The following link leads to a complete - hopefully! - collection of every ZCode game (within certain conditions - see below) released up to August 27th, 2012.
And here’s another link, many many thanks to jakobcreutzfeldt:
I certainly don’t see anyone’s server getting clobbered with this file - which, as of today, 30th of August 2012, is already out of date, since a new game (“Escape!.zblorb”) is already out there. So no worries, and thank you very much, jakobcreutzfeldt!
And jdale has very kindly given us a DropBox link!
This probably seems like a folly. Well, maybe it is, but now it’s a sorted and complete folly I can carry around and play on my mobile phone at any time. I just wanted to share it. I play these with ZaxMidlet, and am saving up for a better phone so I can use JFrotzMidlet, which may not be the best interpreter ever but which does fixes some issues with ZaxMidlet. If you have a better interpreter - enjoy!
NOTES
Included in this pack are English, French, Spanish and Italian games. When translations were available, I gave preference to the original language - if it’s not English and an english version is available, both are supplied. If it’s a foreign translation of an English game, I scrapped the translation.
No blorbed files. Because ZaxMidlet, the interpreter I currently use, can’t read them, I extracted the story files of every blorbed work. If you’d rather have the blorbs, tough - I did this for myself and for my interpreter of choice. But hey, it’s not like you’re missing much.
Playfic games - apart from Nautilisia, and maybe some other high-profile game or two - are NOT included, because until the author of Playfic (an otherwise superb utility) deigns to allow us access to older works, it’s impossible to fully sort and collect them. So I’m not trying.
This is a personal collection. As such, you’ll find a few artifacts, like used saved games, or extraneous files.
Includes Infocom, Scott Adams and Phoenix/Topologika games.
And speaking of Scott Adams, a work of caution - Savage Island Pt 1 is sadly known to suffer from a faulty conversion and is unwinnable in its Inform form. Worse yet, God knows how many other Scott Adams games suffered from the same fate. Play at your own risk (but that’s a standard caveat for any SA game, anyway)
If this pack is not, at this date, complete, please do let me know. Please do.
Be aware that some games will not work with some interpreters, and I expect some of these might not work in any mobile environment at all. But if you just want a huge ZCode collection for your desktop, then you should be a-OK.
If some games are not up to date… well, blame the author for not announcing it properly. I tried to be as up-to-date as possible. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find the latest versions of some games, particularly French games. And those that come in Glulx format and ZCode format, where the ZCode release number is higher than the Glulx one? Nightmarish.
No z6, because it seems no-one wants to support it anymore (certainly I know of no mobile interpreter that does, and mobile was my target for this collection). Apart from the Infocom games, this also means no “Sunburst Contamination”, “Moments Out of Time!” and “Sherlock Holmes Solo Adventures 2” (yes, that one is z6).
If a certain game has a ZCode and a Glulz version, and if the Glulx version is of a higher release number than the ZCode, then the game isn’t included. The reasoning is obvious - the game got too big for ZCode, and if I want to play the game proper I should head to the nearest Glulx VM.
I don’t plan on updating this list - it’s not supposed to be an archive, just something I finished today and wanted to share. In case, you know, someone else had the hankering for a complete collection of games for their mobile. Could happen. Maybe.
Naturally, this collection is about 1% masterpieces, 14% great pieces, and 60% solid crap (with the remainder going between great and not so great. Also, I’m guesstimating like hell). Be warned.
Also included are the games known as the “University of Michigan Dearborn CIS 487 games” (see groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/c … /index.php). I don’t know anything about them, but I can guess that they are end-of-term projects from students. I haven’t played them all but I’ve played enough to say that none are spectacular, and quite a few are atrocious - but mostly because it seems the authors aren’t really as familiar with IF conventions as they should be. Taking that in mind, it should be possible to appreciate some of these pieces.
The file is hosted at Rapidshare, which means that after a certain amount of time of inactivity it will be taken down. I won’t bother with trying to keep it active (I suspect very few people will download it anyway). But if anyone does want this and the link doesn’t work, give me a call and I’ll re-upload. EDIT - This holds true for the other links, but I have no idea whether those will automatically deactivate.
There is an utility for “ZCoding” Quill/PAW games (once-popular game-authoring systems for Spectrum and Commodore). I tried it out once. It didn’t work very well for me, and besides, who knows how much those games rely on their graphics, which were lost in the conversion. So I chose not to “ZCodify” them… but if I had, you can bet they’d be here too.
My goodness, 81% of the way through I suffered a network error and lost the whole thing! 15 years ago I would have resumed the download through Zmodem, but here and now… I’ll try again overnight…
The game “The Day I Mauled Mao” is unwinnable in its present version - "Release 1 / Serial number 110603 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) ".
The thing is, I don’t know where I got that version, which is more recent than the one in the IFDB - "Release 1 / Serial number 081224 / Inform 7 build 5U92 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) ". But the newer version is unwinnable. The older version isn’t.
Damn. I can’t even tell where I got that 2011 version.
Joey - You can always sort it, I suppose. It’s arranged alphabetically - you can put A-F games in your mobile, possibly deleting the ones you think are too crappy too keep (if I weren’t a collector I’d have deleted so, so, so many…), thus creating more space. But I am surprised that a phone which CAN play IF doesn’t have the storage space… Memory cards and all…
Hah, I completely forgot about that! Yes, my “alphabetisation” put “A Colder Light” under “A” and “The Baron” under “T”. I know it’s unpopular, but it’s the way I do it, and I was sorting mostly for myself. Should have put a warning about that.
Like I said, if you have any alternative free hosts I could use… Megaupload used to be faster, but nowadays, using JDownloader, Rapidshare is the fastest for me…
Neither are things I’m comfortable messing around in, sorry…
…but would it help if I split the file into more manageable bits?
Also, not wanting to sound repetitive - JDownloader. You might say, “I don’t want to have to install that thing for just this one thing.” Fair enough - those are my sentiments towards torrents and Dropbox exactly.
EDIT - A quick google for “free upload” gave me a few more sites, some need registering and some don’t. I’m currently uploading to FreeUpload, CrockCo and SendSpace (I’d never heard of any of them before). I’ll be posting the links soon, and updating the main post, hopefully one of these’ll be faster…
EDIT - And as long as I’m doing this, I’ll go ahead and include newer titles. They include “The Prize”, and v3 of “Death Off The Cuff”, and “The Forgotten Girls”, and I think that’s it - I don’t know, because I’m just pretty much automatically downloading and story them as they come along, and add them to my playing queue. But my point is, as long as I’m doing this, I’ll bring it up to date. And I’m not going to make a habit of this, because that’d be pretty nonsensical.
Really? I’ll dig deeper. My first contact just gave me that impression.
EDIT - I still have that impression - everything seems geared towards me “downloading DropBox”. If you can let me know how I can make the file available to others without installing anything in my PC, I’d be grateful.
Please, please, please do not share this link outside of this thread. I don’t have a problem hosting it, and I assume that it won’t attract a lot of downloads, but nevertheless, I’d like to avoid having my server clobbered. It’ll be available for the foreseeable future and I’ll mention it here if I decide to take it down…
edit: needless to say, were some copyright/distribution concern to arise, I would not hesitate to take it down
I play these with ZaxMidlet, and am saving up for a better phone so I can use JFrotzMidlet, which may not be the best interpreter ever but which does fixes some issues with ZaxMidlet. If you have a better interpreter - enjoy!