Ken and Roberta Williams Working on Colossal Cave Adventure Remake for VR and PC

https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/03/22/ken-and-roberta-williams-working-on-colossal-cave-adventure-remake-for-vr-and-pc

by peterkelly • 4 years ago

248 187 4 years ago

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drewg1232• 4 years ago

I first played Colossal Cave adventure on a terminal in my mom's office in the late 70s. She was a FORTRAN programmer for a defense contractor, and would take me into the office on school holidays when she could not find daycare. She'd plunk me down in front of the terminal, and I'd play text based games all day.

I think this is what got me into computers and is basically responsible for me choosing my major and later my career..

AyyWS2• 4 years ago

In the late 80s, I was in a middle school Unix class. My friends and I spent most of the time playing MUDs over telnet. They're all in tech jobs today.

mmcgaha2• 4 years ago

That sounds amazing! Where was your middle school?

munk-a4• 4 years ago

See - that's what I'm waiting to come to VR, the MUDs.

I want to strap on my VR helmet and be in a dark bedroom with only the glow of the CRT for light at 3 AM in the morning MUDing with someone on the otherside of the world who I'd been trying to set up a scene with for weeks for IC reasons.

johnny53169• 4 years ago

It's very interesting, did you and your mom ever talk about your respective programming career? How was it like when she was a programmer?

drewg1232• 4 years ago

Sadly, she was a heavy smoker, and passed away from lung cancer when I was still very early in my career.

The one time we "worked together" was when I got a summer internship at another defense contractor, programming in FORTRAN 77 on VAX/VMS. Coming from C & UNIX at the university, VMS and FORTRAN was quite different. She taught me the basics of the language over a weekend. I never really adjusted to the column layout stuff.

I recall we would use used punch cards for scrap paper when I was a kid. Pretty much every note or list she wrote was on a used punch card.

pugworthy• 4 years ago

1976 I was part of a US National Science Foundation project for high school students. Someone had a teletype on 300 baud modem in the house we stayed at, and played it there. Good times, and also highly formative.

Jaruzel• 4 years ago

You can re-live your childhood online:

https://grack.com/demos/adventure/

It's the 1984 variant version[1] but close enough. It's also retro styled as well!

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure#Later_...

mmastrac• 4 years ago

That's my project! :)

Glad someone posted it. The source is available here: https://github.com/mmastrac/adventure

sgustard• 4 years ago

Same here, my mom worked at the local community college. The other detail was the computer had no display, only a line printer. Spewed out quite a stack of paper by the end of a day playing Adventure.

gotaquestion5• 4 years ago

Excited to see how this pans out. Myst and Riven (and to an extent, "7th Guest" and Gadget) 3D-ified text adventures and were very successful. Riven III was node based but provided full 360 degree viewing, but the game sucked. With the Williams' at the helm I don't think they'll let a substandard game through. Although I'm curious to see if they can add any more depth to it than Robyn and Rand Miller could squeeze out of the engine. IMHO I don't think there has been a single novel advancement to 3D games in decades, as I don't consider goggles to be novel.

I had already played all the Infocom games before discovering Crowther and Woods' Adventure (remember this was pre-internet). It came in the box with a Mockingboard speech synthesizer I got for my Apple in the early 80's. The novelty was that the mocking board text-to-speeched the game, which was neat but unbearable. Not to mention it didn't know how to say "xyzzy" correctly.

moron4hire13• 4 years ago

Have you played the 3D Myst remake? I've played it both on pancake monitor and in the Quest.

On PC, I found it was very easy, though that might have been because I was 20 years older than the first time I played it.

It's a delightful experience in the Quest. Some of the difficulty comes back due to not having any ability to take notes. But being able to walk around and see this world "for real" that I've already spent so much time in was giddying.

gotaquestion5• 4 years ago

I remember reading something about it back when it came out (RealMyst I think?) but didn't get into it. I think a non-node based Myst would be difficult since there would be so many places to look for clues. In node-based Myst, you were forced to scrutinize a very small field of view. Myst III solved the 360-degree FOV by having the clues be quite obvious, as it is harder to "hide a lever" if the user can look anywhere.

I was excited for Return to Zork's attempt at rendering, but was that ever a bummer ("Want some rye?" ...wtf?), as was Inquisitor.

mattl• 4 years ago

What's a pancake monitor?

shadowgovt4• 4 years ago

The VR headset really simplifies the Channelwood first puzzle, where half the challenge, I'm sorry to say, was understanding if you were coming or going as you moved around the node network of walkways and shunted water back and forth.

... but simplifies in a good way. I'm not a fan of the sort of artificial challenge that a viewpoint more limited than my avatar should have in a game induces, and I considered that complexity in the original more bug than feature.

ehnto12• 4 years ago

The remake was excellent. Having played it already I wasn't really expecting to be wowed again, but it really was a great experience once more.

Have you played Obduction? If not I can highly recommend it. I'm also looking forward to their new game Firmament. I'm so glad Cyan is back making games.

freddie_mercury• 4 years ago

With the Williams' at the helm I don't think they'll let a substandard game through.

