4 ms·

If this piques your interest and you're interested in programming history, you will very likely enjoy reading about the Zork Implementation Language and the Z-

by mundo 12y ago

If this piques your interest and you're interested in programming history, you will very likely enjoy reading about the Zork Implementation Language and the Z-machine, on which Inform is based: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine And the original spec for game authors from Infocom is quite entertaining: http://xlisp.org/zil.pdf http://xlisp.org/zil.pdf Good stuff. More generally, if you want a short (<1hr) and amusing example of IF, try this: http://pr-if.org/play/violet/ http://pr-if.org/play/violet/

gradstudent 12y ago
I cannot upvote this enough. Violet is wonderful.
dsjoerg 12y ago
Wow, just played Violet and holy smokes that was fantastic. THANK YOU
bobbyi_settv 12y ago
For further reading, I'd like to recommend the book Let's Tell a Story Together: A History of Interactive Fiction by Jimmy Maher. It is available for free from the author (in Kindle format or readable online): http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/index.html http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/index.html The same author has also written many great blog posts walking through the history of interactive fiction http://www.filfre.net/about-me/sitemap/ http://www.filfre.net/about-me/sitemap/ His article about Ultima IV got 97 comments the last time it was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020954
taradinoc 12y ago
If you enjoy reading about the Zork Implementation Language, you might also enjoy my project, ZILF, which is a working implementation of ZIL: https://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/ ZIL is basically a domain-specific language on top of MDL, the Lisp-like language that was used to write the original mainframe Zork. The developers went on to start Infocom and split Zork into three parts that were small enough to run on home computers, creating ZIL and the Z-machine in the process. The source code for mainframe Zork is still available, but the subset of MDL implemented by ZILF isn't complete enough to play it. Matthew T. Russotto has written a MDL interpreter to do just that: http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlXinterpretersXconfusion.html http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlX...

by mundo 12y ago

gradstudent 12y ago

I cannot upvote this enough. Violet is wonderful.

dsjoerg 12y ago

Wow, just played Violet and holy smokes that was fantastic. THANK YOU

bobbyi_settv 12y ago

For further reading, I'd like to recommend the book Let's Tell a Story Together: A History of Interactive Fiction by Jimmy Maher. It is available for free from the author (in Kindle format or readable online): http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/index.html http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/index.html The same author has also written many great blog posts walking through the history of interactive fiction http://www.filfre.net/about-me/sitemap/ http://www.filfre.net/about-me/sitemap/ His article about Ultima IV got 97 comments the last time it was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020954

taradinoc 12y ago

If you enjoy reading about the Zork Implementation Language, you might also enjoy my project, ZILF, which is a working implementation of ZIL: https://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/ ZIL is basically a domain-specific language on top of MDL, the Lisp-like language that was used to write the original mainframe Zork. The developers went on to start Infocom and split Zork into three parts that were small enough to run on home computers, creating ZIL and the Z-machine in the process. The source code for mainframe Zork is still available, but the subset of MDL implemented by ZILF isn't complete enough to play it. Matthew T. Russotto has written a MDL interpreter to do just that: http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlXinterpretersXconfusion.html http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlX...