Sierra Creative Interpreter – Scripts(benshoof.org)
benshoof.org
Sierra Creative Interpreter – Scripts
https://www.benshoof.org/blog/sci-scripts
61 comments
I'm probably quite a bit older than you, but +1 for King's Quest.
The first time I ever loaded a game was on my dad's IBM PC XT when he wasn't around. He had those old slide-out floppy disk drawers. One of them was labeled "games". I had watched him put floppies into the disk drive and switch on the computer. One day he was out and I cheekily decided to try out his computer without permission. I must have been around six years old.
I opened the games drawer and pulled out a floppy of King's Quest I, put it into the drive, and switched on the PC (with glorious CGA graphics). It loaded successfully. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do anything in that game and the first eureka moment was when I was standing in a field and typed "pick up carrot".
The most notable takeaway from that experience was, I thought there was a real world running inside the computer and from that day the only thing I really wanted to do was mess with computers. I played all the king's quest games, KQ4 (The Perils of Rosella) came quite a bit later, and I loved it.
The first time I ever loaded a game was on my dad's IBM PC XT when he wasn't around. He had those old slide-out floppy disk drawers. One of them was labeled "games". I had watched him put floppies into the disk drive and switch on the computer. One day he was out and I cheekily decided to try out his computer without permission. I must have been around six years old.
I opened the games drawer and pulled out a floppy of King's Quest I, put it into the drive, and switched on the PC (with glorious CGA graphics). It loaded successfully. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do anything in that game and the first eureka moment was when I was standing in a field and typed "pick up carrot".
The most notable takeaway from that experience was, I thought there was a real world running inside the computer and from that day the only thing I really wanted to do was mess with computers. I played all the king's quest games, KQ4 (The Perils of Rosella) came quite a bit later, and I loved it.
Lol, eerily similar experience, late 80s in eastern Europe. My dad had a 286 for work. I saw him start t a weird version of space invaders in possibly COBOL of all places. So when he was at work I had to figure out how to navigate to right folder, load up what I guess must've been like an online interpreter environment, load up the program, and execute it. But oh the satisfaction! The pride! The feeling of conquering the machine and puzzle! Following that I was on space quest rails more than king quest but what an experience - even if it were on black and white Hercules graphics. Being in east Europe all games were pirated. No manual, no details, foreign language. Playing mean streets without knowing the coordinates for places. And eventually spending first hour of dune 2 terrified of my trike falling off the island into the space chasm... Which turned out to be fog of war not a hole :)
Good innocent exciting times!
Good innocent exciting times!
I do think Kids These Days (tm) are being done a disservice by how opaquely polished computing environments have become. It's hard to learn about what is going on when everything is abstracted away and the guardrails work so hard to keep you inside the walled garden.
It's gotten to the point where cloud services and search interfaces are being pushed so hard that the actual filesystem is a mystery to people at a high school/college level.
It's gotten to the point where cloud services and search interfaces are being pushed so hard that the actual filesystem is a mystery to people at a high school/college level.
My experience was so identical to yours, except replace Kings Quest 1 with Kings Quest 3, and replace “pick up carrot” with “kick cat”. Other than that I could have written this post myself.
This comment just made my day. What I didn't mention in my initial comment is that when people ask me, even today, "how did you get into computing and programming" that is the story I tell them. Of course, there's hell of a lot more to it, but that's mostly where it started. (That and my mom teaching me Logo on some ancient Apple machine)
Awesome story. Similar for me but my dad showed me this stuff on purpose, haha.
There was this one bit in KQ4, I think near the end, where I got stuck for weeks.
A bunch of step stones going across a swamp, if I recall correctly, which needed to be navigated in order to get to the next screen.
I repeatedly tried stuff like "jump on stone", "jump across", "swim".
"YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE"
It took weeks to figure out that all I needed to do was type "jump" without any additional text. Oh, the good old days.
A bunch of step stones going across a swamp, if I recall correctly, which needed to be navigated in order to get to the next screen.
I repeatedly tried stuff like "jump on stone", "jump across", "swim".
"YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE"
It took weeks to figure out that all I needed to do was type "jump" without any additional text. Oh, the good old days.
