5 ms·

New Tricks for an Old Z-Machine, Part 3: A Renaissance Is Nigh

89 points by doppp 7y ago

egypturnash 7y ago
Damnit now I wanna kick back with a good drink and some paper to slowly draw a map upon and have another go at Curses. But first I have to pick an interpreter for my Mac. The list[1] pointed to in this article is spectacularly unhelpful, what with being a series of directories with names largely derived from spells in Enchanter and no hints as to what platforms they're on, or what the strengths and weaknesses of each is. The IFDB page for Curses[2] that this article links to points me to a page on another site entirely[3] for interpreter recommendations. Its suggestion for Windows, Mac, and Linux is Lectrote[4]. Which is an Electron app that binds together no less than four different adventure game interpreters. I am generally adverse to Electron apps for the usual reasons (CPU/RAM hogs that consistently break OSX's built-in spellcheck/text expansion on all their text input fields) but somehow, contemplating the teetering pile of virtuality that running a Javascript Z-machine with an entire web browser strapped on the side entails, I feel like this is entirely appropriate in this case. I also feel like the process of digging through this twisty maze of web links, all different, may have made my score go up. 1: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/ http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/inter... 2: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8 https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8 3: http://brasslantern.org/players/howto/tadownload-c.html http://brasslantern.org/players/howto/tadownload-c.html 4: https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote/releases https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote/releases
- tjr 7y ago
  I don't know what but if it's consider "best" or not, but I use Zoom: https://www.logicalshift.co.uk/mac/zoom.html https://www.logicalshift.co.uk/mac/zoom.html
- sp332 7y ago
  You could just click the "Play On-line" button from link #2 and arrive at http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2Fcurses.z5 http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...
- msla 7y ago
  Frotz is a good Z-machine interpreter, and there seems to be a MacFrotz: https://www.thinkyhead.com/macfrotz https://www.thinkyhead.com/macfrotz You might be able to compile the original frotz: https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ There's more here: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    MacFrotz is not a viable option. Its last release was in 2004, it's only available as a PowerPC application, and there is no source available. (I suspect it was originally built to run on Classic Mac OS.) Building frotz from source should work fine, though.
  - Ivoah 7y ago
    The original frotz is installable with homebrew on macOS
- someguyorother 7y ago
  I like Gargoyle: http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/ http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/ It supports a slew of formats and focuses on good typography.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  On Linux (not sure if Mac is similar or not) I just use Gargoyle as one commenter pointed out below. It works amazingly well and can run all kinds of IF formats. I'd love to find a group of people to play IF with some day as a group activity. I was too young during its popular days. Now it is too niche for me to convince any friends or co-workers to give it a go. Curses is super long. If you want something just as beautiful (perhaps more so), but shorter, try anything from Emily Short. She has a few that take anywhere from 15 minutes to a day to play through (Galatea, Alabaster, Bronze...etc). I never finished City of Secrets, but really loved the world. A completely separate author wrote Blue Lacuna which I'm about 1/2 through.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > Curses is super long. It's also a very "old school" interactive fiction game design -- heavily item-driven puzzles, some of which can be made unsolveable by mistake, and at least one maze. Even the author has retrospectively described it as being "by any reasonable standard too hard".
