I’ve never played Minecraft but like most onliney types, I’m aware of it.
In my Apple II circles, I saw an entertaining news item today. Brendan Robert has created ApplesoftMod, which embeds a fully-functional Apple //e emulator as a usable object in Minecraft.
“The actual emulation is based on Java Apple Computer Emulator (Jace) and is allowed to run for 10 seconds before aborting. This is long enough to draw pictures and print simple statements. Letting it run for much longer would cause a higher workload on the server, and this is not desirable on a busy server!”
“Also for anyone who is interested I also embedded a z-machine interpreter using ApplesoftMod as a starting point and now you can play Zork within Minecraft as well as any other Infocom or Inform 7 creation!”
I don’t think he means you can only run Zork for 10 seconds
He’s not running Zork on the emulated Apple II. What I gather from reading the 2nd post is that zmppmod is an adaptation of already existing and unrelated Z-machine playing code. When he says he used ApplesoftMod as a base, I think he’s talking about other elements of the project than the emulator (EG maybe just the interface to Minecraft and the physical presentation of the object in that world?). But which elements specifically, I don’t know as I haven’t tried either of these mods.
I’m often thinking about text adventure versions of other games. Minecraft would presumably be horrible (though a little ASCII map could help…). Katamari could be interesting!
roll north
You roll north, collecting briefcases and cafe patrons. A tree wobbles dangerously, but you just fail to pick it up. A royal cousin perched among the topmost branches shakes an angry fist at you.
There was a game where you played a monster eating things so it could grow bigger and eat bigger things, which embodies a katamari-esque idea. Forget what it’s called (I recall maga reviewed it on the IFDB though). In general, game-mechanics that involve repeating essentially the same kind of action translate poorly to a text medium.
