PieFed.WorldZork I, Zork II and Zork III are now officially open source
Zippy Botwww.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/zork-i-zork-ii-an…
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chemical_cutthroatWhen I first started playing D&D 30 fucking years ago I used to take my hand drawn maps of Zork to school and use those as dungeon maps for my friends and I to play on in the back of class. Goddamn its been a long time, but I owe A LOT to Zork.
paraphrand
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?
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.
I've tried one King's Quest game and found it frustrating, but that was years ago. Maybe could try again.
They were tremendously frustrating back then too. And we had no fucking internet and if you didn't have a buddy who knew how to beat the game you be calling a 900 number tipline lol.
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!
u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)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/
I'll give them a shot, thank you.
I learned how to "write" in Grafiti for my Palm Pilot, and I've learned how to best phrase my searches, so I can learn this.
Guy IngonitoYou 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!
Sweet, I've been looking forward to some quality-of-life improvements and the addition of new roguelike mechanics forever
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!
Wow, even released under the "commercial friendly" MIT license.
I look forward to playing an Ai derivative "coming soon".
MinnesotaGoddam
ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠So, where can we get them?
ジンBy following the links in the article
Sorry, didn't realize only an excerpt was posted here. That's on me.
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.
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.
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.
It’s like going to a store and asking a random person nearby to pick out the item you want, which you are fully capable of reaching yourself, while you keep standing around and do nothing. Great human interaction.
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
Are there any tablets good for old text adventures games?
There was the Ink Console coming out, but that seemingly died off.
How do you mean? in terms of a keyboard? Or e-ink?
Both, so I will assume I am being unrealistic. :(
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.
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!
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.
orenjNice, time to turn off all of my lights and be eaten by a grue
Alabaster_MangoRare Microsoft W here. Is there AI included with Zork?
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.
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.
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.
FerkCode being visible is not very useful if you can't distribute it, extend it, expand it and improve it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Oh, and I was. Many times.
Like, what kind of eating? I'm ok with the lights out. Raises the suspense...
Consider whose fault it could be: not a torch or a match in your inventory
https://youtu.be/4nigRT2KmCE
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.
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.
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.
Good judgment. There is at least one puzzle all about navigating a confusing area without a guide. A pre-made map would rob you of the challenge.
I second the suggestion of mapping by hand.
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.
The rise of the Internet guide really ruined video games. MMOs especially are basically unplayable with how people interact with them.
Back in the day, it sometimes took me YEARS to solve an Infocom game. No internet meant no help. One had to send away for clues in the mail.
IIRC, I used to do it in Excel. It was GRUEsome and I didn't get very far in the game.
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