Mystery Mansion
Encyclopedia
Mystery Mansion is the name of a text-based adventure game written in 1978-1981 by Bill Wolpert while at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington. It originally ran only on the HP
HP-1000 minicomputer on the RTE (Real Time Executive) operating system, but was later ported by persons unknown to run under MPE (Multiprocessing Executive) on the HP-3000. Although the development dates make it contemporaneous with other seminal interactive fiction games such as Adventure and Dungeon (which went on to become the Zork series from Infocom), it remains relatively unknown due to the specialized computers and operating systems on which it ran.
Two C-language ports exist, one by James Garnett while a graduate student at the University of Colorado
, and another by Bob Sorem of the University of Minnesota
(see illustration). The former is a line-by-line exact port in K&R-style C that runs on most Unix-flavor operating systems, while the latter is an adaptation with features not in Wolpert's original in Borland C that runs only under DOS/Windows.
The object of the single-player game is to find one's way through a run-down, foreboding mansion
in order to find various treasures, solve a murder, sleep with the maid (if very lucky), and avoid getting "killed" in the process all before the mansion is destroyed by fire at midnight
to end the game. In addition to the 3 rooms x 3 rooms x 3 stories cube-shaped mansion, there are gardens, tunnels, nefarious characters, and other obstacles to make one's way through or around. Being text-based, there are no illustrations at all, so the player has to imagine everything that is being described.
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
HP-1000 minicomputer on the RTE (Real Time Executive) operating system, but was later ported by persons unknown to run under MPE (Multiprocessing Executive) on the HP-3000. Although the development dates make it contemporaneous with other seminal interactive fiction games such as Adventure and Dungeon (which went on to become the Zork series from Infocom), it remains relatively unknown due to the specialized computers and operating systems on which it ran.
Two C-language ports exist, one by James Garnett while a graduate student at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
, and another by Bob Sorem of the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
(see illustration). The former is a line-by-line exact port in K&R-style C that runs on most Unix-flavor operating systems, while the latter is an adaptation with features not in Wolpert's original in Borland C that runs only under DOS/Windows.
The object of the single-player game is to find one's way through a run-down, foreboding mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
in order to find various treasures, solve a murder, sleep with the maid (if very lucky), and avoid getting "killed" in the process all before the mansion is destroyed by fire at midnight
Midnight
Midnight is the transition time period from one day to the next: the moment when the date changes. In the Roman time system, midnight was halfway between sunset and sunrise, varying according to the seasons....
to end the game. In addition to the 3 rooms x 3 rooms x 3 stories cube-shaped mansion, there are gardens, tunnels, nefarious characters, and other obstacles to make one's way through or around. Being text-based, there are no illustrations at all, so the player has to imagine everything that is being described.
External links
- http://www.lysator.liu.se/adventure/Mainframe_adventures.htmlThe Mainframe Adventures site has more information about Mystery Mansion as well as other mainframeMainframe computerMainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
-based games] - Bob Sorem's port of Mystery Mansion written in C for DOS/Windows
- http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/mansion-19.2.tar.gzArchive file of James Garnett's port into C: includes the original FortranFortranFortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
source]