets but the project fell through and she ended up releasing it herself. The games that won both the Interactive Fiction Competition and the XYZZY Awards are All Roads (2001), Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003), Vespers (2005), Lost Pig (2007), Violet (2008), Aotearoa (2010), Coloratura (2013), and The Wizard Sniffer (2017). The original Interactive fiction Colossal Cave Adventure

1232-638: A group of enthusiasts called the InfoTaskForce and the subsequent development of an interpreter for Z-Code story files. As a result, it became possible to play Infocom's work on modern computers. For years, amateurs with the IF community produced interactive fiction works of relatively limited scope using the Adventure Game Toolkit and similar tools. The breakthrough that allowed the interactive fiction community to truly prosper, however,

1320-443: A legal regime where liability for software products is significantly curtailed compared to other products. Source code is protected by copyright law that vests the owner with the exclusive right to copy the code. The underlying ideas or algorithms are not protected by copyright law, but are often treated as a trade secret and concealed by such methods as non-disclosure agreements . Software copyright has been recognized since

1408-491: A linear fashion, known as gamebooks , where the reader is instead given choices at different points in the text; these decisions determine the flow and outcome of the story. The most famous example of this form of printed fiction is the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, and the collaborative " addventure " format has also been described as a form of interactive fiction. The term "interactive fiction"

1496-525: A narrative work, the software programs ELIZA (1964–1966) and SHRDLU (1968–1970) can formally be considered early examples of interactive fiction, as both programs used natural language processing to take input from their user and respond in a virtual and conversational manner. ELIZA simulated a psychotherapist that appeared to provide human-like responses to the user's input, while SHRDLU employed an artificial intelligence that could move virtual objects around an environment and respond to questions asked about

1584-437: A programming language is run through a compiler or interpreter to execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in networking , operating systems , and databases . Software can generally be categorized into two main types: The rise of cloud computing has introduced the new software delivery model Software as a Service (SaaS). In SaaS, applications are hosted by

1672-401: A prose passage is the ratio of the number of words to the number of sentences. The textbook Mathematical Linguistics , by András Kornai , suggests that in "journalistic prose the median sentence length is above 15 words". The average length of a sentence generally serves as a measure of sentence difficulty or complexity. In general, as the average sentence length increases, the complexity of

1760-401: A quick web search . Most creative professionals have switched to software-based tools such as computer-aided design , 3D modeling , digital image editing , and computer animation . Almost every complex device is controlled by software. Sentence (linguistics)#Classification by purpose A sentence is typically associated with a clause . A clause can either be a clause simplex or

1848-400: A sentence usually match, but not always. For instance, the interrogative sentence "Can you pass me the salt?" is not intended to express a question but rather to express a command. Likewise, the interrogative sentence "Can't you do anything right?" is not intended to express a question on the listener's ability, but rather to make an exclamation about the listener's lack of ability, also called

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1936-495: A significant role in the distribution of software products. The first use of the word software is credited to mathematician John Wilder Tukey in 1958. The first programmable computers, which appeared at the end of the 1940s, were programmed in machine language . Machine language is difficult to debug and not portable across different computers. Initially, hardware resources were more expensive than human resources . As programs became complex, programmer productivity became

2024-433: A single player environment. Interactive fiction features two distinct modes of writing: the player input and the game output. As described above, player input is expected to be in simple command form ( imperative sentences ). A typical command may be: > PULL Lever The responses from the game are usually written from a second-person point of view , in present tense . This is because, unlike in most works of fiction,

2112-620: A small number of games for other systems. Software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the execution of a computer . Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures . Software in

2200-514: A specific version of the software, downloaded, and run on hardware belonging to the purchaser. The rise of the Internet and cloud computing enabled a new model, software as a service (SaaS), in which the provider hosts the software (usually built on top of rented infrastructure or platforms ) and provides the use of the software to customers, often in exchange for a subscription fee . By 2023, SaaS products—which are usually delivered via

2288-415: A system's availability, others allow the attacker to inject and run their own code (called malware ), without the user being aware of it. To thwart cyberattacks, all software in the system must be designed to withstand and recover from external attack. Despite efforts to ensure security, a significant fraction of computers are infected with malware. Programming languages are the format in which software

