Information About ™Zork |
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''Zork'' was one of the first Interactive Fiction Computer Game s and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure . The first version of ''Zork'' was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson , Marc Blank , Bruce Daniels , and Dave Lebling , and implemented in the MDL Programming Language . All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group . interpreters, as well as the older models it was made for originally.]] "Zork" was originally MIT Hacker Jargon for an unfinished program. The implementors named the completed game ''Dungeon'', but by that time the name ''Zork'' had already stuck. Zork has also been adapted to a widely panned Book Series . Three of the original ''Zork'' programmers joined with others to found Infocom in 1979. That company adapted the PDP-10 ''Zork'' into ''Zork I-III'', a trilogy of games for most popular small computers of the era, including the Apple II , the Commodore 64 , the Atari 8-bit Family , the TRS-80 , CP/M systems and the IBM PC . '' Zork I '' was published on 5¼" and 8" Floppy Disk s. Joel Berez and Marc Blank developed a specialized Virtual Machine to run ''Zork I'', called the Z-machine . The first "Z-machine Interpreter Program" ''ZIP'' for a small computer was written by Scott Cutler for the TRS-80. The trilogy was written in ''ZIL'', which stands for "Zork Implementation Language", a language similar to LISP . Personal Software published what would become the first part of the trilogy under the name ''Zork'' when it was first released in 1980, but Infocom later handled the distribution of that game and their subsequent games. Part of the reason for splitting Zork into three different games was that, unlike the PDP systems the original ran on, micros did not have enough memory and disk storage to handle the entirety of the original game. In the process, more content was added to Zork to make each game stand on its own. ''Zork'' is set in a sprawling underground labyrinth which occupies a portion of the " Great Underground Empire ". The player is a nameless adventurer whose goal is to find the treasures hidden in the caves and return alive with them. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures and objects, among them Grues and Zorkmid s. The ''Zork'' universe and timeline has been extended by several of Infocom's other works of Interactive Fiction . ''Zork'' and its relatives are works of interactive fiction. ''Zork'' distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text Parser , which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit grue"), but understood full sentences ("hit the grue with the Elvish sword"). ZORK SERIES The original Zork Trilogy
Later additions to the series All these are text-only unless otherwise noted.
After a six year hiatus, the following games were produced:
The Enchanter trilogy and ''Wishbringer'' occupy somewhat unusual positions within the Zork universe. ''Enchanter'' was originally developed as ''Zork IV''; Infocom decided to instead release it separately, however, and it became the basis of a new trilogy. (In each trilogy, there is a sense of assumed continuity; that is, the player's character in ''Zork III'' is assumed to have experienced the events of ''Zork I'' and ''Zork II''. Similarly, events from ''Enchanter'' are referenced in ''Sorcerer'' and ''Spellbreaker''; but the ''Enchanter'' character is not assumed to be the same one from the Zork trilogy. In fact, in ''Enchanter'' the player's character encounters the Adventurer from ''Zork'', who helps the player's character solve a puzzle in the game.) Although ''Wishbringer'' was never officially linked to the Zork series, the game is generally agreed to be "Zorkian" due to its use of magic and several terms and names from established Zork games. Later compilations and current availability Among the games bundled in '' The Lost Treasures Of Infocom '', published in 1991 by Activision under the Infocom brand, were the original Zork trilogy, the Enchanter trilogy, ''Beyond Zork'' and ''Zork Zero''. A second bundle published in 1992, ''The Lost Treasures of Infocom II'', contained ''Wishbringer'' and ten other non-Zork-related games. Activision's 1996 compilation, '' Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces Of Infocom '', includes all the text-based Zork games; the Zork and Enchanter trilogies, Wishbringer, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. Activision briefly offered free downloads of ''Zork I'' as part of the promotion of ''Zork: Nemesis'', and ''Zork II'' and ''Zork III'' as part of the promotion for ''Zork Grand Inquisitor'', as well as a new adventure: ''Zork: The Undiscovered Underground''. This led many to believe that the games had been released as freeware, even though the included license explicitly prohibited redistribution. Activision's legal department has recently stated that the promotion relating to those games has ended and that it is not legal to distribute the games or make them available for download. Of six novels published as "Infocom Books" by and ''Enchanter'', also by Bailey. A parody series known as 'Pork' was released also starting in 1988. , which is almost impossible to win, and losing tends to consist of being eaten by a Grue . As of 2006 an over-the-phone version of Zork entitled ''Zasterisk'' entered beta testing. Programmed by Simon Ditner using Asterisk COMMANDS In the Zork games, the player is not limited to verb-noun commands, such as "take lamp", "open mailbox", and so forth. Instead, the parser supports more sophisticated sentences such as "put the lamp and sword in the case", "look under the rug", and "drop all except lantern". The game understands a good number of common verbs, including "take", "drop", "examine", "attack", "climb", "open", "close", "count", and many more. The games also support commands to the game (rather than in the game) such as "save" and "restore", "script" and "unscript" (which begin and end a text transcript of the game text), "restart", and "quit". In all of the Zork text adventures, the following commands apply: > n, s, e, w : Short for "go north", "go south", etc. > nw, ne, sw, se : Short for "go northwest", "go southwest", etc. > u and d : Short for "go up" and "go down" > i : Reveals a player's inventory > verbose : Gives full descriptions after each command (rather than omitting details already given to the player) > score : Displays the player's current score, number of moves, and ranking FORTRAN VERSION OF DUNGEON While the authors of Dungeon (as it was then known) were at MIT, a programmer from Digital Equipment Corporation translated part of Dungeon from MDL to Fortran and crammed it into a 56KB PDP-11. (Dungeon was at the time playable on PDP-10's but not on smaller systems.) The game's authors were surprised that such a small system could run the game and provided sources for a more complete translation. When Dungeon became the commercial product Zork at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This Fortran version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions. The Fortran version of Dungeon was widely available on DEC VAXes , being one of the most popular items distributed by DECUS . It went through multiple modifications both to incorporate more features from the original and to track changes in the MDL version. In the late 1980s, the Fortran version was extensively rewritten for VAX Fortran and became fully compatible with the last MDL release. It had one extra joke: an apparent entrance to the Mill (a reference to DEC's headquarters) that was, in fact, impassable. It also had a gdt command (game debugging technique, a reference to The DDT Debugger ) which enabled the player to move any object (including the player) to any room. Use of gdt required answering a random question requiring deep knowledge of the game. The game's response to a wrong answer (“A booming voice says ‘Wrong, cretin!’ and you notice that you have turned into a pile of dust”) appears in many " Fortune cookie" databases. SEE ALSO
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