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This whole thing feels like the INFOCOM way of doing things. Everyone probably knows, but INFOCOM did the Zork type text adventure games. They chose to author

This whole thing feels like the INFOCOM way of doing things. Everyone probably knows, but INFOCOM did the Zork type text adventure games. They chose to author to a virtual machine, which could be ported to many machines once, making all their games playable across a ton of machines. Today, their software is very accessible. Porting a Z machine is not a super heavy lift. Once done, the library of interactive fiction games is available. This machine might make a great target for micro controllers and or other smaller scale systems. Could be fun, and a source of smaller scale software for people to explore, build on. Damn cool! First I've read about this.

anthk 5y ago
>This machine might make a great target for micro controllers and or other smaller scale systems. - V3, perfectly. Infocom games and Puny Inform ones. The best would be the 12th release of Curses in v3 format. - A V5 game would run pretty slow on a C64 for example, you'll need a Turbo Chameleon to run the games at acceptable speed. As acceptable I mean max 4-5 sec lag. - V8 games like Anchorhead are a "no-no" under an 8bit machine. Using telnet/serial against a 16 and more bit machine would be the sanest option.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Depends on the 8-Bit machine doesn't it? I have an Apple //e Platinum running at 16 megahertz. Might do V8 fine. :D
  - anthk 5y ago
    I tried with Vice, REU, Turbo @18mhz and Ozmoo. Running Anchorhead was impossible, and even V5 games such as Vicious Cycles ran borderlinely unusable. I mean, playable over a lag of 8-10 seconds after inputting the command, but it gets tedious fast.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      Bummer. Well, a whole lot remains interesting, thanks for the data points!
      - anthk 5y ago
        https://github.com/johanberntsson/ozmoo https://github.com/johanberntsson/ozmoo
DerekL 5y ago
By the way, portability was only a side effect of the Z-machine. The main purpose was code size. A text adventure compiled down to the Z-machine would take up less space than the same program compiled to machine code. They were written in the Zork Implementation Language (ZIL), which is similar to Lisp.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Yes, as I understand it, that is true.

anthk 5y ago

>This machine might make a great target for micro controllers and or other smaller scale systems. - V3, perfectly. Infocom games and Puny Inform ones. The best would be the 12th release of Curses in v3 format. - A V5 game would run pretty slow on a C64 for example, you'll need a Turbo Chameleon to run the games at acceptable speed. As acceptable I mean max 4-5 sec lag. - V8 games like Anchorhead are a "no-no" under an 8bit machine. Using telnet/serial against a 16 and more bit machine would be the sanest option.

ddingus 5y ago
Depends on the 8-Bit machine doesn't it? I have an Apple //e Platinum running at 16 megahertz. Might do V8 fine. :D
- anthk 5y ago
  I tried with Vice, REU, Turbo @18mhz and Ozmoo. Running Anchorhead was impossible, and even V5 games such as Vicious Cycles ran borderlinely unusable. I mean, playable over a lag of 8-10 seconds after inputting the command, but it gets tedious fast.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Bummer. Well, a whole lot remains interesting, thanks for the data points!
    - anthk 5y ago
      https://github.com/johanberntsson/ozmoo https://github.com/johanberntsson/ozmoo

DerekL 5y ago

By the way, portability was only a side effect of the Z-machine. The main purpose was code size. A text adventure compiled down to the Z-machine would take up less space than the same program compiled to machine code. They were written in the Zork Implementation Language (ZIL), which is similar to Lisp.

ddingus 5y ago
Yes, as I understand it, that is true.