SECRETS of the CAVERN

     by:  DON SNYDER
          12391 S. 800 EAST
          DRAPER, UTAH 84020


    Many years ago, during a late
night session of  ADVENTURE, it
suddenly occurred to me that I
didn't know how the game worked.
Sure, I knew that nothing magic was
going on, but that's no help when
you've got a case of the curio-
sities.

    After a great deal of thought, I
decided that it just couldn't be a
few thousand if-then statements.
After several hours of groveling at
the feet of the lab assistant, I
left the computer room with a
listing of the program-in-question.
While pouring over the print-out, I
was amazed that the program was
almost all tables!  One table held
all of the movement information, a
second held the vocabulary, and a
third held the information for the
hazzards.

    Years passed, and I found myself
at the keyboard of my very own com-
puter.  No longer did I have to wait
for an available terminal.  And no
longer did my program grind to a
near halt, when someone with more
priority went to full screen edit. I
now had the full attention of my own
SYSTEM!

   "Dad, how does this  ADVENTURE
game work?"  Well.....that's one
question I could answer.  Armed with
the memory of that night, several
years ago, I started a program that
would answer my sons question. After
all, it would only take an hour or
so.

    Six hours later, the game was up
and running.  Sure, it was only a
bare-bones implementation, but it
had the most important elements of a
real text adventure.  You could move
around the "cave" and pick up or
drop items.  The room descriptions
were very complete, and the listing
fit on one sheet of paper.

    In the year since this program
was written, I have given copies to
many young (and some not-so-young)
ADVENTURE players, and now it's your
turn.

REMARKS:

________

THIS PROGRAM RUNS ON IBM-PC BASIC

100-160  Prints the title screen

_______

201-209  Is the movement data table

_______
and room description data. The move-
ment table is read into an array
called GO(R,N) where R is the cur-
rent room number, and N is the noun
number.  Part of the table is repro-
duced below.  If you move WEST out
of room 2, you'll end up in room 6.


         N  S  E  W  Up Dn

  Rm 1   4  0  5  3  0  2
  Rm 2   0  7  0  6  0  1
  Rm 3   8  0  1  0  7  0


300-350  Is the vocabulary of the

_______
game.  300 is the verbs, 320 is the
nouns, and 340 is the responses the
machine gives to the nouns.

400-450  Is the JMP table (jump).

_______
This table lets the machine under-
stand your phrase.

500  Initializes the variables. The

___
first room is room #1, the coin is
in room #6, the gold is in room #7,
the axe is in room #8, and the map,
room #9.

600-690  Prints the current situa-

_______
tion, the room description, possible
exits, items carried, and items that
may be picked up.

700-770  Gets the players input,

_______
then processes it.

800-920  Uses the processed input

_______
to read the JMP(R,N) table.  Then,
the program jumps to the appropriate
response.