~2 minute readCall the Exterminator
Despite ruthless testing by our Quality Control Department, every now and then some embarrassing bug escapes the watchful eyes of the Infocom Exterminators and creeps onto your disk. Most people never see these bugs, but they can be jarring when they rear their ugly little heads.
Take, for instance, an early version of Deadline. Somewhere outside the house, you are told The gardener is here, talking to himself.
You could then have the following interaction with the computer:
>LISTEN TO THE GARDENER
The roses make no sound.
Not exactly a breakthrough in your investigation.
Your living quarters in Starcross are spartan: when you start the story, there's nothing in the room but you, a bunk, and a tape library. Not much can go wrong, right? Wrong.
>PUT THE TAPE LIBRARY ON THE BUNK
The bunk isn't open.
Needless to say, the bunk in Starcross opens about as often as the roses in Deadline talk.
A bug in early versions of Sorcerer makes you look like a better magician than you really are. If you know the name of a spell (FWEEP, for instance), you can take it even if you are nowhere near the spell scroll. Don't know where you left a spell scroll? Can't get there from here? No problem! Just type TAKE FWEEP and hey, presto! There you have it! Fortunately, the command SOLVE THE GAME isn't so obliging.
Usually, if you mention an object that you don't have or can't see, you'll be told "You don't have that" or "You can't see that." A bug in some versions of Infidel™, however, allowed the following interaction, whether you had the torch or not:
>LIGHT THE TORCH WITH THE MATCH
The bronze torch is now lit.
Philosophers once asked, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make any sound?" Now they wonder, "If you light a torch, but you don't have it and can't see it, is it really lit?"
Lastly, players of early Planetfall releases saw this charmer:
>FLOYD, TAKE THIS LASER
You manage to lift Floyd a few inches off the ground, but he is
too heavy and you drop him suddenly.
The program is playing games with you. Perhaps it would rather be playing Hider-and-Seeker with Floyd.
This article appeared in
New Zork Times, The
Oct-Dec 1984
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
