9 ms·
Microsoft makes Zork open-source
- mike1o1 10mo agohttps://github.com/historicalsource/zork1 https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1 Direct link to the repository
- tapoxi 10mo agoIs it just me or is GitHub having errors again? I keep getting 500s.
- gemakelijk 10mo agoThe pages loads for me but I see a "Cannot retrieve latest commit at this time." message.
- tclancy 10mo agoI got hit as well. It was dark. I was likely to be eaten by a grue.
- katspaugh 10mo agoSo Zork was written in Lisp? It had to be! --- <ROUTINE V-ADVENT () <TELL "A hollow voice says \"Fool.\"" CR>>
- agiacalone 10mo agoMDL, actually, which was derived from LISP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)
- drob518 10mo agoI’m curious why they chose MDL rather than Lisp for it. Sure, it would have been ancient MACLISP or whatever, but why not leverage what was already in wide use at MIT at the time?
- jjtheblunt 10mo agomaybe they just made a mini-lisp and called it MDL?
- drob518 10mo agoIt’s very Lispy, but it’s not strictly Lisp. Why, for instance, use “<“ and “>” to surround various forms but not others? If they were to make a mini-Lisp, I’d expect something more like Gnu Emacs Lisp, something that’s obviously a Lisp, but heavily influenced by the Lisps of the day. I’ve found a few old MDL manuals linked from Wikipedia, but none of them have any sort of “Here’s why we created MDL” section that I could find.
- DonHopkins 10mo agoMDL is Grue Emacs Lisp ;)
- drob518 10mo agoHeh!
- staplung 10mo agoMDL is also from MIT and supposedly stood for More Datatypes than Lisp. According to wikipedia "MDL provides several enhancements to classic Lisp. It supports several built-in data types, including lists, strings and arrays, and user-defined data types. It offers multithreaded expression evaluation and coroutines." Seems that most of it's novelties were eventually added into LISP proper.
- WorldMaker 10mo agoMDL is what was in wide use at MIT at the time, the PDP-10 era. The M in MDL is sometimes "MIT" in the various backronyms of what it stood for. (Mostly it was apparently just short for "muddle", a self-deprecating description.) (Also, to be technically correct, these source files aren't even MDL, they are a further descendant called ZIL [Zork Implementation Language].)
- arnonejoe 10mo agoI read a while back it’s a language called zil based on MDL. https://the-rosebush.com/2025/07/studies-of-zil-part-2-how-does-zil-work-anyway/ https://the-rosebush.com/2025/07/studies-of-zil-part-2-how-d...
- leoc 10mo agoFrom one perspective ADVENT is just SHRDLU turned inside out, after all. (Though of course from another perspective it's a fancier WUMPUS.) ('ADVENT' is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure , for anyone who isn't familar.)
- WillAdams 10mo agoA nice overview of the source code for that is: http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf
- leoc 10mo ago(This is not an original observation, to be clear: see eg. https://nickm.com/if/riddle_machines.html https://nickm.com/if/riddle_machines.html )
- m463 10mo agoI remember playing it and finding a bunch of listings There is an enormous stack of line-printer paper here. It is barely readable and totally unintelligible. and: <DEFINE FEEL-FREE (LOSER) <TELL "FEEL FREE, CHOMPER!"> <MEMQ ...... The rest is, alas, unintelligible (as were the implementers).
- thecosas 10mo agoLooks like someone made a project to hook LLMs to Zork with some learning along the way: https://github.com/gudlyf/zork_ai_player https://github.com/gudlyf/zork_ai_player
- dang 10mo ago(URL changed from https://www.theverge.com/news/824881/zork-open-source-microsoft-xbox-activision https://www.theverge.com/news/824881/zork-open-source-micros..., which points to this)
- PaulHoule 10mo ago… right, Activisiom bought Infocom in the 1980 s…
- OhMeadhbh 10mo agoYeah. I had to walk down memory lane to try to remember who bought whom as well. I completely forgot that Activision/Blizzard is a subsidiary of Microsoft Gaming these days.
- w4rh4wk5 10mo agoCan we get a GPL (or even MIT) release of id Tech 7? Pretty please.
- OhMeadhbh 10mo agoDang. I had forgotten Zenimax got scooped up by MSFT Gaming a few years back. It's not an unreasonable request, though I suspect it should be made directly to MSFT Gaming.
- davidw 10mo agoGetting a lot of GitHub errors trying to look at the source code. Still, pretty cool; I remember playing work as a kid.
- jasonjmcghee 10mo agoPretty huge milestone, congrats. I can imagine how much time / effort it took to get there!