It was Space Quest 1 for my family and friends. "Insert disk into computer"? "Insert disk into drive"? "Use computer to read disk"? Nope, turns out the magic words were "Insert disk into slot".
Now, imagine the same problem, but for a kid who didn't really have a lot of exposure to English in his daily life.
I both loved and feared those moments in early adventure games: all good, moving on with the story and then... am I an idiot? Is this part of the game puzzle, or I have to iterate all the dictionary words again?
I both loved and feared those moments in early adventure games: all good, moving on with the story and then... am I an idiot? Is this part of the game puzzle, or I have to iterate all the dictionary words again?
I learned English playing Leisure Suit Larry when I was about 6, with a dictionary next to me, painstakingly translating everything. This turned into a lifelong love of adventure games, with the Space Quest games being an especially fond memory.
This was also how I learned the difference between ‘make knife sharp’ and ‘sharpen knife’, or ‘put can in bag’ versus ‘put can in bag’ (the latter of which actually worked if I recall correctly, with Larry stuffing the spray can and then dying, which frustrated me to no end for ages.
I always kinda thought that this is more in the style of what an educational game should be like, exploring with aids and the tasks being somewhat unforgiving, at least that worked really well for me.
> or ‘put can in bag’ versus ‘put can in bag’ (the latter of which actually worked if I recall correctly
Both commands above say “put can in bag”. :) What was the correct command?
Both commands above say “put can in bag”. :) What was the correct command?
And that will teach me to proof read, if I recall correctly then this was Larry 3 and it accepted both putting an air sick bag inside a spray can and the can inside the bag, the latter being the correct answer. It has been more than 2 decades since I last played the old Sierra games, so I might be misremembering, but it was all part of a really worrying suitcase bomb disposal puzzle near the end.
Don’t ask me how Larry stuffed the bag inside the can, but there was the same animation and everything. I remember being extremely frustrated with that, since the Sierra games are otherwise quite flexible in terms of accepting input. This was also why it was useful for learning English, since you could tell it things like ‘look item’ rather than requiring it to be “look at item’ and so on.
So I really loathed those cases where you had to be super precise, since they felt immediately off compared to the rest of the game.
Regardless good times, I think the best Sierra game of that era is Space Quest 3, which had some decent puzzles, a fun story and a hero I really liked.
Don’t ask me how Larry stuffed the bag inside the can, but there was the same animation and everything. I remember being extremely frustrated with that, since the Sierra games are otherwise quite flexible in terms of accepting input. This was also why it was useful for learning English, since you could tell it things like ‘look item’ rather than requiring it to be “look at item’ and so on.
So I really loathed those cases where you had to be super precise, since they felt immediately off compared to the rest of the game.
Regardless good times, I think the best Sierra game of that era is Space Quest 3, which had some decent puzzles, a fun story and a hero I really liked.
The central puzzle of Space Quest 3’s first “act”—how to repair the hyperdrive on your crashed ship—has to be one of the best designed and most satisfying to complete in any game of any era.
I’m not sure which is more frustrating: adventure games where you have to find the right command phrasing or games where you have to find the one magic pixel.
The limited grammar of these early adventure games had such a strong impact on me that I write my to-do lists now using the standard “VERB [ADJECTIVE] NOUN” grammar, as if I’m the character in my own game. :)
The limited grammar of these early adventure games had such a strong impact on me that I write my to-do lists now using the standard “VERB [ADJECTIVE] NOUN” grammar, as if I’m the character in my own game. :)
A slightly out of place geeky remark:
Note how "VERB.NOUN"/"ACTION.ACTIONABLE" is functional programming while "NOUN.VERB" is OOP. After 18+ years in the industry I still find the functional style more fluild: DO THIS, JUMP THAT, SEE HERE, etc. :-)
Now I see that it's the games that did this to me!
Note how "VERB.NOUN"/"ACTION.ACTIONABLE" is functional programming while "NOUN.VERB" is OOP. After 18+ years in the industry I still find the functional style more fluild: DO THIS, JUMP THAT, SEE HERE, etc. :-)
Now I see that it's the games that did this to me!
I learned to spell by playing KQ1 and SQ1. Well, playing the games and having parents whom I could ask questions like "how do you spell 'search body'".