2376-399: A textual exchange and accept similar commands from players as do works of IF; however, since interactive fiction is single player, and MUDs, by definition, have multiple players, they differ enormously in gameplay styles. MUDs often focus gameplay on activities that involve communities of players, simulated political systems, in-game trading, and other gameplay mechanics that are not possible in

2464-604: A troll, elves, and a volcano, which some claim is based on Mount Doom , but Woods says was not. In early 1977, Adventure spread across ARPAnet , and has survived on the Internet to this day. The game has since been ported to many other operating systems , and was included with the floppy-disk distribution of Microsoft's MS-DOS 1.0 OS. Adventure is a cornerstone of the online IF community; there currently exist dozens of different independently programmed versions, with additional elements, such as new rooms or puzzles, and various scoring systems. The popularity of Adventure led to

2552-566: A wider variety of sentences. For instance one might type "open the large door, then go west", or "go to the hall". With the Z-machine, Infocom was able to release most of their games for most popular home computers of the time simultaneously, including Apple II , Atari 8-bit computers , IBM PC compatibles , Amstrad CPC / PCW (one disc worked on both machines), Commodore 64 , Commodore Plus/4 , Commodore 128 , Kaypro CP/M , TI-99/4A , Macintosh , Atari ST , Amiga , and TRS-80 . During

2640-616: A writer. In early 1979, the game was completed. Ten members of the MIT Dynamics Modelling Group went on to join Infocom when it was incorporated later that year. In order to make its games as portable as possible, Infocom developed the Z-machine , a custom virtual machine that could be implemented on a large number of platforms, and took standardized "story files" as input. In a non-technical sense, Infocom

2728-405: Is independent because it realises a statement. What is stated is the causal nexus between having no friend and not going out. When such a statement is acted out, the fact that the speaker doesn't go out is already established, therefore it cannot be stated. What is still open and under negotiation is the reason for that fact. The causal nexus is represented by the independent clause complex and not by

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2816-565: Is interactive fiction authorship and programming, while rec.games.int-fiction encompasses topics related to playing interactive fiction games, such as hint requests and game reviews. As of late 2011, discussions between writers have mostly moved from rec.arts.int-fiction to the Interactive Fiction Community Forum. One of the most important early developments was the reverse-engineering of Infocom's Z-Code format and Z-Machine virtual machine in 1987 by

2904-606: Is sometimes used also to refer to visual novels , a type of interactive narrative software popular in Japan. Text adventures are one of the oldest types of computer games and form a subset of the adventure genre. The player uses text input to control the game, and the game state is relayed to the player via text output. Interactive fiction usually relies on reading from a screen and on typing input, although text-to-speech synthesizers allow blind and visually impaired users to play interactive fiction titles as audio games . Input

2992-410: Is usually logically related to other non-independent clauses. Together, they usually constitute a single independent clause (complex). For that reason, non-independent clauses are also called interdependent . For instance, the non-independent clause because I have no friends is related to the non-independent clause I don't go out in I don't go out, because I have no friends . The whole clause complex

3080-483: Is usually provided by the player in the form of simple sentences such as "get key" or "go east", which are interpreted by a text parser . Parsers may vary in sophistication; the first text adventure parsers could only handle two-word sentences in the form of verb-noun pairs. Later parsers, such as those built on ZIL ( Zork Implementation Language ), could understand complete sentences. Later parsers could handle increasing levels of complexity parsing sentences such as "open

3168-453: Is written. Since the 1950s, thousands of different programming languages have been invented; some have been in use for decades, while others have fallen into disuse. Some definitions classify machine code —the exact instructions directly implemented by the hardware—and assembly language —a more human-readable alternative to machine code whose statements can be translated one-to-one into machine code—as programming languages. Programs written in

3256-758: The Apple II as designated by the "if" graphic that was displayed on startup. Their titles included the Prisoner and Empire series ( Empire I: World Builders , Empire II: Interstellar Sharks , Empire III: Armageddon ). In 1981, CE Software published SwordThrust as a commercial successor to the Eamon gaming system for the Apple II. SwordThrust and Eamon were simple two-word parser games with many role-playing elements not available in other interactive fiction. While SwordThrust published seven different titles, it

3344-434: The Z-machine . As the games were text based and used variants of the same Z-machine interpreter, the interpreter only had to be ported to a computer once, rather than once each game. Each game file included a sophisticated parser which allowed the user to type complex instructions to the game. Unlike earlier works of interactive fiction which only understood commands of the form 'verb noun', Infocom's parser could understand

