texacala Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 I have a vague memory that years ago I saw a project presented on the Closer To Home website describing a Z-Code interpreter for the A8. These interpreters are used to play text adventures in the popular Z-Code format. I can't find any info on this or a link, but I figured this is the place to ask. The thought of playing newly written interactive fiction on my Atari seems too cool for words, but I don't know if that's even possible. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 (edited) People have written new games for the Z-machine and since it's machine independent, I don't see why it couldn't be then released on the Atari. I don't know if the official Infocom compiler is out there in stand-alone form, though. Maybe this link would help: http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/index.html Edited August 20, 2011 by Bryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 You probably want FROTZ. http://frotz.sourceforge.net/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 You probably want FROTZ. http://frotz.sourceforge.net/ I think that he wants to run story files on the Atari itself, though. There isn't a program to do this. There is, however, an Apple II 6502 Assembly program called "InfoLoad", which will load standard Infocom story files. I'll attach it, and maybe someone can do a port for the Atari... InfoLoad.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 Look for games by CTH Enterprises in our database, I believe that's what you're after. -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 Hello Guys Tom Hunt did write a Z-code interpreter. It was on his site. Haven't looked at it in ages (IF isn't really my thing as I don't seem to be able to find the right words), so I can't give you a link. CU Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texacala Posted August 20, 2011 Author Share Posted August 20, 2011 Ok, I wasn't dreaming! (or I was dreaming about Ann Hathaway but not the Z-Code interpreter). Did anyone try it? I imagine memory would be a problem on the A8 for newer work. Thanks for the tip on the CTH games, I'll see what's in the database. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted August 20, 2011 Share Posted August 20, 2011 Infocom Z-Machine versions 3 & 5 were the two most common formats, so anything made in Inform 7 with a target of Z-Code version 5 stands a good chance of running. Here's some info from my notes: ========================== Z-Machine Interpreter Names: Version 1: ZIP 1979 (Zork Implementation Program) Version 2: ZIP Version 3: ZIP "Standard" Version 4: EZIP/LZIP "Plus" August 1985 Marc Blank ("A Mind Forever Voyaging", "Trinity") Version 5: XZIP "Advanced" September 1987 by Dave Lebling (with contributions from others including Brian Moriarty, Duncan Blanchard and Linde Dynneson) ("Beyond Zork" & "Border Zone) Version 6: YZIP 1988 Tim Anderson & Dave Lebling (graphics, mouse support) "Zork Zero", "Shogun", "Journey" and "Arthur") Two new formats, versions 7 and 8, have recently been devised to cope with large Inform games. The maximum permitted length of a story file depends on the Version, as follows: V1-3 128K V4-5 256K V6 512K V7 320K V8 512K ========================== Sooo, z6, z7, z8 won't be running anytime soon... but there is a HUGE library of z3 & z5 stuff out there that will work, and you can make new stuff in Inform 7, with the target for z5, so, it's no problem to make new games that will work on the Atari. The new way of doing things, though, is with Glux. Glux is really great, and very powerful for new systems, but anything written for a Glux target will not work on the Atari. You can get "Gluxe" here, for many platforms. Gluxe runs Glux target code, and is really a very cool modern way to do things with a Z-Machine Virtual Machine, on modern systems. I'm currently getting re-familiarized with all of this stuff. While no one is currently using Z-Machines for anything other than Interactive Fiction, I have started investigating its potential as a general purpose virtual machine for classical AI, a task for which it has a lot of potential to be really useful. In any case, I can answer whatever you need to know about Z-Machines, since I'm currently fairly involved with them. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texacala Posted August 20, 2011 Author Share Posted August 20, 2011 That's very helpful and exciting to think about. If I can find Tom Hunt's program somewhere I'll try it out and see what I can get running. I actually like the idea of Z-machine development for the Atari, seems like another fun way to use the system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 That's very helpful and exciting to think about. If I can find Tom Hunt's program somewhere I'll try it out and see what I can get running. I actually like the idea of Z-machine development for the Atari, seems like another fun way to use the system. As Atari Frog mentioned, look atarimania by CTH enterprises. Those are the Tom Hunt ports of Z-Code Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 That's very helpful and exciting to think about. If I can find Tom Hunt's program somewhere I'll try it out and see what I can get running. I actually like the idea of Z-machine development for the Atari, seems like another fun way to use the system. As Atari Frog mentioned, look atarimania by CTH enterprises. Those are the Tom Hunt ports of Z-Code Please post a direct link to it; I tried looking for CTH, in the search bar, at atarimania, & nothing came up. