![]() ![]() To have the game work on a particular machine, it needed to run a Z-machine (or ZIP - Zork Interpreter Program), and the game code to be run by the Z-machine. Zork and later Infocom games were (re)written in this language, called ZIL (Zork Implementation Language). ![]() Also, an early type of virtual machine called the "Z-machine" was developed that would interpret compact and portable game code written in a specialized language. For this reason the game was split into three parts (Zorks I, II, and III), each representing a part of the original Zork world. However, as it had been developed on a PDP-10 and had naturally grown to fit the resources available on the mainframe, Zork would not fit on the the much smaller microcomputers of the day that consumers would have at home, such as the Apple II or the Tandy TRS-80. Seemingly for convenience, Zork was the first title to be published, as it already was a finished product. Members of the faculty founded Infocom in 1979, originally as a company that could produce any kind of software (for an interesting story see the documentary Get Lamp by Jason Scott). Eventually the game's parser could understand more complex sentences than Colossal Cave's could (the latter was limited to commands of one or two words, and considered the first five characters of each word only), the game was renamed to Dungeon and renamed back to Zork, a creature called "grue" was introduced, and many puzzles were invented. As related by Lebling, the inspiration to write their adventure game came from the appearance of Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure on mainframes on the ARPANET (famously halting all work for two weeks while everyone was playing Cave).Īn overview of Digital PDP-10 hardware (source: Digital Equipment Corporation, one would suppose), the platform on which the original Zork would be developed and played.ĭevelopment of the original Zork was done in MDL, a descendant of LISP that was developed at the Dynamic Modeling Group. The first version of Zork was written in the late seventies on a Digital PDP-10 mainframe at MIT by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling of the Dynamic Modeling Group. Publication overview and some notes for collectors ContentsĪ brief history of the development of Zork And the name Infocom is almost synonymous with Zork it was their first game, it was a dungeon-crawl, it reportedly had a troll in it. They had their roots in a time when writing computer games was mostly a diversion for programmers working on room-filling mainframes. They had a fantastic parser, it was said. Perhaps because of their obscurity there was a alluring mystique attached to Infocom's text adventures. Additionally, some of the machines they ran on, while common in the United States, were not always the most popular in homes in this part of the World - the Commodore 64 being a notable exception. Their titles were disk-based on the Eastern shores of the Atlantic the majority of software for home computers was distributed on cassette due to the high cost of disk drives in these years. Just go east twice and then say XYZZY to pop back to the well house.Aspects of Zork I In early 1980's Europe the games released by American publisher Infocom were not encountered often. When you take it, head SOUTHEAST, WEST and SOUTH to get down to the Orange Room. You want to go EAST, SOUTH, then NORTH to get to the chest. Now head west and south to get into the Pirate Maze. Wave the Rod to make a crystal bridge appear. OK, now head to the Fissure, west of the Hall of Mists. If you miss, just "take axe" and throw it again. If you hit a dwarf in here anywhere, and he throws an axe, take it! Then when you see him again, "throw axe at dwarf" to get him. Drop off your treasures.ĭrop off the keys for now, then say "plugh" to return to Y2. Say "plugh" to zap back to the Well House. To the north is a chamber with a hole in it, with silver. To the south is the South Side Chamber with jewelry (+7 score, +5 drop off). To the west is a West Side Chamber with coins (+7 score, +5 drop off). Open the cage so the bird drives away the snake. Head south and grab the gold (+7 score, +9 to drop off). ![]()
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