News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games.

Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by philipodonnell on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @07:57AM (#19672863)
> 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.

Some things never change...

EDIT: this is how I do most of my personal projects!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by chatmasta on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:59AM (#19673213)
And developer sense of humor about code quality remains the same...

https://github.com/historicalsource/zork/blob/70d16c9c817bc1...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by themodelplumber on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @10:43AM (#19674020)
That word "issue" used in the context of a printed magazine... seems like you don't hear it used much anymore.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by samirm on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @02:42PM (#19676158)
I think the reference was to the function names.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by tobbebex on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @05:29PM (#19677500)
Indeed, it even has a Y2K bug in it!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by aaaaaar on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @04:09PM (#19676859)
I wonder if that's how they developed Cornerstone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_%28software%29

Just rip some code out here, change some there, until it looks like a relational database :)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by sehugg on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @11:26AM (#19674448)
This is definitely how I do all my LaTeX projects.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by coldtea on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:09AM (#19672921)
Well, they worked for them, so why should they?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by z3t4 on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:25AM (#19673015)
I think the parent means that is still how we do software, eg. coyping resembling code and modifying it until it does what we want.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by coldtea on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:54AM (#19673186)
And I mean "If it works for modern devs too, so?"
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by sythe2o0 on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @10:53AM (#19674134)
The parent isn't saying it is bad practice.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by flatline on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @11:16AM (#19674363)
For OP’s personal projects? Meh, it works but will sometimes cause you problems. For a team of 10+ software devs? Disaster!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by bantunes on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:13AM (#19672944)
I think this has to do with the authors being more literary than tech savvy.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by pavlov on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @08:42AM (#19673126)
Infocom was famously tech savvy though. The founders came from MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) where they developed the first Zork adventure.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by anthk on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @09:37AM (#19682401)
The Z-machine is one of the technical marvels of the era. I doubt it. It was the Java of its day.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infoc... by icedchai on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @09:43AM (#19673488)
Nah, that's how I'd do it, too.
[ Parent | on HN ]