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Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

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Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#121

Post by vanderZwan »

bredren wrote: post #37

Hitchhikers Guide was one of the first PC games I ever got. I had no idea it was a “text adventure.” Nor did I understand it was based on a book. My dad got it for me used from The Computer Club in downtown Lake Oswego, Oregon. I picked it out largely due to the green guy on the front of the box. I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from…

> I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story.

I had no idea that the beach sand joke in the Look Around You satire segment about computer games was based on something that once happened in reality.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn82s7KAHvo

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#122

Post by WorldMaker »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #83
kronin wrote: post #47

"Want some rye?" "'course ya do!"

Great game, was my introduction to the Zork world. Like 8bit/16bit games, I wish video capture adventure games would make a comeback, even though I know it's a pipe dream...

There was a Tex Murphy game (Tesla Effect) released in the last couple of years (and was Kickstarter backed), and Her Story made a big splash slightly more recently than that. Several Her Story inspired productions since have been in the works or released. They'll probably never be mainstream/"AAA" again, but there likely will continue to be some people building them so long as they can find their audience.

Plus, AAA game mo-capping has gotten to the point where some of them such as Uncharted and Quantum Break feel very close to classic FMV, with the benefits of a full 3D environment. Quantum Break even had entire "TV episodes" in the middle, making it perhaps the wildest "FMV" game of the last few years.

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#123

Post by WorldMaker »

z3phyr wrote: post #86

Is that some kind of angle bracket lisp? Can anyone shed more light of zil files?

It's exactly a Lisp derivative/fork. Zork was originally written in MDL [0], a Lisp derivative in use on MIT's mainframes (that in turn went on to inspire parts of Scheme). When the Zork team left college to form Infocom, they built ZIL to port Zork to home computers, based on their experience of MDL, and their needs for their Z-Machine virtual machine.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#124

Post by taradinoc »

vanderZwan wrote: post #119
localhostdotdev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not likely to be taken down as the CEO tweeted about it: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1118057606159798274

I love how a tongue-in-cheek reply about the lack of syntax highlighting for ZIL files drew the attention of someone who actually implemented syntax highlighting for it. https://twitter.com/taradinoc/status/1118181848494985216

Who is that handsome mystery developer, where did he come from, and why can't we get enough of him?

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#125

Post by munificent »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #46
jerf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an extremely difficult game. In theory, I know the answer to all the puzzles, however, there are so many ways to lose without realizing it that I've never managed to string together a single play session in which I do it correctly. Though I've also long since stopped trying. :) For instance, there are subareas where you must collect various tools. Many of these are themselves rather fragile affairs, easy to rui…

Frankly, this sounds like terribly punishing game design. Why did so many players put up with it? Was there really nothing better?

Keep in mind that you are criticizing this from the perspective of a game culture that defines this is bad. But that culture didn't exist yet and games like this were part of the early process of creating it.

Players put up with it because this hadn't been defined as "bad" yet. The whole field of what games could and could not expect players to do was wide open.

It's a bit like criticizing Georges Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon" for having poor character development and a weak third act. Those expected aspects of film structure hadn't even been invented yet.

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#126

Post by kolanos »

djsumdog wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an extremely difficult game. In theory, I know the answer to all the puzzles, however, there are so many ways to lose without realizing it that I've never managed to string together a single play session in which I do it correctly. Though I've also long since stopped trying. :) For instance, there are subareas where you must collect various tools. Many of these are themselves rather fragile affairs, easy to rui…

This is really the problem with the entire early genre of adventure games. The later Sierra titles were terrible about this. You pretty much needed the hint book to beat many of them. Even after they dropped text for point-n-click, the puzzles were still hard and not really intuitive. The later LucasArts games were better at this (I bit The Dig without any hints; think I needed one or two for Full Throttle). The mode…

I remember not being able to get off the garbage planet in Space Quest III without the hint book. It was a MacGyver-esque exercise to build a spaceshipfrom scattered junk on the planet. And just when you thought you were done a giant rat would kill you.

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#127

Post by bluGill »

WorldMaker wrote: post #120
pwiecz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find a somewhat playable early "prototype" linked from here: https://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_seque...

What might have been if Infocom hadn't tried to "grow up" and make business software.

The name Infocom comes from their desire to make business software. To a large extent they considered games that they had written in the past to be a way to raise money so they could afford to make the business software that would make them rich. Games were always a distraction in their eye - a profitable one, but not their purpose. As far as I know they never got anywhere with business software...

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#128

Post by magduf »

jackhack wrote: post #73
donretag wrote: post #62

Each game (from the ones I recognize) fit on a single 5.25" 360KB floppy. We barely think in megabytes anymore.

and ran in Those games felt miraculous back in the day. I still recall the amazement I felt playing the detective game Deadline ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadline_(video_game) ) and the way the simulation moved on in real time -- people wandering through a house, or suspects fidgeting nervously or offering additional info while I questioned them -- even if I didn't enter a command and merely waited. Appreciatin…

>40,000 bytes for all code and data. Wow.

That sounds impressive, but it really isn't that much, because it's text-only.

If you want to see something truly impressive, look at Super Mario Bros. on the NES: the entire game is about 64k! Most of the NES games were on that order of size, and they were graphical real-time games.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you'll find with these text-adventure games that they compress quite readily down to a fraction of the size you stated. NES games, not so much. ASCII text isn't a terribly efficient medium of storage, and they didn't have much if any data compression in those days.

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#129

Post by WorldMaker »

bluGill wrote: post #127
WorldMaker wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might have been if Infocom hadn't tried to "grow up" and make business software.

The name Infocom comes from their desire to make business software. To a large extent they considered games that they had written in the past to be a way to raise money so they could afford to make the business software that would make them rich. Games were always a distraction in their eye - a profitable one, but not their purpose. As far as I know they never got anywhere with business software...

I realize. Still doesn't mean I can't lament them for not realizing they were already successful and could continue to be. Just imagine if BioWare had kept trying to make medical software despite the success of their RPGs, just because their name said they should.

Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games

#130

Post by liveoneggs »

willvarfar wrote: post #13

So, are these playable online over gh-pages? It would be so cool if the gh-pages contained an interpreter that loaded the source from github.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...

This adds some "graphics". I personally love this format for these games.

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