- AdmiralAsshat 10mo agoWhy does Microsoft own the rights to Zork?
- seritools 10mo agoInfocom was bought by Activision, ActivisionBlizzard was bought by Microsoft.
- randall 10mo agowhoa til microsoft owns blizzard.
- entropicdrifter 10mo agoYou're one of today's lucky 10,000. It was huge news at the time. The FTC considered not allowing it and the acquisition got delayed for months while back and forth public debate raged.
- danso 10mo agoEasy to forget all the big moves that happened recently, especially since there haven't been (afaict) any major changes to service. I forgot the other day that Sony had bought Bungie, though it'd be pretty memorable if Sony announced Destiny 3 as a PS5 timed exclusive.
- tshaddox 10mo agoMassive media/telecom/tech companies get passed around between other massive media/telecom/tech companies so much that regardless of how much you saw the news at the time, a couple of years later it's tough to remember "Now who is it that owns Warner Bros. currently? AOL? AT&T? Netflix? The sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia?"
- Gormo 10mo agoAnd Sierra. It would be amazing if MS released the source code to some of Sierra classic Hi-Res/AGI/SCI games, or the engines themselves. IIRC, Al Lowe had retained copies of source code from the early Sierra days, and was planning to release some of it publicly a few years ago, but Activision shut him down. Maybe MS would be willing to reconsider that now that they're pursuing historical preservation.
- ginko 10mo agoHasn't the code to Zork been available for ages? For instance: https://github.com/MITDDC/zork https://github.com/MITDDC/zork
- alt227 10mo agoThe article states that Microsoft has made a pull request to the existing repos to include the MIT license. It was public already, what they are doing here is open sourcing the code.
- agiacalone 10mo agoYes, but that happens to be the mainframe version. They are a bit different.
- Gormo 10mo agoThis is the source code to the original, non-commercial version of Zork that originated at MIT. Microsoft has now released the source code for the Infocom's commercial release for microcomputers.
- calibas 10mo agoIt is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
- esafak 10mo agoI wonder if grue was taken from Nelson Goodman's Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction
- MarkusQ 10mo agoYes. Because it is pitch black and therefore you can not determine it's color (plus, the fact that you haven't been eaten by one yet does not justify the conclusion that you won't be). It's also a play on Gardener's "unexpected hanging paradox".
- redundantly 10mo agoNyet. Jack Vance created grues in the one of the Dying Earth series books.
- vunderba 10mo agoLove it. I use a grue reference on 404s to my blog. https://mordenstar.com/zork https://mordenstar.com/zork
- DonHopkins 10mo agoIf this predicament seems particularly cruel, consider whose fault it could be: not a torch or a match in your inventory. MC Frontalot - It Is Pitch Dark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE Featuring Steve Meretzky! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Meretzky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Meretzky
- bluedino 10mo agoI've seen a few things called 'Zork source code' in various places over the years (even on a CD that came with a game programming book of some sort), and copies like this: https://github.com/MITDDC/zork https://github.com/MITDDC/zork What's the lineage here?
- CobrastanJorji 10mo agoGood question, I'm also curious. A quick search shows that there are some differences. The one in this new historicalsources folder has the PLUGH easter egg, but the other one doesn't seem to have it. But the older version has a "Tomb of the Unknown Implementor," which this new version seems to lack.
- jsnell 10mo agoZork was originally written at MIT for PDP-10s in an obscure Lisp dialect (MDL). The authors then later formed a company to sell the game on micro-computers. To do it, they built a virtual machine optimized for this purpose, a new Lisp dialect (ZIL) that could compile to the virtual machine, and the ported the game over to that new dialect. Even so, they had to split the game into three parts to fit. The source you're linking to is the original MDL source. This is about the ZIL source for the three games that the original Zork was split into.
- fsckboy 10mo agoMDL was a dialect of lisp invented by/in part/under Sussman, the originator of Scheme and SICP; what you're calling an obscure dialect was was part of the continuum of a research trajectory, one of a number of experimental languages designed to test out ideas. Sussman got his PhD in 1973 so we're talking about his later work as a student/early work as a postdoc/assistant professor, and Abelson was in the same timeframe, and Guy Steele a half decade junior, and many others in the lab whose names you would also recognize.
- dboreham 10mo agoWas go to say - MIT, dec-10: probably not obscure.
- fortran77 10mo agoxyzzy
- bluGill 10mo agoDifferent game.
- fortran77 10mo agoplugh
- ChicagoDave 10mo agoplover
- tellmehowto 10mo agoEver played Zork? If you say "xyzzy" or "plugh" in Zork it replies "A hollow voice says, 'Fool'" or simply "Cretin." A nod to Crowther and Woods.
