Пятнадцать байтов на стек от конца

В 1989 году компания Infocom, главный поставщик текстовых игр, приказала долго жить. Спроса не было: все уже играли с графикой, звуком и видео. Огромная масса фанатов текстовых приключений осталась ни с чем. Энтузиасты пытались ваять похожие игрушки на коленке, но выходило хреново. Специализированный софт для разработки таких игр, созданный в Инфокоме, пропал вместе с компанией.

Неожиданно в 1993 году молодой студент Оксфорда Грэхэм Нельсон объявляет в интернете, что он воссоздал технологию Infocom в виде открытого для всех опенсорсного проекта. Софт назывался Inform и включал виртуальную Z-машину и компилятор со специализированного языка. Также в качестве демонстрации к пакету прилагалась новая игрушка "Curses". Игра занимает достойное 13-е место в рейтинге 2019 Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time.

Карты и инструкции: plover.net/~davidw/sol/c/curse93.html

Полное прохождение игры с максимальным счётом: curses_walkthrough.txt

Скачиваем, запускаем:

$ wget https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/curses.z5
$ frotz curses.z5

It's become a matter of pride now not to give up. That tourist map of Paris must
be up here somewhere in all this clutter, even if it has been five years since
your last trip. And it's your own fault. It looks as if your great-grandfather
was the last person to tidy up these lofts...

An Interactive Diversion
Copyright (c) 1993, 1994, 1995 by Graham Nelson.
Release 16 / Serial number 951024 / Inform v1600 Library 5/12
Standard interpreter 1.1

The attics, full of low beams and awkward angles, begin here in a relatively
tidy area which extends north, south and east. The wooden floorboards seem
fairly sound, just as well considering how heavy all these teachests are. But
the old wiring went years ago, and there's no electric light.

A hinged trapdoor in the floor stands open, and light streams in from below.

>help instructions

Welcome to the world of CURSES, an Advanced interactive Adventure game...

The scene is set initially in the present day, at Meldrew Hall, an old family
seat in the shires of England. You play the part of the current heir to the
house. (This doesn't make your family rich aristocrats - just people who suffer
very badly from inheritance tax.)

Remember, your only aim is to find that map of Paris so you can go on holiday -
try not to get diverted by any enormous quests. Still, it would be interesting
to find out:

Just how realistic are the Tarot cards?
What do sixth century politics have to do with you?
Surely Greek myths can't come into this?
What on earth is wrong with your entire family?
Do the National Trust have sinister motives?
Why is it so hard to go to church these days?
What are daisies for? Or goats, for that matter?
Can modernist poetry really be bad for you?

Should you rescue someone who doesn't want you to?

To finally understand the secret, you will need to reach the Master Game, a
concluding game-within-a-game buried deep in the past. Good luck!

>help commands

Basic commands consist either of a verb on its own, or a verb with one or more
nouns. For instance, to see where you are type "look". Some verbs can also have
more elaborate forms; for instance you could also look at, inside or under
something. "Curses" understands about 1200 English words, so most reasonable
synonyms are allowed.

To pick something up, "take thing" and to drop it again, "drop thing". To see
what you have, type "take inventory" or just "inventory". You can move about
with commands such as "go west", or just "west" for short. (It is assumed that
you are blessed with an excellent sense of direction.)

Some commands can act on more than one thing. You can "drop all", which will
drop everything (except things you're wearing), for instance. Or if you found a
packing case with a number of things in, you could type such things as:

remove everything but the blue key
get all the coins except ten, twenty and fifty

(Containers may also be emptied or emptied into each other.) If you are not
explicit enough, sometimes the game can infer what you mean, but at other times
it will ask for further details. It might have replied to the first line above
by saying

(from the yellow packing case)

so that you know what has been assumed on your behalf. If there had been two
blue keys you might reasonably have meant, it would reply with something like

Which do you mean, the blue doorkey or the Blue Moon Agency key?

You may either tell it which, or else give up and do something else instead. If
you don't mind which key, you can always say something such as:

drop a key into the slot

and the game will make a sensible choice and tell you what it was.

