“Just as Mark is almost entirely responsible for Deadline, Starcross is mostly mine,” Lebling smiles. “I have always been a science fiction fan and have wanted to do an adventure in the genre. That’s one of the things I really like about Infocom. We figure out what we really want to do, rather than design games by market demand. I’m in this to have fun. It would be nice also for Infocom to make lots of money and be very successful, but I couldn’t work if I wasn’t having fun doing it. I love writing these games — much more than I enjoy playing them.”
“Starcross was a real joy to write and should be a lot of fun for people to play. The puzzles are science fiction puzzles, not adventure puzzles. We did not want to do a ‘Zork in Space’ game. Starcross is intended as an entry level game for people who like science fiction but who haven’t played many adventure games before.”
After finishing work on Zork I and II, Marc Blank moved over to Deadline which came out early in 1982; he then switched to making new content for Zork III, while Dave Lebling polished the re-used Zork mainframe puzzles. At the same time, Lebling created Starcross.
From The Infocom Gallery. Notice: “intended as entry level” vs. “expert level”.
Lebling was a major science fiction fan, and for this game his main two references were Clarke and Niven. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama in particular is quite adventure-game-like, with a mysterious giant alien structure of unknown purpose being entered by explorers; Niven had multiple stories that served as inspiration, but his Ringworld was an alien structure in the same manner of Clarke’s. We’ve had one game for the Project already inspired by Ringworld.
Notably, both are hard science fiction authors — as in attempting to have some scientific basis for what’s going, unlike, say, philosophical science fiction — and Starcross similarly has an emphasis on puzzles involving science. I have played this before (back in ’92 or so) and I don’t remember much other than one of the ending puzzles invokes a principle of Newton.
Rather famously for collectors, the initial publishing run put the game in a “saucer shape” box. This was again the brainchild of ad agency Giardini/Russel. Inside was included a map (the only part that’s Lebling’s) which gets used for the initial puzzle and serves as copy protection. I’ll pull it out later in the post when it becomes relevant.
Via eBay, for $2,495.00 or Best Offer.
The year is 2186. Humanity has established colonies on the moon, Mars, and several of the larger asteroids. Earth’s sky is dotted with space habitats, and the spaceways are always busy. As usual, there is the urgent need for energy to power this advanced civilization, one of the primary sources of that energy is quantum black holes.
In STARCROSS, you are a miner of black holes, scouring the asteroid belt in your one-man survey ship. Finding and harnessing a single black hole can make a person’s fortune. It’s a lonely business, fraught with the known and unknown hazards of space. You’ve equipped your ship, the M.C.S. STARCROSS, with the best gear you could afford. You’ve put everything into this venture, and though you’ve tried before, you somehow sense that this time will be different.
We’re prospecting for black holes when we get woken up by our ship’s computer. We’ve found something big.
You are sound asleep in your bunk aboard the deep-space black hole prospecting ship “Starcross,” operating out of Ceres. Just as your sleep becomes deep and comfortable, an alarm bell begins ringing! It’s the mass detector! Instantly you awake. This hasn’t been a profitable trip so far, and you don’t even have the cash for repairs. This could be the break you’ve been waiting for.
Living Quarters
(You are in the bunk.)
This nook is your spartan living quarters, containing only a bunk and a bureau. The only exit is to starboard.
There is a tape library here. (outside the bunk)>STAND UP
You are on your own feet again.
The alarm bell on the mass detector is ringing stridently.
The initial roll-out is a bit more lengthy than Zork 1, which started with no introduction whatsoever, just “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” — the wide open space of possibilities that I’ve termed the “pastoral opening”. Lebling has explained with this game they needed some cushion for those used to fantasy, and also because the player is immediately confronted with a ship they need to control.
>E
Bridge
This is the control room of the Starcross. There are exits labelled (arbitrarily) “Port,” “Starboard,” and “Out.” The latter exit has a heavy bulkhead which is closed.
Your ship’s computer does the routine tasks of navigation and life support. A control couch is mounted before a control panel and a large viewport. The ship’s registration is affixed nearby.
Your mass detector, essential in the search for black holes, sits to one side. On the detector are a red button, a blue button, and a small screen on which something is displayed.
The alarm bell on the mass detector is ringing stridently.>PUSH RED
The alarm goes silent.>EXAMINE REGISTRATION
Mining Class Ship “Starcross”
Registered out of Ceres
Registration 47291AA-4XDesigned by David Lebling
Constructed in 2178, Luna City Docks
by Frobozzco Astronautics
and Infocom, Inc.>READ SCREEN
The display reads: “mass UM91.”
The blue button prints information which looks roughly like the map that comes with the game.
