The Visible Zorker: Zork 1(eblong.com)
113 pointsby PLenz11 hours ago3 comments
  • Joe_Cool8 hours ago
    This is neat. Z-machine internals without needing to run a debugger.
    • ghaff8 hours ago
      Very cool. Did a very little testing for Infocom back in the day and knew a lot of the folks involved.
  • projektfu7 hours ago
    It seems to often make it hard to get back where you were, like you go west and then east and end up in a different place. I don't know enough about z-machines to tell why.
    • II2II4 hours ago
      It has been a while since I've played interactive fiction, so I can't make a specific suggestion, but modern games seem to be better at keeping the directions consistent (or at least providing clues when they are not). As others have noted, older games broke directionality to serve as puzzles -- failing to acknowledge that some people have a sense of direction while following twisty paths!

      Newer games also tend to follow some quality of life rules in their design, things like avoiding arbitrary deaths and avoiding situations where the player cannot progress because they missed something earlier in the game.

    • pdw6 hours ago
      Nothing to do with the VM. The game was designed that way, navigation is part of the puzzle.
    • conexions7 hours ago
      Perhaps you could try making a map.
      • sllabres6 hours ago
        Or in this case; just click on "map"
    • anthk6 hours ago
      Not ZMachine related, not even with Inform6, where n_to, s_to and w_to e_to are pretty much self-explanatory. It's just that Dungeon/Zork/Zork-I-II-III were made that way.
  • raffael_de6 hours ago
    Would Inform 6 nowadays be still the language of choice for developing text based games like Zork? Or even a reasonable choice for that matter?
    • jhbadger3 hours ago
      There's also ZIL by way of ZILF https://github.com/taradinoc/zilf This is the Lisp-like language that Infocom implementers actually used back in the day.
    • ChicagoDave2 hours ago
      I built https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee/ as a modern IF platform (Typescript) that runs natively in a browser.

      Also https://sharpee.net/

    • svachalek6 hours ago
      It's still pretty good. TADS is a more modern alternative, and the one I would go with, but basically these haven't been commercially viable products since the 80s so there's not a lot going into it.

      Arguably, the right answer now is to document everything that matters to you about the adventure, and tell an LLM to run it.

      • ChicagoDave2 hours ago
        TADS is hardly modern. It’s actually the oldest VM based platform from the early 90’s.
        • jhbadger2 hours ago
          Well, TADS is older than Inform, yes, but the whole idea of VM-based platforms for adventures originated from Infocom's Z-machine starting with Zork I in 1980 -- it's what let them basically release their games for every platform current in the US in the 1980s.
      • m4635 hours ago
        I wonder if you could make a "choose-your-own-adventure" book uning LLMs.

        It would write the book ahead of you, kind of like how railroads could send trains with supplies out to the track as it was built.

        • taormina5 hours ago
          Like with any LLM produced project, can you? Sure. Will it be engaging, well written or consistent? Almost certainly not.
        • ChicagoDave2 hours ago
          You could, but no one wants to read or play GenAI content.
    • dwheeler6 hours ago
      I think Inform 7 is pretty cool. I suggest checking in to that as well.
    • anthk6 hours ago
      Yes, very easy to grasp and games will be much lighter than Inform7. Tads it's propietary even if the interpreters are free. Inform6 has the whole stack (even free documentation too), from Inform Beginner's Guide to these, where you have libre games for Inform6 and some free as in freedom related documentation of Inform6 internals.

      https://jxself.org/git/