Zork Port to I7
Jim Aikin
(http://i7-dungeon.sourceforge.net/source.html)? A friend of mine found
it by googling. It seems to have appeared in 2008. It doesn't want to
compile in the current version of I7, and I'm wondering if it ever
compiled ... and if so, under what version?
Dean seems to have put his own copyright notice on it, which is pretty
darn odd considering he probably didn't own the rights to it in the
first place.
Has anyone played it? Is it a faithful port, or is it loose?
--JA
Al
> Hey, does anyone know anything about the Dean Menezes port of Zork to I7
> it by googling. It seems to have appeared in 2008. It doesn't want to
> compile in the current version of I7, and I'm wondering if it ever
> compiled ... and if so, under what version?
>
> Dean seems to have put his own copyright notice on it, which is pretty
> darn odd considering he probably didn't own the rights to it in the
> first place.
>
> Has anyone played it? Is it a faithful port, or is it loose?
I was able to compile an earlier source code version under one of the
earlier
compiler releases.
It will not compile in it's present form under 5U92 or 5Z71.
I played a portion of it when it first came out and there may be a few
minor
differences but it seems to be close to the original
David Kinder
> Hey, does anyone know anything about the Dean Menezes port of Zork to I7
> (http://i7-dungeon.sourceforge.net/source.html)? A friend of mine found
> it by googling. It seems to have appeared in 2008. It doesn't want to
> compile in the current version of I7, and I'm wondering if it ever
> compiled ... and if so, under what version?
There's a compiled build here
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/ZorkI7.ulx
It was compiled with 5T18. Recompiling it with the current I7 would probably
be good as it would likely benefit from the Glulx acceleration opcodes.
It seems to be a faithful version of the mainframe Zork/Dungeon, at least at
the start.
David
S. John Ross
> Dean seems to have put his own copyright notice on it, which is pretty
> darn odd considering he probably didn't own the rights to it in the
> first place.
He could legitimately claim copyright on the _code_ since he's doing
that himself, but player-readable strings (presumably copied directly
from the original) would be a no-no (a violation of Activision's rights
to unless they gave permission; certainly not something he could claim
the rights to himself).
Victor Gijsbers
> Hey, does anyone know anything about the Dean Menezes port of Zork to I7
> (http://i7-dungeon.sourceforge.net/source.html)? A friend of mine found
> it by googling. It seems to have appeared in 2008. It doesn't want to
> compile in the current version of I7, and I'm wondering if it ever
> compiled ... and if so, under what version?
It seems the only things you need to change to make it compile are:
(1) some inventory listings have to be changed to "Rule for printing the
name of the ... while taking inventory:".
(2) There are two rooms called Small Room. This is presumably a bug that
did not show up in the previous build of Inform 7. Unfortunately, I
don't know which of the references in the game are to which of the small
rooms, so I cannot fix this--someone with better Zork knowledge should
step in. ;)
Regards,
Victor
Jim Aikin
There are other bugs that show up after those are fixed. I had a problem
with a report rule that had no apparent errors ... at least none that I
could find.
If someone wants to fix the thing, that would be super -- assuming it's
a good port.
--JA
David Kinder
> If someone wants to fix the thing, that would be super -- assuming it's
> a good port.
I don't know how good it is, but there is a pretty good Z-code / Inform 6 port:
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/zdungeon.z5
David
David Kinder
> 6 port:
>
> http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/zdungeon.z5
Alternatively, you can run the MDL original with a bit of work:
http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlXinterpretersXconfusion.html
If you're not on Windows, though, you'll need to roll your own
executable of this.
David
Victor Gijsbers
> There are other bugs that show up after those are fixed. I had a problem
> with a report rule that had no apparent errors ... at least none that I
> could find.
The report rule that comes up first just needs another dot after it, in
order to stop confusing the parser; and then there are a lot of
"if"-conditions that need to be fixed (like "if x is 2 or 4", which must
become "if x = 2 or x is 4"). And then still more problems pop up.
But the very existence of those rooms with the same name and all those
if-conditions which are now thankfully illegal, since they _didn't do
what you thought they would do_ , makes me suspect that this port has
not received a lot of testing.
Kind regards,
Victor
Jayson Smith
settle this once and for all, but the truth is, I don't know, and I'm a bit
interested. Who actually owns the copyright on the mainframe Zork? IIRC even
the final MDL version, after development had been stopped in favor of the
microcomputer versions, claims to be copyrighted by MIT. Of course, the
Infocom Zork games claim Infocom copyright, and not "used under license from
MIT" or some such. So probably, Infocom acquired the rights to the mainframe
Zork from MIT, or MIT never actually had a copyright on it in the first
place. In either case, I assume that would give Activision copyright on the
mainframe Zork. I am *not* a lawyer of any kind, so what I say here is
probably worth less than one tenth of one grain of salt.
Jayson
"S. John Ross" <sj...@io.com> wrote in message
news:DPrGn.83156$O81....@news.usenetserver.com...
Andrew Owen
"Late 1977 a hacker obtained a copy of the Zork source code, which was
subsequently spread.[3] The leaked Zork source code was later used by
Bob Supnik, a programmer from Digital Equipment Corporation, to create
a Fortran IV port, which allowed the game to run on the smaller DEC
PDP-11.[4] Late 1977 the Zork authors had decided to rename Zork to
Dungeon, and Supnik subsequently released his port as Dungeon in
January 1978.[5][6] Somewhere in 1978 the Zork developers received
notice from Tactical Studies Rules, the publisher of Dungeon!, who
claimed trademark rights to the name Dungeon, and they subsequently
changed the name back to Zork.[7] When Zork became a commercial
product at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice
was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be
allowed. This Fortran version, and C translations thereof, have been
included in several Linux distributions."
So... copyright Infocom, but can be distributed. Except no citation is
given for the last, important, part. In practice Activision allows the
non-commercial use of Zork IP and has previously freely distributed
Zork I to III. You should ask permission, but if you don't you're
probably unlikely to get a cease and desist notice.