On Fri, Mar 13, 2026 at 9:14 AM Alan Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Fri, 13 Mar 2026 at 06:27, B 9 <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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? >> > > Yes. It goes through several iterations over time as the machines and > games got bigger. Some of the original source has been released so there's > a fun way to visualize it at work > > https://eblong.com/infocom/visi/zork2/ > The Visible Zorker is super nifty! I totally see what you mean about the language being Lispy. Did people program directly in it or was it just a p-code target for game generator programs? I'm looking forward to exploring it more and seeing if it will let me modify and execute code on the fly, but first I better play through Zork 2; I've never tried it before and it is clear these twisty passages are full of spoilers. > For The Quill a search for Gilsoft Quill will find you the original > manuals which gives a good flavour of how the table driven systems worked. > Following your advice, I immediately got lost in a rabbit-hole that I —having been raised on the wrong side of the pond — didn't even know existed. I knew nothing of the text adventure scene in Europe. Thanks for the tip on "table driven <https://archive.org/details/practical-computing/PracticalComputing-1980-08/page/68/mode/1up>" systems; that helped me to understand better what is happening under the hood. Am I understanding correctly that Scott Adams invented that idea? I mean, sure humans have been using finite automata with reprogrammable connections in a table since shortly after the invention of the wheel, but what I mean is, it seems like Scott Adams was the first one to apply the idea to adventure games, right? Even more than the technology, I enjoyed learning about the creativity and community <https://www.filfre.net/2013/07/the-quill/> that blossomed in Europe in the early 80's with tools like The Quill. What a thing for people to one day realize they have the power to create worlds that others could journey into. While I'm aware of a few isolated niches in the States, I think we lacked the critical mass of community for anything comparable until the 1990s when we finally caught on to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). It appears Radio-Shack never released Pirate's Adventure, or any interactive fiction, for the Model 100 but that snippet of the BASIC version from Byte would run almost unchanged. I'll have to take a look at the data file format, but if it's not too crazy, it should be possible to port. According to IFArchive <https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/games/trs80/>, a handful of text adventures were written for the Model 100 . I read a bit more about The Quill's graphics format ("The Illustrator") and I think you're right that it would render very badly. On the other hand, it might be fun to try to do anyway as it's a wacky graphics format — not exactly bitmap nor vector, more like an executable with graphics macros. There's a whole warren of rabbit holes I'm resisting diving into right now. :-) —b9
