[MWForum]public domain story line for interactive fiction

[Furman Smith]

Janus Jakaterina <nuzoo2@yahoo.com> wrote that they were interested
in suggestions or samples relating to creating interactive fiction
using Microworlds Logo.  I have a suggestion.

Long ago I wrote a computerized fantasy simulation in BASIC and two
versions of the program were published in the now defunct RECREATIONAL
COMPUTING.  The first is called "Nellan is Thirsty" and the second is
called "Deliver the Cake".

Both were written for children.  As best as I can tell Nellan was the
first interactive fiction written specifically for children.

The program and the story lines are in the public domain.

I am delighted that Geoff Draper completely rewrote Nellan, taking
advantage of current graphics and audio.  His version is in the public
domain and you can download a copy from
http://www.geocities.com/thirstynellan/ .

Mr Draper wrote "The Art of Rewriting Old Games", which you can read
at http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7083 .

So here is a story line which was originally delivered in BASIC with
a command line interface and which was rewritten in C++ with a point
and click interface.  

As I recall the original Nellan fit, just barely, in the 8 k memory
of the Tandy Radio Shack Model so it was not a large program.  (With
16 k spaces could be inserted between the words of the BASIC statements
and a reasonable number of comments could be included.)

I used Nellan to show how a program could interact in such a manner but
I found that it was a bit long to easily cover with computer-club members
or college students in one hour so I wrote the second, "Cake", in order
to be able to go over everything instead of saying "The rest is done in
about the same way."  Both programs illustrate the basic techniques,
although not in the beautiful manner that Steven Pemberton is able to
do using ABC as shown at
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/abc/examples/adventure.html .

I have a Web page, http://sciences.aum.edu/~furman/RC_2CFS.htm , in which
I express that I'd like to rewrite one or both of the CFS's in Microworlds
Logo or Python.  I'd like to;  I haven't;  I don't anticipate getting to
it until I retire.  I remember starting a project long ago with the original
LCSI Logo (thus an old version by the company that does Microworlds) and 
loving it that I could do such as
	run [describe :current_room] -- that sure beats the case method used
in BASIC (IF ROOM$="FOYER" THEN GOTO 820)

I would love it if someone cast the Nellan story or the Cake story in
Microworlds.  You can get the story line of Nellan by running Geoff's
program.  I can dig up the old Cake stuff if anyone wants.

Incidently, on another subject, there was a survey in this newsgroup
a while back about people using Microworlds and I never responded.
I feel guilty.  I should have mentioned that I'd used it in the research
leading to a publication "Comply/Constrain Games or Games with a Muller
Twist" which is available at http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/vol2.html .
What made Microworlds so useful in this investigation was a feature that at 
first I thought I'd never use -- the ability of Microworlds to interact 
with Microsoft's spreadsheet Excel.

Happy coding.                         -- furman