Poor Man's IF Player
chipschap
interest to a limited audience to say the least, but I thought I'd put
it out there just in case anyone wants to have a look.
What it is essentially is a poor man's version of the Gargoyle
player. I make no pretense of having put something together anything
remotely as good as the latter, but what I wanted was a "player of all
games" that would run on small Linux distros.
This one, which I call GGZC for no real reason, has been checked out
on a couple of different generations of the Linux Ubuntu distro, and
also on Puppy Linux 4.21. running from a 2GB USB stick ... which was
the whole point; I wanted something minimalist to run in such an
environment. I would imagine it runs on other Linux distros as well,
but I don't have them set up here to test on.
GGZC will play a wide variety of IF stories/games, in a term, in the
default font, using interpreters which rely on curses/ncurses for
minimal formatting. There are a few new things here; for instance
GGZC allows you to walk up and down directory trees looking for a
file; it will allow you to look inside tars, gzips, zips, bz2, etc.,
archives, will extract the games from the archives and when done, will
fold save files back into the archive; and if it sees an EXE or BAT
file it will try to run it with DOSBOX, if available. (OK, I confess
that I wanted T-Zero on my USB installation...)
I've packaged it with Stephane Peter's excellent "makeself" so
everything--- script and interpreters--- reside in a single file. You
could view this as good or bad depending on how you look at things,
but I wanted simplicity and this provides it.
Why would you want this, when playing with Gargoyle is so much better,
and when it only works with Linux? I don't know, but if you are
interested the executable archive is found here:
http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/ggzc.zip
The full source is at http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/makeggzc.zip ,
but please only download the latter if you are sufficiently interested
as it's a bit large.
Comments, if any, to gg...@bobnewell.net . Bugs are guaranteed to
exist.
Otto Grimwald
> Why would you want this, when playing with Gargoyle is so much better,
> and when it only works with Linux? I don't know, but if you are
> interested the executable archive is found here:
it's a good idea :)
I like to play in console mode sometimes. What I regret is on linux you
can't use nice proportional fonts in console as they only display
monospace fonts (or if you select a proportional font, it will display
it as a monospace font)
To improve your package, you could replace frotz with fizmo which
handles unicode better than frotz (ggzc doesn't display well accented
letter if you don't switch your terminal to iso8859).
chipschap
> To improve your package, you could replace frotz with fizmo which
> handles unicode better than frotz (ggzc doesn't display well accented
> letter if you don't switch your terminal to iso8859).
Very good idea; I was not aware of fizmo but I was aware of how bad
French IF looked :(
I'll get hold of this and put in in the archive over the next couple
of days.
Kazuki Mishima
without using Wine, so I might give GGZC a try.
Otto Grimwald
> I can't easily get Gargoyle running on my 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10 system
> without using Wine, so I might give GGZC a try.
can't you use this package?
Hannes Schüller
> and when it only works with Linux?
I actually *prefer* playing on a terminal. The only problem I see is
that even the 'source' distribution comes with binary interpreters. As
far as I can see, the rest is just shell scripts. Am I right in
assuming that I can simply exchange the files in terps.zip, for example
to get it running on non i386 systems? Or did you do something special
to compile these interpreters?
Hannes
dott.Piergiorgio
Mah... I'll see this April how it works... but I prefer the rather
intricate kludge I done in the past, at least because somewhat actually
works....
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
Otto Grimwald
> I actually *prefer* playing on a terminal. The only problem I see is
> that even the 'source' distribution comes with binary interpreters.
I think it could make sense to get the sources with the interpreters as
sources as well, like for gargoyle.
Kazuki Mishima
I had no idea that package existed. I'm not sure I can use it yet, as
it's for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and doesn't seem to be
available for the current Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
chipschap
That's certainly doable and logical especially now as I'm doing a
little customization (not much, but a little). I had hesitated in the
first place to redistribute interpreter source, but most of the
licenses seem to allow it. I'll repackage the source distribution
(over time, as it will take time) to include interpreter source and
builds. And yes, as noted above, the rest is just a large shell
script, nothing particular, just something I wanted to have for
distributions such as puppy linux.
BTW, as recommended, I've put in fizmo for non-English games, and
rebuilt git with glktermw for the same reason. This means that the
ncursesw library is a requirement, but it seems to be present in most
distros, certainly in Ubuntu and Puppy at least, which are the distros
I test on. I have uploaded this to the same place,
http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/ggzc.zip and makeggzc.zip.
There is the question above about running on non-i386 systems. Yes
you can swap out the interpreters in terps.zip but you do have to be
able to run a true bash shell. Great if it works, but of course it
goes beyond my very modest initial concept and purpose, which was
something small and relatively simple to run on a Puppy Linux bootable
USB stick--- and that remains my purpose, as Gargoyle is otherwise
better in every way.
Otto Grimwald
> I had no idea that package existed. I'm not sure I can use it yet, as
> it's for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and doesn't seem to be
> available for the current Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
doesn't it work if you download it individually and install it with dpkg
or other package management facility?