Why not? They've published lots of substandard games in the past.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-and-a-disg...

atdrummond• 4 years ago

Open Season, despite how regressive it may appear today, sold north of 1 million copies and received extremely warm reviews from outlets such as CGM[1]. From the Wiki summary of said review:

A longer review in March 1994 stated that the game had succeeded "at so many levels", that its realism and "seemingly endless amounts of" police procedure offered "larger implications about our society and its struggle against the drug machine". The reviewer noted that treating NPCs with the same "lack of consideration" players do so in other games "seems incredibly damning—and heartrending—because it's true to life. We treat each other, the game implies, in our attempts merely to cope with the problems with which we are faced, like NPCs". The magazine concluded that "Open Season tells that story magnificently".

1. https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1994&pub=...

xioxox• 4 years ago

I'll be interested in this remake when it's done. I don't know what it is about Colossal Cave, but the descriptions of the caves were pure magic to me when I played this many years ago. Perhaps it comes from the real experience caving of the authors. I also loved the Magnetic Scrolls games from the end of the 80s, like Jinxter - they had some great humour (but difficult puzzles).

GLGirty• 4 years ago

What, with your bare hands?!

omarhaneef• 4 years ago

use computer

You don't know how

pick manual

You have the manual

read manual

You now know how to use a computer

use computer

Your hands are busy

drop manual
use computer

... except funnier

dylan604• 4 years ago

I know Kung Fu

Show me

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

Things like this do happen to an extent in VR games, which is funny.

A classic example would be opening a locked door to which you have a key in, say, a zelda game. On a controller you just go over to it and press A. In VR you may need to sheathe your sword to draw the key and put away your shield to steady the door knob to unlock it and then push open the door and then pick up your weapons again.

The whole "Pick up your weapons again" loop at the end of little interactions is common in many games and is more involved than in traditional games that would abstract it.

zestyping• 4 years ago

What a concept! ;)

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

Is it just me or is there a wider belief that VR will never be anything more than a niche? Facebook aka Meta has bet its future on this and I think it's a mistake.

When people think of VR they think of the Matrix but that will never be because of the laws of physics. Latency is the big problem (unless such a network is very localized in the real world) but visually speaking, black is a problem. Black is a colour on computer displays but in the real world it's the absence of light. Another big visual problem: focus.

Yet another problem: controls. In the real world you just think and act. In VR you have these controls to direct movement. That's never going to feel natural so you're pretty much predicated on a pure brain-computer interface for it to feel realistic.

There's no killer app for VR (optimists will add "yet") and no hint of what one might be.

Part of what made these old adventure games so compelling (IMHO) was the format: text. Games like Myst added images and can have an appeal all of their own but it's different to the text adventure game. The same goes for video (meaning rendered 3D graphics). I have doubts that this magic (which has a heavy dose of nostalgia) will translate to VR.

For me the Infocom games (Zork in particular) will always be remembered fondly but part of the magic was the time and you can never step in the same river twice.

delecti3• 4 years ago

How much VR have you tried? After just 10 minutes of Beat Saber I was left with an odd feeling after taking off the headset. I think your standards for VR are unreasonably high, considering how utterly addicting it's likely to be to huge numbers of people if it just gets fairly engaging.

Put another way, both Roblox and Minecraft look like crap, and are largely graphics we could have replicated on the the Playstation 1 or N64, but Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5 billion, and Roblox has a valuation in the tens of billions. The threshold between "there's no killer app" and "yet" is razor thin.

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

I've tried an Oculus Go for maybe 12 hours? Some of it was interesting but it always felt gimmicky to me. A bit like 3D in movie theaters. Like it was all so... forced.

tokai• 4 years ago

largely graphics we could have replicated on the the Playstation 1 or N64

I know you are making a hyperbole, but that is just absolutely ridiculous.

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

Everyone loves to bring up beatsaber when discussing the future of VR but beat saber is so carefully designed to avoid its pitfalls. You don't move more than a few feet irl or in game. Everything you need to see is in front of you. You have infinitely light weapons with no resistance.

Graphics is not the problem. It's the interface.

ekianjo4• 4 years ago

After just 10 minutes of Beat Saber I was left with an odd feeling after taking off the headset.

Beatsaber is like the Tetris of VR. It won't change anything, while it's a good game and it's addictive.

tomc19855• 4 years ago

The VR folks are starting to sound like the Year of the Linux Desktop folks.

Y'all standing at the station for a train that might never come

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 4 years ago

Beat Saber is the only reason I still have a VR rig and I still feel like I agree with parent. It is a solid rhythm game and decent upper body workout on higher difficulties, but if I hadn't already bought a friend's used Oculus I don't think it would convince me.

A big part of it is how damned inconvenient the whole thing is. I need all these long high-quality USB3 cables for the headset and sensors, a beefy video card, and most importantly an otherwise empty room to play it in safely.

The Quest, the most convenient system, only kinda deals with the first two problems and does nothing for the third.