"Curses" sometimes assumes commands which you implicitly make, but always tells
you what they are in brackets. For instance:

>look up bach in book

(first taking the Encyclopaedia of Composers)
(putting the tuning fork in the rucksack to make room)
"J. S. Bach (1685-1750) had a pet aardvark called Nigel...

"it" refers to the last thing manipulated, "him" and "her" to anyone obvious in
the room; "pronouns" will tell you what they currently mean, if in doubt.
"again" repeats the last command.

You can "save", "restore" or "restart" the game at any time, or indeed "quit" or
ask for your "score", which also tells the time. "fullscore" or "full" gives a
breakdown of the score. As an aide-memoire the command "objects" tells you where
you left things you once had, and "places" says where you have been. If you want
to check that your copy of the game file is intact (and not, for instance,
corrupted by some file-transfer process you used to get it), you can "verify"
it. These commands do not take up any game time, and nor does anything the game
didn't understand.

Some jaundiced players tire of long descriptions of places, and they can type
"short" (or "superbrief") to make the game only give short ones. Amnesiac
players, on the other hand, may like to use "long" (or "verbose") to give only
long ones. Either kind can go back to the usual state of affairs with "normal"
(or "brief"). There are also two kinds of inventory: "inventory wide" and
"inventory tall".

This Advanced story file employs special effects such as names of
rooms and a more elaborate status line than usual. Also, less than altogether
relevant quotations pop up from time to time. If these effects do not seem to
work properly on your machine, or are just downright annoying, they can be
turned off with "plain" and on again with "pretty".

From time to time you will be told that your score has changed: this can be
turned off with "notify off", turned on again with "notify on" or made even more
common by "notify full" (which even tells you about scores accruing from visits
to places, unusual items discovered and the like).

Simple typing mistakes can sometimes be corrected just by typing "oops" followed
by the word you had intended to type, so for instance:

drop fish in buket
oops bucket

The game knows several useful abbreviations: i for inventory, ne for northeast

(and so on), l for look, g for again, o for oops, x for examine, z for wait
(short for "zzz" - sorry about that).

You can sometimes enter larger objects you find. You might well be able to get
in a tractor, for instance, though driving it around might be harder.

From time to time, you will wish to speak to other people. If you only have a
single word to say, you could use commands like

answer yes
say boo to goose

(Text in quotation marks is not allowed.) The game will usually guess who you
want to talk to if you miss off the name. A better way to talk, which allows
more complicated remarks, is to use commands such as

goose, boo
wine waiter, give me the bill
ask professor about turtles

though the waiter may have better things to do, and the professor might be quite
mad. Some documents may be consulted in this game. For this, try commands such
as

look up chlorine
consult periodic table about argon

You can give several commands in a row by use of "then" (or full stops, commas
or "and" in some contexts): so, for instance,

e, s, get fish then inventory
e.e.open door.s

There are, of course, many other commands for more specialised circumstances. A
final word of warning: cursing is strictly forbidden in this game.

>north

This small cavity at the north end of the attic once housed all manner of home-
made wine paraphernalia, now lost and unlamented. Steps, provided with a good
strong banister rail, lead down and to the west, and the banister rail continues
along a passage east.

You can see a labelled glass demijohn (which is closed) (in which are a nasty-
looking red battery and a tourist map) here.

As you disturb the still air, the attic key, which was balanced on top of the
demijohn, slips onto the floor and disappears into a crack in the floorboards.
Your spirits sink as it does, rattling down some distance. How on earth are you
going to get it back?

>west

This used to be called the Conservatory, before Aunt Jemima took it over to
potter about with plants, painting and indeed (on occasion) pottery. She has
filled the place with objets trouves and bric-a-brac, and hung up a home-made
calendar of watercolours. Even the old airing cupboard to the south is
cluttered.

An open doorway leads back southwest onto the upstairs landing, and you can hear
the chaotic noise of suitcases being manhandled about - good thing nobody's seen
you. A narrow staircase leads up and to the east into the attic.

Jemima herself seems to be in the potting room to the west.

>south

A space about six feet square. The old drying racks now contain odd ceramic
sculptures almost but not quite unrecognisable as coffee mugs. One corner is
filled with an enormous pile of tie-dyed sheets, from Aunt Jemima's infamous
Sixties Revival period of last October.

>_ (и так далее)