UM91 was specific for my game; it can be any of the orange “previously uncharted mass” objects. A bit of math is required. As the right side of the map explains, you need to give commands like so:
COMPUTER, RANGE IS VALUE
COMPUTER, THETA IS VALUE
COMPUTER, PHI IS VALUE
and then COMPUTER, CONFIRM will cause the ship to move.
While range is fairly straightforward to read (50, assuming polar coordinates) as was Phi (121º, given directly on the object as mentioned by the side directions) giving Theta took me a little math. “Up” is given as 0º and “Right” is 90º, so I worked out by counting that the map is using 90/6 = 15 degree increments. So Theta here is 15º.
(Note there’s a “screen-reader friendly” version of the coordinates here, although that removes the slight bit of math puzzle. Maybe that isn’t a bad thing; one of the comments on Drew Cook’s writeup is from someone who could never figure out how the coordinates worked and was unable to play the game. I do wonder if there’s a screen-reader method of preserving the math puzzle rather than just skipping the puzzle with a list!)
>computer, phi is 121
“Phi set.” Lights blink furiously for a moment. The computer speaks: “Sequence for intercept of mass concentration is programmed and ready. Please confirm new navigational program. I’m waiting…”>computer, confirm
“Thank you. New navigational program will initiate in fifteen seconds. There will be a course correction burn of 60 seconds duration. I advise you to fasten your seat belt.”
I admit I died the first time here because there’s a “safety line” in the adjacent room (along with a space suit) and I went to try to hold onto that. Instead there’s a buckle revealed if you sit down on the couch.
Time passes as you journey towards your destination.
Filling space before you is an enormous artifact, more than 5 km long and about a kilometer in diameter. Regularly spaced around its waist are bumps and other odd protrusions. You cannot see the aft end but the fore end sports a glass or crystal dome almost 100 meters across.
There is a brief burn as the ship matches course with the artifact. You are hanging in space about half a kilometer away from the waist of the object. The Starcross’s engines shut down. The computer speaks: “Program completed. We are being scanned by low level radiation. Awaiting instructions.”
The “awaiting instructions” threw me for a bit. What happens is that a “red dome” comes into view, with a metal “tentacle” that wraps around your ship’s hull.
You are smashed against the bulkhead as the tentacle accelerates the Starcross to the artifact’s speed of rotation. Inexorably, your ship is drawn toward the dome. When you are a few tens of meters away, three smaller tentacles issue forth and grapple the ship solidly to the surface of the artifact. The large tentacle retreats into its housing, which closes.
Unfortunately, the accelerations involved were tremendous, and being smashed into the walls didn’t help your condition either.
I spent a while trying to figure out a direction, any direction at all, that the computer might accept other than the initial ones. COMPUTER, LAND was at least acknowledged (the artifact is rotating too fast to land). However, I couldn’t scan, do some kind of communication ping, or anything else I thought might help prevent the artifact from thinking we were hostile.
I also found I could OPEN BULKHEAD and go outside with the space suit, as long as I first attached the line to the suit and a hook outside the airlock.
>attach line to suit
Attached to the space suit.
As the object rotates below, the features of a different area become visible through the viewport.
There is an area with a blue dome below. Near the dome is a spherical object which just might be a spaceship. It is held down by silvery ropes.>attach line to hook
Attached to the hook.>out
Outside Ship
You are floating outside the Starcross. The airlock door is open. One end of your safety line is attached to a hook next to the airlock. This is deep space, outside the plane of the ecliptic and far beyond the orbit of Earth. The sun seems small but still intolerably bright to look at directly.
There is an area with a blue dome below. Near the dome is a spherical object which just might be a spaceship. It is held down by silvery ropes.
I went down another confused direction as I tried to jet out an escape from the ship before it got destroyed.
Finally it occurred to me the intent may be simply to “dock” our vessel and it wasn’t trying to smash it up, so I went back and used the seat buckle at the couch, and it worked. You can in fact WAIT from the entire time your ship starts moving until its final “landing” on the artifact without moving at all, and it works.
As the object rotates below, the features of a different area become visible through the viewport.
Below is an area with a red dome which has no ship near it.
Suddenly an odd protrusion near the red dome splits open and a huge articulated metal tentacle issues from it at great speed. It approaches the ship and delicately wraps itself around the hull. You are slammed against your seat as the tentacle accelerates the Starcross to the artifact’s speed of rotation. Inexorably, your ship is drawn toward the dome. When you are a few tens of meters away, three smaller tentacles issue forth and grapple the ship solidly to the surface of the artifact. The large tentacle retreats into its housing, which closes.You are disoriented: now that you are attached to the artifact, which is rotating, “up” and “down” have taken on new meanings. Your sense of balance tells you that your ship is clinging to the underside of some enormous object, and if you aren’t careful you will fall! “Up” now refers to the center of the object, “down” to the immensities of space.
