--- Nicholas Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 08:48:07PM -0700, Amir Karger wrote: > > > Cheat first to help you get started.
Actually, I believe True Laziness would say cheat always. Except maybe when Hubris says it'll look cooler if it's native :) > We found at work that having a prototype system that we could > incrementally > improve helped enormously > (Because we could test that each finished component worked in its > proper, > integrated environment) Surely you don't expect me to write this code AND test it?! Actually, I posted to rec.arts.int-fiction today to see if there are any Z-machine regression tests lying around. > I think that if you're comfortable writing it in perl, you should > write > one in perl first. It's a prototype. You can use it to learn how to > do the real thing in PASM. And you'll have something working earlier, > so hopefully you won't get demoralised part way through. Agreed. It looks like if I steal enough from Games::Rezrov (same license as Perl), then a Perl disassembler should take me only a few hours (coding time, not wallclock time!) The neat thing about porting a virtual machine at that point is that translating each Z opcode to PASM shouldn't take long (at least for the simpler opcodes, and we agreed I'm not going to worry about the hard ones yet), so I'll continue to feel like I'm accomplishing things. Then if I've got a Perl translator that does enough, the excitement will hopefully push me over the rather larger energy barrier of writing the translator in PASM. > Just don't make it too good, in case everyone stops working on parrot > and starts playing Zork/Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy/whatever Well, most of those aren't freely available. My biggest concern is that *I* might start playing them. (I bought a CD a few years ago with almost all the Infocom games on it.) -Amir __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
