Part 67: Chapter 67
Gay Abortions posted:
South if we can climb up there unaided. North if not.
Well, let's find out, even if it will upset Captain Caveman to go this way first.
quote:
>s
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
And thus we are rewarded for our transgressions.
Remember how I said you guys were boned at the other maze? If I were letting you play through this one, you really would be boned. The only way to navigate this maze is, as was astutely suggested upthread by Gay Abortions, to drop items to make the rooms distinct, and you can only carry seven. One of which is the lamp, which you need to navigate the maze in the first place. The maze has fourteen all-alike rooms and ten identical dead ends. It doesn't take a math whiz to figure out that you're going to end up doing some random guessing or repeatedly move a lot of stuff. And even when you do drop items, it's famous for being almost impossible to map accurately since the directions don't make any kind of logical sense (for instance, a room where going up and going down lead you to the same other room). This maze is one of the crueler things done in early IF. It can take several times longer to figure out this one area than to play through all the rest of the game, and you can burn an incredible number of turns on it.
Or you could be reading a Let's Play performed by someone with access to multiple walkthroughs and the game's source code.
quote:
>s
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>e
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>s
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>s
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>s
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>n
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>e
At Brink of Pit
You are on the brink of a thirty foot pit with a massive orange column down one wall. You could climb down here but you could not get back up. The maze continues at this level.
This is one of the two locations reachable in the maze.
quote:
>n
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>e
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>nw
You've found the pirate's treasure chest!
Dead End
This is the pirate's dead end.
The pirate's treasure chest is here!
You can also see many rare coins here.
>
This is the other. You guys tell me where you want to go first and what you want to do, and I'll restore and make it happen.
(Don't worry, I won't make you all sit through the same room description list again.)
Adventure: Behind the Parser Each of the two mazes was designed by one of the two principal authors of the game. The all-alike maze we are currently enjoying was designed by Crowther, the original author, and the all-different maze was designed by Woods as a direct reference to it. (Woods' version is also designed using his knowledge of graph theory, since he was taking a class on it at the time. Crowther's... was not.)
This maze has been referenced in countless text adventures in other areas of geek culture. Most notably, Zork contains a maze with the same description, in which the remains of what is most likely meant to be a dead Adventure protagonist can be found. (He's even carrying a key which can be used to unlock a grate, a burnt-out lantern, and a bag of coins.) The "all different" maze never achieved quite the same fame, possibly because it was both less horrifying and less original.