''Dunnet'' is a

surreal Surreal may refer to: *Anything related to or characteristic of Surrealism, a movement in philosophy and art * "Surreal" (song), a 2000 song by Ayumi Hamasaki * ''Surreal'' (album), an album by Man Raze *Surreal humour, a common aspect of humor ...

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...

text adventure written by

Ron Schnell Ronald Steven Schnell (born November 10, 1966) is an American computer programmer in Weston, Florida. He was co-founder of Mail Call in 1997 and the chief technology officer of Rand Paul's 2016 presidential campaign. Life and work Schnell be ...

, based on a game he wrote in 1982. The name is derived from the first three letters of ''dungeon'' and the last three letters of ''

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

''. It was first written in Maclisp for the DECSYSTEM-20, then ported to Emacs Lisp in 1992. Since 1994 the game has shipped with

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

; it also has been included with XEmacs. The game has been recommended to writers considering writing

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

Plot

The game starts out with the player standing at the end of a dirt road, but it turns to the surreal when players realize that they are actually walking around inside a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

system, and teleporting themselves around the

Arpanet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

. There are many subtle jokes in this game, and there are multiple ways of ending the game. Throughout the game the player moves through different areas and rooms trying to collect treasure to earn points.

Legacy

Dunnet is playable on any operating system with the Emacs editor. Emacs comes with most

Unices A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

, including

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

(prior to version 10.15

Catalina Catalina may refer to: Arts and media * ''The Catalina'', a 2012 American reality television show * ''Catalina'' (novel), a 1948 novel by W. Somerset Maugham * Catalina (''My Name Is Earl''), character from the NBC sitcom ''My Name Is Earl'' ...

) and distributions of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Several articles targeted to Mac OS X owners have recommended it as an easter egg as a game that can be run in

Terminal.app This is a list of macOS built-in apps and system components. Applications App Store The Mac App Store is macOS's digital distribution platform for macOS apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. based on the iOS version, the platform was an ...

. It can be run by running emacs -batch -l dunnet in a shell or the key sequence M-x dunnet within Emacs, the former being the preferred and official way to run it. Dunnet was used as a benchmark in the effort to port Emacs Lisp to Guile, progressing from running standalone games to running the entire Emacs system in less than a person-year of work.

References

External links

*
Source code
of the eLisp port,

GPLv3 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

license {{EmacsNavbox 1982 video games 1980s interactive fiction Emacs Emacs modes Linux games MacOS games Video games developed in the United States Open-source video games Video games with textual graphics