Sam Trenholme's webpage
This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in 1995; any technical information is probably outdated.

Re: Xyzzy


Article: 7855 of alt.hackers
From: seebs@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: Xyzzy
Date: 21 May 1995 23:54:44 -0500
Organization: Usenet Fact Police (Undercover)
Lines: 32
Approved: uh-huh.
Message-ID: 3pp5ek$3cn@solutions.solon.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: solutions.solon.com
Status: RO

In article <3pipuh$82p@eccdb1.pms.ford.com>,
Clinton Pierce (R) <cpierce1@cp500.pto.ford.com> wrote:
>I've been accused that a recent post regarding the "xyzzy"
magic sequence
>in some games was a troll.  Not so, or at least my troll has backing.  The
>original statement was:

>>"xyzzy" was the "God Code" of the first real
aventure game "Advent".  It's
>>use since then is kind of a tribute.

>And the backing is from the Jargon File:

[...]

It's not a God code.  It just verbs you preposition noun preposition noun.
(No spoilers *here*.)  A God code has to make something otherwise impossible
possible, like one of the other magic words in the game (either the set that
works together, or the room one), and ideally, allows arbitrary frobbing.
PARTIAL SPOILER FOLLOWS
Moving between places that are only... *hmm* a handful o' moves apart
anyway (exact number forgotten, <10) when you don't need a light for
most of the way is hardly a "god code".

ObHack: Magically getting my machine to reexport nfs filesystems.  Not that
I know what I do; but I restart mountd, and nothing happens, and I restart
mountd, and nothing happens, and I restart mountd, and it all works.

-s
--
Peter Seebach - seebs@solon.com  -- seebs@intran.xerox.com
All the arrogant jerks who object to stereotypes are all alike.
C/Unix proto-wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help.
Copyright 1995 Peter Seebach.  Not for distribution through Microsoft Network.



Parent

Back to index