It's not just kids without exposure to English who struggled with typed English interfaces!
It's not just kids without exposure to English who struggled with typed English interfaces!
On the brighter side: I lived through that period when the games transitioned from text-based interfaces to point-and-click ones. What a relief that was!
I understand the nostalgia for Infocom games of people like Jimmy Maher - I also have a soft spot for beautiful and polished writing, but this definitely was a way forward for games in general.
I understand the nostalgia for Infocom games of people like Jimmy Maher - I also have a soft spot for beautiful and polished writing, but this definitely was a way forward for games in general.
I think the next evolution on it was classic JRPGs, like Dragon Quest/Warrior. There was still tons of dialogue, but the point-and-click was replaced by speak-to-everyone-and-try-stuff. It was still mostly linear, but it felt more interactive than just finding the right screen region.
I hated the transition to point and click, because it turned into "hunt for the right pixel" -- with text based games you generally only needed to be in the vicinity of the object you were trying to manipulate.
Absolutely, but precision was also a bit of a problem for the text based games. I remember Space Quest was the king of this, requiring frequent saving to make it past certain sections where a single accidental button press could cause you to fall off a ledge or step on something that just killed you.
If you, say have a movement disorder, this happens all too often.
Still I have so many great memories of Sierra’s games from my childhood that I can’t bring myself to hate all the foibles.
If you, say have a movement disorder, this happens all too often.
Still I have so many great memories of Sierra’s games from my childhood that I can’t bring myself to hate all the foibles.
My favourite pixel hunter was and still is Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis :-)
Can't imagine myself playing that kind of game again but back then this semi-serious and comfortably safe (no real danger and no sierra deadends as well) gameplay felt right for the 7-8 year old.
Oh, and Kyrandia..!
Can't imagine myself playing that kind of game again but back then this semi-serious and comfortably safe (no real danger and no sierra deadends as well) gameplay felt right for the 7-8 year old.
Oh, and Kyrandia..!
Both games are classics, Indy 4 is one of my favorite games of all time.
Yeah, the pixel thing... Not as bad as most parser-based games but still.
But did the industry find a better way to tell a story without resorting to action-packed gameplay? I mean, Grim Fandango kind of slow story supplemented by visuals?
But did the industry find a better way to tell a story without resorting to action-packed gameplay? I mean, Grim Fandango kind of slow story supplemented by visuals?
No offense to Grim Fandango, which is a great game, but for Sierra-style adventures, I don’t want to be told a story. I don’t want to feel like I’m moving on tracks through a ride, flipping a switch or solving a puzzle to keep the train moving.
Like the best interactive fiction, in classic Sierra games you’re interacting with the developers’ world to create the story. Free-form text input is key to this distinction. Play-throughs of richly written games like The Colonel’s Bequest are much more rewarding because your character isn’t limited to exploring the world via “look/talk/touch/use”.
Like the best interactive fiction, in classic Sierra games you’re interacting with the developers’ world to create the story. Free-form text input is key to this distinction. Play-throughs of richly written games like The Colonel’s Bequest are much more rewarding because your character isn’t limited to exploring the world via “look/talk/touch/use”.
Well, some of that free range kind of feeling can be achieved by introducing local non-linearity into the game, i.e. make certains parts of the game independent of each other.
Then, as the player progresses to the next episode the non-linearity would become a single step to the next episode, without any cross-episode interdependencies. Most well-designed adventure games have this branch-narrow-branch-narrow structure, where bottlenecks make sure the player is ready to proceed to the next level.
What was no very good about Sierra-style design is that they did introduce this non-linearity but there were often inter-episode links introduced. (e.g. "had to pick up this item a couple of episodes back it's late now"). So resorting to walkthroughs was the only way to avoid this kind of meaningless backtracking. It a very shady way to lengthen gameplay time!
Then, as the player progresses to the next episode the non-linearity would become a single step to the next episode, without any cross-episode interdependencies. Most well-designed adventure games have this branch-narrow-branch-narrow structure, where bottlenecks make sure the player is ready to proceed to the next level.
What was no very good about Sierra-style design is that they did introduce this non-linearity but there were often inter-episode links introduced. (e.g. "had to pick up this item a couple of episodes back it's late now"). So resorting to walkthroughs was the only way to avoid this kind of meaningless backtracking. It a very shady way to lengthen gameplay time!