I don't know about you guys, but I can't just have the servants clear out the tertiary ball room whenever I want to play a game. In the normal sized bedroom I've allocated for VR I have managed to slam into walls on more than one occasion when moving quickly trying to hit something or dodge something.

I would definitely say the whole thing is still pretty far into "gimmick" territory for the vast majority of gamers.

tluyben2• 4 years ago

I agree with most you say, but did you try a newer Standalone VR helmet? It might not be for everyone and overhyped last year, but we are getting tremendous value from it in online meetings, working together and using it as substitute for a stack of (5) large monitors on one laptop. I like the games but I am not a big gamer and can see how the controls are an issue for hardcore gamers, however for at least dev work, this thing was worth it’s weight in palladium and then some for during and now ‘after’ covid. Now that handtracking starts working well, it is only getting better.

I hope it will improving as I can see this working well for portable dev work once everything gets smaller and more powerful. I mean I am there now but there is no software (at least last I checked) to work in environments where I can just have 5-6 screens with browsers open without my laptop connected. If that and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and I no longer need a laptop for 90% of my work. And then just make it smaller for improvement:.

kgwxd• 4 years ago

I did, until my kid started playing it a few months ago and that was all he wanted to do all day, every day. Then, he completely lost interest and hasn't used it in weeks, so I'm back where I started.

onion2k• 4 years ago

visually speaking, black is a problem. Black is a colour on computer displays but in the real world it's the absence of light

That isn't a problem. People don't want to use technology to exactly replicate the real world - they use tech to replicate the real world up to a point, and then they diverge into things that can't happen in the real world. People don't care if the black isn't quite right. After all, people watch films and TV a lot, and they have the same problem.

There are lots of reasons why VR might fail to become mainstream in the long term but graphics isn't one of them.

andybak5• 4 years ago

I've loved VR since I first tried it and I still love it.

There's no killer app for VR

We'll end up quibbling about the definition of "killer app" but I think there's dozens killer apps for VR. If you mean "an app that will make it as popular as the smartphone" then you're right. But that's a strangely high bar. If you mean "an app that is compelling enough to sell a reasonably large number of headsets" then that definitely already exists. (but then we can enjoy quibbling about what "reasonably large" means)

ehnto12• 4 years ago

I think the idea of a killer app for VR misses the point a bit anyway. It doesn't need a killer app since it doesn't need mainstream adoption. If we are looking for a mainstream adoptable use case it is probably in AR. VR has a specific use case and that's fine.

Netcob• 4 years ago

I got the first Oculus Rift dev kit not too long after it came out and I got the first version of the HTC Vive.

I find it hard to talk about VR as some monolithic thing. When I first tried it, I felt the same "wow, this is the future!" feeling most enthusiasts got. The stutters and the weird headaches then made me add "...but not the present".

But my personal issues with it are both surmountable and not shared by everyone. On the hardware side, the depth-of-focus issue must be solved somehow, and graphics processing must improve a lot on both the hardware and software side in order to eliminate any stutters (IMO any frame drop or framerates below 90 are unacceptable, again, my personal issue), image sharpness must match real-world screens at a reasonable distance (at least where I'm looking at) and when it comes to games, unfortunately anything that tries to look realistic still looks like mid-2000s graphics in VR.

Plus the headset must be comfortable to wear for at least 8h at a time, and there needs to be good full-body tracking, although for a virtual workplace that's not so important.

I'd probably spend all of my work and play time in VR if these things were solved, and I could totally see that happening in the next few years, the way things are going.

Unless the only good option is Facebook, in which case, I'll pass.

zeagle• 4 years ago

Re: the blacks. Hopefully the next generation of valve index & others will have OLED screens with proper blacks.

moron4hire13• 4 years ago

I have worked in the VR industry full time for the last 5 years. Your description of the problems of VR are unrecognizable to me.

Which people are these that "think of the Matrix" when they think of VR? I've seen some people talk about it, or more often Sword Art Online. But they are rare. It tends to mark folks as not having really tried VR. I've seen people talk about not even wanting to try VR until it's "full dive". That's dumb. I doubt it's ever going to get there and I also doubt it's even a good idea. See: The Matrix and SAO for depictions of why.

I think "people" know the tech is not magic and have decent expectations on what it entails. What I tend to see are people blown away by how impactful that simple "box with a display and some lenses" concept works at transporting a person to a new world.

I don't think anyone really cares about black levels that much, not to the degree that it becomes any kind of deciding factor on purchases. Focus... are you sure you're not Ronny Abovitz? Literally the only person I've seen ranting about focus. Again, nobody cares. It'd certainly be nice, but it's just not that important of a feature.

Your comment on latency is confusing. Which latency? Motion-to-photon latency? Hasn't been a problem in years. Network latency? We're not talking about a networked game here, and regardless, that's going to be true for any kind of multiplayer experience, VR or otherwise. It's also a largely solved problem and people don't tend to notice network latency in most multiplayer games. The only latency issue I encounter on a regular basis is Oculus Quest 2's hand tracking latency. That's not a fundamental limitation, though, because other hand tracking systems like UltraLeap show that it can be done very well. The Quest's problem is that it's running on what's essentially a 3 year old smartphone SOC.

