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Zork I, Zork II and Zork III are now officially open source (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://no.lastname.nz/post/1917886

Microsoft announced today that they're preserving a bit of history here - with Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III now officially and clearly open source. The source has been around for a while but now it's all proper.

From the announcement they said:

Today, we’re preserving a cornerstone of gaming history that is near and dear to our hearts. Together, Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License. Our goal is simple: to place historically important code in the hands of students, teachers, and developers so they can study it, learn from it, and, perhaps most importantly, play it.

all 24 comments

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[–] 25 points 11 months ago

So they're now openzork!

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    [–] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I've been wanting to get these running via virtual assistant (Alexa, Google, Siri, etc.). Imagine playing these on a long car ride, via voice!

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    • [–] 11 points 11 months ago

    Wow, even released under the "commercial friendly" MIT license.

    I look forward to playing an Ai derivative "coming soon".

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    [–] 10 points 11 months ago

    >be eaten by grue

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    [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Nice! Would love to see Zork Zero opened as well.

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    [–] 5 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    So, where can we get them?

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    By following the links in the article

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

    Sorry, didn't realize only an excerpt was posted here. That's on me.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Maybe it's lazy, but I always ask for people to post things in the comments that are in the article, so I don't have to read the article.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (2 children)

    I understand if the article is long or convoluted and you just need a short summary but even refusing to click the link and do a quick check is lazy AF and should not be encouraged. Or at least use AI for that.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Holy fuck, I'm not using AI for that shit.

    A lot of times people are happy to share stuff in the comments. I do it myself for articles I'm actually interested in reading. It's part of the human connection that makes the internet a interesting place to be, not an AI hellscape.

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    • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Reminds me of a game my buddy and I made called BIP.

    BIP was a crazy computer that went nuts.

    Our code was about as sophisticated as this. As in, not. lol

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    [–] 1 point 11 months ago (5 children)

    Are there any tablets good for old text adventures games?

    There was the Ink Console coming out, but that seemingly died off.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    How do you mean? in terms of a keyboard? Or e-ink?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Both, so I will assume I am being unrealistic. :(

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Well if you have a lot of money everything's great :D But srs, there's a bunch of them that run out-of-the-box android that would do it. Boox is what I'm thinking of specifically, maybe a used one even - and they have a USB C port you can just plug your favorite clicky keyboard into and baddabing - perfect e-ink Zorkage.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Finally got a chance to look into the Boox and wanted to say thanks for the suggestion!

    Currently broke of course, but this looks like it would do everything the Ink Console would of and then some. There's a version of Zork (all) on the Play store as well!

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago

    Right on - I thought I saw something about someone jailbreaking a kindle again which might be another avenue if you've got the time and interest. There's also the raspberry-pi-with-an-e-ink-HAT option but it doesn't get bigger than 7 inches afaik. Otherwise, yeah those used prices should come down eventually.

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    • 19 comments in c/opensource@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 19 points 11 months ago

    from Zork 1

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    [–] 17 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Is this the one where you get eaten by a grue?

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    • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    I'd forgotten about those games. Played a little in college in the 80s.

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    [–] 8 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Are games with semantic text input any fun? They look like they'd be tremendously frustrating as a modern gamer. I guess you need to learn the language it's looking for?

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I liked them but I also grew up with Choose Your Own Adventure books. You might try some of the hybrid games like Kings Quest that have graphics and use arrow keys but also use a parser for input.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The commands aren’t very complicated. You’re mostly looking at stuff, taking stuff, or using items on stuff. It’s usually just [verb] [noun] type simple 2 word sentences.

    The hard part of Zork is figuring out where to go and what to use where. Navigation in the game is usually by compass directions but the map is not a plain grid, so you can go north and then go west and end up right back ever you started for odd reasons. You’re highly encouraged to make your own map on paper, in addition to lots of notes about things you saw in each area.

    The game even includes a maze, a reference to the earlier Colossal Cave Adventure’s “maze of twisty passages, all alike.” Navigating it is a real challenge!

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I unfortunately don't have much time to play games.

    I've tried Zork a few times, but I always get stuck near some clearing, and I don't know where to go. Basically at the start.

    Anyway, curiosity combined with imagination, yeah, could be fun.

    Main reason I haven't tried it is pretty stupid. I don't know how to save and reset, otherwise Zork is also on our SDF pubnix. But I also didn't really go out looking. You can try it without sign-up on telehack.com. Also, why the hell can't I run telnet (freezes or takes long time to respond) on Arch + KDE in terminal emulator (I tried 2), but it works in TTY?

    And a list of many BBSs: https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/

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    • [–] 10 points 11 months ago

    So can I get the solution to Zork on the C64 now :-D

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    [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Want some rye? Course ya do!

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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    You are likely to be eaten by a grue, if this predicament seems particularly cruel, consider who's fault it could be, not a torch or a map in your inventory!

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Sweet, I've been looking forward to some quality-of-life improvements and the addition of new roguelike mechanics forever

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    [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Off to Frobozz I go, I guess

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    12 comments in c/gaming@lemmy.zip view that post
    [–] 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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    • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    I should really give Zork an earnest try. Every few years I pick it up for like 10min, thinking "Wow, this is cool", and then drop it.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    It's a ton of fun. Honestly, I suggest you play it the way I did as a kid, and bring out a bunch of paper and pencils and start drawing your own maps by hand. There's something magical about that process, imo.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That sounds like the way to do it. Last time, I read some posts where people were using premade maps online, and my first thought was that it would defeat the purpose. I want to feel like an explorer.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I remember the start of having an online way to figure things out, starting with the maps. Stratics was an early source for the current MMORPGs and the solutions. Before then, unless you had a group of people all sharing their discoveries on a BBS, you had pencil and paper by you to figure things out. It does change the game experience when you have to live within its boundary and can't peek at the bigger solutions. Some games got frustrating because of this, but the Infocom line had their great parser that helped in its own ways by being a bit more accessible. That's what I'm interested in more than the games themselves, how it was so good at conversational dialogue and understanding your prompt, in the same days where ELIZA was around in the personal computer world and was very limited because it was just IF-THEN clauses.

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    • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Attack Troll with Nasty Knife

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    8 comments in c/opensource@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 18 points 11 months ago

    Nice, time to turn off all of my lights and be eaten by a grue

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    [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Rare Microsoft W here. Is there AI included with Zork?

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    • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Considering that afaik they were shipped in Z-code, the game code was already visible to any Z-machine implementation and to whoever wanted to fiddle with raw Z-code.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    They were shipped in z-code, but z-code is basically machine code, and indeed, you can patch any game if you want to fiddle with the binary. The source code is human-readable.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Not only we had compilers to z-code for a long time, but in fact first third-party languages for the z-machine were better than Infocom's own, which was discovered from their leaked code. So I'd guess reversing the bytecode isn't a problem either for a while now.

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