#infocom — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #infocom, aggregated by home.social.
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And after a long hiatus: another stint with #thelurkinghorror!
So we go back to the lab and get into the pentagram. However, once the professor is in his pentagram, we cut the line on ours and step outside.
#infocom #interactivefiction -
@kyonshi I looked around at various lists of best loved Infocom adventures and added them to my plan (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=n9ca76cb&dl=0). I have found a friend willing to play through them with me, so I'm going to start off with another crack at Zork, invisiclues in hand - even though it's probably not the best it's just so influential and I really want that context.
#adventuregame #videogames #infocom #interactivefiction #textadventure #zork
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@kyonshi I looked around at various lists of best loved Infocom adventures and added them to my plan (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=n9ca76cb&dl=0). I have found a friend willing to play through them with me, so I'm going to start off with another crack at Zork, invisiclues in hand - even though it's probably not the best it's just so influential and I really want that context.
#adventuregame #videogames #infocom #interactivefiction #textadventure #zork
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@kyonshi I looked around at various lists of best loved Infocom adventures and added them to my plan (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=n9ca76cb&dl=0). I have found a friend willing to play through them with me, so I'm going to start off with another crack at Zork, invisiclues in hand - even though it's probably not the best it's just so influential and I really want that context.
#adventuregame #videogames #infocom #interactivefiction #textadventure #zork
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@kyonshi I looked around at various lists of best loved Infocom adventures and added them to my plan (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=n9ca76cb&dl=0). I have found a friend willing to play through them with me, so I'm going to start off with another crack at Zork, invisiclues in hand - even though it's probably not the best it's just so influential and I really want that context.
#adventuregame #videogames #infocom #interactivefiction #textadventure #zork
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@kyonshi I looked around at various lists of best loved Infocom adventures and added them to my plan (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=n9ca76cb&dl=0). I have found a friend willing to play through them with me, so I'm going to start off with another crack at Zork, invisiclues in hand - even though it's probably not the best it's just so influential and I really want that context.
#adventuregame #videogames #infocom #interactivefiction #textadventure #zork
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Time to figure out those ZIL grammar flags that Steve Meretzky said were confusing! (Back in 1989.)
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Here is the list so far, for those interested: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=zifwosg0&dl=0
Currently the post-2000 entries are just a few I didn't want to forget. I'm planning to add a bunch more - including the cream of Wadjet Eye's output.
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Here is the list so far, for those interested: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=zifwosg0&dl=0
Currently the post-2000 entries are just a few I didn't want to forget. I'm planning to add a bunch more - including the cream of Wadjet Eye's output.
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Here is the list so far, for those interested: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z1xo8c163g5bfd9p0lt7w/Adventure-game-plan.md?rlkey=5vp89hdyrymkrsij29o0hup0d&st=zifwosg0&dl=0
Currently the post-2000 entries are just a few I didn't want to forget. I'm planning to add a bunch more - including the cream of Wadjet Eye's output.
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I am assembling myself a "syllabus" of the best classic adventure games to play through in chronological order. The 90s seems straight forward: there are widely praised favourites (e.g. Secret of Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Gabriel Knight).
But what of the 80s? Do any of those adventure games (and their text predecessors) hold up? Especially if I'm not a child with time to bang my head against the same puzzles for weeks and weeks?
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Visible Zork 3 is now available!
https://eblong.com/infocom/visi/zork3/
Status of the Visible Zorker project: This is fun! I want to keep going. More notes and previews of upcoming games:
https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/05/visible-zork-3
ObNote: The Visible Zorker is a Patreon-supported project. I just released Starcross for Patreon supporters.
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Fellow #infocom text adventure fans, the newest #Vezza #zmachine #interpreter is now available for the #Amstrad #NC200 running CPMish. Using the glorious built in LCD display at 79x18 characters, it was a lot of fun to build. Special mention to Matthew Logue for not only requesting the NC200 version and providing platform information, but also for sending me a huge amount of photos from real hardware so I could debug, and doing a complete play though of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to prove it worked.
#retrogaming #retrogaming -
Blogged about some of the complications in supporting .v5 Z-machine games in my elm Z-machine.
https://whitebeard.blog/posts/ask-the-vm-where-is-the-player/
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a long, long time ago one of the only places you could find MS-DOS abandonware was on Home of the Underdogs. every week I would crawl through its RPG and Adventure sections looking for the next underrated gem I had never heard of. among their “Top Dogs” were two infocom games: Circuit’s Edge and Mines of Titan.
although infocom became synonymous with text adventures/interactive fiction, it was also a publisher of graphical RPGs designed by westwood associates. these were fascinating games - a blend of dungeon crawling, text adventure, and NPC dialogues.