As for "killer apps", honestly, I have never really believed in the concept. There's nothing on my smartphone that I can't do without it being specifically on my smartphone. But combined, the whole ecosystem is extremely useful. My smartphone also isn't the seamless digital assistant Jobs predicted it would be, but it's still extremely useful. Back in 2008, most people thought smartphones weren't for them, but now most find them extremely useful.

There are problems in the VR industry. Any device that isn't the Quest 2 is too expensive and not featureful enough to warrant the expense. Building software for VR is still extremely primitive (No, Unity doesn't solve it. Come back to me after you ship a Unity VR project that meets Meta's store guidelines if you disagree). Battery life on standalone systems is abysmal. I don't know anyone with a PC-tethered system that hasn't destroyed several cables, ports, keyboards, or even just glass containers.

And there are problems being foisted on VR. The global chip shortage is making it way to hard to scale. Meta's attempts to dominate the market by undercutting the competition is a huge danger to everyone. This coopting of social VR into "metaverse" by crypto grifters is going to kill an entire segment of the app market. Megacorp's inability/unwillingness to moderate user behavior on their platforms is a lot more harmful to people's mental health when it's literally in their faces.

But the biggest one might be people who don't know anything about VR claiming it's "useless" or "dead".

6gvONxR4sf7o• 4 years ago

You might be too surrounded by people who are into current VR.

Focus... Again, nobody cares.

That’s just not true. Having a single fixed focal distance was super jarring when I’ve tried VR. But normal people won’t complain about that. They’ll just say “looks weird.”

Personally, the problem it needs to solve is figuring out how to let me virtually move without physically moving, while not making it awkward and also not getting me motion sick. So far, that problem still feels fundamental.

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

As for "killer apps", honestly, I have never really believed in the concept. There's nothing on my smartphone that I can't do without it being specifically on my smartphone. But combined, the whole ecosystem is extremely useful. My smartphone also isn't the seamless digital assistant Jobs predicted it would be, but it's still extremely useful. Back in 2008, most people thought smartphones weren't for them, but now most find them extremely useful.

Smart phones are portable web browsers. That's the killer app. That's immensely useful. VR is non portable, at least in the sense that you're gonna look like a huge asshole loading up your quest on the subway. That's a pretty difficult barrier.

ekianjo4• 4 years ago

I have worked in the VR industry full time for the last 5 years

Maybe this results in having a distorted vision of what VR represents for people out there. Just like everyone else who works on a specific business for a long time.

gotaquestion5• 4 years ago

I played around with VR back in 2013, and thought 3D conferences were neat, but annoying.

However, I believe that if headsets can be made less bulky, it will become ubiquitous. I don't know what the experience will be like, it certainly won't be matrix-y, but I can absolutely see a generation of 20 somethings expecting goggles at some point in the future, maybe 10 years from now.

It might actually be Zuck's vision of sanitized cartoony avatars zipping around with no legs because look at how much money kids spend on VBUCKS to look slightly different in Fortnight. The Fortnight generation's kids will be hooked on VR if the goggles are cheap/small enough.

rob74• 4 years ago

What makes me worried about the future of VR is that there is no "entry-level" VR solution anymore since Google and Samsung cancelled Daydream and Gear VR respectively. Which means that in order to try it out in the comfort of your own home you now have to invest ~400 €.

grumbel2• 4 years ago

Quest2 goes for $300/350€ and is a substantially more complete and better VR package than Daydream/GearVR ever was, i.e. positional tracking on headset and controller, Daydream/GearVR was rotation only. Not having to use a phone also reduces a lot of friction in using the device and drastically improves the visuals.

I do however miss the $200/200€ WMR headsets that we had for a while, that felt like a more reasonable entry point for a PC gaming headset. There is currently no replacement for those. Quest2 not only adds price, but also weight due to battery and SoC, which you don't really want or need when using it only on PC.

dylan-m• 4 years ago

I think Daydream and Gear VR set VR back more than anything, and if they were going to keep doing what they were doing it's a good thing they're gone. See the many comments in this thread conflating 3DOF headsets (glorified panorama viewers) with the same 6DOF VR (full movement in space plus all-important hands) that people are actually excited about.

gfxgirl3• 4 years ago

The same was said for PDAs from Apple Newton (1992) -> Windows CE devices (1996) -> Palm Pilot (1997) -> iPhone (2007). Lots of enthusiasts who thought having a computer in their pocket was amazing and everyone else who thought it would never be anything more than a niche.

ekianjo4• 4 years ago

SO are you saying that all niche eventually become mainstream products? I hate to disappoint you, but most niche products remain niche products. The exception you took is far from being the rule.

criddell• 4 years ago

My first VR experience was in 1992 (Dactyl Nightmare!) and I thought for sure it was going to be the next big thing. Thirty years later, I think the VR market is pretty big and might be plateauing. There are millions of headsets out there - enough for a lot of software companies to make money. Does it still need exponential growth?

