Cool and simple ideas needed!

[Tom Jennings]

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Philipp Hachtmann wrote:

> I have text. And I have a keyboard - on the ASR33, half duplex circuit
> ...but what is ANIMALS?

It's been so long since I've seen it I hoep I can describe it... a
hex dump (!) of it came with the SWTPC 6800.

It's a guessing game. It uses a lot of text [so non-techies like
it] but does no text processing or handling [so toggle-switch
programmers like it].

It's D U M B.  There is a table containing related datums:

ANIMAL NAME // QUESTION TO ASK

FISH	DOES IT SWIM
CAT	DOES IT MEOW
BIRD	DOES IT HAVE WINGS

You can build in a few animals to start. It builds this by asking
yes/no questions, and occasionally asking for new data. It's
reasonably clever-seeming for a tiny program.  It codes up in a
few hundred instructions. Human input is either raw text stored in
a table, or Y or N for decisions.


computer:	ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N):
person:		[N exits or restarts] Y
computer:	DOES IT SWIM?
person:		N
computer:	DOES IT MEOW?
person:		Y
computer:	IS IT A CAT?
person:		Y
computer:	GREAT!
 		<whitespace>

computer:	ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N):
...


If you get to the end of questions ("swim? meow? wings?") with all
NOs then it asks for new data:

computer:	WHAT ANIMAL WERE YOU THINKING OF?
person:		ORANGUTANG
computer:	WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK?
person:		DOES IT FLING TURDS AT GAWKING VISITORS
computer:	THANK YOU
 		<whitespace>

computer:	ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N):
...
computer:	DOES IT FLING TURDS AT GAWKING VISITORS?
person:		Y
computer:	IS IT AN ORANGUTANG?
...


Ad nauseum. With an adult audience, the questions/answers tend
towards the sexual and scatalogical (duh).

There's a grossly over complex version in some dialect of BASIC here:

http://www.animalgame.com/play/misc/source.php


HA HA! The home page http://www.animalgame.com/ *IS* the ANIMALS
game!  Now that's weird...