Thanks, Alan Cox, for the primer on game engines! As a fan of LISP, I'm quite intrigued that Infocom is derived from it. Is that the same as the "Z-machine" John mentioned?
I'm also curious about Quill. Technically, the Tandy 200 has 40K of ROM, although I've only ever heard of people bankswitching the bottom 32K of it. Would Quill graphics translate to a black and white 240×128 pixel display? I remember playing Scott Adams' “Adventure” on a Vic 20. Even with everything on a cartridge, they still scrimped and saved bytes: All sentences were VERB NOUN and only the first few characters of a word mattered. Is the Tandy 200's screen (40 columns by 16 rows) big enough for Scott Adams split screen interface? If not, maybe one could use the builtin screen and an external (Disk & Video InterfaceI) screen simultaneously. —b9 On Thu, Mar 12, 2026 at 4:25 PM Alan Cox <[email protected]> wrote: > Bureaucracy came out of the same company (Infocom) but different game > author (Douglas Adams - he of HHGTTG). The game uses a later version of the > engine (Z4) but it's all indeed pretty similar. > > The main game engines of the time break down pretty well into > Infocom - a lisp derived language and an interpreter. Port an interpreter > and you get all the games for the versions it covers. Most though would be > too big for a M100 ROM > Scott Adams - a table driven system originally in BASIC for Adventureland > and Pirate (and published in magazine form), later in assembly. Port one > interpreter get all the games. Several other game houses used the same > engine (eg Mysterious Adventures). All games would fit a 32K ROM > Quill - a table driven system inspired by Scott Adams engine but with the > major design errors fixed. Very very common in Europe, rare in the USA it > seems. Most games are about 40K but many would fit 32K without graphics > PAWS - a sort of super version of the Quill. Mostly used for bigger banked > memory games. > Level 9 - a tiny really elegant interpreter engine used for a bunch of > classic UK games (and some terrible ones ;)). Generally fits 32K. > > The Scott games need only tiny amounts of RAM with the engine and tables > in ROM, hence they were sold as VIC20 cartridges on the 3.5K machine. > > There are published free software game engines for all of them for anyone > so inclined. The big challenge would be screen space, especially as the > Scott Adams games used a split screen format that wouldn't translate well. > > > On Thu, 12 Mar 2026 at 20:20, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Reminds me of the star trek text game I played in the 80s called 'The >> Kobayashi Alternative.' Fun game with some subtle humor mixed in, just >> like >> the TV show. >> >> It was a game my friend had on his 8086 IBM so I never had enough time in >> the hot seat to finish it. The decks on the ship were navigating areas >> and >> so were the planets. >> >> I never had zork, but the advert for it was in another text game we had >> on >> the mac+ called Bureacracy. I figure most text games run similarly. >> >> Daniel >> sysop | Air & Wave BBS >> finger | [email protected] >> >> On Wed, 11 Mar 2026, David Plass wrote: >> >> > You're in the main saucer of the ship (think: Enterprise). The >> passageway goes all around in a big circle, so you can go clockwise >> > (shortcut: cw) or counterclockwise (shortcut: ccw) around it. >> Eventually you'll reach somewhere interesting. >> > >> > On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 11:03 AM John R. Hogerhuis <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > >> > >> > On Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:56 PM David Plass <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > Port is left, starboard is right, aft is back, forward is... >> forward (in TNG, remember 10 Forward?) >> > Thanks for trying it out! >> > >> > >> > That seems like all the directions. What is clockwise/counterclockwise >> about? >> > >> > -- John. >> > >> > >> > > >