- scooterpi 10mo agoIt’s present in both Zork and Crowther Woods adventure. Guess you never played zork?
- ayaros 10mo agoThis is great, but I'd rather they make Windows 11 open-source instead.
- jsheard 10mo agoFunnily enough you can easily find the Windows XP source code on GitHub. Not endorsed by Microsoft of course, but they've ignored it sitting on their own service for years, along with ignoring all the modern Windows and Office piracy tools which are also on GitHub. Microsoft works in mysterious ways.
- iddan 10mo agoMost of the money to be made is by licensing software to organisations that can afford the risk of pirating (practically anything bigger than SMBs: enterprises, governments, armies, etc). The moat of everyone used to your platform worths a lot more. So they just regulate enough so it won’t seem like they don’t give a shit at all.
- nebula8804 10mo agoIf AGI ever comes close to fruition I can't wait to just dump this code into some AI, tell it to fix all security bugs and make it work on M Series processors. Would finally achieve a computing environment that would be perfect for me. Until then, I will continue to dream.
- Night_Thastus 10mo agoIf we ever get to the point of having a tool that could do something that complex, we're well past the point of using human-written operating systems or using M-series processors. Which is to say, very, very, very far away.
- nebula8804 10mo agoHmm I seem to recall Karpathy talk about the next era of software being like this: Essentially everything is made on demand exactly the way the user expects or something like that. it would definitely be a paradigm shift that requires rethinking how we approach software. What do we really need? If you look at what Ai can solve today, smaller problems seem to be solved really well by AI. So just an AI with a large enough context, adequate speed to made the changes in near real time and a reasoning ability that can better handle problems vs whats available today might be adequate to realize this relality in some way.
- ChicagoDave 10mo agoScott: Do the whole library of Infocom games!
- classichasclass 10mo agoIt's not just Zork: a number of games, including Hitchhiker's, are open source now. https://github.com/historicalsource https://github.com/historicalsource
- ChicagoDave 10mo agoyes, but only Zork 1-3 have official licenses
- pm215 10mo agoThe others don't seem to have the MIT license pullreq added, so they are not open source; the source code is merely available. The repos have a note: "This collection is meant for education, discussion, and historical work, allowing researchers and students to study how code was made for these interactive fiction games and how the system dealt with input and processing. It is not considered to be under an open license." This github repo has been up for some years now (this old blog post has some back story: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source-code https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-sourc... ) -- AFAIK it's the source contents from an old hard drive image from back when Infocom was a company. (I only checked hitchhikers and starcross, because github is giving a lot of error pages for these right now.)
- ndiddy 10mo agoYeah the code was leaked without Activision's permission a few years ago. It's strange to me that Microsoft has taken this opportunity to clear up the rights to Zork 1-3 but not to the rest of the Infocom back catalog. The other games haven't been available for sale since the mid 90s when Activision put out a shovelware CD collection containing every Infocom game except Hitchhiker's and Shogun, so it's not like they have much commercial value.
- skissane 10mo ago> It's strange to me that Microsoft has taken this opportunity to clear up the rights to Zork 1-3 but not to the rest of the Infocom back catalog. Likely explanation: their lawyers are worried there may be third party rights or agreements limiting their ability to open source a game – even if that isn't true, lawyers want to see paperwork to convince themselves it isn't true. For Zork, that was comparatively easy because the game's history is well-known, and Activision had a history of releasing sequels. For other games, that may be more difficult – so start with the lowest hanging and highest profile fruit.
- Aman_Kalwar 10mo agoWow, didn’t expect this from Microsoft. Amazing to see classic game code being made accessible for learning
- ghssds 10mo agoThis is exactly the kind of thing Microsoft likes to opensource: old, crusty, and obsolete. Let's compare. When ID Software opensourced Doom a few years after it's initial release, there was still some life in it and it spawned a myriad of forks and new developments continuing to this day. An active community formed around it. When Microsoft opensourced MSDOS, an opensource clone had existed for so long it was only of interrest to archeologists and historians. It was as whitered and lifeless as Zork is.
- kgwxd 10mo agoFunny, I exactly expected a lame PR stunt from Microsoft to distract from the endless string of terrible decisions.
- knowitnone3 10mo agolearn what? how to print text to stdout? how to do if else statements or math.random? I'm sure you can rewrite this in a week or in a month from scratch. Next, Microsoft will opensource notepad because there are 0 text editors out there. It is 1960 after all.
- westurner 10mo ago[flagged]
- abtinf 10mo agoThe license says it’s copyright 2025. How does that work? Shouldn’t the copyright be something like 1977?
