cyber - Cyber World interactive fiction adventure
cyber
A rip in the fabric of time lands you into the future following a devastating bio-war. Only Earth’s buildings, computers, and robots survived. Can you escape alive?
Exploration in Cyber World is like most adventure games: enter simple one or two-word commands to move, manipulate objects, and examine things you encounter. For example, “examine coins”, “attack robot”, “look”, and so on. All objects have helpful descriptions — it’s a good idea to look at everything for clues and avoiding hazards.
Move about using standard compass directions, abbreviated if you prefer (e.g., “n” is equivalent to “go north”). All exits are clearly marked.
If a robot is present, you can get assistance from it by calling or talking to it. Warning: Some robots possess a sinister demeanor and may be dangerous to your existence!
Use “save” to preserve your current session in case you have to quit early, or want to have a backup position. Use “restore” to resume a saved session where you left off.
Use “help” for a list of commands and abbreviations.
Cyber World is a major revision of Daniel Tobias’ “Planet of the Robots” written in 40-column, uppercase Applesoft BASIC in November, 1981. The game originally occupied a 25K BASIC program file, which didn’t leave any room for expansion. Descriptions were, needless to say, not verbose. The full enjoyment of the plot could not be realized.
In 1993, the game was obtained by Morgan Davis who converted it to MD-BASIC, reformatting all the internal messages for standard 80 column displays, and moved the vocabulary, room and item descriptions out of the game and into an external data file. This allowed descriptions to be rewritten and expanded, plus made it possible to add large visual descriptions to items, such as the Deep Thought computer screen, a map for the mall, and so on. New puzzles and nuances to the plot were added to make the game richer with more interactive fiction. The resulting program slimmed down to just 10K but it gained 40K of external data.
The only significant change to the original game was the removal of a built-in low-res graphic arcade game in which the player engaged from within the mall’s arcade. This omission allowed the game to be played over a standard text terminal (e.g., BBS). As a consolation, the arcade game turned into something more like a slot machine that can pay back double the cost of playing it (if you’re lucky).