Meet the Men Behind Infocom's Mask

Andrew Briggs

Andrew Briggs survives dwarves, wizards, and other perils to bring you the story behind US firm Infocom

WHAT POSSIBLE connection could there be between a venerable scientific organisation like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a netherworld inhabited by dwarves, unicorns and wizards?

Stumped? Well, the answer is Infocom, one of the new breed of companies revolutionising the adventure game market. Infocom is a young company made up of young computer professionals who cut their teeth working within the hallowed walls of the MIT. It was there that they began the work that has put them among the trendsetters in adventure games.

Since going it alone Infocom has played a large part in the development of adventure games. Its first, Zork, was written for mainframe computers in 1977 in MDL, a language inspired by Lisp and developed in the early 1970s at the MIT. As the 1980s dawned, Infocom used its expertise to convert Zork to run on microcomputers.

Sentences

The company has developed software permitting adventure game players to use complete sentences rather than the standard two-word commands. These games are known as the Interlogic Series. They include the Zork trilogy, Starcross (a galactic adventure game), Suspended (a sortie into the twilight world of cryogenic suspension), Planetfall (a light-hearted look at science fiction), Deadline and The Witness (both murder mysteries).

The games, which require 32K primary memory and a disk drive, are compatible with the Apple II, Atari micros, the Commodore 64, CP/M systems, DEC's Rainbow and RT-11, IBM bit, NEC's APC and PC-8000, the Osborne 1, Texas Instruments' Professional and Tandy's TRS-80 Models I and II.

In Zork I the Great Underground Empire confronts players with predicaments ranging from the mystical to the macabre, as they strive to discover the 20 treasures of Zork and escape with their lives. Zork II takes players into new depths of this subterranean realm where they will meet the Wizard of Frobozz. And in the final game in this trilogy, players encounter the Dungeon Master himself, who holds their destiny in the balance.

Initiation

Deadline, an interactive mystery, is an initiation into real-live adventures. Players are pitted against a 12-hour time limit to solve a murder case, working from an actual dossier on the crime as they try to piece together the clues.

In the science fiction adventure Starcross players are launched into the year 2186 and the depths of space where they are destined to rendezvous with a starship form the outer fringes of the galaxy and enter the ship's mysterious interior. Once inside, they will come face-to-face with other worldly beings, both helpful and harmful.

Another science fiction adventure, Suspended, takes players into the twilight world of cryogenic suspension and awakens them to the nightmarish reality of a planet in crisis. Players strategically manipulate six robots in order to solve the problems. A game board and movable game pieces are also used. Suspended comes from staff member Michael Berlyn, an established writer of science fiction books.

The Witness, a whodunit rooted in the classic mystery novels of the 1930s, is a follow-up to Deadline. It puts players on the scene of the crime, working form a clue-laden police file and battling a 12-hour time limit.

Planetfall takes a lighthearted look at science fiction. On a distant planet, the hapless player has been shipwrecked, armed with only a patrol-issue, multi-purpose scrub-brush and aided by a impish robot companion. Players are challenged with saving the doomed and plague-stricken world while trying to keep a straight face.

The company's vice-president for product development, Marc Blank, clearly sees the Interlogic Series as a big breakthrough in the adventure game field. Writing in the January 1983 issue of Softline magazine, he said: "In the five years during which Interlog games have been developed, the parser (the part of the program through which the player communicates with the games environment) has been continually enhanced and expanded. The impetus for that expansion has been the desire to present the player with new and challenging problems.

Opening doors

"Early on, we recognised that adjectives were important in that they allowed the existence of more than one object of the same kind. An example from Zork I is doors: in the living room are two doors, a trap door (which is initially hidden) and a wooden door. The ability to distinguish between these is vital.

"The addition of prepositions and compound verbs using prepositions (eg "Pick up", "Put down" and "Turn on") was another important turning point in the construction of the Interlogic parser. There were two equally important reasons for this addition. In the case of prepositions, the need was compelling: "Put the knife in the trophy case", "Swing the sword at the cyclops", "Unlock the door with the key", "Fire the gun at the monster". Prepositions used in this way are vital if the verbs "Put", "Swing", "Unlock", and "Fire" are to be used conveniently and logically. Compound verbs allow a great deal of flexibility. Although the verb "Look" is ubiquitous in adventure games, the additional ability to "Look inside" "Look behind", or "Look under" adds new possibilities.

"Deadline incorporates a more conversational (albeit limited) style for interaction with the characters. One might say, for example, "Mrs. Robner, tell me about your husband." Or "McNabb, show me the holes." The important thing to realise is that the entire interactive basis of Deadline is predicated on the availability of a parser that allows that interaction. In the case of the Interlogic games, the need for an ever-improving interaction has consistently led to ever-improving parsers.

"A complement of additional enhancements make game playing more enjoyable; foremost among these are the ability to use multiple objects in a command, the ability to string multiple commands on one command line, the recognition of ambiguous nouns and the ability to easily clear up the ambiguity. These are all intended to save the player from time-consuming repetition," he concluded.

The development of a programming system that allows full sentences to be used is obviously a big advantage for Infocom. But the company's president, Joel Berez, believes Infocom has two other things in its favour.

Expertise

The first is the MIT-influenced expertise of the people working for it. "It's the ability of these individuals that keeps Infocom in the forefront of the markets," says Berez. "With all these talents blended together, the resulting products can offer the highest level of sophistication. By working in a stimulating environment -- formerly in the lab at MIT and now at Infocom -- this team has developed an advanced set of programming tools."

The second is the versatility of the games. "Because we develop application software in a machine-independent manner, a single development effort yields software that, after only a very small amount of machine-dependent programming, will run on hardware manufactured by a number of major vendors," says Berez.

He believes both these factors augur well for the young company. In fact, he predicts that Infocom will soon branch out from entertainment into other areas, one of which will probably be business applications.

"We have the technological base established to develope new products," he says, "The personal computer market is growing by leaps and bounds and our plans are to provide quality products for a wide specturm of computers and end users."

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