- Blamklmo 10mo ago[dead]
- QuantumNomad_ 10mo agoIANAL but copyright is typically the year of first publication. I could see this being important here in two ways: 1. If the source code of Zork has not been made available to the public before, then now is the year of publication. 2. If Zork source code has previously been made available to the public, perhaps the version published here has had changes made, in which case now is the year of publication of this version of the source code. I assume that when Microsoft opens source code they have a team of lawyers that have solid legal arguments for what the copyright year should be in each case. Therefore, maybe it’s even possible legally that 3. Even if source code was previously made available, and even if no changes were made in any way since then to any of the included source code or other files, perhaps just the act of using a different license is in its own way part of how copyright applies. Publishing something under a specific license in $CURRENT_YEAR does not retroactively make the license apply before the time at which it was made available under that license and so perhaps an argument could be made that copyright year in a license includes taking that into consideration.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago> IANAL but copyright is typically the year of first publication. Under current copyright law, copyright is effective from the moment the work is first set in fixed form, though I think copyright used to be based on first publication. Updates creates a new work, for which the copyright date is that of the updated work being completed (which doesn't change that some parts are also part of works copyrighted earlier and which may enter the public domain earlier.)
- bluGill 10mo agoThe copyright on the whole collection is 2025 - which is likely just the README or some such thing. Some of the parts are copyright 1977. For works created after 1978 copyright would last from year of first publication + 90 years, but since most of this is written in/before 1977 different laws apply. (I suspect that Activation was careful to ensure they keep their registration up to date, but there is a slight possibility this is all public domain anyway if you want to hire a lawyer to check)
- theoldgreybeard 10mo agoSo derivative works are possible, who will be the first to attach Zork to the OpenAI API?
- simonmales 10mo agoI love the idea that these can live forever in apt/rpm repositories.
- throwuxiytayq 10mo agoIt seems likely that the entirety of Zork (world state and the possible actions to transform it) is already learned by the model. Which means that there is a grue in there, too. Not good. I’m starting to re-think the doomer argument...
- gaudystead 10mo agoPerhaps this is a stupid/contentious idea (partly because it somewhat kills the "spirit" of the original games), but there's a little part of me that would be interested in seeing the scene building parts of Zork piped into an image generation service to visualize the landscape that the game describes. (the grue would obviously just a picture full of black, though some creepy eyes would be a nice touch)
- VikingCoder 10mo agoIt exists https://dzlab.github.io/notebooks/flax/vision/diffusion/2023/01/15/Zork_StableDiffusion.html https://dzlab.github.io/notebooks/flax/vision/diffusion/2023...
- lloydatkinson 10mo agoI wonder how long before someone hooks up AI image generation for the scenes with this. It could either be very tastefully done or complete slop. Probably the second option.
- lkramer 10mo agoIn the early days of LLMs I tried it, but it was kinda terrible, and I also realised that the fun of these games, like reading a book, was the imagining of the action. Take that away and they are very simple puzzle games
- tellmehowto 10mo ago[dead]
- SoKamil 10mo ago> It could either be very tastefully done or complete slop. It really depends on the creator. A slop is a side effect of the fact that the entry barrier has been much lowered. Previously you at least had to put some effort into learning the craft before showing that to the world.
- foobarian 10mo agoThere was a game I remember from the 80s that had such a (to me) tasteful background of still images to go with the text adventure; Time and Magik trilogy on Atari ST. [1] [1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/28812/time-and-magik-the-trilogy/screenshots/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/28812/time-and-magik-the-tril...
- vunderba 10mo agoThere have been a couple attempts at this kind of thing (same with AI generation of images from pages of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books). It's more a gimmick than anything particularly useful. Might even distract if the image embellishes from the original description leading players down the wrong path for solving a puzzle.
- VikingCoder 10mo agoIt exists https://dzlab.github.io/notebooks/flax/vision/diffusion/2023/01/15/Zork_StableDiffusion.html https://dzlab.github.io/notebooks/flax/vision/diffusion/2023...
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- dvrp 10mo ago“ When Zork arrived, it didn’t just ask players to win; it asked them to imagine” Sigh… it’s all ChatGPT nowadays ain’t it.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- sigmonsays 10mo agobummer > The code relies on old internal Infocom toolchains (ZILCH compiler, WATFOR, > mainframe environment) that are not open and likely not preserved.
- bernds74 10mo agoThere's this: https://www.ifwiki.org/ZILF https://www.ifwiki.org/ZILF https://zilf.io/ https://zilf.io/ Although I haven't played with it and can't tell you whether it can compile the open source Zork.