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    > I'd love to find a group of people to play IF with some day as a group activity. I was too young during its popular days. Now it is too niche for me to convince any friends or co-workers to give it a go. I've been joking that my Twitch channel is an exercise in finding extremes that likely no one would actually watch. It mostly only has stuff streamed to it, for instance, because Sea of Thieves gives some small in-game rewards for streaming, and I like finding a lot of the less exciting parts of SoT to stream (including jokes about some of it being Pirate ASMArrr for how quiet and soft I play it sometimes). Anyway, long rambling prologue to: now I really want to try Twitch streaming some text adventures. This sounds like a very appropriate use of the wonders of modern game video streaming technology, both sarcastically in the sense of my above finding silly things to stream for streaming's sake, and not at all facetiously in that if it did somehow attract an audience magically or mysteriously that sounds like an amazing way to play such games.
    - 7thaccount 7y ago
- ashton314 7y ago
  I've always used Rezrov [1] as my Z-machine interpreter. Pure Perl, runs like a champ on my mac. 1: http://edmonson.paunix.org/rezrov/ http://edmonson.paunix.org/rezrov/
- i_don_t_know 7y ago
  If you have an iOS device, you may like Craig Smith‘s port of Frotz. It includes a few games, including Curses I think. You can also browse the IFDB and download other games from inside the app.
- msla 7y ago
  The de-facto standard: https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/
fooblitzky 7y ago
The Inform Designer's Manual[1] has to be one of the most enjoyable books on a programming language ever written. [1] http://inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf http://inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf
zzo38computer 7y ago
ZIL is sometimes still used; there is a new implementation called ZILF. Also, I wrote a document called "The Tricky Document" which describes many new tricks for Z-machine, most of which nobody has ever used as far as I know, which can allow even more efficiency than Inform and ZIL. I also wrote my own implementations of Z-machine, and other people who want to try, can also try to do so.
- derefr 7y ago
  Random awful thought: it wouldn't be that hard to write a Z-machine LLVM backend.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    From there it's only a short hop to compiling to WASM, too.
  - zzo38computer 7y ago
    I thought of to have a LLVM backend to target Glulx. Some things are done easily enough; the ! operator of C corresponds to "ushiftr 1,$,$" in Glulx (this is using Glasm syntax). Calling conventions are simple. The Glk functions can be converted directly to Glulx code, with a few exceptions; the Glk type "S" means a different thing in C and in Glulx, although for most of them you can instead use ones that take an array and length, making the function to calculate the length before calling Glk. The C strlen() function becomes "linearsearch 0,1,$,1,-1,0,4,$" in Glulx. However, one thing with both Z-machine and Glulx is that there is no alloca(). However, you might be able to emulate it with a "shadow stack", I thought. (If programming in assembly language, this is not a problem since you can take advantage of those specific virtual machines instead.) Also, does LLVM support targeting 16-bit computers so well? (I don't know how to write a LLVM backend.) For Z-machine, one thing I thought might work better to compile into a Z-machine code might be a variant of BASIC instead. But when programming in Z-machine or Glulx, I just use assembly language; you can then run those programs on other computers anyways, so it wouldn't be as much problem. (Many of the tricks in "Tricky Document" assume the use of assembly language, although some could be implemented by optimizers.)
pja 7y ago
Curses was a wonderful, if weird & slightly disjoint at times, experience. I believe I did (eventually) finish it, but doubt I could do so now! Interactive fiction is alive and thriving these days, with an active community of authors & players. Last week was the end of the annual competition, where people submit short (2-hour) games which are collectively judged. There were 82 entries this year, some of which are well worth your time.
peapicker 7y ago
I loved being there at the time, my sorely aging interpreter Jzip was used to bundle the Inform winners of the first IF competition on the Lost Treasures of Infocom CD back in the day. The competition was started by G. Kevin Wilson, who has since gone on to tabletop boardgaming fame as one of the designers behind the boardgames "Descent: Journey in the Dark", "Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame", "Arkham Horror", "Elder Sign", and many others. ( ref: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2336/kevin-wilson https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2336/kevin-wilso... )