3432-438: The high-level programming languages used to create software share a few main characteristics: knowledge of machine code is not necessary to write them, they can be ported to other computer systems, and they are more concise and human-readable than machine code. They must be both human-readable and capable of being translated into unambiguous instructions for computer hardware. The invention of high-level programming languages

3520-508: The 1990s Interactive fiction was mainly written with C-like languages, such as TADS 2 and Inform 6. A number of systems for writing interactive fiction now exist. The most popular remain Inform , TADS , or ADRIFT , but they diverged in their approach to IF-writing during the 2000s, giving today's IF writers an objective choice. By 2006 IFComp , most games were written for Inform, with a strong minority of games for TADS and ADRIFT, followed by

3608-559: The Club de Aventuras AD (CAAD), the main Spanish speaking community around interactive fiction in the world, was founded, and after the end of Aventuras AD in 1992, the CAAD continued on its own, first with their own magazine, and then with the advent of Internet, with the launch of an active internet community that still produces interactive non commercial fiction nowadays. Legend Entertainment

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3696-403: The Interactive Fiction community in general decries the use of mazes entirely, claiming that mazes have become arbitrary 'puzzles for the sake of puzzles' and that they can, in the hands of inexperienced designers, become immensely frustrating for players to navigate. Interactive fiction shares much in common with Multi-User Dungeons ('MUDs'). MUDs, which became popular in the mid-1980s, rely on

3784-532: The U.S. was the dungeon crawl game of Acheton , produced in Cambridge, England, and first commercially released by Acornsoft (later expanded and reissued by Topologika ). Other leading companies in the UK were Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 Computing . Also worthy of mention are Delta 4 , Melbourne House , and the homebrew company Zenobi . In the early 1980s Edu-Ware also produced interactive fiction for

3872-399: The bottleneck. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 hid the details of the hardware and expressed the underlying algorithms into the code . Early languages include Fortran , Lisp , and COBOL . There are two main types of software: Software can also be categorized by how it is deployed . Traditional applications are purchased with a perpetual license for

3960-404: The correctness of code, while user acceptance testing helps to ensure that the product meets customer expectations. There are a variety of software development methodologies , which vary from completing all steps in order to concurrent and iterative models. Software development is driven by requirements taken from prospective users, as opposed to maintenance, which is driven by events such as

4048-400: The cost of poor quality software can be as high as 20 to 40 percent of sales. Despite developers' goal of delivering a product that works entirely as intended, virtually all software contains bugs. The rise of the Internet also greatly increased the need for computer security as it enabled malicious actors to conduct cyberattacks remotely. If a bug creates a security risk, it is called

4136-419: The cost of products. Unlike copyrights, patents generally only apply in the jurisdiction where they were issued. Engineer Capers Jones writes that "computers and software are making profound changes to every aspect of human life: education, work, warfare, entertainment, medicine, law, and everything else". It has become ubiquitous in everyday life in developed countries . In many cases, software augments

4224-456: The environment's shape. The development of effective natural language processing would become an essential part of interactive fiction development. Around 1975, Will Crowther , a programmer and an amateur caver, wrote the first text adventure game, Adventure (originally called ADVENT because a filename could only be six characters long in the operating system he was using, and later named Colossal Cave Adventure ). Having just gone through

4312-472: The examples below, the subject of the outmost clause simplex is in italics and the subject of boiling is in square brackets. There is clause embedding in the second and third examples. There are two types of clauses: independent and non-independent / interdependent . An independent clause realises a speech act such as a statement, a question, a command or an offer. A non-independent clause does not realise any act. A non-independent clause (simplex or complex)

4400-727: The first commercial publisher of interactive fiction. That same year, Dog Star Adventure was published in source code form in SoftSide , spawning legions of similar games in BASIC . The largest company producing works of interactive fiction was Infocom , which created the Zork series and many other titles, among them Trinity , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and A Mind Forever Voyaging . In June 1977, Marc Blank , Bruce K. Daniels, Tim Anderson , and Dave Lebling began writing

4488-438: The form of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or open-source software . Software quality assurance is typically a combination of manual code review by other engineers and automated software testing . Due to time constraints, testing cannot cover all aspects of the software's intended functionality, so developers often focus on the most critical functionality. Formal methods are used in some safety-critical systems to prove

