.z5 or .zblorb

[Mark Brethen]

I always thought that both .z5 and .zblorb files were used when
playing IF. Frotz seems to want only one. Which one do I use?

[Craig Smith]

Not sure what you mean. Both are supported, but they are not the same
thing. Extensions .z3, .z4, .z5, and .z8 are game files containing
only the IF z-code of the indicated numeric version. Zblorb is an
archive format (like zip) especially for IF, and includes multiple
resources, including the .z5 (or other version) game itself as well as
splash images, etc.

If you have a zblorb or z5 file and it isn't working, it's possible
it's corrupt, or it has the wrong extension. If you manually rename
an actual .z5 file to have a .zblorb extension or vice versa, it won't
work. (However, naming an actual .z5 file to end in .z3 or .z4
doesn't cause a problem.)

[Mark Brethen]

I guess I'm used to playing in Zoom, which uses the .z# file but also
let's you drop a Blorb file in the "Story Information" window to
change the resources for the particular game (if that makes sense).

[Mark Brethen]

I get a "wrong format message" when I load the blorb file. It contains
AIFF files. I don't know if your app knows what to do with them?
The .z5 loads fine.

[Craig Smith]

AIFF files are sound files. Frotz does not currently support sound,
but it should silently (npi) ignore AIFF records in blorb files and
still use the Z-code record. Probably the zblorb you are using
contains only sound resources and doesn't actually have a game file in
it. (And so it really shouldn't have extension zblorb just just
blorb, because there is no Z-code.)

[Mark Brethen]

I guess that begs the question: Can .z and .blb files somehow be
combined to create a .zblorb that will work in Frotz? (I'm thinking of
those that contain graphics).

On Jul 9, 10:39 pm, Mark Brethen <mark.bret...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As a matter of fact, it is a .blb extension. Like I mentioned, Zoom
> used both the .z5 and .blb files. Now I understand what's going on.
> Thanks.

[Craig Smith]

Yes, but unfortunately all of the blorb tools I know of are command-line tools (which work like zip or tar). You would need to extract all the files using the command line tool into a clean directory, then add the .z# file and repackage them into a new blorb. No one to my knowledge has made a nice GUI frontend to manipulate blorb files, at least not on Mac. If you do find one, let me know.

So, out of curiosity, are the blb files you are working with the ones from this page? http://ifarchive.plover.net/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmediaXblorb.html

If so, you might as well not bother, because version 6 games with graphics aren't yet supported either, so bundling them together into one zblorb for Frotz won't help. Right now the only in-game graphics Frotz supports is for Glulx games, plus splash screens. I do plan on adding sound support pretty soon, though. I also eventually plan to add Z6 support, but that's not a priority. I'd rather do TADS and other game system support before that, since new games are being written for those systems.

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[Mark Brethen]

Close: http://ifarchive.giga.or.at/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmediaXsound.html

There you will find versions of the sound files released as part of
two Infocom games.