Re:Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whi...
by user3939382 on Sunday April 12, 2026 @03:08AM
(#47736882)
This is awesome. Presumably if this worked in Elm, Clojure would work too. There’s a very cool niche community around these games for those who don’t know. Vespers was one of the best games I ever played. Check out ifdb for games. There are mobile players available too.
Re:Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whi...
by DougMerritt on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @04:12PM
(#47770829)
Although its core is low level, PostScript is a pretty good language by some metrics; it's often been claimed to be a (supposedly accidental) dialect of Forth with some powerful features bolted on.
What makes Zmachine.ps so bad? Certain programming issues, or are you going off a general feel?
Re:Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whi...
by DerekL on Monday April 13, 2026 @04:38AM
(#47749380)
Portability between different computers is only a secondary reason for the Z-machine. The most important reason is code size, making the largest possible game that can fit on a floppy disk.
Vespers on IFDB: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=6dj2vguyiagrhvc2
Due to the UK Online Safety Act, all games on the IF Archive are currently unavailable to users in the United Kingdom.
Uncool. Sigh
gopher://gopher.661.org/1/if-archive
Proxy:
http://portal.mozz.us
The previous URL over the proxy:
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/gopher.661.org/1/if-archive
ZMachine games:
https://portal.mozz.us/gopher/mercury.661.org/1/if-archive/g...
Tristam Island and Calypso (and All Things Devour, plus Spiritwrak) can be fetched over git/github, they are libre games, so no issues there.
I can post links to the compiled ZMachine binaries if you want.
On Games, get Tristam Island and Calypso in the Z3 versions.
What makes Zmachine.ps so bad? Certain programming issues, or are you going off a general feel?
See the article “How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small Machine” by Marc S. Blank and S. W. Galley, in the July 1980 issue of Creative Computing. https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing-1980-07/page/n...