- WorldMaker 10mo agoThe blog post itself suggests using ZILF. I hope some of those other Infocom tools eventually get open sourced for historic curiosity, but ZILF is probably going to remain the modern answer for how to compile these files.
- somat 10mo agoHow bad is it? I mean you have the source, it could be ported. Or am I completely misunderstanding and you specifically want the old toolchains, in which case A respectful moment of silence for compilers lost. Speaking of porting I have always vaguely wanted to port the original basic version of ultima, I mean never enough to actually do it, but I like the idea of the source being available to do so. even if it is just an accidental artifact of how it was made.
- efreak 10mo agoRead the notes on the repository itself: > Basic Information on the Contents of This Repository > > It is mostly important to note that there is currently no known way to compile the source code in this repository into a final "Z-machine Interpreter Program" (ZIP) file using an official Infocom-built compiler. There is a user-maintained compiler named ZILF that has been shown to successfully compile these .ZIL files with minor issues. There are .ZIP files in some of the Infocom Source Code repositories but they were there as of final spin-down of the Infocom Drive and the means to create them is currently lost. > > ... > > In general, Infocom games were created by taking previous Infocom source code, copying the directory, and making changes until the game worked the way the current Implementor needed. Structure, therefore, tended to follow from game to game and may or may not accurately reflect the actual function of the code.
- drob518 10mo agoWhen I was 14 or so, in the early 1980s, a friend and I who had been playing Zork thought it would be fun to design a game ourselves. We actually wrote to Infocom with a proposal that we write a new game for them and they let us use ZIL and the Z-machine to implement it. Surprisingly, they actually wrote back to us and politely declined our offer. In hindsight, while we knew how to program in BASIC and assembly language on our Apple IIs, we would have been lost making a game with ZIL. That’s to say that Infocom made the right call. Still, it said something about the company that they treated a couple kids with respect and didn’t laugh in our faces. I wish I still had the letter.
- reticulated 10mo agoMy goodness, I could have written this word-for-word. Similar age, same Apple II BASIC and 6502 upbringing (roll sleeves and call -151) and also wrote to Infocom. We were in the UK so even more surprised to get a reply similar to yours several weeks later. Sadly my letter is also lost to various house moves. Or eaten by a grue.
- drob518 10mo agoHa! They probably assigned an intern to reply to all the kids wanting to help them write the “next one.” Too funny! They had class, Infocom did.
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoMe too, except my letter was to Sierra On-Line and my experience was on TRS-80 6809. Really classy reply asking me to write back when I finished school.
- drob518 10mo agoNice.
- brandall10 10mo agoLovely to hear this about Infocom and SOL. The former was my obsession throughout the mid-late 80s on my Atari 800XL, and then the latter for the next few years after getting a 386SX in '89.
- Eric_WVGG 10mo agohow could they not title this article GIT FORK ZORK
- TZubiri 10mo agoThere's also Frotz and other Z Machine interpreters, and the actual Zblorb game file. But I guess this would be the source code that compiles to the zblorb. So this is useful to modify zork, but not much changes if you want to build something around zork, as you will most likely be building something that interfaces at the z machine level.
- anthk 10mo agoGreat, I remember a page which stated that it was sad to have free as in freedom ZMachine languages and interpreters (Inform6, Frotz/Fizmo...) but there were very few text adventures under a libre license. So far, the most known ones: - Spiritwrak - All Things Devour - Calypso - Tristam Island
- Gormo 10mo agoPerhaps few classic games were released under FOSS licenses, but there are tons of more recent ones on IFDB.
- anthk 10mo agoI know, I play IF games since 2001 and 2002; and my previous gameplays where with the classical ones for ZX Spectrum (in Spanish) and some freeware games bundled with 'shareware' CD's with Winfrotz and later Frotz/NFrotz. Some GNU user used to have several under libre licenses (even non-ZMachine ones), such as Beyond the Titanic, but he has no working repos any more.