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4576-439: The functionality of existing technologies such as household appliances and elevators . Software also spawned entirely new technologies such as the Internet , video games , mobile phones , and GPS . New methods of communication, including email , forums , blogs , microblogging , wikis , and social media , were enabled by the Internet. Massive amounts of knowledge exceeding any paper-based library are now available with

4664-479: The game and decided to design one of their own, but with graphics. Adventure International was founded by Scott Adams (not to be confused with the creator of Dilbert ). In 1978, Adams wrote Adventureland , which was loosely patterned after the (original) Colossal Cave Adventure . He took out a small ad in a computer magazine in order to promote and sell Adventureland , thus creating the first commercial adventure game. In 1979 he founded Adventure International,

4752-633: The game. Interactive fiction became a standard product for many software companies. By 1982 Softline wrote that "the demands of the market are weighted heavily toward hi-res graphics" in games like Sierra's The Wizard and the Princess and its imitators. Such graphic adventures became the dominant form of the genre on computers with graphics, like the Apple II. By 1982 Adventure International began releasing versions of its games with graphics. The company went bankrupt in 1985. Synapse Software and Acornsoft were also closed in 1985, leaving Infocom as

4840-446: The games. Modern games go much further than the original "Adventure" style, improving upon Infocom games, which relied extensively on puzzle solving, and to a lesser extent on communication with non player characters, to include experimentation with writing and story-telling techniques. While the majority of modern interactive fiction that is developed is distributed for free, there are some commercial endeavors. In 1998, Michael Berlyn ,

4928-427: The gem and put it in my bag. take the newspaper clipping out of my bag then burn it with the book of matches'. Several companies offered optional commercial feelies (physical props associated with a game). The tradition of 'feelies' (and the term itself) is believed to have originated with Deadline (1982), the third Infocom title after Zork I and II . When writing this game, it was not possible to include all of

5016-468: The genre, then faded and remains still today a topic of interest for a small group of fans and less known developers, celebrated on Web sites and in related newsgroups. In Spain, interactive fiction was considered a minority genre, and was not very successful. The first Spanish interactive fiction commercially released was Yenght in 1983, by Dinamic Software , for the ZX Spectrum. Later on, in 1987,

5104-431: The information in the limited (80KB) disk space, so Infocom created the first feelies for this game; extra items that gave more information than could be included within the digital game itself. These included police interviews, the coroner's findings, letters, crime scene evidence and photos of the murder scene. These materials were very difficult for others to copy or otherwise reproduce, and many included information that

5192-610: The last game ever created by Legend was Unreal II: The Awakening (2003) – the well-known first-person shooter action game using the Unreal Engine for both impressive graphics and realistic physics. In 2004, Legend Entertainment was acquired by Atari , who published Unreal II and released for both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's Xbox. Many other companies such as Level 9 Computing, Magnetic Scrolls, Delta 4 and Zenobi had closed by 1992. In 1991 and 1992, Activision released The Lost Treasures of Infocom in two volumes,

5280-464: The leading company producing text-only adventure games on the Apple II with sophisticated parsers and writing, and still advertising its lack of graphics as a virtue. The company was bought by Activision in 1986 after the failure of Cornerstone , Infocom's database software program, and stopped producing text adventures a few years later. Soon after Telaium/Trillium also closed. Probably the first commercial work of interactive fiction produced outside

5368-480: The main character is closely associated with the player, and the events are seen to be happening as the player plays. While older text adventures often identified the protagonist with the player directly, newer games tend to have specific, well-defined protagonists with separate identities from the player. The classic essay "Crimes Against Mimesis" discusses, among other IF issues, the nature of "You" in interactive fiction. A typical response might look something like this,

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5456-483: The mainframe version of Zork (also known as Dungeon ), at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science . The game was programmed in a computer language called MDL , a variant of LISP . The term Implementer was the self-given name of the creators of the text adventure series Zork. It is for this reason that game designers and programmers can be referred to as an implementer , often shortened to "Imp", rather than

5544-424: The merrier." These mostly omit a main verb for the sake of conciseness but may also do so in order to intensify the meaning around the nouns. Sentences that comprise a single word are called word sentences, and the words themselves sentence words . The 1980s saw a renewed surge in interest in sentence length, primarily in relation to "other syntactic phenomena". One definition of the average sentence length of