Circuit’s Edge is unique insofar as it is set in a futuristic middle east. the world is based on George Alec Effinger’s When Gravity Fails series, a cyberpunk setting with cybernetic implants, islam, and money. Effinger himself wrote all of the ingame text.
decades later I was finally able to buy physical copies. i always liked the cover art for circuit’s edge, and that they used artist Jean-Francois Podevin’s pre-vis sketch for the manual cover.
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Pour les enseignants, la lecture de "Histoire de l'information" est à prolonger par "Le Numérique-monde" de Pascal Robert.
Une fois les bases historiques acquises grâce au travail colossal de vulgarisation de Chris Haughton, l'analyse historique et géopolitique de la logistique informationnelle devient limpide.
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Pour les enseignants, la lecture de "Histoire de l'information" est à prolonger par "Le Numérique-monde" de Pascal Robert.
Une fois les bases historiques acquises grâce au travail colossal de vulgarisation de Chris Haughton, l'analyse historique et géopolitique de la logistique informationnelle devient limpide.
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Pour les enseignants, la lecture de "Histoire de l'information" est à prolonger par "Le Numérique-monde" de Pascal Robert.
Une fois les bases historiques acquises grâce au travail colossal de vulgarisation de Chris Haughton, l'analyse historique et géopolitique de la logistique informationnelle devient limpide.
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Pour les enseignants, la lecture de "Histoire de l'information" est à prolonger par "Le Numérique-monde" de Pascal Robert.
Une fois les bases historiques acquises grâce au travail colossal de vulgarisation de Chris Haughton, l'analyse historique et géopolitique de la logistique informationnelle devient limpide.
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Pour les enseignants, la lecture de "Histoire de l'information" est à prolonger par "Le Numérique-monde" de Pascal Robert.
Une fois les bases historiques acquises grâce au travail colossal de vulgarisation de Chris Haughton, l'analyse historique et géopolitique de la logistique informationnelle devient limpide.
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After a few months of inactivity on my blog (which has happened before), I have written a medium-sized article about how the term "interactive fiction" has changed over the years.
https://www.vintrospektiv.de/index.php/2026/01/quo-vadis-interactive-fiction/ #interactivefiction #vintrospektiv #textadventures #infocom #cyoa
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After a few months of inactivity on my blog (which has happened before), I have written a medium-sized article about how the term "interactive fiction" has changed over the years.
https://www.vintrospektiv.de/index.php/2026/01/quo-vadis-interactive-fiction/ #interactivefiction #vintrospektiv #textadventures #infocom #cyoa
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After a few months of inactivity on my blog (which has happened before), I have written a medium-sized article about how the term "interactive fiction" has changed over the years.
https://www.vintrospektiv.de/index.php/2026/01/quo-vadis-interactive-fiction/ #interactivefiction #vintrospektiv #textadventures #infocom #cyoa
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After a few months of inactivity on my blog (which has happened before), I have written a medium-sized article about how the term "interactive fiction" has changed over the years.
https://www.vintrospektiv.de/index.php/2026/01/quo-vadis-interactive-fiction/ #interactivefiction #vintrospektiv #textadventures #infocom #cyoa
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After a few months of inactivity on my blog (which has happened before), I have written a medium-sized article about how the term "interactive fiction" has changed over the years.
