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1977: Zork

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Re: 1977: Zork

#71

Post by user3939382 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #64
daniel5151 wrote: post #44

One of the coolest technical aspects of early Infocom text adventure games is that most games weren't actually written using native assembly code for the platforms they ran on, and were instead compiled down to "z-code", a bytecode which ran on the "z-machine" virtual machine architecture. Z-machines are pretty niftly little bits of tech, as while they have a lot in common with regular 'ol machine code, the z-machine…

I used to play a lot of z-machine text adventures on the original iPod Touch with an app called Frotz. It was pretty cool to see stuff from the 80s running on a modern tiny portable computer like that.

Frotz is still around for iOS and it still works great!

Re: 1977: Zork

#72

Post by chongli »

haolez wrote: post #52
chongli wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amusing but it’s not a game. It will respond with something (often amusing) to any promos you write but there aren’t any rules to what you get back and there are no puzzles to solve. Zork, on the other hand, is an actual game you can solve, complete with a scoring system.

I think aidungeon would be very similar to a game if it remembered the past sentences that the player and the AI have input so far. So far, it seems to create a new context from scratch for each and every sentence from the player.

Very similar but still not a game. Games have rules, objectives, victory conditions. This would still be a text-based "walking simulator" or "lucid dream simulator" to put it more accurately.

Re: 1977: Zork

#74

Post by waltwalther »

sillyquiet wrote: post #11

There's going to be lots of these anecdotes, but Zork was the first computer game I ever obsessed over, on my cousin's C64. Hand-drawn maps and notes about clues, getting eaten by the grue on purpose, getting frustrated at the maze of twisty passages, and of course entering random curse words just to be scolded by the game. Much more recently, I played a web-browser based port of the game and even accounting for nost…

Yes! Those hand drawn maps. Brings back memories..

Re: 1977: Zork

#75

Post by selimthegrim »

blackrock wrote: post #34

> You are in an open field west of a big white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. This reminds me of that hypnotic phrase from the 12 Monkeys tv series. Anyways, whatever happened to these types of games? Did it just die out as computers got more powerful, and everyone just played first-person shooters or 3d role playing games?

There was one called Disco Elysium a couple years ago that made quite a few waves (but more graphical obviously)

Re: 1977: Zork

#76

Post by bluGill »

simmons wrote: post #58
daniel5151 wrote: post #44

One of the coolest technical aspects of early Infocom text adventure games is that most games weren't actually written using native assembly code for the platforms they ran on, and were instead compiled down to "z-code", a bytecode which ran on the "z-machine" virtual machine architecture. Z-machines are pretty niftly little bits of tech, as while they have a lot in common with regular 'ol machine code, the z-machine…

I was reading an article about the Z-Machine recently [1], and I was quite surprised that in addition to being a virtual machine, it also implemented virtual memory! Thus, pages could be swapped in and out of disk as needed. (Since CPUs like the 6502 didn't have a hardware MMU, I guess this was an explicit software step -- i.e. a called function that would check if the page was loaded, and if not, arrange for its loa…

While cool in a way, it was also annoying that infocom games in the day took several seconds, then started the disk to load whatever the next response was.

The limited parsers of the competition responded almost instantly to input. The limited parsers were enough for everything needed, most everyone I knew just used the two word sentences even though more complex ones would work.

Re: 1977: Zork

#77

Post by bluGill »

aaronareed wrote: post #54
germinalphrase wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. It really is the voice to text that is the concern. I noodled around with an interactive fiction game concept a while back focused on a nuclear showdown. I wanted to build it into an red analog telephone. The phone would ring and you would hear a message from various government/military types. As tensions rise, the phone rings more often, possibly multiple lines light up forcing you to catch/miss vital inform…

This is an incredible game idea and you should absolutely make this because I want to play it!

Great idea, but very hard to pull off. The hardware is easy, but all the wrting and plot needed to go from a demo to a fun game takes a lot of hard tedious work.

I encourage the effort, but don't want to well it short. The idea is the easy part.

Re: 1977: Zork

#78

Post by nineteen999 »

bluGill wrote: post #76
simmons wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading an article about the Z-Machine recently [1], and I was quite surprised that in addition to being a virtual machine, it also implemented virtual memory! Thus, pages could be swapped in and out of disk as needed. (Since CPUs like the 6502 didn't have a hardware MMU, I guess this was an explicit software step -- i.e. a called function that would check if the page was loaded, and if not, arrange for its loa…

While cool in a way, it was also annoying that infocom games in the day took several seconds, then started the disk to load whatever the next response was. The limited parsers of the competition responded almost instantly to input. The limited parsers were enough for everything needed, most everyone I knew just used the two word sentences even though more complex ones would work.

> then started the disk to load whatever the next response was.

In addition on some systems with smaller disks (eg. C64) needed the story file to be split up over two disks, because the story file and interpreter wouldn't both fit on one disk. So you were switching the floppy disk at various intervals as well. With the C1541 being no speed demon to begin with it was not fun. I remember being much happier playing it on CP/M and DOS machines later.

Re: 1977: Zork

#79

Post by psychstudio »

the_af wrote: post #22
the_af wrote: post #2

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. and It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. are such iconic phrases, they bring a ton of good memories to my mind. And I never even finished Zork or Adventure!

And how could I forget! xyzzy

So iconic in fact that it's the name of the annual IF awards AFAIR.
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