5632-597: The mid-1970s and is vested in the company that makes the software, not the employees or contractors who wrote it. The use of most software is governed by an agreement ( software license ) between the copyright holder and the user. Proprietary software is usually sold under a restrictive license that limits copying and reuse (often enforced with tools such as digital rights management (DRM)). Open-source licenses , in contrast, allow free use and redistribution of software with few conditions. Most open-source licenses used for software require that modifications be released under

5720-472: The operating system) can take this saved file and execute it as a process on the computer hardware. Some programming languages use an interpreter instead of a compiler. An interpreter converts the program into machine code at run time , which makes them 10 to 100 times slower than compiled programming languages. Software is often released with the knowledge that it is incomplete or contains bugs. Purchasers knowingly buy it in this state, which has led to

5808-618: The physical world may also be part of the requirements for a software patent to be held valid. Software patents have been historically controversial . Before the 1998 case State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. , software patents were generally not recognized in the United States. In that case, the Supreme Court decided that business processes could be patented. Patent applications are complex and costly, and lawsuits involving patents can drive up

5896-407: The player in the position of an observer, rather than a direct participant. In some 'experimental' IF, the concept of self-identification is eliminated, and the player instead takes the role of an inanimate object, a force of nature, or an abstract concept; experimental IF usually pushes the limits of the concept and challenges many assumptions about the medium. Though neither program was developed as

5984-487: The problem of writing for widely divergent graphics architectures. This feature meant that interactive fiction games were easily ported across all the popular platforms at the time, including CP/M (not known for gaming or strong graphics capabilities). The number of interactive fiction works is increasing steadily as new ones are produced by an online community, using freely available development systems. The term can also be used to refer to literary works that are not read in

6072-531: The real life Mammoth Cave , but also included fantasy elements (such as axe-wielding dwarves and a magic bridge). Stanford University graduate student Don Woods discovered Adventure while working at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and in 1977 obtained and expanded Crowther's source code (with Crowther's permission). Woods's changes were reminiscent of the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien , and included

6160-708: The red box with the green key then go north". This level of complexity is the standard for works of interactive fiction today. Despite their lack of graphics, text adventures include a physical dimension where players move between rooms. Many text adventure games boasted their total number of rooms to indicate how much gameplay they offered. These games are unique in that they may create an illogical space , where going north from area A takes you to area B, but going south from area B did not take you back to area A. This can create mazes that do not behave as players expect, and thus players must maintain their own map. These illogical spaces are much more rare in today's era of 3D gaming, and

6248-408: The release. Over time, the level of maintenance becomes increasingly restricted before being cut off entirely when the product is withdrawn from the market. As software ages , it becomes known as legacy software and can remain in use for decades, even if there is no one left who knows how to fix it. Over the lifetime of the product, software maintenance is estimated to comprise 75 percent or more of

6336-469: The response to "look in tea chest" at the start of Curses : "That was the first place you tried, hours and hours ago now, and there's nothing there but that boring old book. You pick it up anyway, bored as you are." Many text adventures, particularly those designed for humour (such as Zork , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , and Leather Goddesses of Phobos ), address the player with an informal tone, sometimes including sarcastic remarks (see

6424-589: The same company produced an interactive fiction about Don Quijote . After several other attempts, the company Aventuras AD , emerged from Dinamic, became the main interactive fiction publisher in Spain, including titles like a Spanish adaptation of Colossal Cave Adventure , an adaptation of the Spanish comic El Jabato , and mainly the Ci-U-Than trilogy, composed by La diosa de Cozumel (1990), Los templos sagrados (1991) and Chichen Itzá (1992). During this period,

6512-424: The same license, which can create complications when open-source software is reused in proprietary projects. Patents give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a novel product or process. Ideas about what software could accomplish are not protected by law and concrete implementations are instead covered by copyright law . In some countries, a requirement for the claimed invention to have an effect on

6600-411: The sentences also increases. Another definition of "sentence length" is the number of clauses in the sentence, whereas the "clause length" is the number of phones in the clause. Research by Erik Schils and Pieter de Haan by sampling five texts showed that two adjacent sentences are more likely to have similar lengths than two non-adjacent sentences, and almost certainly have a similar length when in