https://www.vintrospektiv.de/index.php/2026/01/quo-vadis-interactive-fiction/ #interactivefiction #vintrospektiv #textadventures #infocom #cyoa
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Game Studies Study Buddies #89 on Get Lamp
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As a surprise Christmas gift to #retrocomputing, I've pushed out a new version of my #Vezza #Infocom #zmachine #interpreter. This time it's a #CP/M build, specifically for the #TRS80 models 2/12/16... on glorious 8-inch floppies. My requestor and tester Ziggystar12 was kind enough to take a photo of Bureaucracy running on a machine with the 8-inch drives; a game that could never be run on that machine before even though it was contemporary! #retrogaming #retroBattleStations
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Another fine #z80 machine is the Tiki-100, hailing from Norway and running an OS that was compatible with #cp/m 2.2, called TIKO. This one has a pixel-based display which is rendered by the character out BDOS calls, making it a little slow, but still a lot of fun to work with. The boot disks and emulator are all Norwegian which was a fun challenge. The testing process also uncovered that the emulator has a timer bug, so the timing is different to that on real hardware. In the end, it all worked rather well. I ended up using the one colour highlight available to simulate bold text, bringing my #Infocom #Inform #Z-machine interpreter #Vezza to yet another machine. Download the binary from https://gitlab.com/sijnstra1/vezza
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Multilink Monday 12/15/25
Another session of links from my huge For-SSB browser tab group, presented here with minimal comment in the hopes of clawing back a bit of RAM.1. Fan patches English into Wizardry VI for Saturn.
2. The unreleased web browser for the Gamecube. (8 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsx
https://setsideb.com/multilink-monday-12-15-25/
#news #niche #retro #romhacks #DinosaurPlanet #infocom #multilink #niche #PictoChat #retro #romhacks #WizardryVI -
Multilink Monday 12/15/25
Another session of links from my huge For-SSB browser tab group, presented here with minimal comment in the hopes of clawing back a bit of RAM.1. Fan patches English into Wizardry VI for Saturn.
2. The unreleased web browser for the Gamecube. (8 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsx
https://setsideb.com/multilink-monday-12-15-25/
#news #niche #retro #romhacks #DinosaurPlanet #infocom #multilink #niche #PictoChat #retro #romhacks #WizardryVI -
Multilink Monday 12/15/25
Another session of links from my huge For-SSB browser tab group, presented here with minimal comment in the hopes of clawing back a bit of RAM.1. Fan patches English into Wizardry VI for Saturn.
2. The unreleased web browser for the Gamecube. (8 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsx
https://setsideb.com/multilink-monday-12-15-25/
#news #niche #retro #romhacks #DinosaurPlanet #infocom #multilink #niche #PictoChat #retro #romhacks #WizardryVI -
Multilink Monday 12/15/25
Another session of links from my huge For-SSB browser tab group, presented here with minimal comment in the hopes of clawing back a bit of RAM.1. Fan patches English into Wizardry VI for Saturn.
2. The unreleased web browser for the Gamecube. (8 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsx
https://setsideb.com/multilink-monday-12-15-25/
#news #niche #retro #romhacks #DinosaurPlanet #infocom #multilink #niche #PictoChat #retro #romhacks #WizardryVI -
Multilink Monday 12/15/25
Another session of links from my huge For-SSB browser tab group, presented here with minimal comment in the hopes of clawing back a bit of RAM.1. Fan patches English into Wizardry VI for Saturn.
2. The unreleased web browser for the Gamecube. (8 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsx
https://setsideb.com/multilink-monday-12-15-25/
#news #niche #retro #romhacks #DinosaurPlanet #infocom #multilink #niche #PictoChat #retro #romhacks #WizardryVI -
A paper on how to reuse interpreters to get inform v3/5 games on your Apple II:
https://www.kansasfest.org/wp-content/uploads/apple_ii_inform_paper.pdfThere's just a slight issue: the linked tool used to interleave v5 story files on floppy images can no longer be downloaded.
The original URL is http://3.buric.co/interlz5-001.zip, archive.org doesn't seem to have it.Please, tell me that someone here has it...
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Fun fact: Did you know you can play "Zork" & any number of classic Infocom games using #Microsoft #Copilot as a z-emulator? Visit https://copilot.microsoft.com & use the prompt:
"You are an Infocom z-machine emulator. You will emulate the text adventure game Zork, responding to commands just as a z-machine emulator would while I am the player."
(Also works for Planetfall, Suspended, Deadline, etc.)
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The Grundy #NewBrain was an interesting #z80 based machine from 1982. One of its more remarkable features was a built-in single line display in addition to the video out, allowing for some portable use. The machine was targeted at business use and didn't get a large amount of platform specific software. It ran a version of #CP/M 2.2 with an efficient implementation giving it a large TPA. The platform also supports inverse characters, although without a specific control code to toggle so I need to manually track reverse character mode and toggle the top bit accordingly. With some gymnastics in memory management, a 50Hz timer is available, allowing me to count the ticks for the 10Hz timer expected by a full featured #Zmachine
Now that it's properly tested and running, you can download the latest addition to the #Vezza family from https://gitlab.com/sijnstra1/vezza and if you are curious about the NewBrain you can get the emulator and other info from https://newbrainemu.eu/new/I've attached screenshots of the Bomber game in action, as well as the #Infocom classic A Mind Forever Voyaging.
