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A reminder to younger readers that these complex maps emerge from programs that ran in 64K, smaller than most web page logos.
by tomcam 4y ago
A reminder to younger readers that these complex maps emerge from programs that ran in 64K, smaller than most web page logos.
- larsbrinkhoff 4y agoSome of those maps show the original Zork that ran in 256K of 36-bit words.
- Narishma 4y ago32K I think for the first game. The TRS-80 and Apple II versions at least.
- flyinghamster 4y agoAlso, the Z-machine that ran Zork and other Infocom games was an early example of a cross-platform bytecode interpreter, well before Java and the like.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI know it was a cross platform virtual machine, but Did it actually interpret byte code and not just text?
- chongli 4y agoYes. Z-machine specifies a table of 256 opcodes. Developers write code in ZIL (Z-machine Implementation Language), a text-based source code. The ZIL is then compiled into a byte code program consisting of those 1-byte opcodes as well as arguments and static data.
- anthk 4y agoThe are new games made for the zmachine since the 90s.
- Bluecobra 4y agoIt’s really amazing how they pulled off Zork for micros. I think it took up ~1MB of memory on a PDP-10?
- fzzzy 4y agoThat's why they split the micro version into Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III. The original version had all three.