89 points by doppp 7y ago

Damnit now I wanna kick back with a good drink and some paper to slowly draw a map upon and have another go at Curses. But first I have to pick an interpreter for my Mac. The list[1] pointed to in this article is spectacularly unhelpful, what with being a series of directories with names largely derived from spells in Enchanter and no hints as to what platforms they're on, or what the strengths and weaknesses of each is. The IFDB page for Curses[2] that this article links to points me to a page on another site entirely[3] for interpreter recommendations. Its suggestion for Windows, Mac, and Linux is Lectrote[4]. Which is an Electron app that binds together no less than four different adventure game interpreters. I am generally adverse to Electron apps for the usual reasons (CPU/RAM hogs that consistently break OSX's built-in spellcheck/text expansion on all their text input fields) but somehow, contemplating the teetering pile of virtuality that running a Javascript Z-machine with an entire web browser strapped on the side entails, I feel like this is entirely appropriate in this case. I also feel like the process of digging through this twisty maze of web links, all different, may have made my score go up. 1: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/ http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/inter... 2: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8 https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8 3: http://brasslantern.org/players/howto/tadownload-c.html http://brasslantern.org/players/howto/tadownload-c.html 4: https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote/releases https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote/releases

tjr 7y ago
I don't know what but if it's consider "best" or not, but I use Zoom: https://www.logicalshift.co.uk/mac/zoom.html https://www.logicalshift.co.uk/mac/zoom.html
sp332 7y ago
You could just click the "Play On-line" button from link #2 and arrive at http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2Fcurses.z5 http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...
msla 7y ago
Frotz is a good Z-machine interpreter, and there seems to be a MacFrotz: https://www.thinkyhead.com/macfrotz https://www.thinkyhead.com/macfrotz You might be able to compile the original frotz: https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ There's more here: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter
- duskwuff 7y ago
  MacFrotz is not a viable option. Its last release was in 2004, it's only available as a PowerPC application, and there is no source available. (I suspect it was originally built to run on Classic Mac OS.) Building frotz from source should work fine, though.
- Ivoah 7y ago
  The original frotz is installable with homebrew on macOS
someguyorother 7y ago
I like Gargoyle: http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/ http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/ It supports a slew of formats and focuses on good typography.
7thaccount 7y ago
On Linux (not sure if Mac is similar or not) I just use Gargoyle as one commenter pointed out below. It works amazingly well and can run all kinds of IF formats. I'd love to find a group of people to play IF with some day as a group activity. I was too young during its popular days. Now it is too niche for me to convince any friends or co-workers to give it a go. Curses is super long. If you want something just as beautiful (perhaps more so), but shorter, try anything from Emily Short. She has a few that take anywhere from 15 minutes to a day to play through (Galatea, Alabaster, Bronze...etc). I never finished City of Secrets, but really loved the world. A completely separate author wrote Blue Lacuna which I'm about 1/2 through.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > Curses is super long. It's also a very "old school" interactive fiction game design -- heavily item-driven puzzles, some of which can be made unsolveable by mistake, and at least one maze. Even the author has retrospectively described it as being "by any reasonable standard too hard".
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  > I'd love to find a group of people to play IF with some day as a group activity. I was too young during its popular days. Now it is too niche for me to convince any friends or co-workers to give it a go. I've been joking that my Twitch channel is an exercise in finding extremes that likely no one would actually watch. It mostly only has stuff streamed to it, for instance, because Sea of Thieves gives some small in-game rewards for streaming, and I like finding a lot of the less exciting parts of SoT to stream (including jokes about some of it being Pirate ASMArrr for how quiet and soft I play it sometimes). Anyway, long rambling prologue to: now I really want to try Twitch streaming some text adventures. This sounds like a very appropriate use of the wonders of modern game video streaming technology, both sarcastically in the sense of my above finding silly things to stream for streaming's sake, and not at all facetiously in that if it did somehow attract an audience magically or mysteriously that sounds like an amazing way to play such games.
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
ashton314 7y ago
I've always used Rezrov [1] as my Z-machine interpreter. Pure Perl, runs like a champ on my mac. 1: http://edmonson.paunix.org/rezrov/ http://edmonson.paunix.org/rezrov/
i_don_t_know 7y ago
If you have an iOS device, you may like Craig Smith‘s port of Frotz. It includes a few games, including Curses I think. You can also browse the IFDB and download other games from inside the app.
msla 7y ago
The de-facto standard: https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/

fooblitzky 7y ago

The Inform Designer's Manual[1] has to be one of the most enjoyable books on a programming language ever written. [1] http://inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf http://inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf

zzo38computer 7y ago

ZIL is sometimes still used; there is a new implementation called ZILF. Also, I wrote a document called "The Tricky Document" which describes many new tricks for Z-machine, most of which nobody has ever used as far as I know, which can allow even more efficiency than Inform and ZIL. I also wrote my own implementations of Z-machine, and other people who want to try, can also try to do so.

derefr 7y ago
Random awful thought: it wouldn't be that hard to write a Z-machine LLVM backend.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  From there it's only a short hop to compiling to WASM, too.
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  I thought of to have a LLVM backend to target Glulx. Some things are done easily enough; the ! operator of C corresponds to "ushiftr 1,$,$" in Glulx (this is using Glasm syntax). Calling conventions are simple. The Glk functions can be converted directly to Glulx code, with a few exceptions; the Glk type "S" means a different thing in C and in Glulx, although for most of them you can instead use ones that take an array and length, making the function to calculate the length before calling Glk. The C strlen() function becomes "linearsearch 0,1,$,1,-1,0,4,$" in Glulx. However, one thing with both Z-machine and Glulx is that there is no alloca(). However, you might be able to emulate it with a "shadow stack", I thought. (If programming in assembly language, this is not a problem since you can take advantage of those specific virtual machines instead.) Also, does LLVM support targeting 16-bit computers so well? (I don't know how to write a LLVM backend.) For Z-machine, one thing I thought might work better to compile into a Z-machine code might be a variant of BASIC instead. But when programming in Z-machine or Glulx, I just use assembly language; you can then run those programs on other computers anyways, so it wouldn't be as much problem. (Many of the tricks in "Tricky Document" assume the use of assembly language, although some could be implemented by optimizers.)

pja 7y ago

Curses was a wonderful, if weird & slightly disjoint at times, experience. I believe I did (eventually) finish it, but doubt I could do so now! Interactive fiction is alive and thriving these days, with an active community of authors & players. Last week was the end of the annual competition, where people submit short (2-hour) games which are collectively judged. There were 82 entries this year, some of which are well worth your time.

peapicker 7y ago

I loved being there at the time, my sorely aging interpreter Jzip was used to bundle the Inform winners of the first IF competition on the Lost Treasures of Infocom CD back in the day. The competition was started by G. Kevin Wilson, who has since gone on to tabletop boardgaming fame as one of the designers behind the boardgames "Descent: Journey in the Dark", "Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame", "Arkham Horror", "Elder Sign", and many others. ( ref: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2336/kevin-wilson https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2336/kevin-wilso... )