By the way, portability was only a side effect of the Z-machine. The main purpose was code size. A text adventure compiled down to the Z-machine would take up less space than the same program compiled to machine code. They were written in the Zork Implementation Language (ZIL), which is similar to Lisp.
Yes, as I understand it, that is true.
>This machine might make a great target for micro controllers and or other smaller scale systems.
- V3, perfectly. Infocom games and Puny Inform ones. The best would be the 12th release of Curses in v3 format.
- A V5 game would run pretty slow on a C64 for example, you'll need a Turbo Chameleon to run the games at acceptable speed. As acceptable I mean max 4-5 sec lag.
- V8 games like Anchorhead are a "no-no" under an 8bit machine. Using telnet/serial against a 16 and more bit machine would be the sanest option.
Depends on the 8-Bit machine doesn't it?
I have an Apple //e Platinum running at 16 megahertz. Might do V8 fine.
:D
I tried with Vice, REU, Turbo @18mhz and Ozmoo.
Running Anchorhead was impossible, and even V5 games such as Vicious Cycles ran borderlinely unusable. I mean, playable over a lag of 8-10 seconds after inputting the command, but it gets tedious fast.
Bummer. Well, a whole lot remains interesting, thanks for the data points!
Everyone probably knows, but INFOCOM did the Zork type text adventure games. They chose to author to a virtual machine, which could be ported to many machines once, making all their games playable across a ton of machines.
Today, their software is very accessible. Porting a Z machine is not a super heavy lift. Once done, the library of interactive fiction games is available.
This machine might make a great target for micro controllers and or other smaller scale systems. Could be fun, and a source of smaller scale software for people to explore, build on.
Damn cool! First I've read about this.