Warp (video game)

For the 2012 game of the same title, see Warp (2012 video game).

Warp is a text adventure game, written in the early 1980s by Rob Lucke and Bill Frolik for the Hewlett-Packard HP 3000.

The game was never officially released, but found widespread distribution through the HP INTEREX user community. It became so popular among HP users that the authors were compelled to include a mechanism to prevent playing it during working hours.

Warp is arguably one of the most advanced text adventure games ever created. Its main strength is its command parser, which attempts to understand complex natural English syntax such as "Go west and get everything but the lamp from the toolbox" or "Backtrack 2 moves. Next, inspect the peg and fountain". The command processor supports macros (custom commands), recursion, conditional tests, and multiple saved states, making it conceivable for one to construct a script that can play the game from start to finish.

The world of Warp is extensive, interesting and dangerous. Most of the action takes place in a large sea resort, including islands and reefs which can be explored by boat. The game's name alludes to an interesting twist in the world's laws of physics. There are many ways to die, and a player will likely experience all of them before figuring out how to collect all the treasures and win the game. For the clever few who get that far, there is an endgame with even more puzzles to solve.

According to Frolick, Warp contains about 17,000 lines of Pascal and 6000 lines of textual data. There are a total of 1216 points that can be acquired in the main game, with a further 100 endgame points.^[1]

References

External links

• Warp documentation
• Warp server instructions telnet://empire.openmpe.com/ and enter HELLO PLAYER.WARP at the prompt.