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Microsoft makes Zork open-source

opensource.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#71

Post by 1313ed01 »

ndiddy wrote: post #49
pm215 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The others don't seem to have the MIT license pullreq added, so they are not open source; the source code is merely available. The repos have a note: "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 licens…

Yeah the code was leaked without Activision's permission a few years ago. It's strange to me that Microsoft has taken this opportunity to clear up the rights to Zork 1-3 but not to the rest of the Infocom back catalog. The other games haven't been available for sale since the mid 90s when Activision put out a shovelware CD collection containing every Infocom game except Hitchhiker's and Shogun, so it's not like they…

I really enjoyed that Activision "shovelware" cd. For a time it made up a large part of my (Linux) game collection. It is not leaving my collection.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#73

Post by leoc »

katspaugh wrote: post #14

So Zork was written in Lisp? It had to be! --- >

From one perspective ADVENT is just SHRDLU turned inside out, after all. (Though of course from another perspective it's a fancier WUMPUS.)

('ADVENT' is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure , for anyone who isn't familar.)

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#74

Post by foobarian »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #51

I wonder how long before someone hooks up AI image generation for the scenes with this. It could either be very tastefully done or complete slop. Probably the second option.

There was a game I remember from the 80s that had such a (to me) tasteful background of still images to go with the text adventure; Time and Magik trilogy on Atari ST. [1]

[1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/28812/time-and-magik-the-tril...

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#75

Post by vunderba »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #51

I wonder how long before someone hooks up AI image generation for the scenes with this. It could either be very tastefully done or complete slop. Probably the second option.

There have been a couple attempts at this kind of thing (same with AI generation of images from pages of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books).

It's more a gimmick than anything particularly useful. Might even distract if the image embellishes from the original description leading players down the wrong path for solving a puzzle.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#77

Post by drob518 »

When I was 14 or so, in the early 1980s, a friend and I who had been playing Zork thought it would be fun to design a game ourselves. We actually wrote to Infocom with a proposal that we write a new game for them and they let us use ZIL and the Z-machine to implement it. Surprisingly, they actually wrote back to us and politely declined our offer. In hindsight, while we knew how to program in BASIC and assembly language on our Apple IIs, we would have been lost making a game with ZIL. That’s to say that Infocom made the right call. Still, it said something about the company that they treated a couple kids with respect and didn’t laugh in our faces. I wish I still had the letter.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#78

Post by redundantly »

esafak wrote: post #43
calibas wrote: post #16

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

I wonder if grue was taken from Nelson Goodman's Fact, Fiction, and Forecast . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction

Nyet. Jack Vance created grues in the one of the Dying Earth series books.

Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

#79

Post by gaudystead »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #44

So derivative works are possible, who will be the first to attach Zork to the OpenAI API?

Perhaps this is a stupid/contentious idea (partly because it somewhat kills the "spirit" of the original games), but there's a little part of me that would be interested in seeing the scene building parts of Zork piped into an image generation service to visualize the landscape that the game describes.

(the grue would obviously just a picture full of black, though some creepy eyes would be a nice touch)

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