Wow, didn’t expect this from Microsoft. Amazing to see classic game code being made accessible for learning
Funny, I exactly expected a lame PR stunt from Microsoft to distract from the endless string of terrible decisions.
Microsoft makes Zork open-source
81–90 of 256 posts
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
whoa til microsoft owns blizzard.
You're one of today's lucky 10,000. It was huge news at the time. The FTC considered not allowing it and the acquisition got delayed for months while back and forth public debate raged.
Easy to forget all the big moves that happened recently, especially since there haven't been (afaict) any major changes to service. I forgot the other day that Sony had bought Bungie, though it'd be pretty memorable if Sony announced Destiny 3 as a PS5 timed exclusive.
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#83There's also Frotz and other Z Machine interpreters, and the actual Zblorb game file. But I guess this would be the source code that compiles to the zblorb.
So this is useful to modify zork, but not much changes if you want to build something around zork, as you will most likely be building something that interfaces at the z machine level.
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#84Great, I remember a page which stated that it was sad to have free as in freedom ZMachine languages and interpreters (Inform6, Frotz/Fizmo...) but there were very few text adventures under a libre license. So far, the most known ones:
- Spiritwrak
- All Things Devour
- Calypso
- Tristam Island
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#85So 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)
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#86I like playing Zork via docker:
https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork1
> docker run -it clockworksoul/zork1
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#87I would love to see the Apple ][ source code made available for a lot of these classic games. In this case what I really want to see is the Z-Engine or interpreter itself not essentially the data files only.
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#88[deleted]
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#89If I'm reading this right, the source code has been available for all the Infocom games in https://github.com/historicalsource for at least six years, but what's changed today is the license?
Re: Microsoft makes Zork open-source
#90When 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 langu…
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.