Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
github.com
Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
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Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#2What language is this written in?
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#3What language is this written in?
The README says it was written in MDL.
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#4What language is this written in?
1970's was MDL (a lisp dialect of sorts), later versions used a specialised subset:
In 1980 Marc Blank and Joel Berez adapted the MDL language to create a subset called ZIL (Zork Implementation Language) which was used extensively by Infocom to create their award winning games.
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#5There are multiple versions of mainframe Zork available on GitHub. See https://eblong.com/infocom/#zorkmdl for this and everything else Infocom.
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#6Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#7Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626
Thanks! Here's a merge of previous 'related' lists. If anyone finds others, we can add them...
Infocom’s code-porting tools for Zork and other games have been found - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38528416 - Dec 2023 (30 comments)
Zork Zcode Interpreters Appear Out of Nowhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38361247 - Nov 2023 (14 comments)
Infocom-zcode-terps: Historical source code for Infocom's Z-machine interpreters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326878 - Nov 2023 (24 comments)
Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37893794 - Oct 2023 (160 comments)
1977: Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26181863 - Feb 2021 (91 comments)
Zork source and binaries, January 1978 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371538 - Sept 2020 (13 comments)
Zork source code, 1977 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626 - May 2020 (81 comments)
Exploring Zork (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20731333 - Aug 2019 (22 comments)
Zork and the Z-Machine: Bringing the Mainframe to 8-Bit Home Computers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19982345 - May 2019 (17 comments)
A Brief History of Zork (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946781 - May 2019 (10 comments)
Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19672436 - April 2019 (238 comments)
Z3 – The Zork CPU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169565 - Sept 2017 (11 comments)
The DUNGEON (Zork I) source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15147346 - Sept 2017 (50 comments)
Your load is too heavy: Zork deep reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138114 - Aug 2017 (32 comments)
The Enduring Legacy of Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15073227 - Aug 2017 (48 comments)
Beyond Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10524438 - Nov 2015 (9 comments)
Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2705269 - June 2011 (133 comments)
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#8Presumably parsers could be much more conversational and sophisticated today? Has anyone created such a thing?
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#9Presumably parsers could be much more conversational and sophisticated today? Has anyone created such a thing?
See https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/
(Inform 7 games are actually also programmed in a kind of adventure-speak, but if anyone is willing to play guess-the-verb in not-quite-natural-language, it'd be IF fans. eg https://literateprograms.org/dijkstra_s_algorithm__inform_7_... )
Re: Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
#10Presumably parsers could be much more conversational and sophisticated today? Has anyone created such a thing?
You mean an LLM-based adventure game? There’s AI Dungeon [1]. Or do you mean a more sophisticated conventional parser with a hand-crafted adventure? That I’m not aware of.
From what I know about adventure games with parsers, they’re essentially just a big finite state machine with descriptions for each state and a hard-coded list of commands that trigger state transitions. There may be additional commands that print a whimsical or humorous response but otherwise leave the player in exactly the same state. There’s also usually a default response for when the input can’t be parsed into a valid command.
The AI Dungeon approach, as far as I’m aware, isn’t really a game with rules and a reachable end condition. It’s just an LLM trained on fantasy role-playing description so it can produce a lot of stuff in response to any prompt. What it lacks, as far as I’m aware, is the underlying state machine.