- danso 10mo agoSo how good are the latest coding agents? Like if I asked Gemini 3/Claude/ChatGPT 5.1 to convert it into something that could run from a Python interpreter, how far would they get? (I assume Zork Implementation Language is not well represented in the training corpus)
- WorldMaker 10mo agoThe easiest way to get it to run from a Python interpreter would be to compile the ZIL source to a Z-Machine binary, which you can do with ZILF [1], then use a Z Machine library in Python (such as a pure Python implementation of the Z-Machine [2]) to load/run it. A coding agent may even be able to suggest that path, as knowledge of at least the existence of both ZILF and Python ZVM should be in training sets. The more interesting questions would be how much a coding agent could help you write new Zork rooms or similar things in ZIL now that these ZIL source files are MIT licensed. I would also assume ZIL is not well represented, it's fork of the Lisp family tree (Lisp -> MDL -> ZIL) in generally probably not well represented in open source code bases up to this point. (Some of that may depend on if the agent was trained on some of these historicalsource repos ahead of this open source license change, too.) [1] https://zilf.io/ https://zilf.io/ [2] https://github.com/sussman/zvm https://github.com/sussman/zvm
- anthk 10mo agoAlso if you don't wall to install a whole C# stack on constrained netbook/non supoprted old machine: https://notabug.org/coderain/zilutils https://notabug.org/coderain/zilutils EDIT: Wrong link. Wait, I'm sure there's a C based alternative out there.
- neonsunset 10mo ago[dead]
- taradinoc 10mo agoA C-based alternative for compiling ZIL? I don't believe there's one that works. The two options for compiling ZIL code are to run ZILF on a modern system or to run ZILCH on a PDP-10 emulator. The good news is you don't need to install any C# development tools if you use the prepackaged binaries, since they're standalone executables.
- MPSimmons 10mo agoI like playing Zork via docker: https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork1 https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork1 > docker run -it clockworksoul/zork1
- clockworksoul 10mo agoSomebody uses it! Yay! You made my day
- mycall 10mo agoWith Z2 and Z3 now released, will you make containers for those too?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- clockworksoul 10mo agoThey already exist: https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork2 https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork2 https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork3 https://github.com/clockworksoul/docker-zork3
- MPSimmons 10mo agoThanks for making this! Yeah, I play it whenever I have some time. Lots of fun!
- VikingCoder 10mo agoThanks for your work on this! I tried to use these official sources to make my own. https://github.com/MattCruikshank/zork1-source https://github.com/MattCruikshank/zork1-source Curious if you have feedback: > docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/saves:/home/zork/save mattcruikshank/zork1-source:latest The -v lets me save and restore. I tried to use Docker Compose to specify the volume... But the TTY support there feels terrible, and I don't know how to fix it.
- tracker1 10mo ago
- PilotJeff 10mo agoI would love to see the Apple ][ source code made available for a lot of these classic games. In this case what I really want to see is the Z-Engine or interpreter itself not essentially the data files only.
- zzo38computer 10mo agoI have seen some of the interpreter source codes, but I don't know if they have been "officially" published. These also include some other things such as test files, and a picture file that I have never seen a decoder for (other than the decoder (and encoder) that I wrote myself). Many modern implementations do not support permanent shifts in Z versions 3 and above (although all of my own implementations do, and I think all of the official implementations also do, even though Infocom never used that feature (this isn't too surprising since the algorithm they described for deciding when to use permanent shifts is worse than not using them at all; I worked with someone else to make a better algorithm for making this decision)). Some of the official implementations check the Z version number and some don't; even some that do, do not check if it is a small-endian story file (and the ones that do will only display an error message if it is, and refuse to run it). My own implementations do check for small-endian story files (as well as the Z version number), although some will display an error message and refuse to run it in that case, some actually are able to run both big-endian and small-endian story files (as far as I know, there are no small-endian story files; Infocom never used this feature and no modern compilers support this). Something else I might mention is that some people say that Infocom used many tricks in the programming, although I have looked at disassembled code in the debugger and found that they could be optimized a lot more (e.g. by using SET->BCOM optimization, and many other things), and the source code for the interpreters also shows some things that could be optimized much better. (Another thing revealed from the source code of the interpreters is a undocumented command-line switch for the DOS version that allows you to specify the name of the story file.)
- ndiddy 10mo agoThe source code for most of Infocom's Z-code interpreters (including the Apple version) is available here: https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps . Note that this isn't an official licensed release so it's in a legal gray area. It would be nice to see Microsoft bless these with an official license as well.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- raldi 10mo agoIf I'm reading this right, the source code has been available for all the Infocom games in https://github.com/historicalsource https://github.com/historicalsource for at least six years, but what's changed today is the license?
- VikingCoder 10mo agohttps://github.com/historicalsource/zork1/pull/3 https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1/pull/3
- wg0 10mo agoMake AoE open source please. I am sure Microsoft Empire won't crumble.
- RyanOD 10mo agoThis literally gave me goosebumps. It's hard to convey how much Zork (and the rest of the Infocom portfolio) means to me. This was my first entry into gaming on my Commodore 64. For anyone out there who had anything to do with bringing these games to market, know that you impacted so many lives in a fun, meaningful, heartfelt way.