Now is when you should go in the airlock. The whole safety line thing seems to not be important yet, though.
>OUT
You exit gingerly, climbing “up” to the surface of the artifact, where your magnetic boots hold you securely as you hang “upside-down.”Red Dock
This is a docking port color-coded in red. All around are strange protrusions, one of which could be a hook for a safety line. The surface here is metallic, but gets stony further from the dock. On one side (“Down”) is your ship, tethered to the surface of the artifact by thick silvery ropes. On the other (“Up”) is a large dome with an airlock.
A round metal sculpture or relief covers part of the airlock door. It is made up of thousands of tiny hexagonal columns which extend various lengths from the surface, making a three-dimensional representation. You can examine it more closely to see the details.>EXAMINE SCULPTURE
A closer examination reveals that there are exactly ten circular bumps or columns on the sculpture: the first is large and centrally located, the second through tenth are smaller and scattered at various distances and orientations. As you go outward from the large bump in the center there are four small bumps, two rather large ones, two medium-sized ones, and then a small one again.
After brief contemplation I had fair certainty this is meant to be the solar system (another sci/math puzzle!) Trying to “push” most of the bumps results in the message “All of the hexagons extend to full length, then retract into the surface, leaving the sculpture completely smooth.” It’s honestly kind of mean of the aliens not to specify
– are we indicating the star of our solar system? (first bump)
– are we indicating our planet of origin? (fourth bump)
– are we indicating the planet we are nearby? (fifth bump)
Planet of origin works:
>push fourth bump
A tiny column made up of only one hexagon appears at about the same distance from the center as the first large bump.>push hexagon
The sculpture flattens out completely, except at the former location of the tiny bump, where a hexagonal rod of black crystal is extruded.>get rod
When you take the black rod, the airlock door opens!
Suddenly things get wide open, so this still seems like a good place to stop until next time.
From the Zork User Group map cover, which does not match my visualization of the game at all.
Renga in Blue 
Starcross was always a personal favorite of mine. I’m looking forward to this.
Another out ot the park homerun. This review of starcross made me seek out a copy and start playing.
Thank you again,
fos1
The prose is refreshing, at least compared with the lately entries, that had to cope with low memory.
I’ll bet you a dozen black holes that Lebling never thought of it as a puzzle at all. (If you have the chart in hand.) If you think like an MIT guy, that chart *is* a list, just dressed up with a little bit of graphical design. Reading radial coordinates isn’t math!
My guess is that the “entry level” quote from Lebling makes sense if you’re someone who hasn’t played adventures before but also is a student at MIT who likes science fiction. I’m going to wait until the end before I come back to that, though.
Maybe you’ve covered this in a previous entry, but I’m kind of interested in the differences in mindset between the MIT big-brains at Infocom and their contemporary peers in the Cambridge Phoenix/Toplogika group.
It seems like the MIT guys, going forward after Zork, tried to keep in mind that they were writing for a general (and often quite young) commercial audience, but sometimes couldn’t avoid revealing their inherent “MITness”, whereas the Cambridge crew, even after most of their games started to be converted for the commercial market, were still mostly concerned with outwitting or one-upping their buddies for office bragging rights, fully revelling in their boffiny “Cambridgeness”. Thus the sometimes fine line in adventure games between clever and sadistic, seen in this context as largely a product of their creators’ environment and the culture that it fostered.
I’m probably just blathering, though. Nothing new there!
Yeah, it’s copy protection, not a puzzle as such.
Given we’ve now had two people that said back in they they were stuck at that part and couldn’t move past that (not because of copyright, because they couldn’t figure out the map), I think it counts as a puzzle.
I originally played the Lost Treasures of Infocom version which converted everything to a text list.
(replying at this level since i can’t go deeper) I mean I don’t think it was really intended as a puzzle.
Basically same – I played the Masterpieces version.
Far be it from me to judge the game design mistakes of a bunch of twenty-somethings too harshly, but it does occur to me that placing the copy protection later in the game would both prevent that bottleneck you described and give a demonstrative slice of the game to the pirates, showing them how fun it is to play while demanding they get a real copy if they want to beat it. I have to feel sorry for whoever played this as their first (and/or only) text adventure, and, curiously, that goes double for if they were a pirate.
Starcross was the first Infocom game I ever got my hands on – I still have the game (an original copy, although in the grey “re-release” box) for the C64.
