Contents: 1. The Story of Infil-Traitor 2. The Game 3. The manual (reprint) 4. The Website 1. THE STORY OF INFIL-TRAITOR How this game ended up entered in the 2000 IF comp is a story in itself, and you should probably read before you play the game. Back in January, I was poking around one of the many surplus shops in Silicon Valley. I can't actually remember the name of the place where I found the game, but it's on Lawrence Expressway between Fry's and Halted Specialties (the electronics surplus place), in the same mini-mall as the Disc Drive-only store, a Subway, and a store that sells hacker CDs, OEM Pentiums, old Asian porn, mini-video cameras, crossbows and that kind of thing. If you've ever tooled around Silicon Valley, you know the place. Anyway also in the mall is a place that seems to specialize in nearly pirated software - OEM LucasArts CDs, bundles stripped from Leading Edge PCs, Windows 98 manuals without holograms, bulk multimedia designed for 1x CD-ROMs, that kind of thing. Anyway, I was poking through their bargain bin, looking for another copy of Spinnaker's PLUS (an old multimedia authoring tool I helped test back in Boston), when I unearthed a rubber band bound group of about 20 ziplock-style baggies, each with a floppy disk and a photocopied sheet of paper. The name on the paper was Infil-Traitor, but what caught me was the name: Charles Hugenot, which is also the name of my upstairs neighbor and landlord (although he goes by Tom). The game was for PC on one side and Apple II on the other, and the copyright date was 1982. I picked up one copy for fifty cents on a risk buy. I mentioned the game the next time I saw Tom. I knew he used to work for Intel, so I figured it might have been him (his last name, which he asked that I change -- it isn't really Hugenot -- is also pretty distinctive). At first he didn't know what I was talking about. He was like "what? I never released any software," but when I showed the game to him he totally freaked out and told me the whole story. Back when he was working for Intel, in the day, he did an adventure game, just as a lark, to test out this new IBM PC he got from work. There was actually a good sized packaged software industry back then, but a lot people still made their own games and stuff, and Tom's was just one of thousands of adventure games that people cranked out in their spare time back then (um, kind of like some of us do now). The catch is, he knew a guy, or really, a guy he shared a cube with, knew a guy who was trying to start a publishing business, along the lines of Sirius or Broderbund or (later) Sierra. Again, if you were around back then, you'll remember there were nearly as many software publishers as there were pieces of software. By '82 things were starting to get professional - Infocom's Zork II was released in 1982 - but there were still plenty of shoestring operations, and this guy, Gary Weaver, was running one of them, the not-too-terribly-cleverly-named GWS (Gary Weaver Soft Ware). (It was actually ahead of its time in that he was trying to sell software for a budget price.) Tom approached him in the fall of 1982 and Gary agreed to publish the game, with pretty typical terms at the time: $100 up front with a promise of "more to come" if the game sold. The game didn't sell. According to Tom, GWS tanked after he gave Gary three disks with the PC, Apple II and Commodore 64 code on them, and it was never released. "The whole thing, to me, was just an excuse to buy and write off a C64 and an Apple II," Tom told me. Tom never saw the money, and his Intel shares vested around then, so he didn't really care much. Other than briefly testing Infil-Traitor, he's never played another game. So, what was the game doing in a bargain bin on the Lawrence Expressway? As near as Tom can figure, Gary probably produced a few samples to show to computer store owners. Stuff like that can just float around the Valley for years - usually it ends up on some palette that some guy buys in bulk and forgets about in a warehouse for 15 years, then sells to another guy, etc etc. We'll probably never know how it got there. I thought it probably got sold off when the duping plant the disks were made at liquidated, but Tom says he's pretty sure Gary was duping the disks himself, so who knows. Maybe Gary sold a palette of his own. There's only two Gary Weavers in the Bay Area and neither is THE Gary Weaver, so that's a dead end. The label looks professionally printed, but the manual is pretty clearly a photocopy. Since Tom was never paid, the copies were technically produced illegally, and since there's no evidence that any were ever actually sold, other than to me, the game is essentially unreleased. The fact that these 20 copies were pirated does kind of throw it in a gray area, but I think it falls within the "unreleased" rule of the Comp, and if you're seeing it here, I guess it did. [It does. --Stephen] I asked Tom if I could release it to the contest (and make it freeware) and he said "sure," with the one caveat that I not mention his last name. No problem. 