Infocom's "Milliway's"

hygraed · Post by **hygraed** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 12:13 am

The end of Infocom's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was the perfect setup for a sequel. Unfortunately, for some reason one was never released.

However, some dude went digging through an old hard drive and discovered a couple of playable prototypes of the intended sequel, "Milliway's." The full story, and a Java interpreter containing what exists of the game (not a tremendous amount), is here:

http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infoc ... the_galax/

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 9:24 am

I can't even formulate a proper reply. That's dynamite. Thank you for posting that; I had not seen it until last night (and then spent an hour extra reading it... whoops).

More on this later. Definitely.

hygraed · Post by **hygraed** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 9:53 am

Also, I would pay several hundred dollars for a complete copy of this "Infocom Drive." I'm dead serious.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:06 am

Did you check out the comments this morning? There is an understandably upset post from Michael Bywater, who was mentioned in the blog post via internal e-mails.

He wrote Jinxter, which is referenced briefly in there as well. The fact that it apparently sold poorly is just crushing. CRUSHING. What an original, well-written game.

hygraed · Post by **hygraed** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:30 am

It's particularly interesting to me that some people - not all, but some - were actually considering having someone other than Douglas Adams write the game (even going as far to have it developed by a competitor and published under the Infocom label!) for the sake of having it finished on time. I've heard tales of how much of a nightmare Adams was to work with, due to his utter disregard for deadlines and time management in general, but either it was much worse than I had inferred or Infocom was in terrible, terrible shape by this point.

hygraed · Post by **hygraed** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:34 am

Holy shit! No, I didn't read the comments, but I sure am now. The article itself is fascinating, but it looks like we might be in for an impromptu interview with some of the original implementors concerning the game. Even Amy Briggs showed up!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:06 pm

In the comments of the article is a link to an ogg file, which has a presentation by Steve Meretzky and Michael Bywater. It is here: http://matthau.yoz.com/meretzky-bywater.ogg

I hate to just direct-link to someone's media without another word, so let me also post the blog link that talked about the thing as well, which is here:

http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/000228.html

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:05 pm

I'll repeat what I said on the blog as I doubt anyone will ever see it, considering how damn huge the thread was: it's so fucking awesome that we can get all these implamenters, and Anita, and Graham, and Wheeler and Paul O'Brian and Emily Short and Steven Granade and God knows who else that stands out in the IF community to all be commenting on the same thread at once. And, so fucking pittiful that all they wanna do is bitch. I *WANT* more stuff from that hard drive though, yes.

jjsonick · Post by **jjsonick** » Tue May 20, 2008 10:18 am

Man, I'm really hoping a ZIL compiler is on that drive somewhere and that it will get released someday. If a compiler were available, I'd write a game in ZIL, even if it had to be very short to preserve my sanity.

But yes, very cool for the gathering of IF luminaries past and present, even if the subject was very contentious.

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Tue May 20, 2008 1:17 pm

jjsonick wrote:If a compiler were available, I'd write a game in ZIL, even if it had to be very short to preserve my sanity.

Am I high? I thought someone had written a modern-day one.

Well, there's a start anyway:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.e ... lly/README

Bruce

jjsonick · Post by **jjsonick** » Tue May 20, 2008 1:54 pm

bruce wrote:Am I high? I thought someone had written a modern-day one.

Well, there's a start anyway:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.e ... lly/README

No, there's no complete one afaik. I stumbled across Zilly, too, while searching - it seems to be as far as anyone's gotten. If I win the lottery, I will pay that guy to finish it.

Actually, when this whole Milliways thing was being discussed on ifMUD, someone there (Martin? Marvin?) who has done some interpreter work, and apparently also has access to some rare Infocom docs, said he may someday write a ZIL compiler - but it was not a priority. Once again, my big lotto win could be coming his way.