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While porting #Vezza for another #z80 platform (the Grundy #NewBrain), I noticed that there was an issue with the timer routine for the #MSX version. It turns out that the code was in there for the MSX version was using the MSX clock, however, it was not calculating the time properly, The MSX has a fine-grained timer which allows me to measure the time to the nearest 0.1 second as required for the #Zmachine standard. This makes the MSX version one of the few that I have written which supports the full fine-grained time requirement.
While for normal text adventures, this timer resolution might not make much difference, some of the fun post-#Infocom games, this distinction is used. One of the games that I've tested which works properly now is the `bomber.z5`, a real time game where you need to drop bombs from the plane to create a flat landing for your plane. Check the screenshot below for the action! Download the latest from https://sijnstra.itch.io/vezza
#retrogaming #retrocomputing -
Back to fun platforms to port my #Vezza #Infocom #Zmachine interpreter - this time it's the Enterprise 128. A 4MHz #z80 machine from the mid 80s, it has a great emulator, and a bespoke DOS known as IS-DOS, with a lot of compatibility with both CP/M 2.2 and #MSXDOS. While it needed quite some tweaking, a lot of the heavy lifting was done with my original #MSX version before it was optimised. As I understand, the #Enterprise128 didn't have a great library of games for it, so hoping this helps! Get it while it's hot at https://gitlab.com/sijnstra1/vezza Screenshots are the IS-DOS 1.0 version running Border Zone, and the IS-DOS 1.1a version running Beyond #Zork.
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Another wet weekend, another #Vezza release! I was asked to adapt my #Infocom interpreter to another platform - this time the #SinclarQL. An interesting request as it uses a #Motorola 68008 CPU, however, it does have the ability to emulate a #z80 on #CP/M. I was given some pointers on which versions worked to some extent, along with some documentation. Fast forward a few days and I had adapted one of the VT52 versions crossed with other features, and now #Sinclair QL users can enjoy in CP/M mode their #Inform #ZMachine adventures. Yes, there's a native terp as well, however, this was only a few days worth of massaging to get it to work on the SUCCESS CP/M Emulator - the proof is in the screen shots. You can download the executable here https://gitlab.com/sijnstra1/vezza/ #retrocomputing #retrogaming
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[Nouveau billet] In RSS :rss: we trust* - Patrimoine et numérique
➡️ https://patrimoine-et-numerique.fr/tutoriels/88-44-in-rss-we-trust
De l'utilité des flux RSS pour s'informer comme internaute / professionnel, et de la nécessité d'en fournir pour les sites Internet
*established since 2002
#RSS #RSSfeed #fluxRSS #information #numérique #infocom #web #RSN #veille
poke @agnes_vbb @BruantC
avec dedans un poil de #FreshRSS chez @zaclys et un pouet qui tombe à pic de @thibault_lh
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#tmux
It's how you hide that you're playing #Infocom's #LurkingHorror from your boss... Now, if only I weren't my own boss and thus know all my tricks!#wordgrinder #ping #powertop #weather #calcurse #ttyclock #htop #watch #free-m #frotz #dosemu #dosemuDumbMode
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Dear #Zmachine experts,
why do I get garbled output from DOS frotz V2.54, when I try to run Zork Zero?
Command entered:
C:\ZORK0> frotz -d 2 zork0.zipThe current directory contains this files:
ZORK0.CG1
ZORK0.EG1
ZORK0.MG1
ZORK0.ZIP
ZORKZERO.EXEThe last file is #Infocom's original interpreter.
Thanks in advance!
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Un nouveau venu est en gestation chez C&F... Celui d'Anne Cordier, "Grandir informés" ! C'est la suite de "Grandir connectés", et ça arrive en mai.
Mais rien que pour vous, on a ouvert une précommande à prix réduit jusqu'au 1er mai : https://cfeditions.com/grandir-informes/
Et pour vous aider à prendre votre mal en patience, un tout nouveau tirage de son grand frère "Grandir connectés" est en route juste pour l'occasion : https://cfeditions.com/grandirConnectes/
#profdoc #educnum #EMI #Education #educationauxmedias #Infocom