Or maybe it's going to take a company like Apple to really figure out VR. As you pointed out, it took them two swings at the pocket computing problem over 15 years to really nail it. Maybe the VR headset trajectory will be similar - semi-successful product in a year or two and then 15 years from now, something really great.

I mostly believe the first thing I said is true - the VR market is pretty big and is only a failure if you were expecting iPhone-like success.

AR, on the other hand, is going to blow up but probably not with anything head-mounted. For example, my car projects information onto my windshield when I drive. I think that qualifies as an AR device.

ekianjo4• 4 years ago

There's no killer app for VR

Apparently HL: Alyx may be that kind of thing. Problem is, it's just one game, and it took years and lots of efforts to make for probably very little return on investment.

sitzkrieg• 4 years ago

its not a killer app. it was a decent ~12 hr single player game, and yet one of the only really fleshed out games for vr so far

gs17• 4 years ago

It's pretty close, I just wish it had proper mod tools.

oneoff7865• 4 years ago

Alyx was fun. It was nothing close to a killer app.

shadowgovt4• 4 years ago

I've seen this kind of boom become bust twice already; we'll have to see how this one pans out.

I will note that technology-wise, the hardware is better than it's ever been and I think it has a fighting chance this time previous iterations lacked. For all their simplicity, mouse and keyboard have a level of accuracy and precision that VR does not. This is partially due to their simplicity (keys are binary devices, and a mouse can track position to near-perfection with optical flow modeling, or even the old wheel solution from days of yore). In contrast, VR not only has traditionally had lower-resolution on the tracking signal, it's tracking far, far more degrees of freedom (at least six, but if you want to accurately represent the user's kinematics the number explodes). Plus, the biological sensor fusion we humans use to determine our position in the world demands accuracy from the virtual hardware because we can be very sensitive to input error (and we feel it as nausea, disorientation, or vertigo).

The sensor fusion of modern cheap accelerometer tech with the absolute tracking of either lighthouses or whole-room flow imaging has had amazing consequences, but it's not yet perfect and I don't know if a critical mass of users will demand perfection or not. We'll find out. But, I've never seen better hardware taking a stab at the market before.

mancerayder2• 4 years ago

I have a Steam Index and I think the games are fun and re-playable. The problem for me was -

I live in too small a space, and this requires a dedicated game room or having to re-arrange furniture, set up the external sensors (not true for Oculus but true for this), and then recalibrating. That, plus the heavy headset and massive cables.

The controllers are amazing through, they track all your fingers without being attached to your fingers.

It has a future, it's still a little rough around the edges. However, apartment dwellers might be limited in their interest.

coldpie4• 4 years ago

I think it has a chance, but it's definitely on life support. All the big names from this latest attempt (Valve, HTC, Sony) have already given up on it. Facebook is trying to turn it into a thing, but I think they're just trying one last gasp on a failed acquisition before firing that team. Sony and Apple claim to have new hardware coming down the pipe, but I imagine they're feeling much less enthusiastic about it now than when they started those projects. Maybe one of those three will pull it off, but it's not looking good.

pavlov2• 4 years ago

Meta has over 10,000 people working on VR / AR and has invested tens of billions in it. I don't think they're giving up very soon.

caslon• 4 years ago

A very large body of HMDs have OLED displays, which have "true" blacks.

dwringer• 4 years ago

Wow, your post sure got a lot of replies, heh. I've not used a modern VR headset but I have used a TrackIR, and to me it provides such a huge leap in immersion that I can't really see how VR would be worth the extra hassle over that. I'd rather have a CAVE than anything like today's consumer VR. Give me more and bigger screens, not some headwear out of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

grumbel2• 4 years ago

Blacks are essentially a solved problem with (micro)OLED. Controls are a non-issue, it's no different than holding a screwdriver or pen, humans are quite adapted to using tools to manipulate the world and we have hand and finger tracking on top if necessary. Latency again, not really a major problem, works well enough, this is VR after all, not telerobotics, if the game engine has to cheat a little, that's fine. Focus adjust exists in a couple of prototypes, but so far hasn't made it into the consumer space, I'd rate this as a "nice to have", most people quickly get used to the fixed focus.

The big problem VR has to overcome is getting resolution parity with monitors. At the moment VR is still extremely low resolution, even headsets in the 2000x2000 realm are, due to the image being stretch across ~100° FOV, only the equivalent of an old 800x600 monitor. That's not good enough for a lot of uses. It works fine for VR games, but barely works for 2D movies and even less so for text. Given that the majority of content out there is made for larger resolutions, that's the biggest stumbling block for VR as it means people have to get out of VR and use another display device.

