Editing Zork (section)

===Creation===
The developers did not announce their game while it was in development, but a lack of security on the MIT systems meant that anyone who could access the PDP-10 computer over the [[ARPANET]] could see what programs were being run. As a result, a small community of people, many of whom had been involved in playing and contributing to ''Trivia'', would "snoop" on the system for new programs. They found the new "Zork" adventure game and spread word of it under that name.<ref name="GDCTalk"/><ref name="History2"/> This community{{emdash}}dozens or possibly hundreds of players, according to Lebling{{emdash}}interacted with the developers as they created the game, playtesting additions and submitting [[software bug|bug]] reports.<ref name="Retro77"/><ref name="History2"/> The implementers added a command transcript feature to keep track of what commands players tried to use unsuccessfully.<ref name="Retro77"/>

By the end of June, the game was approximately half the size of the final ''Zork'', and had a substantial community of players for the time. The group added locations such as a volcano and coal mine, and soon shifted their efforts to improving the [[game engine|game's engine]] and adding the ability to [[saved game|save the player's progress]] in the game. Following user requests, they also added the ability for the game to run on PDP-10 computers running different operating systems{{emdash}}[[TENEX (operating system)|TENEX]] and [[TOPS-20]]{{emdash}}which were much more popular than the [[Incompatible Timesharing System]] operating system the MIT computer used. These users then set up a mailing list to distribute updates to the game. The developers returned to creating new content in the fall of 1977, adding the "Alice in Wonderland" section and a system for fighting enemies.<ref name="History2"/>

Around this time, community member Ted Hess at DEC decoded the [[copy protection|protections]] the group had made for the [[source code]], and another DEC employee, Bob Supnik, created a [[Porting of video games|port]] of the game to Fortran.<!--Specifically, the team had changed ITS itself to hide the Zork directory from users, and also encrypted the source code; Hess found the ITS patch, undid it, and downloaded the game files (getting caught in the process by Anderson), and then brute-forced the encryption later.--> This port, released in March 1978, opened the game to a wider set of players without access to a PDP-10 mainframe.<ref name="History2"/><ref name="GetLampSupnik"/> At the time, the team had decided to give the game an actual name besides "zork", and chose ''Dungeon''. This name was used for the Fortran version, which was spread through [[DECUS|the DEC users group]] as one of its most popular pieces of software. [[TSR, Inc.|TSR Hobbies]] claimed the title violated their trademark for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', and the developers reverted to their original title.<ref name="History2"/>

Over the course of 1978, the team added the bank and Royal Zork Puzzle Museum sections, along with some puzzles and ideas suggested by players. The last puzzle was added in February 1979, though the team continued to release bug fix updates until the final update in January 1981. Anderson attributes this to the team running out of ideas and time, and having run out of space in the one [[megabyte]] of [[computer memory|memory]] allocated for the game.<ref name="History2"/>

Very little of the game was planned ahead of time, nor were aspects of the game specific to one developer; instead, whenever one of the developers had an idea they liked, that developer would add it to the game, developing the concept and writing the text to go with it. According to Lebling, Blank ended up focusing mostly on the parser, Anderson on the game code, Blank and Daniels on new puzzles, and Lebling on descriptions of locations.<ref name="Retro77"/> Anderson says that Blank wrote "40 or 50" iterations of the parser, and describes Daniels as designing puzzles that were then largely implemented by the others. He credits Blank with vehicles and saving, and Lebling with the robot, grues, and the fighting system.<ref name="History2"/> To immerse the player in the game, the developers decided not to describe the player character, removing any accidental descriptions or [[gender pronoun|gendered pronouns]].<ref name="Retro77"/> The text responses to the player's commands were frequently opinionated and sarcastic, a design choice that mirrored the group's speaking patterns. The team felt it would both make the system feel less like a computer and also train the player to write commands in a way that the parser could understand rather than ways it would misinterpret.<ref name="USG2015"/>