2. THE GAME So here it is - a living artifact of adventure games past. Considering that this was to be released at the same time as Zork II, it's pretty primitive, but I think the game is surprisingly fun to play. (It's also super easy. I beat it in an hour.) It's also cool to play a new game from way back when, especially if you're in the mood for some nostalgia. Parser-wise, this is a traditional two-word game (there are some single word commands, though. Other than like "drop" and "take" most of the vocabulary only functions in the room it needs to function in. There's also some "guess the word" action here too, mainly for nouns: just make you type in object names pretty exactly and you'll be fine ("pool cue" not "cue", etc). Mike Mika and I compiled the PC source into an .exe, it should basically run on an PC ever made with more than 32K of RAM. For Macs, I redid the code in Chipmunk BASIC, which I consider the best BASIC for the Mac. You can download Chipmunk BASIC for free at http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/. It should run on every Mac ever made. Also included is the Apple II/C64 source for anyone who wants to go totally oldskool and type it in themselves. You can probably alter the Mac source to run on any BASIC in the known world in about 10 minutes - the RND statements are the only things you'll probably need to change. NOTE FOR C64 USERS: The text in the infil.bas file is formatted for 80 columns. Converting it to 40 columns is left as an exercise for the reader. 3. THE MANUAL JPEGs of the manual should be in this folder structure somewhere, but here is a reprint if you don't feel like (or can't) open them. I've kept the spacing and spelling faithful to the original. INFIL-TRAITOR: A spy adventure by Tom [Censored] for 48K Apple II or IBM PC on one disk WELCOME to INFIL-TRAITOR. You are Drake Cartright, master spy for the CIA. The situation in Vladistan is tense. Both the East and the West use Vladistan as a crossroads for their international efforts to spread their ideology across the globe. You fight for freedom and against tyranny, and now your fight has lead you here, to Vladstoka, capital of Vladistan. Morolia is a Soviet client state, and the Morolian Ambassador is a known Red agent. Elements from the British service, MI5, have indicated to the CIA that the Ambassador's residence is in fact a major Soviet information gathering base. Now, Mossad has informed CIA Headquarters that plans for the US XJ-39 weapons delivery system, stolen from the Pentagon and tracked to Tel Aviv, have moved again -- to Vladstoka. The next step, of course, is Moscow. Losing the XJ-39 could tip the Balance of Power in the arms race and doom the free world. No transmissions have been detected yet from the Morolian Ambassador's residence. There is still a chance to recover the plans but you must act fast. Tonight is a party at the Ambassador's mansion. As a US citizen, and a known CIA operative, an invitation is out of the question. As is a gun. Armed only with your wits, you must infiltrate the house and ensure that the plans do not fall into enemy hands. To get you started, a bomb threat has been called into the Police. But that won't fool them for long. Also, you should know that you may not be the only intelligence operative who knows about the location of the XJ-39 documents. Your country is counting on you, Cartright. Don't let us down. HOW TO PLAY THE GAME You communicate with INFIL-TRAITOR in a manner similar to D&D or other computer games like ADVENTURE. At the ? prompt, type what you want, as Cartright, to do. For some commands (directions, inventory, and general look), you can simply type one letter (N,S,E,W, I,L). The computer will tell you if you try to go in a direction you can't. For other commands, two full words may be needed. So, you may need to type READ MESSAGE at the ? prompt to perform an action. You cannot perform all actions in all areas. If you get stuck, try to think about what a spy would do in that situation. If all else fails, you can always look at the BASIC code, but don't forget: that's cheating! SYSTEM SPECIFIC NOTES Apple II: The game is on side one of the disk. It will boot automatically. IBM-PC: The .exe file is on side two of the disk. MS-DOS is NOT provided, so you will need to use a seperate disk to boot the system. Commodore 64: DOS is not provided on the disk, of course. Load the game as you would any others. --------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S NEXT FROM GWS SOFT WARE! If you enjoy INFIL-TRAITOR, be sure to keep an eye out for DUNGEON QUEST, a new graphical dungeon adventure coming soon for Apple II. Featuring HI-RES 3D-style graphics, it is a revolutionary computer game. Can you defeat the wicked and beautiful Zemya, and save your village? There's only one way to find out... GWS Soft Ware 150 North Hill Dr Brisbane, CA 94005 INFIL-TRAITOR is (c) 1982 by GWS Soft Ware from the back cover: Can one man defeat the might of the Soviet Union? He can, if he's Drake Cartright, master spy for the CIA! And, if you're willing to help him. Take control of Cartright in this thrilling computer espionage adventure, set in the exotic Eastern European "Republic" of Vladistan. Can you recover the plans in time, or will the Reds get the XJ-39, and the weapon they need to enslave the free world? FEATURES * OVER 50 DIFFERNT LOCATIONS * FULL TEXT INPUT * THRILLING, WHITEKNUCKLE STORY * MULTIPLE ENDINGS! SUGGEST RETAIL PRICE: $14.95 4. THE WEBSITE I am planning to put up higher-res JPEG images of the manual, scans of the original disk, and some other INFIL-TRAITOR original source material I got, including an interview with the author, at http://members.aol.com/~stoatoast. I may flake out and not do it though, so if you go there and just see pictures of my baby, well, there ya go.