Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft makes Zork open-source

opensource.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 256 posts

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#141

Post by WorldMaker »

danso wrote: post #85

So how good are the latest coding agents? Like if I asked Gemini 3/Claude/ChatGPT 5.1 to convert it into something that could run from a Python interpreter, how far would they get? (I assume Zork Implementation Language is not well represented in the training corpus)

The easiest way to get it to run from a Python interpreter would be to compile the ZIL source to a Z-Machine binary, which you can do with ZILF [1], then use a Z Machine library in Python (such as a pure Python implementation of the Z-Machine [2]) to load/run it.

A coding agent may even be able to suggest that path, as knowledge of at least the existence of both ZILF and Python ZVM should be in training sets.

The more interesting questions would be how much a coding agent could help you write new Zork rooms or similar things in ZIL now that these ZIL source files are MIT licensed. I would also assume ZIL is not well represented, it's fork of the Lisp family tree (Lisp -> MDL -> ZIL) in generally probably not well represented in open source code bases up to this point. (Some of that may depend on if the agent was trained on some of these historicalsource repos ahead of this open source license change, too.)

[1] https://zilf.io/

[2] https://github.com/sussman/zvm

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#142

Post by fainpul »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #131

The cynic in me believes that this only took place after numerous meetings during which the question "is there any way we can still make money from this" was repeatedly answered with "no".

My guess is they wanted to create some good publicity for once, to distract from all the shit they get for their AI stunts and Windows fuckups.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#143

Post by jamesgill »

I kinda hate that Microsoft gets to take credit for being magnanimous with yet another product they never created.

The TL;DR: The Zorks were created by several guys at MIT who later formed Infocom. Infocom eventually sold to Activision, Microsoft bought Activision and voila--"Microsoft is open sourcing Zork".

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#144

Post by brandall10 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #111
reticulated wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goodness, I could have written this word-for-word. Similar age, same Apple II BASIC and 6502 upbringing (roll sleeves and call -151 ) and also wrote to Infocom. We were in the UK so even more surprised to get a reply similar to yours several weeks later. Sadly my letter is also lost to various house moves. Or eaten by a grue.

Me too, except my letter was to Sierra On-Line and my experience was on TRS-80 6809. Really classy reply asking me to write back when I finished school.

Lovely to hear this about Infocom and SOL. The former was my obsession throughout the mid-late 80s on my Atari 800XL, and then the latter for the next few years after getting a 386SX in '89.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#145

Post by dsjoerg »

jamesgill wrote: post #143

I kinda hate that Microsoft gets to take credit for being magnanimous with yet another product they never created. The TL;DR: The Zorks were created by several guys at MIT who later formed Infocom. Infocom eventually sold to Activision, Microsoft bought Activision and voila--"Microsoft is open sourcing Zork".

They're not taking credit for the product; they're taking credit for _open-sourcing_ it. Which they did.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#146

Post by WorldMaker »

drob518 wrote: post #70
agiacalone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MDL, actually, which was derived from LISP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)

I’m curious why they chose MDL rather than Lisp for it. Sure, it would have been ancient MACLISP or whatever, but why not leverage what was already in wide use at MIT at the time?

MDL is what was in wide use at MIT at the time, the PDP-10 era. The M in MDL is sometimes "MIT" in the various backronyms of what it stood for. (Mostly it was apparently just short for "muddle", a self-deprecating description.)

(Also, to be technically correct, these source files aren't even MDL, they are a further descendant called ZIL [Zork Implementation Language].)

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#147

Post by jamesgill »

dsjoerg wrote: post #145
jamesgill wrote: post #143

I kinda hate that Microsoft gets to take credit for being magnanimous with yet another product they never created. The TL;DR: The Zorks were created by several guys at MIT who later formed Infocom. Infocom eventually sold to Activision, Microsoft bought Activision and voila--"Microsoft is open sourcing Zork".

They're not taking credit for the product; they're taking credit for _open-sourcing_ it. Which they did.

Yes, I get it. It's right there in the headline.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#149

Post by WorldMaker »

bernds74 wrote: post #118
sigmonsays wrote: post #76

bummer > The code relies on old internal Infocom toolchains (ZILCH compiler, WATFOR, > mainframe environment) that are not open and likely not preserved.

There's this: https://www.ifwiki.org/ZILF https://zilf.io/ Although I haven't played with it and can't tell you whether it can compile the open source Zork.

The blog post itself suggests using ZILF.

I hope some of those other Infocom tools eventually get open sourced for historic curiosity, but ZILF is probably going to remain the modern answer for how to compile these files.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#150

Post by VikingCoder »

WorldMaker wrote: post #137
VikingCoder wrote: post #115

Can ZILF just compile this? https://zilf.io/

That is the exactly the suggested compiler in this blog post. (These repos have been compiled with it for a while. The biggest change in these [Internet Archive-uploaded] repos is an official Microsoft-backed MIT License as opposed to assuming Fair Use for Archival Use prior to now.) I'm hoping Microsoft may have a chance to open source more of the original Infocom compilers and VMs, even if they would be hard to run…

Zilf liked it, but Zapf is flagged by Windows 11 Smart App Control as potentially dangerous to my machine...

And there's no way to turn it off for one app.

And if I turn it off, I can only turn it back on by re-installing Windows.

What the bloody...

So now I want to download and build.

But it's .net 10, so I apparently need VS 2026, which I hadn't bothered to install yet.

Oh my.

Post reply on HN