I think once resolution is solved, that will be the killer-app for VR just by itself. As it means a VR headsets, which can be turned into an AR headset via camera pass through, is able to replace every screen you currently have. That will be the point where people can start ditching their multi-monitor setups and have essentially an empty desk with just a headset. The appeal of getting ever bigger TVs will also vanish when you can have a virtual IMAX screen in your headset.

It will still take some years until VR/AR headset are good enough and comfortable enough to replace TVs and monitors en masse. But I have little doubt that it will happen sooner or later. All the VR gaming stuff is really just a bonus here and I don't think we'll get mass VR adaption just from that.

trafficante• 4 years ago

The software side of this vision is already surprisingly mature and mostly waiting for hardware to catch up.

On my Quest 2, I can pop into a virtual environment with 5 desktops scaled around me in 3D space, a physical keyboard fully rendered into the environment that also tracks my fingers, and a scaleable camera “portal” positioned over the location of my doorway (in physical space) that displays a camera feed of anyone entering the room.

If I’m trying to relax, I can hop into a virtual movie theater on the moon and watch a 3D Blu-ray rip or play most modern AAA pc games.

All of this while sitting in a lounge chair in my living room.

And then, of course, there’s all the 6dof VR games but, after Alyx barely moved the hardware sales needle, I don’t think that sort of thing is what’s needed to drive mass adoption at this point.

VR needs much better screen tech, high performant SoCs, and a “coolness” factor. I wonder if there’s a company known for all three that has repeatedly yoinked entire markets even though they entered “late”?

telman17• 4 years ago

I use VR for Flight Simulator and Elite Dangerous. Living my space exploration dream in VR (sitting down!) is truly a magical thing. VR isn't necessarily only the room experience games and I think some folks forget that.

Spooky23• 4 years ago

I think it’s an example of why companies need mature governance models.

It’s cool tech, but it seems like it’s boiled down to Second Life + helmet graphics.

anthk3• 4 years ago

For me the Infocom games (Zork in particular) will always be remembered fondly but part of the magic was the time and you can never step in the same river twice.

Inform6, 7. Then get Anchorhead, Inside Woman, Spider and Web, Vicious Cycles, Slouch Over Bedlam, Curses+Jigsaw and get amazed.

ynx• 4 years ago

There's plenty of people who, having not tried anything resembling modern VR, completely discount it as a medium. So while you're not alone in your belief, your criticism also has red flags that will cause most people with experience in VR to not take it seriously, even its informed critics.

- Handling latency is more akin to client-side prediction behavior, rather than synchronous awaiting on network response for frame-by-frame accuracy. So it's more of a distribution problem of how to replicate and conflict-resolve state most efficiently, rather than round-trip latency.

- Black is not that much of a problem. The brain adapts.

- Focus is a problem with active work on it (using eye tracking) which we'll see improvements on in the near future, but it's worth noting that a fixed focal distance actually helps vision for some people.

- "There's no killer app for VR (optimists will add "yet") and no hint of what one might be.": no, optimists would tell you you're wrong. Someone mostly neutral would point to things like VRChat driving a noticeable portion of sales of VR headsets or additional equipment, which is promising in that there is a viable non-Meta social VR app currently in existence. A pessimist would argue that VRChat hasn't achieved a sustainable business model. A contrarian would further add to the pessimist's point that the top sellers in VR tend to be stagnant year over year, suggesting the industry isn't as live (optimist: yet) as many perceive it to be.

- "you're pretty much predicated on a pure brain-computer interface for it to feel realistic" - not quite. You might depend on that to present approximate realism, but VR - and we're talking 6dof here, 3dof is far below any threshold of believability/immersion - does not require much approximation of hand position for the brain to very quickly allow a virtual world to feel "real" enough for some fairly deep immersion.

Better-informed critics of VR typically question its broad appeal based on motion sickness, lack of support/indifference/hostility from other game developers or middleware developers, difficulty of authoring plausible VR content in general, inconsistent hardware depressing the quality of software aimed at the "lowest common denominator" device (though this last one has largely evaporated due to the Quest 2 being very cheap and very good), possible risk of effects on children's development of physical balance if they play too much, and so on.

ehnto12• 4 years ago

Perhaps you're imagining VR as an alternative to real life, but it's actually just an alternative to gaming on a monitor. I don't expect it to be comparable to life, I just expect it to be better than gaming on my monitor, and even then only for really particular games. You wouldn't play an RTS in VR, or even FPS games like Counter-Strike, since the actual gameplay of CS is mouse precision, reflexes and playspace awareness.

So VR is a niche even within the gaming community and will never replace the monitor except for some circumstances. But it does enable unique experiences that no other platform can.

Where VR excels is in visual immersion, intuitive interaction and spatial awareness. So it excel in games like racing and flight simulators, space sims, and in things like puzzle games where manipulating things with your hands adds a new dimension to the game.