Kazuki Mishima
<contact_is_on_webs...@anamnese.fr.st> wrote:
> doesn't it work if you download it individually and install it with dpkg
> or other package management facility?
It does! Yay! Why hasn't this been added to the Karmic repository, I
wonder?
Dannii
Karmic had already been released when it was added.
Adam Thornton
chipschap <chip...@gmail.com> wrote:
>BTW, as recommended, I've put in fizmo for non-English games, and
>rebuilt git with glktermw for the same reason. This means that the
>ncursesw library is a requirement, but it seems to be present in most
>distros, certainly in Ubuntu and Puppy at least, which are the distros
>I test on. I have uploaded this to the same place,
>http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/ggzc.zip and makeggzc.zip.
I would just point out that there is a reason I built the CLI Inform
distribution to not even assume a cursor-addressible terminal. s390 and
s390x, if you're running on the console, for instance, do not. My ARM
platform in so far as it has a console at all usually uses a serial
link. (Of course, I can telnet or ssh to it and use a virtual vt100,
which DOES allow me to use curses, but that means the network has to be
up.)
Now, you can point out that that's not a way any sane person would run
Inform, and you would be right. But having something that speaks only
to a stdio stream does give you something that you can trivially plug
into something else, be it a chatbot or a screen reader or whatever.
>There is the question above about running on non-i386 systems. Yes
>you can swap out the interpreters in terps.zip but you do have to be
>able to run a true bash shell. Great if it works, but of course it
>goes beyond my very modest initial concept and purpose, which was
>something small and relatively simple to run on a Puppy Linux bootable
>USB stick--- and that remains my purpose, as Gargoyle is otherwise
>better in every way.
And if you're booting from a USB stick then you probably can assume x86
or x64 and a cursor-addressible terminal.
Adam
vaporware
> In article <3e98a334-8c1e-4490-bfa4-e4997e98f...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
>
> chipschap <chipsc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >BTW, as recommended, I've put in fizmo for non-English games, and
> >rebuilt git with glktermw for the same reason. This means that the
> >ncursesw library is a requirement, but it seems to be present in most
> >distros, certainly in Ubuntu and Puppy at least, which are the distros
> >I test on. I have uploaded this to the same place,
>
> I would just point out that there is a reason I built the CLI Inform
> distribution to not even assume a cursor-addressible terminal. s390 and
> s390x, if you're running on the console, for instance, do not. My ARM
> platform in so far as it has a console at all usually uses a serial
> link. (Of course, I can telnet or ssh to it and use a virtual vt100,
> which DOES allow me to use curses, but that means the network has to be
> up.)
Can't you use VT100 emulation over serial? That's how the real VT100
connected.
vw
Adam Thornton
vaporware <jmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Can't you use VT100 emulation over serial? That's how the real VT100
>connected.
If I were using a VT100 rather than a Silent 700, sure.
Adam
chipschap
source and is about 7 MB:
http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/makeggzc.zip
It was an interesting experience compiling all 11 interpreters, which
only increases my admiration for Gargoyle (which has I think 13 or
more).
I appreciate Adam's comments about further simplicity, but I just
don't have the time to attempt it.
Continue to think of GGZC as hackish, because, well, it is; but I use
it, as I've said often, on my bootable Puppy Linux USB stick. (I
bought a PQI which is extra tiny and extra stealthy, also extra easy
to lose-- a complete OS and IF library on something smaller than my
thumbnail,)
chipschap
> If I were using a VT100 rather than a Silent 700, sure.
With the thermal printing paper, shades of 1977? I'm old enough to
remember when that was the latest and greatest.
Adam Thornton
Yep, thermal paper.
Oooh, that smell.
Adam
Gene Wirchenko
You hear a rustling in front of you.
Never mind; it is just the output.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
chipschap
is not an object for me!) and have developed GGZC a little more; I'm
now going to have to set it aside for at least the near future, so
release 0.95, even if I still consider it alpha, is as far as it
goes.
I've added
1) the ability to play from and save to password protected zip
archives
2) the JACL interpreter (making 12 interpreters in all)
3) a PDF manual, about 13 pages long (rather wordy for a minimalist
system)
There are numerous other cleanups and bug fixes and no doubt some
fresh new bugs too.
Once again the executable is at http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/ggzc.zip
and the manual explains where to get full source code, including the
interpreter source.
I also have a page about GGZC on my web site, http://www.bobnewell.net
. Follow the games link.
The GGZC executable is about 1.2 MB with all of the interpreters and
scripts, and is a very compact way to play a large variety of
interactive fiction in console mode.
chipschap
The play package is at http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/ggzc.zip
The source is at http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/makeggzc.zip
and both of these will be silently updated as (and if) I fix bugs. I'll also resubmit the play package to the I-F archive as soon as I'm sure it's more or less stable.
GGZC is "the poor man's interactive fiction player" and is described in all too much detail in the messages earlier in this thread.