I agree, though in the better games (most of them, I would say) this kind of thing was a) hard to get yourself stuck in if you were making a careful play-through and/or b) not fatal, only costing you the "best" ending or some final score points.
The best games (again, I'd cite The Colonel's Bequest) had numerous game-stage dependent side-quests and optional puzzles or secrets that made for rich replay value.
Overall, I wouldn't undersell the value of the possibility of failure & the frisson it provides over a carefully guard-railed world.
There's certainly an aggressively evil way to structure games like this. The first that comes to mind is Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it's hard to escape the impression that the sadism towards the player was meant to be part of its charm.
The best games (again, I'd cite The Colonel's Bequest) had numerous game-stage dependent side-quests and optional puzzles or secrets that made for rich replay value.
Overall, I wouldn't undersell the value of the possibility of failure & the frisson it provides over a carefully guard-railed world.
There's certainly an aggressively evil way to structure games like this. The first that comes to mind is Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it's hard to escape the impression that the sadism towards the player was meant to be part of its charm.
Thinking about it again... In the end of the day, these games are what made English easy for me. In the longer term this definitely worked well!
You often had to take notice of the terms they used, and be sure to use those terms. That's why looking around was so important. In some ways those text interfaces were similar to crossword puzzles. They made you think, even as you described what you wanted to do.
The point-and-click UI was less frustrating, but there was also something lost compared to the text commands.
The point-and-click UI was less frustrating, but there was also something lost compared to the text commands.
It would be sort of interesting to put GPT-4 in front or something so it could determine if you were trying to do a valid action and then translate it to the correct command.
Oh my... I called one of the helplines that existed at the time and asked for the solution to a puzzle in one of the LucasArts Indiana Jones adventures.
Sounds so surreal in retrospect.
Sounds so surreal in retrospect.
Yep, I'm sure it's nostalgia, but AGI/SCI have a special place in my heart. I played King's Quest 3 a few months ago through to the end and it was everything I'd hoped it would be.
I really wish someone would point AI at this problem and generate a whole bunch of AGI/SCI games. SierraGPT.
I really wish someone would point AI at this problem and generate a whole bunch of AGI/SCI games. SierraGPT.
Those kinds of text interfaces for games would be a perfect use for the kind of AI we have right now. It drove me nuts when I'd try 10 versions of the same thing to find whatever noun or verb the programmer thought I should be using. They were also unforgiving when it came to bad spelling which didn't help.
I was grateful for the move to point and click adventure games. Pixel hunting was honestly less frustrating.
I was grateful for the move to point and click adventure games. Pixel hunting was honestly less frustrating.
I remember those "just in case" saves. Sierra loved those 'death screens' I especially liked the Space Quest ones - reload, restart, quit.
In hindsight, they're annoying, and IMHO kind of bad game design. Getting to the end, and finding out that to win the game, you needed some random item from level 1, and now you have to go back and do it all over again..
In hindsight, they're annoying, and IMHO kind of bad game design. Getting to the end, and finding out that to win the game, you needed some random item from level 1, and now you have to go back and do it all over again..
"Rubber tree!"
Agreed. Infocom games were initially my introduction to text based adventures on an Atari 800XL, then moved to Sierra upon getting a 386xl. I started w/ Leisure Suit Larry 3, then played a variety of Space Quests, Hero Quests/Quest for Glories, King Quests, Police Quests. I also bemoaned the move to point and click.
Despite having an original Nintendo (w/ Rob!), those text based Sierra games were the highlight of my game playing youth. There was a perfect blend of imagination, interaction, frustration, that just felt so intimate.
Despite having an original Nintendo (w/ Rob!), those text based Sierra games were the highlight of my game playing youth. There was a perfect blend of imagination, interaction, frustration, that just felt so intimate.
Did you ever play the Kyrandia games? My God I spent a lot of time with them.
Leisure Suit Larry (Sierra) was being played by my older cousin and introduced me for the first time to a lot of new concepts haha.
Leisure Suit Larry (Sierra) was being played by my older cousin and introduced me for the first time to a lot of new concepts haha.