Unfortunately, I was about 12 years old when I first tried the game, and English isn’t my first language, so I never even got the first location puzzle worked out. As a result, I bounced off of the game quite hard, and it took me many years to give text adventures another try… So yeah, if that one was intended as an entry level game, I would say it failed that assessment hard! 😅
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Notice: “intended as entry level” vs. “expert level”.
Intended as entry level? I know that the whole “level” system at Infocom was kinda wonky and things got shoehorned into inaccurate levels so they could market themselves as having a range (see also: Hitchhiker’s, “standard level”? very funny, guys), but Lebling, what are you smoking? Maybe it started out that way, but morphed into something different in actual production. I found even just getting a grip on the geography in Starcross so difficult that it was one of the last Infocom games I ever finished, and that’s with a complete dependency on the Invisiclues. The actual labeling “expert level” is much more accurate IMO.
The “saucer” packaging is neat (albeit it must have been annoying for stockists) but… am I the only one who thinks it looks like a smoke detector?
that quote was decidedly eye-catching when I saw it
I don’t remember much but I know the game murdered me as a child
I’ll return to it when I finish
So glad this issue was addressed. That my my initial reaction as well… That the package says “expert” and yet the author says it’s entry level.
Jason, I’m very curious how that you’ve played through so many adventures with horrible parsers, are the infocom parsers a breath of fresh air- or are they gussied up archaic parsers? I remember in the day, infocom games felt like genuine AI in comparison to the wonky mainstream text adventure parsers. But this could just be sitting if my youth and context at that time.
the Infocom parser is still good, and yes, it’s pretty much galactically better than anything else from ’82
Warp and Ferret made a try but even those parsers have some wonky aspects (and of course are on mainframes where barely anyone played them at the time)
I have to wonder why Infocom didn’t have more parser competition back in those days. I suspect the technological and media storage limits of the day would preclude having both a robust parser and graphics.
Do you find that the more robust Infocom parser confounds the effectiveness of your verb list? If yes, how so?
I’ve never been sure how much the complexity of Infocom’s parser really mattered. I know back in the day, people in the IF community were always like, “We need the parser to be better; people expect it to understand things like >PLEASE OPEN THE DRAWER FORTHWITH THAT I MIGHT PLACE WITHIN IT THE POTTED PLANT OF POT”, but my experience showing text games to modern humans of the 21st century like my children is that they expect to just type in a single-word noun and have the game interpret it as “Do the obvious thing to the object I specified”.
Complex parsers allow you to express complex actions, but in general, I think the rest of the adventure genre – and the adventure-game elements that got imported into other genres – reflects that “Express a complicated idea to the game that it might validate that you have figured out the complex idea it wants you to convey” is a less useful gaming paradigm than “Key on the particular object you want to apply to this situation”. Most of the time, the ability of the parser to understand complex concepts only led to the generally frustrating experience of “I know what the game wants me to do but not how to tell the game to do it”
More complicated parsing would only become properly beneficial when games could be built around robust simulationist modeling of the world, which wasn’t really Infocom’s ballywick to begin with, and probably wouldn’t have been practical in that era even if Infocom was interested in that sort of game.
I think it’s more complicated than that.
I’ve been been able to compare my various parsers quite directly against each other.
The two-word parsers work when they “stick with their strength” and try not to communicate anything too complicated, but even given that condition, they tend to be very bad about conveying when things go wrong — that you tried to use an item that was too big, not sharp enough, too small, etc. In other words, the parser isn’t just in the front end, but the back end messages, which Infocom was much better about. The amount of “weight” I had to deal with was much clearly lessened with this game.
The complex communication has enabled some puzzles that would otherwise not be possible. I never felt during Starcross that I was just never able to say what I wanted to say (the exception being talking with NPCs, but that’s because it didn’t port over the material from Deadline for capacity reasons).
There are other games (ahem The Pawn) that eventually took long parser liberties to painful excesses, but at least in Infocom up to ’82 we aren’t seeing that, and I don’t think it’s intrinsic to a parser that understands more that bad things have to happen with it (we’ve had plenty of equally bad things and situations where I can’t communicate with the two-word parsers).
I wish I could remember where I heard/read this but I recall hearing that the Williamses (of Sierra fame) felt a bit envious of Infocom’s parser and consistently high game quality. I remember thinking how patently absurd this comparison was, as their Hi-Res Adventures made absolutely no attempt at revolutionizing adventure game parsers (for the better, that is… An argument could be made for the reverse since the graphics often removed or made difficult something that would have had to have been clearly described in a text only adventure. E.g. in mystery house when you look in the kitchen sink and the game shows you the crudely drawn knife, but the parser only recognizes “butterknife” and does nothing to describe it to the player as such)
To me, it looks like the old game “Simon”.
Yeah, it does rather resemble that too, although a different color.