Ferret History




Ferret was born many years BPC (Before PCs) on a 16-bit mini-computer produced by Data General (now part of EMC ... now Dell, but essentially defunct).

The game is written in PL/I (developed by IBM) which is a powerful language ideal for writing this type of game (it was once described as all the best bits of Fortran, Algol and Cobol put together).

Way back in the '80's there were no graphical interfaces but that did not prevent the game from giving the player a serious challenge.  Some say that radio is better than television because the pictures are better.  In fact, the retro interface is ideal as it can be left running in the background while the player tries to solve the puzzles do some work.

Developed in stages, the game's architecture allowed the addition of extra phases in an incremental manner.
After a hiatus of many years the game has now been completely redeveloped for the PC, courtesy of Visual Age PL/I for Windows (again from IBM).  An attempt to port the game to C just didn't work - sorry C fans, but it's just not up to the job.

If enough interest is shown in the game there may be future developments... watch this site for news.

More...

Ferret in its native environment (Data General Dasher D460 Visual Display Unit):

Screen Shot