Comments on: So the Infocom source code base was just ‘released’.

By: buricco

buricco — Tue, 12 May 2020 07:10:01 +0000

In reply to neozeed. I believe so.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Tue, 12 May 2020 05:49:04 +0000

In reply to Roy.

I guess this is an earlier version than the one confusion runs?

https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2015/12/02/confusion-mdl-zork/

By: Roy

Roy — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:43:29 +0000

Software
Source code for seminal adventure game Zork circa-1977 exhumed from MIT tapes, plonked on GitHub
Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue
By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor 8 May 2020 at 06:58
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/08/zork_source_code_released/

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 07:20:42 +0000

In reply to neozeed.

This account is doing the same thing with some success: https://github.com/The-ZIL-Files

By: neozeed

neozeed — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 01:02:03 +0000

In reply to Jesse.

It was the freq words indeed.

The directories are just grabbed off of the old PDP-10 and have lots of junk in the directories (minizork has the actual ZIL assembler source code). And that is what was messing up.

Also one of the files for planetfall was cut short on the triffid object, which prevents compiling.

I was thinking of trying to go one by one to re-build as much as I could. But I’ve been also looking to cross compile simple stuff for the Atari ST, which has proven far more difficult than it should have.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:45:58 +0000

FWIW, ZILF supports Z-machine versions 3-8. If you’re getting errors about exceeding the size limit, that means the assembler isn’t finding the right table of abbreviations, which the game needs in order to fit under the size limit. Check the filenames it prints out and the contents of the “freq” files you have; you may need to rename a file or generate new abbreviations.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 04:51:04 +0000

In reply to JRD.

Source to the ZAP assembler was left in MiniZork 1982.
https://github.com/historicalsource/minizork-1982/blob/master/zap.mid

Interesting for sure, although it’s not the language compiler.

I had thought cornerstone used the Zmachine, which would explain why it was so incredibly slow. Either way it’s a sad end to an otherwise fantastic company.

By: JRD

JRD — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 04:31:05 +0000

Andrew Plotkin, who wrote Glulx, finds clues about the original ZIL compiler in “What is ZIL anyway?”
http://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/what-is-zil-anyway.html