I got my ass handed to me by my dad when he found out I had been playing LSL3 at a friends house. Speaking of the LSL series, we had mastered the whole "how old are you" quiz at the beginning of LSL1, and had photocopies of the bizarre copy protection solutions for 2 and 3. I think I enjoyed LSL2 the most, the one on the cruise ship.
It was Kings Quest III and Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory) on my Tandy 1000HX for me!
Kings Quest IV was my first computer game as well on an LCII. There was just something different about the pace of those games.
I'm still surprised that a Hollywood that's clearly starved for good script ideas has never picked up the Gabriel Knight series.
Hollywood doesn’t want good scripts, they want moneymakers and GK isn’t a big enough property to guarantee that.
I know this is conventional wisdom and also is very true.
however, the funny thing is, when eventually a film maker comes along and makes a film that is both new, unique, and outlandishly successful, then suddenly its "obvious" and Hollywood starts to copy that, but it takes forever for the right person to be in the right place for that to get moved forward, so you end up with rinse wash repeat stuff for the longest time.
For example, HBO taking a risk on Game Of Thrones or the initial conception of the new Marvel movies (I'm talking about Iron Man, the first one from 2007, and so on, when it was still novel), Breaking Bad was novel when it came out too. Same with The Walking Dead (the plot elements, not so much the idea of a zombie horror)
Its so weird how this industry appears to work from the outside
however, the funny thing is, when eventually a film maker comes along and makes a film that is both new, unique, and outlandishly successful, then suddenly its "obvious" and Hollywood starts to copy that, but it takes forever for the right person to be in the right place for that to get moved forward, so you end up with rinse wash repeat stuff for the longest time.
For example, HBO taking a risk on Game Of Thrones or the initial conception of the new Marvel movies (I'm talking about Iron Man, the first one from 2007, and so on, when it was still novel), Breaking Bad was novel when it came out too. Same with The Walking Dead (the plot elements, not so much the idea of a zombie horror)
Its so weird how this industry appears to work from the outside
What’s interesting is “good scripts” are apparently a dime a dozen (diamond dozen in the rough) all over Hollywood; if you find the original scripts for many “crappy” movies they’re moderately decent. It’s after they get massaged for public consumption that they’re often the common dreck we’ve come to expect.
What’s annoying is the studios still buy up the rights to tons of properties and then never develop anything. So you can’t even have a small studio/independent film on something like (for example) the Penny Arcade comic, because someone owns those rights and won’t sell
What’s annoying is the studios still buy up the rights to tons of properties and then never develop anything. So you can’t even have a small studio/independent film on something like (for example) the Penny Arcade comic, because someone owns those rights and won’t sell
Hollywood you either need a guaranteed moneymaker or something the people will money can buy into. One I always found interesting was how Arrival happened because the screenwriter KEPT pitching it until he found a producer/company that was interested, then he managed to convince Denis Villeneuve to direct it and it got nominated for best picture (also think it did well in box office but I can't remember for sure anymore).
Agree, though I think LOTR made fantasy enough of a moneymaker to make GOT not such a moonshot as these other genre kickoffs.
Even in season one, before all of the actors could demand huge salaries - GOT had to have been an expensive show. Limited special effects (initially), but so many characters, in so different locations. The series is still not even fully written yet!
Feels like a riskier play vs any number of fully formed fantasy settings.
Feels like a riskier play vs any number of fully formed fantasy settings.
Hollywood has adapted all sorts of niche comic books in the hopes that something might land.
I think one of the reasons Hollywood avoids many video game franchises that people would sort of expect them to adapt or sequel is a lingering hangover from the FMV craze of the 90s. Hollywood Producers worked hand in hand with a bunch of videogame companies, lost a ton of money in the process, and seemed to come out of that distrustful of two-way working relationships with videogame companies.
That reason seems directly relevant to GK in particular: GK2 was quite successful in Sierra terms, but still somewhat unsuccessful in Hollywood (accounting) terms and likely still on some Hollywood producer's books as an old loss.
I think one of the reasons Hollywood avoids many video game franchises that people would sort of expect them to adapt or sequel is a lingering hangover from the FMV craze of the 90s. Hollywood Producers worked hand in hand with a bunch of videogame companies, lost a ton of money in the process, and seemed to come out of that distrustful of two-way working relationships with videogame companies.
