Reward for The PITS
SYNOPSIS: I'm looking for an old
adventure game I played online back in the 1980's. Help me find it, and there could be
cash in it for you.
I am offering a cash reward to the person who can get the source code to the game, so that it can be ported to Unix via GCC and released to the open source community. I am looking for:
I fear that the source code is sitting in some archive, code listing on a self, or on a dusty mag tape waiting to see the light of day again. The PITS: What is it? The game description.As I've described the game to people, they wonder if I have it confused with classic adventure or Zork. I do not.Specific details from the game are sketchy.
Nonetheless, purchasing the bridge resulted in a swarm of minature helicopters descending, and minature creatures constructing, in just mere moments, the most elaborate bridge across the chasm. One of them grabbed your bill, gave you some piddling change, and they all disappeared into the horizon. Crossing the bridge led to an interesting house that you had to break into, and the various exits within the house took you to the bowels of a very large and elaborate mountain. If you played outside, there was an open grave, and the text descriptions would entice you to get close. Too close. Because doing so would result in your falling in and breaking your neck, as if the grave had been recently dug for you. The game offered more rooms and more score granularity than other text adventure games (the only kind at the time).
Other Games on The SourceOther popular games on The Source were Blackdragon (by Bob Maples, described here, and possibly last seen somewhere on DECUS long ago), Adventure, Zork, Hunt the Wumpus, and a number of rather dull strategy board games.The PITS: Clues GatheredWhat information I have to make finding it easier, I detail here. It's not much.More PITS LoreIt is believed that The PITS ran on Prime computers under the PRIMOS operating system. It is possible that it ran under PrimeBASIC, but that detail is very uncertain.Tracking PITS on the InternetOne would think that finding The PITS would be easy in this day and age. Not so. Usenet postings about it are rare:
eMail TrackbacksI've approached a number of people who have been quite helpful in either providing some information or referencing me to someone else. [Blue = I've conversed with, Red = Haven't heard from or have no contact info]
Thanks to Charlie Terry, Bruce MacNaughton,
Dave Eastburn,
Alexander "Sandy" Trevor, and
especially Taylor Walsh
for helping me get further than ever before in my quest to locate this
software.
As of 22-Jan-06, I have not heard back from Gary Brown, Mike Sears, or Brian Biggs. In some sense, I fear that I've contacted people too high up the corporate ladder to be intimate with this software package. What I'd really like to find is some hard core users of The Source, and ideally some people who worked on and adminstered the machines. Many of these kind souls are consultants or leaders of corporations, and I do not feel it right to burden them with this matter. I request that unless you know them personally, you do the same.
Unfortuantely, I got Jim's email two months late (long story), and am hoping he can put me in contact with Jeff Entwisle. Taylor also suggested Brian Biggs might have some information, and provided a new name, David Lebling, who was one of the original guys that wrote and marketed Zork. The goal is to re-establish the social network, in a seven degrees to Kevin Bacon style, back to the original creator of The PITS.
I do not know how to reach Ed Isaacs. |