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.
