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Infocom games
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 7:07 pm
by Yoruk
Hello,
Did you know if
Infocom games were available on the Dragons ?
I'm a big fan of the
Zork games series, it would be great to play on a real machine !
I made some researches, looks like.. no
Thanks in advance if someone have some information.
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2016 12:56 am
by Alastair
Unfortunately Infocom never released any title for the Dragon. At the time there were not enough households with a Dragon plus a disc drive (the disc drives cost more than the computer itself, so only a small percentage of Dragon owners bought a drive) to make the market worthwhile for Infocom. Also Infocom was an American company and despite the appearance of the Tano Dragon, the computer had a negligible presence in America.
For a list (incomplete) of text adventures that were officially released for the Dragon, or in the odd case announced but not released, please check out the
Classic Adventure Solution Archive (CASA for short).
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:44 am
by Yoruk
Ok I see.
I understand now why the Zork games were very popular on Commodore/Atari and Apple machines...!
Thanks for the link, very interesting.
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:58 am
by snarkhunter
The safest bet now, as far as playing the "Infocom" games is concerned, might be to resort to emulation. I think I retrieved the whole range in Amiga format, many years ago...
I believe it should also be quite easy to play those online nowadays...
https://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 11:00 am
by Yoruk
An other way is actually to use a modern "interpreter" for these games.
Infocom created a virtual machine, the "
Z-machine" to simplify the porting to the various range of 80's computers. The game file itself is the same on every machines, only a small executable (the "interpreter") is different for each machine.
Today, you can use software like
WinFrotz or
Gargoyle to run these games on modern computers, laptops, tablets, phones...
It's still possible today to create this kind of interactive-fiction games, (and compatible with the software above). Take a look at
Inform 7 for example.
I am a writer since some years, all my games are playable online or offline, even on old computers. Unfortunately, it seems that no zmachine interpreters were made for the Dragon...
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 1:40 pm
by Alastair
I've been looking into this and there are some
Infocom games available for the CoCo (TRS-80 Colour Computer), a computer that is very similar to the Dragon. So I suspect it may be possible to port the CoCo zmachine interpreter to the Dragon.
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:22 pm
by Yoruk
I know that some Coco cartridges can work on the Dragon, but for the floopy games I don't know....
But it's a very interesting discovery !!
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 2:30 pm
by bluearcus
At least one game has already been ported... Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is available in the archive if you look in the disk Software section.
Does that mean we could potentially get the whole range of Infocom games running then?
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 11:55 am
by admin
Potentially yes - If you look at the HHGTTG game, I think the Z-Machine engine has been ported, so theoretically it should be possible.
Re: Infocom games
Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 12:37 am
by Alastair
Does anyone know how N.D.U.G. created their port of "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"?