251–256 of 256 posts
bummer > The code relies on old internal Infocom toolchains (ZILCH compiler, WATFOR, > mainframe environment) that are not open and likely not preserved.
> Basic Information on the Contents of This Repository > > It is mostly important to note that there is currently no known way to compile the source code in this repository into a final "Z-machine Interpreter Program" (ZIP) file using an official Infocom-built compiler. There is a user-maintained compiler named ZILF that has been shown to successfully compile these .ZIL files with minor issues. There are .ZIP files in some of the Infocom Source Code repositories but they were there as of final spin-down of the Infocom Drive and the means to create them is currently lost. > > ... > > In general, Infocom games were created by taking previous Infocom source code, copying the directory, and making changes until the game worked the way the current Implementor needed. Structure, therefore, tended to follow from game to game and may or may not accurately reflect the actual function of the code.
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I think it would be safe for Microsoft to release (intentionally or unintentionally) the source for just about any product. I bet it's incredibly difficult to run a successful build. From talking to someone who used to work on Excel, it took them around 1 day to build Excel from source. And that's if everything goes perfectly and you know exactly what you're doing and are using the build system and setup and configur…
People have built working operating systems from both the XP/Server 2003 and NT 4 leaks. Here's someone building Server 2003 on Windows 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWZe00v2Rs0
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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 mor…
Also if you don't wall to install a whole C# stack on constrained netbook/non supoprted old machine: https://notabug.org/coderain/zilutils EDIT: Wrong link. Wait, I'm sure there's a C based alternative out there.
The good news is you don't need to install any C# development tools if you use the prepackaged binaries, since they're standalone executables.
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This is about the fourth article I've read that mentions Lisp today on here. Okay, I get it. Lisp is great. Where should I start? It wasn't like I was planning on doing anything else at work next week...
You're kind of in luck. For a while, it was trendy (because MIT was doing it) to teach Intro to Programming with Lisps, especially Scheme. Because of this, there are quite a few "learn programming with Lisp" books and resources. The famous "SICP" book was the textbook for the MIT course and all of the examples were Lisp (there's a newer version that uses JavaScript, I think). There are loads of fine online books and…
The thing I want is probably very stupid - I'd like Zork I through III ported to Inform 6... I don't specifically know why that appeals to me. I guess it's because I'd like to tinker with it and understand it better. And if I were going to write Zork I from scratch today, I'd want to use the most modern tools available. [checks notes] Okay, but not Inform 7. I have an aversion to Inform 7. I want my code to look more…
I feel the same about Inform 6 vs 7. I wrote some very simple games in Inform 6 thirty or so years ago, just for personal amusement, but never did a thing with Inform 7.
I guess I'm skeptical of "literate programming" in general, where I have to learn a special way of phrasing English just to interact with some magical process that I don't and can't understand... all so I can avoid typing a few square brackets and semicolons. I think there's an underlying symmetry to the conceptual structure of interactive fiction and the way it looks in Inform 6 that is much easier to reason about... but eh. I'm a couple decades late to the argument.