VonGuard• 4 years ago

Want to hear Roberta talk about her experience playing Adventure for the first time? We interviewed her in our podcast about this very topic: https://art19.com/shows/the-madecast/episodes/a9172691-a4fb-...

smoyer• 4 years ago

If you're interested I'm the original Infocom text adventures, the "Eaten by a Grue" podcast does an analysis of one game peer episode. The first half of each episode is spoiler-free so you can enjoy the content before you've played through.

https://monsterfeet.com/grue/

jandrusk• 4 years ago

I just don't see VR going mainstream for gaming. I think there is a certain degree of tactile feedback that gamers look for when gaming that they get from a controller or a keyboard and mouse. It will reach a niche audience and I think that most likely be millennials.

It will never work for greybeards like me with Vertigo ;)

stevenwoo• 4 years ago

I get uncomfortably sweaty after 10 minutes, but maybe that depends on fit.

kemayo• 4 years ago

It makes a fair difference if you add a fan into your headset: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/08/a-fan-for-the-valve-in...

jedberg• 4 years ago

Have you tried an Oculus? I have vertigo too and am a graybeard and it doesn't bother me at all. They did a good job with the refresh rate. Other VR headsets do still bother me, so they did something right (at least for me) on the Oculus.

bebop• 4 years ago

Off topic, but I was just watching an interview with those two about some of the games that they developed at Sierra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAemLilaNjk

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

I think VR and text adventurers are at an odd crossroads. Text adventures are noteworthy for what they let you do with an unlimited interface. But it's also noteworthy in what you CANNOT do. In VR there's a lot of things you can't explicitly forbid trying to do, namely anything that's somewhat physical in your nearby space.

ethbr03• 4 years ago

Because this is approaching the web horizon, for those who don't know, Ken and Roberta Williams are pretty close to the SoCal version of Shigeru Miyamoto.

They founded Sierra On-Line in 1979, which published pretty stellar titles until its sale in 1996 (and subsequent mismanagement and outright corporate fraud by the acquirer).

Here are a list of the things they published, among which some were developed inhouse, among which some were developed by one or both of the Williams.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment...

PS: And on a personal note, I can't imagine my teenage years without Sierra. From King's Quest to Dynamix to Valve's Half-Life to Relic's Homeworld to Gearbox's initial Half-Life console ports, they survived far longer in an industry where so many don't... while putting out amazing stuff over decades.

Or to put it another way, when they first started writing and publishing games, there was no Internet (in the modern sense) and Intel had just released the 10 MHz 8086 built on a 3000 nm (3 µm) node.

By the time they left the company, the web and JavaScript existed, and Intel had just released the Klamath 300 MHz Pentium II on a 350 nm node.

Crazy times.

tomc19855• 4 years ago

Did they really have much of a role to play for Half-Life or Homeworld? By that point they were just a publisher.

ethbr03• 4 years ago

Supposedly they chose to publish Half-Life because they regretted turning down the chance to buy id, and thought Valve seemed like a good company. So I think they deserve some credit for recognizing talent.

VBprogrammer• 4 years ago

They also had a couple of really cool Nordhavn motor yachts which Ken has blogged about extensively, including crossing the Atlantic in their first one.

mgdlbp• 4 years ago

The Internet Archive has many historic games (and some of its other vintage software) available to run in various emulators in-browser. For example, a 1987 release of King's Quest in (F1 for help; note: sound!):

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Kings_Quest_I_-_Quest_for_...

Discussion of how it's done with DOSBox compiled to Wasm:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977424

fknorangesite5• 4 years ago

Plenty are on GOG, too.

slowmovintarget• 4 years ago

Hacking King's Quest on my middle school's Apple IIe was one of the ways I learned to code.

lolive• 4 years ago

I really hope we will die a lot in this game... Like in the good old times [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/KLPXP5KkcMQ

mancerayder2• 4 years ago

I grew up on those Sierra adventure games -- LucasArts too!

Would love to see these (and the Williams) come back in any form.

denton-scratch• 4 years ago

interesting characters

I played ADVENT for many hours, back in the day (on the boss's time). The only characters I remember are a dwarf, a pirate, a dragon, a bird, a giant, and a giant clam. OK, I suppose the bear and the troll might count as characters.

None of these count as "interesting characters" - a chap that always says "Fee Fi Fo Foo" isn't particularly interesting, and none of the others has any dialogue.

LichenStone• 4 years ago

I really hope they make use of the Steam Audio API in the game, which can simulate sound reflections, occlusion, reverb, and HRTF directional positioning to the listener for sound sources. Would make a ton of sense for a cave environment.

hnthrowaway0315• 4 years ago

I'm actually thinking it makes a lot of sense to convert those dungeon crawlers (Dungeon Master for example) to VR. I'm wondering how much work is needed. One definitely needs to remodel the whole world and create new models for the monsters and items so it's essentially making a whole new game, plus a lot of gameplay code needs to be "converted" to VR. And how does one limit the actions of players in VR?

ndand• 4 years ago

"Roberta and I will be on Twitch tomorrow to talk about a new game we're working on. Our interview will be at 3pm Pacific time."

https://twitter.com/caboken/status/1506390567197896705

spcebar• 4 years ago

For some background, Colossal Cave Adventure is arguably the first narrative computer game, and probably the first text adventure. It was developed in the 70s by Will Crowther (who helped create ARPANET) and Don Woods, who added most the game's puzzles.