- VikingCoder 10mo agoThe thing I want is probably very stupid - I'd like Zork I through III ported to Inform 6... I don't specifically know why that appeals to me. I guess it's because I'd like to tinker with it and understand it better. And if I were going to write Zork I from scratch today, I'd want to use the most modern tools available. [checks notes] Okay, but not Inform 7. I have an aversion to Inform 7. I want my code to look more like code, and less like an LLM prompt.
- anthk 10mo agoDitto here. And, better, translated into Spanish with INFSP6. There is one made from a non-native Spanish speaker and it's really bad. Now a proper Zork translation can be a reality. Ah, and yes, IF6 ports for Adventure do exist, both in English and Spanish, and the Spanish one it's really great, with even the backstory on creating the game perfectly translated..
- skybrian 10mo agoI wonder how well a code agent would do on porting the code?
- nathan_douglas 10mo agohttps://github.com/allengarvin/inform-zork1/blob/main/zork.inf https://github.com/allengarvin/inform-zork1/blob/main/zork.i... I feel the same about Inform 6 vs 7. I wrote some very simple games in Inform 6 thirty or so years ago, just for personal amusement, but never did a thing with Inform 7. I guess I'm skeptical of "literate programming" in general, where I have to learn a special way of phrasing English just to interact with some magical process that I don't and can't understand... all so I can avoid typing a few square brackets and semicolons. I think there's an underlying symmetry to the conceptual structure of interactive fiction and the way it looks in Inform 6 that is much easier to reason about... but eh. I'm a couple decades late to the argument.
- LunaSea 10mo agoWaiting impatiently for World of Warcraft to be Open Sourced.
- chickensong 10mo agoTentatively scheduled for 2051
- VikingCoder 10mo agoCan ZILF just compile this? https://zilf.io/ https://zilf.io/
- WorldMaker 10mo agoThat is the exactly the suggested compiler in this blog post. (These repos have been compiled with it for a while. The biggest change in these [Internet Archive-uploaded] repos is an official Microsoft-backed MIT License as opposed to assuming Fair Use for Archival Use prior to now.) I'm hoping Microsoft may have a chance to open source more of the original Infocom compilers and VMs, even if they would be hard to run on modern machines, in later expansions of these repos.
- VikingCoder 10mo agoZilf liked it, but Zapf is flagged by Windows 11 Smart App Control as potentially dangerous to my machine... And there's no way to turn it off for one app. And if I turn it off, I can only turn it back on by re-installing Windows. What the bloody... So now I want to download and build. But it's .net 10, so I apparently need VS 2026, which I hadn't bothered to install yet. Oh my.
- neonsunset 10mo ago[dead]
- ChicagoDave 10mo agoYou just need dotnet core. You can compile from a command line on any os. You can install dotnet on linux.
- VikingCoder 10mo agoVery true - but I also wanted to try VS 2026. I'm no Docker developer, but I'm working on a Dockerfile to build zilf, build zork, and run frotz.
- 10mo ago
- boomboomsubban 10mo agoWhen EA recently made Command & Conquer free software, it was clear that the various art assets were not covered under this. Is there something similar for a text based adventure game? Does the writing count as code?
- WorldMaker 10mo agoThe writing should be assumed to be subject to copyright still even though the code is open source. In this case it sounds like Microsoft's Legal has taken the assumption the writing is applicable under the code license and is mostly seeking to enforce trademarks and brand (don't commercially release something implying it is a Microsoft-approved Zork) more than the writing, per Scott's wording of Microsoft's legal requests here: https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1/pull/3 https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1/pull/3 Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, that's not legal advice, build commercial derivatives at your own risk and with your own lawyer's advice.
