 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):