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-cth-enterprises_publisher_2494_8_G.html That should be it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 The A8 interpreters will only manage V3 titles. I looked into this a few years back when making MaxFlash cart versions of the Infocom games (no disk swapping etc). The best option I think is to reverse engineer the C64 Border Zone, using Frotz sources as a reference (I think that's what I used when doing the HHGTTG V3 code), and compare the BZ V5 engine with the A8 V3 code and then make a new cart-based engine by fixing up the relevent bits, which should be around disk access and memory usage (maybe meaning 128K RAM would be miminal requirement?). Probably worth including the V4 engine from the C64 at the same time. From what I remember the differences between V3 & V5 meant much V5 syntax couldn't be targeted at V3 and trying to rewrite those parts was too difficult. I think I was looking at the Inform sources for Scott Adams or something like that. Ended up just making a special cart for his games having done Brian Howarth's beforehand. Those can be found over at AtariMax. Mark 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 Speaking of which - here is a new topic on the Atarimax forums: Infocom Text Adventures http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texacala Posted August 23, 2011 Author Share Posted August 23, 2011 So did Tom Hunt port certain text adventures to the A8, or did he write a general app that will run any v3 titles? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 Though having not investigated but having played some of the CTH titles, my impression would be that he had 'wrapped' the existing interpreter with a loader (and from what I remember also may have hooked into some of the screen drawing parts, e.g. dlist, to brand it). The Z-file containing the adventure's compiled code contains its own header and so simply placing this starting at the correct sector on the disk would mean the interpreter would detect it and run fine. So many of the V3 examples (e.g. Alice) could have been downloaded and used 'as-is'. This probably had the advantage too that these works were smaller in size than a full-blown Infocom title and so would fit on just one side of a disk. FYI: For the cartridge port, code was assembled to run in the cart-bank area ($A000-$BFFF) and Z-code and working RAM is located below this, wheras the Infocom interpreter loads low. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted August 28, 2011 Share Posted August 28, 2011 Mini Zork is available as well: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-mini-zork-i_18988.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bikerbob Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Bringing this back up because I would like to write my own "infocom" adventure for my son or maybe write it with him. Now 8 years later.. can the 8bit be used to Author a game.. or is it better to just buckle under and do it on a PC? what is the best current source for 8-bit Zmachine Int. compiler.. lots of info out there for the pc. James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Bringing this back up because I would like to write my own "infocom" adventure for my son or maybe write it with him. Now 8 years later.. can the 8bit be used to Author a game.. or is it better to just buckle under and do it on a PC? what is the best current source for 8-bit Zmachine Int. compiler.. lots of info out there for the pc. James Considering that all the best languages for doing this (Inform, Adrift etc) are all modern PC based, you'll want to do it on a PC. Far, FAR easier. As long as you aim for a lower Z-machine version to compile to, you'll be able to run it on an actual Atari. The more modern formats like .z8, .blorb etc. won't work. The modern languages add so much power and functionality, you'd be crazy not to take advantage of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 You'd asked before on this thread so the resources there should help 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
16kRAM Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 This thread demonstrates it's possible to extract Infocom's Z3 interpreter from one of Infocom's Atari disk images and append your own Z3 story. Links at the bottom of my post in that thread may help point you in the right direction. After a pretty intensive month or so of development, I was able to do it with Grue Z3. (Though I had the advantage of starting with someone else's story). https://github.com/michaelsternberg/grue_z3 https://16kram.com/2017/07/20/an-apple-ii-build-chain-for-inform/(Apple II example - but the build instructions for Inform 6.15 and "hello world" example would apply to any 8-bit platform) John Linville's series of posts in Inform and the Coco show a little more sane method of injecting a story file into a disk image. I clumsily concatenated the interpreter, story file, and padded out the remainder of with 0s. Hope it helps. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
16kRAM Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 John Linville's series of posts in Inform and the Coco show a little more sane method of injecting a story file into a disk image. I clumsily concatenated the interpreter, story file, and padded out the remainder of with 0s. Forgot to include a link: http://retrotinker.blogspot.com/2017/11/building-coco-games-with-inform.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotty Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 If you decide to do it on the PC, check out an old program called AGT, The Adventure Game Toolkit. Was shareware, now freeware. I bought it many years ago. Super simple to use, and a great overall program. I myself like the 'big' version of the program, as it gives you a HUGE number of rooms, creatures, commands etc. Granted, the original is no slouch, but the big is a LOT bigger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Game_Toolkit http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/programming/agt/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 Zfiles.zip This is all of the CTH infocom files that I have in my Infocom atr collection. also in the zip is a header CTH loader file that is the wrapper for the z3 files that will fit into a 130kb atr or 90kb atr. add together with copy command or hex editor CTH loader file first then fill atr to desired size. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted July 14, 2019 Share Posted July 14, 2019 Just read about a Z interpreter named Ozmoo that can play up to Z8 on the C64. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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