6688-550: The term refers to text adventures , a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be " text-only ", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics (still images, animations or video) still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles . Due to their text-only nature, they sidestepped

6776-431: The total development cost. Completing a software project involves various forms of expertise, not just in software programmers but also testing, documentation writing, project management , graphic design , user experience , user support, marketing , and fundraising. Software quality is defined as meeting the stated requirements as well as customer expectations. Quality is an overarching term that can refer to

6864-426: The transcript from Curses , above, for an example). The late Douglas Adams, in designing the IF version of his 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', created a unique solution to the final puzzle of the game: the game requires the one solitary item that the player didn't choose at the outset of play. Some IF works dispense with second-person narrative entirely, opting for a first-person perspective ('I') or even placing

6952-569: The two interdependent clause simplexes. See also copula for the consequences of the verb to be on the theory of sentence structure. One traditional scheme for classifying English sentences is by clause structure , the number and types of clauses in the sentence with finite verbs. Sentences can also be classified based on the speech act which they perform. For instance, English sentence types can be described as follows: The form (declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamative) and meaning (statement, question, command, or exclamation) of

7040-524: The two magazines Viking and Explorer, with versions for the main 8-bit home computers ( ZX Spectrum , Commodore 64 , and MSX ). The software house producing those games was Brainstorm Enterprise, and the most prolific IF author was Bonaventura Di Bello , who produced 70 games in the Italian language. The wave of interactive fiction in Italy lasted for a couple of years thanks to the various magazines promoting

7128-460: The wide success of interactive fiction during the late 1970s, when home computers had little, if any, graphics capability. Many elements of the original game have survived into the present, such as the command ' xyzzy ', which is now included as an Easter Egg in modern games, such as Microsoft Minesweeper . Adventure was also directly responsible for the founding of Sierra Online (later Sierra Entertainment ); Ken and Roberta Williams played

7216-626: Was essential to completing the game. Seeing the potential benefits of both aiding game-play immersion and providing a measure of creative copy-protection, in addition to acting as a deterrent to software piracy, Infocom and later other companies began creating feelies for numerous titles. In 1987, Infocom released a special version of the first three Zork titles together with plot-specific coins and other trinkets. This concept would be expanded as time went on, such that later game feelies would contain passwords, coded instructions, page numbers, or other information that would be required to successfully complete

7304-534: Was founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu in 1989. It started out from the ashes of Infocom. The text adventures produced by Legend Entertainment used (high-resolution) graphics as well as sound. Some of their titles include Eric the Unready , the Spellcasting series and Gateway (based on Frederik Pohl 's novels). The last text adventure created by Legend Entertainment was Gateway II (1992), while

7392-437: Was programmed in Fortran , originally developed by IBM . Adventure's parsers could only handle two-word sentences in the form of verb-noun pairs. Infocom 's games of 1979–88, such as Zork , were written using a LISP -like programming language called ZIL (Zork Implementation Language or Zork Interactive Language; it was referred to as both) that compiled into a byte code able to run on a standardized virtual machine called

7480-538: Was responsible for developing the interactive style that would be emulated by many later interpreters. The Infocom parser was widely regarded as the best of its era. It accepted complex, complete sentence commands like "put the blue book on the writing desk" at a time when most of its competitors parsers were restricted to simple two word verb-noun combinations such as "put book". The parser was actively upgraded with new features like undo and error correction, and later games would 'understand' multiple sentence input: 'pick up

7568-401: Was simultaneous with the compilers needed to translate them automatically into machine code. Most programs do not contain all the resources needed to run them and rely on external libraries . Part of the compiler's function is to link these files in such a way that the program can be executed by the hardware. Once compiled, the program can be saved as an object file and the loader (part of

7656-407: Was the creation and distribution of two sophisticated development systems. In 1987, Michael J. Roberts released TADS , a programming language designed to produce works of interactive fiction. In 1993, Graham Nelson released Inform , a programming language and set of libraries which compiled to a Z-Code story file. Each of these systems allowed anyone with sufficient time and dedication to create

7744-468: Was vastly overshadowed by the non-commercial Eamon system which allowed private authors to publish their own titles in the series. By March 1984, there were 48 titles published for the Eamon system (and over 270 titles in total as of March 2013). In Italy, interactive fiction games were mainly published and distributed through various magazines in included tapes. The largest number of games were published in

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