It's a very oldschool fantasy text adventure which, by today's standards, requires a lot of patience, but it created a genre and inspired games like Zork (and by extension Infocom), and Adventure for the 2600, which itself inspired many other games.

Rick Adams has a great website dedicated to it with a lot of history and fun facts (https://rickadams.org/adventure/), and you can play the game directly on the site.

Very exciting to see the Sierra crew taking this on. It seems like a bizarre thing to adapt but I'm a big fan of them and the original.

mintplant• 4 years ago

I discovered ADVENT because it was bundled in with DSLinux [0], the Linux distribution for the Nintendo DS. Poking through /bin, I thought it was going to be a little CLI advent calendar---imagine my surprise when the console started telling me a story! There was a long period in grade school where I was kinda obsessed with the game and its derivatives, especially Mike Arnautov's 770-point expansion [1]. I remember pulling apart his A-code sources (a custom DSL for implementing his versions of the game) to make my own additions to the world. From there I discovered the Inform 7 authoring system [2] and the wider text adventure/interactive fiction ecosystem.

I came into the whole thing comparatively late (sometime in the late 2000s, I guess?), but Colossal Cave is still a huge part of my childhood. Expansions, ports, remixes, and re-imaginings are already a tradition for the game: even the version most people are familiar with is Don Woods's expansion of Will Crowther's original code. I'm psyched to see the Williams's contribution to the canon!

[0] https://dslinux.org/

[1] https://mipmip.org/downloads.html

[2] http://inform7.com/

anthk3• 4 years ago

Inform6 it's better if you like easy OOP and structured code.

Get Inform Begginers Guide and Inform's Designers Manual. Both are free PDF files.

You'll need Inform6 and the Inform 6 library (easy).

crtasm• 4 years ago

50 Years of Text Games did a good piece on it: https://if50.substack.com/p/1976-adventure

jollofricepeas• 4 years ago

Very cool.

I enjoyed the original game.

Imagine what they’ll do with the 3D version…

Playing the game as reading a choose your own adventure book outside of a Parisian cafe = Done

Playing a PC like version while sitting in a grungy university library basement in front of a Commodore 64 = Done

Same experience but in three dimensions = Mindblowing

mrfusion• 4 years ago

Is there anywhere to play the original colossal cave adventure?

anthk3• 4 years ago

Linux: install bsdgames, type down "advent".

All: Get a Z-Machine interpreter (Frotz/Winfrotz/Lectrote) and "advent.z5" from here:

https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent.z5

jamesjamesm• 4 years ago

Here https://archive.org/details/msdos_Classic_Adventure_-_The_Or...

dang• 4 years ago

Roberta Williams, the Queen of Graphic Adventure Video Games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30781307 - March 2022 (no comments yet)

christkv• 4 years ago

I've started playing Kings quest 2 with the kids and oh my the amount of deaths. I had forgotten the pixel perfect walking needed not to plunge to your death. Kids are enjoying it though since they get all the fairy tale references.

auselen• 4 years ago

Ken’s book “Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings” was a nice read: https://kensbook.com/faq/

20wenty• 4 years ago

Audible version is great, too. https://www.audible.com/pd/Not-All-Fairy-Tales-Have-Happy-En...

selimthegrim• 4 years ago

I am really hoping for some Mixed-Up Mother Goose dirt (the first game I ever played on the Apple II in 1992)

egypturnash• 4 years ago

Initial promotional footage is... not very impressive.

https://twitter.com/colossalcave3d/status/150637770280619622...

uxcolumbo• 4 years ago

I wish Ken & Roberta would work on a new 2D pixel art point&click game.

Doing VR well takes a lot of effort, which would be better spent on story and creating beautiful pixel art - which somehow has a richness that VR can't seem to replicate (yet).

dekhn• 4 years ago

Dark Crystal (from their company) ruined adventure games for me. Later I found a cheat book and turns out you had to type a totally non-obvious command (LISTEN STREAM) in a specific location to unlock the rest of the game. No fun.

mehlmao• 4 years ago

The Old Man Murray piece "Death of Adventure Games" sums up my feelings on the genre.

Who killed Adventure Games? I think it should be pretty clear at this point that Adventure Games committed suicide.

https://oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

magpi3• 4 years ago

I would like to see this happen for other games like the old Inform game Trinity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(video_game)

gotaquestion5• 4 years ago

I'm literally playing Trinity on an emulator right now. Not sure how I missed it back in the 80's but I'm really enjoying it. I'm stuck on the satellite door. Don't spoil it! Playing text adventures requires far more willpower today since the answers are easily accessible via the Internet. Not giving in to cheating really makes it feel old-school.

psyc• 4 years ago

Slash and Axl reunited. Ken and Roberta Williams making a game. What's next? _why reappears on TikTok?

Ken and Roberta Williams Working on Colossal Cave Adventure Remake for VR and PC

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