Jeremy Irish writes: > My inspiration was mostly from the game Colossal Cave Adventure, > where Will Crowther used his exploration of the Mammoth Cave system > in Kentucky to build his first adventure game.
I went on the Wild Cave Tour of Mammoth Cave. It was a trip. I encourage everyone who meets the physical requirements to take it. They supply you with a hard hat and caving lantern; you supply the ankle boots, knee pads, and gloves. You start off on a tourist trail with the lights off. Part way down the trail, you go off the trail and sit on the rocks to let your eyes night-adjust and introduce yourself to the group. Then they take you through Split Rock, which is a chest compressor. You start walking down a passage, then you bend over, then you crawl easily, then you commando-crawl, then you have to pick a side on which to put your head (the passage is too low to turn your hard hat) and wriggle like a worm. Finally you reach Split Rock, where you have to arch your back to get your head up, then you turn your head sideways, and push your chest through the split in the rock. While your chest is in the split, you can't breathe. Yes, it's alarming, but it only lasts a moment. Anyway, all that aside, they told us about the named passages as we went through them. They named the current one, and my ears pricked up! I recognized the name from Adventure. Even better, I remembered where the passages off it went. When they say, in Adventure, "A low N/E passage heads to (wherever)", they're not kidding. Some of the passages leading out of rooms require more worm-wriggling. Mammoth Cave has over 350 miles of mapped passages and when surrounding caves are inevitably connected, will grow to over 500 miles. -- --my blog is at http://blog.russnelson.com | When immigration is Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | outlawed, only criminals 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 | will immigrate. Illegal Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog | immigration causes crime. _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
