Thanks for pointing that out. It looks like Frotz 2.52 is only packaged for the absolute most recent Ubuntu releases, though (at least, in the downloads at pkgs.org). I’ll download and compile a newer version soon, but if 2.53 is about to be released, I’ll wait for that.
Dan’s comment got me wondering, and I tried x [something immediately visible]
on my whole catalog of Infocom games on my hard drive. In case it’s helpful, here’s a quick list of where x
doesn’t seem to map effectively on to examine
under Frotz 2.44 with frotz -x
on my machine:
-
A Mind Forever Voyaging (release 77)
-
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur (release 74)
-
Beyond Zork (release 57)
-
Border Zone (release 9)
-
Bureaucracy (release 116, .z4)
-
Dungeon (Release 12 / Serial number 990623 / Inform v6.14 Library 6/7; .z5)
-
Leather Goddesses of Phobos (release 4, .z5, but release 59, .z3, doe work)
-
Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It (release 19, .z4)
-
Planetfall (release 10; .z5)
-
Sherlock (release 26, .z5, and release 21, .z5)
-
Trinity (release 12, .z4)
Here’s a quick list of where it does work:
-
Ballyhoo (release 97)
-
Cutthroats (release 23, .z3)
-
Deadline (release 22, .z3, and release 27, .z3)
-
Enchanter (release 29; .z3)
-
Hitchhiker’s Guide (release 59; .z3)
-
Hollywood Hijinx (release 37; .z3)
-
Infidel (release 22; .z3)
-
Leather Goddesses of Phobos (release 59, .z3, but release 4, .z5, doesn’t work)
-
Mini-Zork (release 34, .z3)
-
Moonmist (release 9, .z3)
-
Seastalker (revision 86, .z3, and revision 15, .z3)
-
Sorcerer (release 15, .z3)
-
Spellbreaker (release 87, .z3)
-
Starcross (release 17, .z3)
-
Stationfall (release 107, .z3)
-
Suspect (release 14, .z3)
-
Suspended (release 8, .z3)
-
The Lurking Horror (release 203, .z3)
-
The Witness (release 22, .z3)
-
Wishbringer (release 68, .z3)
-
Zork I (release 88, .z3)
-
Zork II (release 68, .z3)
-
Zork III (release 17, .z3)
I couldn’t figure out how to get a prompt up for Journey: The Legend Begins (.z6) and didn’t take the time to learn the unusual controls for a game I’ve never gotten around to playing. I couldn’t get Return to Zork running in Frotz, but then, I don’t think it’s a Z-code game? I also couldn’t get to a prompt in Zork Zero (but then, the manpage explicitly says that .z6 is semi-supported, and I wouldn’t really want to run it in a terminal anyway).
In any case, it looks like it works much more often than not! It turns out it’s just that the Infocom games I’ve played in a terminal with Frotz happen to be disproportionately selected from the “doesn’t work” list.