That reason seems directly relevant to GK in particular: GK2 was quite successful in Sierra terms, but still somewhat unsuccessful in Hollywood (accounting) terms and likely still on some Hollywood producer's books as an old loss.
That's really interesting, I did not know Hollywood had been involved with the FMV stuff!
"Tell me about... voodoo"
This alone would be worth the price of admission. But Who plays GK?
This alone would be worth the price of admission. But Who plays GK?
Your first instinct looking at this is that it's a Lisp, and you read the article about the Smalltalk backstory, but then you read through the code and... it's a Tcl.
I mean, I read some of the code and it looks like a Smalltalk with an sexpr syntax. But it also seems to have free-floating functions as well unbound from an object/class scope. Also seems to have a mix of class-based and prototype-based inheritance. Why do you say Tcl?
Overall I would have loved to have had this programming language available to me as a general purpose language in the 80s and early 90s.
Overall I would have loved to have had this programming language available to me as a general purpose language in the 80s and early 90s.
That was my first impression as well but a closer looks seems to reveal it's missing lists, and I do not know many lisps that are missing lists :)
Similar collection for SCUMMVM games:
https://github.com/EricOakford/SCUMM-Decompilation-Archive
https://github.com/EricOakford/SCUMM-Decompilation-Archive
Seeing the code for King's Quest V definitely felt like a bucket list item.
Although, in truth, it now feels more mundane than mysterious. Reams of code that is just walk and hitbox positioning, animation, "if player has item do A, otherwise do B".
I have to wonder if there was another tool or a DSL within Script generating the more lookup-tably stuff.
Although, in truth, it now feels more mundane than mysterious. Reams of code that is just walk and hitbox positioning, animation, "if player has item do A, otherwise do B".
I have to wonder if there was another tool or a DSL within Script generating the more lookup-tably stuff.
I loved those games so much. Every time a new one came out and my friend got a "copy" it was a celebration. We'd sit for days at his house playing. I loved the text interface the most and some of the magic was lost when it was replaced. We went through them all from King Quest 1 through the Police Quest series, Space Quest etc. It was glorious.
The 80s film "Terminal Entry" featured a 'futuristic' version of a Sierra style game, control by voice prompts. I thought this is what the future has in store for us...
The 80s film "Terminal Entry" featured a 'futuristic' version of a Sierra style game, control by voice prompts. I thought this is what the future has in store for us...
As someone who has never played the games, this was top notch writing. I just read it all because it was so engaging, accessible and really well paced.
Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest - these were the first experiences that really fascinated me with computers. The exploratory conversational aspect of the text based interface is still compelling to me. I’d love to see all these games on phones - I think they’d work well.
I played a port of PQ1 on a Nokia N95. Sadly it didn't work well, between the small screen, the wrong aspect ratio and the 12 key pad. Perhaps a larger touchscreen might ameliorate some of these problems but I generally find text entry on newer phones much worse with my (large) fingers.
>The whole goal was flexibility in programming, and trying to push as much of the programming capabilities up to the game developer level rather than having them have to go into the engine as we could, and decoupling graphics and so forth to the point where you could keep extending the graphical capabilities.
I was under the impression that this was not the case, and that the reason Sierra games run poorly on Amiga/Atari was that they could not use the custom chips in those machines.
Compared to the Lucasarts interpreter that ran really well on all kinds of hardware, and even allowed the switching of old-school graphics to special-edition to be easily implemented.
I was under the impression that this was not the case, and that the reason Sierra games run poorly on Amiga/Atari was that they could not use the custom chips in those machines.
Compared to the Lucasarts interpreter that ran really well on all kinds of hardware, and even allowed the switching of old-school graphics to special-edition to be easily implemented.
Whyever the dangling parens? The OpenGOAL decompilation has many dangling parens too - they're a rather odd sight when moving around S-expressions (dodging the issue of if it's "Lisp" or not). I guess WAST and SMT-LIB producers are a mixed bag too.
I’ll die on the hill that dead-end game states and “just in case” save game histories were a critical part of the magic.
And the games were never the same when the text prompts were replaced by point & click.
Maybe I just hate the feeling I’m on rails.