Anchorhead Steam release (gblorb) in MS-DOS

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I’ve recently purchased the updated Steam release of Anchorhead and I’d love to play it on my DOS machine, as is my preference for IF and roguelikes. Is there a DOS-based interpreter that will run it? Thanks in advance.

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I fear you may be out of luck.

The 2018 Anchorhead.gblorb I have declares Glulx version 3.1.2. Major version 3.x.x of the Glulx specification was released in 2006; this post-dates both of the DOS Glulx interpreters I find on the IF Archive:

Experimentally, in dosbox:

  • dosgit-104: *** fatal error: Illegal instruction ***
  • glulxe-034: Glulxe fatal error: This Glulx file is too new a version to execute.

(But, I’m not a habitual DOS user. Maybe there’s a newer DOS interpreter build under a rock somewhere.)

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I tried building the latest Glulxe against the last release of glkDOS, which implements Glk 0.6.1 (ancient).

Spoiler: Anchorhead doesn’t work, but it gets a bit farther than what @JTN was able to coax out of the older interpreters.

I had to modify two Unicode calls to their non-Unicode counterparts since glkDOS doesn’t support Unicode. It builds and runs, and even starts up. It gives a warning:

Run-time problem P52: This interpreter does not support Unicode.

Then the opening text appears, and you’re prompted for input, but all input results in “I beg your pardon?”

There’s some issue in parsing. No idea what, though a reasonable guess is something to do with Unicode, since that’s what’s been explicitly been a problem.

It’s not a general Glulxe-on-DOS issue, though. I started up Floatpoint, and it responds to input just fine. And for a more recent game, “Dr Ludwig and the Devil” responds to input, although it also gives the “does not support Unicode” warning.

I’m attaching the Glulxe I built; it’s version 0.6.1. It requires a 32-bit extender, so if you’re trying to run in 16-bit mode, you’re unfortunately out of luck.

glulxe.zip (663.9 KB)

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Current Inform doesn’t support unicode in input, only in output, so I’m surprised about that error.

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Thanks for the prompt replies. I know next to nothing about programming so I’m not going to provide anything useful, except possibly the idea that the embedded images might be the thing that prevents it from working? I don’t know.