- Karliss 10mo agoIn many ways it's the opposite, the code counts as writing. At least where I live (should be similar in other EU countries) from the perspective of copyright law code is largely classified as literary work. There are few special rules related to fact that code is typically written by large team employed by company compared to books being written by single author and printed by publisher. Also few special rules that don't make sense for regular literary works related to reverse engineering, interface compatibility with other software and copying as part of installation/execution process. All the code specific licenses are arbitrary rules decided by right owners under which they license others to use their work. Book authors typically don't have to worry whether when granting permission to read their work they also need to grant rights to relevant patents, or whether dynamic or static linking should be permitted. Assuming Microsoft owns all the necessary rights for everything I don't see a major reason they couldn't release it as single work under whatever license they want. Considering the way this specific game is written I don't think you can even cleanly separate code from rest of the writing. It's all one big program with bunch of short string literals sprinkled all over the place. You could take all the string literals, but without code defining how those strings are ordered in a non linear and interactive way it would make as much sense as reading a book where all the sentences have been sorted in alphabetical order. I doubt any of the Zork authors were part of writer union and negotiated separate licensing rules for the text they wrote. With regards to common case where source is released with open source license separate from art assets there are a couple of reasons. It's much easier to separate pictures and music from code and tell that those are covered by different license. For some of the art assets especially music it's not uncommon that the publisher themselves don't have full rights to them and only have limited license to use in game but not to relicense as separate works. Releasing source code without art assets makes it easier to maintain commercial value and limit ability for others to exploit the work as ready to use product (or sequals) while still allowing programmers to study the code and learn from the technical tricks in code or making new games based on same engine. If I am not mistaken at From the historical preservation perspective art assets are less likely to bitrot and become unusable. 20 years in future you will likely still be able to rip them out of commercial builds of game with little losses and worst case observable as standalone media. But the code is a lot more likely break and not be runnable on future OS/hardware. Code also has a lot more hidden aspects that you can much more easily observe by reading source code directly instead of reverse engineering the compiled executables. Better release the source code while it hasn't been completely lost.
- BryantD 10mo agoThe repository is part of https://github.com/historicalsource https://github.com/historicalsource, which has code for a bunch of Infocom games, although at a quick glance most of them aren't open sourced. Still, very cool resource.
- MrZongle2 10mo agoThe cynic in me believes that this only took place after numerous meetings during which the question "is there any way we can still make money from this" was repeatedly answered with "no".
- jdkee 10mo agoReads like ChatGPT wrote it.
- jamesgill 10mo agoI kinda hate that Microsoft gets to take credit for being magnanimous with yet another product they never created. The TL;DR: The Zorks were created by several guys at MIT who later formed Infocom. Infocom eventually sold to Activision, Microsoft bought Activision and voila--"Microsoft is open sourcing Zork".
- thebeardisred 10mo agoEaster egg from back in the day - (podman|docker) run -it quay.io/games/zork
- doener 10mo agoIf you ask Claude to simulate Zork you get a text adventure that is loosely based on Zork, but entirely different.
- ninetypercent 10mo agoAnd better.
- throwaway81523 10mo agoHow did Microsoft get to own it in the first place? And the original MDL version of Zork has been around forever. I wonder if Microsoft has any of the other Infocom games and might release them too. And, "A game that changed how we think about play"? Um, that was ADVENTURE. Zork was arguably better, but it was in the same vein, and later.
- pwg 10mo ago> How did Microsoft get to own it in the first place? See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996035
- ChicagoDave 10mo agoI was in a small room with two paper terminals in 1979 where I discovered ADVENT and DUNGEO at the same time. Maybe there was a distinct separation for a few college students, but for most people they “came out” at the same time.
- cellular 10mo agoWho's going to be the first to port to arduino + LCD?
- NecroTechno 10mo agoit's pretty grim that this announcement, which is in part celebrating the legacy of an incredible artistic endeavor, was written by an LLM. reading this feels like my head is continuously being bashed in by a brick.
- monkeywork 10mo agoWhere do you get that the announcement was written by an LLM - they list the authors of the article on the page.
- bumblehean 10mo ago"When Zork arrived, it didn’t just ask players to win; it asked them to imagine" Literally the first sentence.
- p_ing 10mo agoNo one can make typos without being framed as an LLM.
- VerifiedReports 10mo agoWhat typos?
- ChadNauseam 10mo ago> When Zork arrived, it didn’t just ask players to win; it asked them to imagine. There were no graphics, no joystick, and no soundtrack, only words on a screen and the player’s curiosity. Yet those words built worlds more vivid than most games of their time. What made that possible wasn’t just clever writing, it was clever engineering. Check out wikipedia's "signs of ai generated writing". Every sentence here is represented in that post. "Not just x, but y." "No x, no y, no x, just abc". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
- 10mo ago
- williamDafoe 10mo agoI have an original line printer printout of 1970s "Adventure" (translated from Fortran into C for UIUC's CAC PDP-11/70 running UNIX v7.) Adventure is the father of Zork. Zork is a clone of Adventure.
- musicale 10mo agoAppropriate to release it under an MIT license.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- orph 10mo agoawesome
- planckscnst 10mo agoWhenever I use LLM-generated content, I get another LLM and pre-bias it by asking if it's familiar with common complaints about LLM generated content. And then I ask it to review the content and ask for it to identify those patterns in the content and rewrite it to avoid those. And only after that do I bother to give it a first read. That clearly didn't happen here. Current LLM models can produce much better content than this if you do that.
- wiz21c 10mo agoDidn't know MSFT owned Infocom