Hunt the Wumpus

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Hunt the Wumpus
TI-99/4A boxart showing the visualization of the Wumpus and the graphics-based labyrinth
Developer(s)	Gregory Yob
Platform(s)	BASIC, TI-99/4A
Release date(s)	Original BASIC Version 1972 TI-99/4A Version 1980
Genre(s)	Adventure game
Mode(s)	Single-player
Media	Download, Cartridge

Hunt the Wumpus is an early computer game, based on a simple hide and seek format featuring a mysterious monster (the Wumpus) that lurks deep inside a network of rooms. It was originally a text-based game written in BASIC. It has since been ported to various programming languages and platforms including graphical versions.

Contents 1 About the game 1.1 Rules of the game 1.2 History of the game 1.3 Later versions of the game 2 Hunt the Wumpus in other games 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links

[edit] About the game

[edit] Rules of the game

The original text-based version of Hunt the Wumpus uses a command line text interface. A player of the game enters commands to move through the rooms or to shoot "crooked arrows" along a tunnel into one of the adjoining rooms. There are twenty rooms, each connecting to three others, arranged like either the vertices of a dodecahedron or the faces of an icosahedron. Hazards include bottomless pits, super bats (which drop the player in a random location, a feature duplicated in later, commercially published adventure games, such as Zork I, Valley of the Minotaur, and Adventure), and the Wumpus itself. The Wumpus is described as having sucker feet (to escape the bottomless pits) and being too heavy for a super bat to lift. When the player has deduced from hints which chamber the Wumpus is in without entering the chamber, he fires an arrow into the Wumpus's chamber to kill it. The player wins the game if he kills the Wumpus. However, firing the arrow into the wrong chamber startles the Wumpus, which may cause it to move to an adjacent room. The player loses if he is in the same room as the Wumpus (which then eats him) or a bottomless pit.

[edit] History of the game

Originally written by Gregory Yob in BASIC while attending the Dartmouth campus of the University of Massachusetts and noticed on mainframes at least by 1972, Hunt the Wumpus was first published in the People's Computer Company^[1] journal in 1973, again in 1975 in Creative Computing, and finally in 1979 in the book MORE BASIC Computer Games. Out of frustration with all the grid-based hunting games he had seen, such as Snark, Mugwump, and Hurkle, Yob decided to create a map-based game. Yob injected adversarial humor into the computer's hints, prefiguring the "voice" of the Infocom narrator.^[2] Later versions of the game offered more hazards and other cave layouts. An implementation of Hunt the Wumpus was typically included with MBASIC, Microsoft's BASIC interpreter for CP/M and one of the company's first products. Hunt the Wumpus was adapted as an early game for the Commodore PET entitled Twonky, which was distributed in the late 1970s with Cursor Magazine. A version of the game can still be found as part of the bsdgames package on modern BSD operating systems, where it is known as "wump."

[edit] Later versions of the game

The 1980 port of the game for the TI-99/4A differs quite a bit from the original while retaining the same concept. It is a graphical rather than text-based game, and uses a regular grid equivalent to a torus rather than an icosahedron. In this version, the Wumpus is depicted as a large red head with a pair of legs growing out of its sides.^[3]

[edit] Hunt the Wumpus in other games

The card game Magic: The Gathering has featured several "Wumpus" cards. The Wumpus seen on Magic cards is a beast with a characteristically-shaped head, jaw and mane. Mercadian Masques featured Hunted Wumpus (reprinted in several core sets, including 10th Edition), as well as Thrashing Wumpus. Planar Chaos, a set concentrating on new takes on popular cards, contained Shivan Wumpus.

The Wumpus is also found in the open source game NetHack and the game M.U.L.E, with capture of the wumpus in the latter game leading to an in-game cash prize for the player.^[4][5][6][7]

The Wumpus is mentioned in the "Thy Dungeonman" games in Homestarrunner.com. It is also mentioned in the October 18, 2000 cartoon at userfriendly.org.

The Wumpus gets his revenge on Wumpus hunters in the audio-only game Be the Wumpus.

A zone in Kingdom of Loathing was introduced in June of 2009 which features an icosahedral map and the goal of which is to find the Wumpus and defeat it in combat.^[8]

Wumpus is the inspiration behind and project name of Nicholas the Traveler, an evermoving character in Guild Wars.^[9]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Ahl, David H. (Ed.) (1979), MORE BASIC Computer Games. New York: Workman Publishing. ISBN 0-89480-137-6

[edit] External links

• Gregory Yob's 1975 description in Creative Computing.
• Gregory Yob's 1977 follow-up in Creative Computing.
• Scans of description and BASIC source code for Hunt the Wumpus
• Scans of description and BASIC source code for Hunt the Wumpus 2
• Review ov TI-99/4a version at stageselect.com
• Hunt the Wumpus from TatsuSoft Fully playable PC version (dead link)
• Hunt the Wumpus by Bill Collins Graphical port to the Atari 2600.
• Python implementation of Hunt The Wumpus
• A PHP implementation of Hunt the Wumpus
• Online Java Hunt The Wumpus, based on TI-99/4A version
• Wumpus! a diversionary tale by Joseph J. Strout. A graphical adaptation for Mac OS 7.5 and newer.
• Jungerl contains an erlang implementation of Hunt the Wumpus
• Linux "wump" page
• New Envisioning of Hunt The Wumpus on Xbox Live Indie Games