If you wish to experience of The Wonderful World of Cavern then you are quite
welcome to play Cavern online; the full Cavern Adventure Game is all here,
ready for your enjoyment.Cavern is a fairly complex adventure which cannot be completed in a few minutes
and, as it is not possible to save current or load previous adventures when it
is run over The Web ( as that would breach browser security restrictions ), I
would seriously recommend that you download the Cavern Adventure Game and run it
offline, however, to get a feel for the adventure; this is a good place to
start.
Download and Play Offline
To enjoy The Wonderful World of Cavern in all its complexities at your leisure,
with the ability to save current and load previous adventures, I recommend that
you download the Cavern Adventure Game and play offline.Simply download the
CAVERN.ZIP file into
a directory on your PC, unzip it to the same or another
directory ( C:\CAVERN is recommended ) and simply click on the INDEX.HTM file
in that directory, or load it via your browser.
The .ZIP file is around 500Kb and expands to about 1Mb; you'll need around
1.5Mb of hard disk space to install and play Cavern but the .ZIP file may be
deleted after installation.
If you have downloaded a previous version of the Cavern Adventure Game and
have saved any of your adventures; these can be loaded into later
versions of the game - you will, generally, be warned of any changes which
affect what you have previously saved.
The Cavern Adventure Game has been written in HTML and uses JavaScript; it is
therefore a requirement that you have a browser which supports JavaScript, and
that JavaScript is enabled, to undertake an adventure.
The game has been developed and tested using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0
which will run the JavaScript code perfectly and it is believed that Internet
Explorer 4.0 is equally usable, although exhaustive testing has not been
undertaken at this time.
Various versions of The Cavern Adventure Game have been tested using Netscape
Navigator 4.6 which have all failed abysmally, either hanging or actually
crashing the browser; it is suspected that other, earlier, versions of Netscape
Navigator will exhibit similar problems although this has not been verified.
While, in an ideal world, and if this were a commercial product, I would be
willing to invest considerable time and effort in resolving the problem, I am
not currently prepared to do so. This means that only Microsoft Internet
Explorer 5.0 is recommended for playing the Cavern Adventure Game.
If you
wish to send the code off to the manufacturer of any other browser that you
are using so that they can make the code run using their products; please feel
free to do so. I would love to know why my code, which runs perfectly on
Internet Explorer 5.0, causes problems with other browsers but have neither
the time, nor the inclination to do so. I offer my apologies to those of you
who are not running Internet Explorer and are unable to play Cavern but the
problem is outside of my control.
The Cavern Adventure Game needs to store a reasonable amount of data on
your hard disk when a game is saved and, due to their ambiguous and limited
specification, Cookies are unsuitable for such use. After prolonged
debate as to how adventures could be saved the only solution which has been
deemed viable is the use of Microsoft ActiveX technology which will allow an
HTML page to access a user's hard disk.
The Cavern Adventure Game therefore requires that Microsoft ActiveX technology
is available, and the game is run from a local hard disk, in order that
adventures can be saved. This in turn requires that the game be played through
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or above on a PC platform if you wish to use
the ability to save current and load previous adventures.
Again, I can only apologise to those of you who are not using Internet Explorer
4.0 or above on a PC platform and are unable to play the Cavern Adventure Game.
Any proven and guaranteed solutions to the problem of not being able to save
data to a hard disk outside of such an environment will be gratefully received;
there are an awful lot of software developers out there who would love to be
able to overcome such problems.
Cavern is generally a fun game to play but it does contain fairly
strong descriptions of death when an adventurer does something stupid enough
to get killed. The Cavern world encompasses concepts of Wizards, Demons and
other other mythical and unusual creatures and reincarnation. For these
reasons, parental guidance may need to be required when younger children are
exposed to the Cavern world.
Historical Background
Ever since I was introduced to the ADVENT text based adventure game at
Hatfield Polytechnic in the late seventies; I've had an affinity with such
games.While simple text based adventure games have lost favour, with the advent ( no
pun intended ) of high speed desktop PC's, souped-up 3D graphic engines and
sound cards which can demolish a wall at 50 paces, there is still something
satisfying about a simple ( or not so simple ) text based adventure.
Perhaps it's the difference one finds between reading a book and watching a
film; in a book one becomes immersed in the plot as it unfolds, on the screen
everything is done for you and you're carried along for the ride.
Modern day Role Playing Games ( RPG's ), or perhaps more accurately, Live
Action Games ( LAG's ), Doom, Duke Nukem,
Tomb Raider and a host of others, are incredible pieces of work and I
have thoroughly enjoyed playing them, however, there is a tendency to lapse
into Avenging Death Warrior mode, rushing around, splatting everything
in sight.
Fun admittedly, but sometime I feel there's something lacking; intellectual
stimulation. The adventure isn't really embodied there.
Previous generation games, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld,
Stonekeep, Return to Zork, King's Quest, Discworld,
Myst and so on, embody far more of the original adventure spirit than
later games; requiring maps to be drawn, treasures and objects to be collected
and challenges to be overcome and puzzles to be solved to allow progress
through their imaginary worlds.
Playing these games can be a full-time occupation as opposed to running through
a computer generated landscape hurling pipe-bombs left-right-and-centre with
one's finger held tight on the BFG 2000 - That's the Big F--king Gun if you
hadn't made the association when you got it.
