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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

#211

Post by baroffoos »

klez wrote: post #78
bencollier49 wrote: post #49

No license anywhere. These games are still valuable IP aren't they?

At the bottom of the README > This collection is meant for education, discussion, and historical work, allowing researchers and students to study how code was made for these interactive fiction games and how the system dealt with input and processing. It is not considered to be under an open license. So all rights reserved, basically

Not too bad really. This code is so old I doubt anyone really knows how to work with it properly or get it running on a modern machine. Only good for curiosity

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

#213

Post by taradinoc »

brlewis wrote: post #147
lispm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scheme don't know. But Lisp Machine Lisp and then Common Lisp.

I've seen EQUAL? in some of the code snippets. I can believe that inspired Scheme predicates.

Yeah, MDL used the question mark suffix like Lisp used "p".

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

#214

Post by dwd »

leejoramo wrote: post #100
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have to remember that the majority of people with computers at this time had to be into this sort of thing just to get their computer booted. Much less loading a game. > Turn on computer "You turn on the computer, after 3 minutes a glowing green block slowly flashes on the screen in front of you" > Wait "You wait a while. A glowing green block slowly flashes on the screen in front of you." ... I hope you had a mi…

Upvoted you on looking for clues with a hex editor. Little did you realise you were setting yourself up for a lifetime of debugging.

I remember getting stuck in an early C64 text adventure and reading the BASIC code to try and find a clue.

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

#215

Post by dwd »

FabHK wrote: post #85
mrkstu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was kind of the point. His other Infocom game was called Bureacrary, so you can see the theme developing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)

An infamous scene in Bureaucracy was when you had to order some food in a diner, and you'd spend 10 minutes on that (How do you want the burger, rare, medium, or well done? With fries or onion rings? Small, medium, or large? Coke or Fanta? Regular or light? etc. etc., really drawn out), and then the waiter comes back and explains that the computer crashed and you had to go through the whole tedious process again... C…

Sounds like a recent experience I had trying to book tickets to a Disneyland park online: Registration, email confirmation, multiple options and numerous validation pain points for it to report their payment system was offline at the end.

The game at least was intentional rather than incompetent.

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

#216

Post by vanderZwan »

taradinoc wrote: post #124
vanderZwan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We'll probably never know, it's a mystery for the ages.

Rumor has it that he owns http://zilf.io, but that appears to be unfounded

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

#217

Post by larsbrinkhoff »

taradinoc wrote: post #212
DougN7 wrote: post #206

Cool! Now, does anyone know the significance of ‘xyzzy’ and ‘plugh’? :)

Here's a ZIL version of the game where "xyzzy" and "plugh" first appeared: https://bitbucket.org/jmcgrew/zilf/src/tip/Examples/advent/a...

I have the oldest available Crowther version running using a DEC Fortran compiler.

YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING . AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY.

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

#218

Post by lispm »

brlewis wrote: post #147
lispm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scheme don't know. But Lisp Machine Lisp and then Common Lisp.

I've seen EQUAL? in some of the code snippets. I can believe that inspired Scheme predicates.

Yes. But I think that's relatively minor.

From 'The Evolution of Lisp' Steele/Gabriel:

> MDL also introduced through example the use of a final ? in a name to connote a predicate ... Lisp Machine Lisp would pick up the lambda lists and the locatives, and would adapt the evaluation and splicing markers in backquote, though the evolution of the concept passes through Conniver where it is refined into a form very similar in appearance and effect as in Lisp-Machine Lisp, but in fact the implementation is quite different. Scheme would pick up the use of a trailing “?” for predicates. MDL had a multitasking facility that would reappear in various forms in Lisp-Machine Lisp, Conniver, and various implementations of Common Lisp.

Scheme got the '?'.

LML got complex arglists, locatives, markers for evaluation/splicing in backquote, multitasking.

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

#219

Post by larsbrinkhoff »

taradinoc wrote: post #28
jhbadger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically the history goes Lisp -> MDL -> ZIL

MDL and Lisp kinda co-evolved, and some MDL features (lambda lists, maybe others?) made it into the evolutionary branch that lived.

Basically correct.

The first Lisp for MIT's IBM mainframe was ported to the AI lab PDP-6, running standalone. Later ITS was written for the PDP-6, and Lisp was ported to run under timesharing by 1968. This evolved into Maclisp.

MDL, first called Muddle, is mentioned in Project MAC Progress Report VIII, covering 1970-971. "The extension of LISP is known locally as "MUDDLE". It was designed and has been implemented by Carl Hewitt and Gerald Sussman of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Christopher Reeve, David Cressey, Bruce Daniels, and Gregory Pfister of Dynamic Modeling".

Ideas from Muddle made it back to Maclisp. The first Lisp Machine Lisp (later ZetaLisp) was basically a reimplementation or Maclisp (as is Emacs Lisp), and Common Lisp is to a large degree a subset of Lisp Machine Lisp.

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

#220

Post by larsbrinkhoff »

pja wrote: post #16
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.

The compiler for these source files has been lost. You can play the zip files that were released commercially with Parchment, but because the copyright on those has not expired you wont be able to do so legally on the public internet I believe.

Not quite lost.
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