Mini-Zork II, call for testing

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
#1

As I wrote in a separate thread, I’ve been spending some time lately getting the Mini-Zork II source code that was leaked along with the other Infocom source code into shape. Like Mini-Zork I, the idea must have been to create a version that could run on a C64 without a floppy drive.

I’m now at the point where I’ve fixed just about every issue that I’ve come across on my own (including a few bugs that are still in the full version of the game!) but I would really appreciate some outside testing. So if anyone’s interested, the latest version can be found in this GitHub repository. Please let me know if you find any bugs.

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#2

I see that is perhaps the freshest IF work ever published (binary committed half an hour ago…) :smiley:
sidenote, you can also try to use a release number above 393, preferable from 400 (the gamut here is 32,374 unique non-Infocom release numbers, or I’m wrong ? :wink: )

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

#3

I’m afraid I don’t see the reason. I’ve never heard of any games adjusting release numbers to stay out of the range Infocom used. The serial number should be a clear indication that it’s not an official Infocom release.

The only known Infocom era data file for it is Release 2 / Serial number 871123, and this is almost certainly built from the same source code with some (ok, several) modifications. I thought it would make sense to continue with Release 3 and upwards.

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#4

I disagree. Elsewhere I noted that I know the gray (and dark gray…) zones of the 'net, and I understand that “faking unreleased upgrade/version” is a relatively common phenomena in the retrogaming scene. Hence my position on the need of an easily identifiable clear-cut distintion between the original releases and the mods (whose is what your work is classifiable…)

Also, there’s a sort of beholder effect: here in the IF community/scene we take for granted the knowledge of the complete Infocom release list and buglist, but isn’t a knowledge we can take for granted in the general gaming scene, even those nearer the IF gaming (e.g. the retrocomputing scene I noted above)

Hope to have cleared that I have nothing against you, and I posted my reasoning, whose I think is serious enough to deserve a calm debate elsewhere.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

#5

Well, the release number seems like a pretty obscure way of doing that, not much better than the “ZAPF” embedded in the game header. After all, we don’t know what undiscovered release numbers are still lurking out there. (The surviving .chart files suggest that numbering would often be restarted during development, perhaps as the game passed through alpha and beta testing?) So how about simply changing the game banner a bit instead? Right now, it reads:

Mini-Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz
Copyright (c) 1988, Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 13 / Serial number 210220

I don’t want to add extra lines to it, because I quite like its brevity, but I could easily change it to something like:

Mini-Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz
Copyright (c) 1988, Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Unofficial Release 13 / Serial number 210220

How does that sound?

No offense taken. Even if I thought that was the intention - which I don’t - I did ask for feedback, didn’t I? :slightly_smiling_face:

#6

Unnecessary. There is no official release of Mini-Zork II. Just keep doing what you’re doing.

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#7

I agree with @jcompton. Just continue doing what you were doing.

Release numbers should be in sequence. If the Infocom code is release 2, then the next release should be release 3. If you put huge gaps in the release numbers, then purists will go looking for the missing releases.

The ‘Unofficial release’ isn’t a bad idea. Unfortunately, it makes other unofficial releases look like official releases because they don’t have the ‘Unofficial’ prefix. For that reason, it might be better to avoid it.