As Space Invaders and Battle Zone were usurped by X-Wing
Commander and Pacific Islands, text based adventure games were lost
to history as real time graphical adventures took hold.
It's not surprising considering just how impressive Doom was when it
was first released on an unsuspecting games playing audience.
It's a great shame that the obvious inspiration for Doom,
Wolfenstein 3D, never really got the credit it deserved; obviously,
being set in a Nazi infested rathole gave it less grounds for acclaim than a
game which battles evil satanic forces.
Games like Doom, Duke Nukem and their successors have, in reality,
been just as responsible for pushing computer owners onto the next level of
hardware kit as the declining operating speed of Microsoft's Windows has. Such
games have also shown just how powerful, and magical, the art of computer
programming has become, making Microsoft's software offerings look pitiful in
comparison.
But when the world is cluttered with clone upon clone of these, now outdated
games, what next ?
Every game becomes much like the rest; boring. What's new ?
Could we see a return to the old text based adventure games ?
Unlikely, no one in their right mind is going to load up an old MS-DOS 720Kb
disk of Zork I or The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy are
they ?
No. It's old technology, outdated, been there, done that, things have moved on,
but, what is the World Wide Web ?
Nothing more than a collection of, mainly text, pages all linked to one another;
surfing is little more than the art of text based adventuring.
And with this realisation I was inspired !
Ever since I played, and became immersed in, ADVENT, so called because
the original DECsystem-10 operating system it ran under only supported
filenames of six characters so Adventure was truncated for posterity,
I have spent time reincarnating it, from scratch, in various forms; assembly
language on a Digico M16E, Dartford Basic on a DECsystem-10, on a BBC Micro, in
TurboBasic for MS-DOS, as a Telnet Client under TCP/IP and even under Windows
in Visual Basic.
The revamped ADVENT, which I've always called Cavern for as long
as I can remember - some twenty years now, never ever reached completion.
Technology moved on ( how many platforms for which it was rewritten are used
today ? ) and I lost heart in the face of emerging 3D graphics technology.
But my interest in text based adventures was rekindled in a blinding flash of
light ( and a small puff of orange smoke ); turn Cavern into a web based
textual adventure.
With twenty years of adventure coding behind me it only took a few hours
of work to bash years of Cavern ideas into a working HTML and JavaScript
design, and then a month or so getting side-tracked into padding out
descriptions of objects and locations to add more flesh and make it all
a little more worthwhile and credible. And an awful lot of effort, which I
hadn't anticipated, went into game play testing ( thanks Rebecca ) and
tarting up the lose ends.
So, after many, many years, Cavern has finally reached a global audience.
What is Cavern ?
Cavern is a game of exploration in a fantasy world where one collects
treasures and valuables, encounters various creatures, is confronted by
puzzles and challenges, accumulates points and, upon successful
completion of the challenge, is awarded with nothing more than an accolade
and the smug feeling of success.Cavern is admittedly derived from the original ADVENT game, there's no
point in denying it.
Saying that it's derived from ADVENT doesn't however mean that it's just
a re-write or porting of the original game.
It's probably better to say that it takes its inspiration from the original, and
the many variants and evolutions which cropped up along the way, and adds new
locations and objects not, I think, previously found.
Some of the old locations are still there, some of the old objects are still
there but the world has evolved slightly differently from the original and
it's, hopefully, different enough to be entertaining in its own right.
I could have just wiped out, or renamed, all references to the old ADVENT
locations, objects and creatures and built Cavern up from scratch but that
would be like killing an old friend.
Cavern is a mixture of original ADVENT, ideas taken from derivations and my
own ideas; it should be both familiar and different to the hardened ADVENT
player !
After so many years drawing maps, tweaking or improving the originally terse
room descriptions and so on, it's hard to remember what's original creation and
what isn't. I know there are also some ideas taken from Zork but the passage of
time has blurred the origins of my inspirations.
Suffice to say that, having come back to Cavern after a number of years off, I
actually enjoyed exploring, and adding to, the world I have again created.
Cavern is back and it was fun bringing it back.
It's not perfect yet, its recent reincarnation was not helped by most
accessible, original source code being on 5¼" floppy disks in BBC Micro
format with a lot of documentary material having been lost over the years, but
all the fundamentals are there and the game can be played, and enjoyed, to
completion.
There aren't many monsters to be encountered and there are a lot of things I'd
like to add in future versions but Cavern is a complete, self contained game
without, I hope, any lose ends.
Please don't criticise the JavaScript code; it's just been hacked together. Not
what one would expect from a Professional Software Engineer, but, what the heck,
this is fun; coding ( or more correctly, kludging ) seventies style !
Think of it as more a model or simulation than the final thing.
I may try and extend the game, even re-write the whole games engine, I may not.
Perhaps someone would be interested in taking what I have and expanding the
game, adding new locations, objects and game play, and could convince me to
see it through to its end.
The game world and the objects within it are fully expandable and I can see its
potential should text based adventuring take off again. I don't hold out any
hopes as such but, at last, all my prior efforts reach a wider audience.
Having rekindled my interests in text based adventures; I was quite surprised
to find an awful lot of stuff out on the Internet. Many of the old games are
available for download and there does seem to be a great deal of interest in
Interactive Fiction. Hopefully Cavern will make a welcome addition to
this great collection.
If you want to see what's in store so far ..
