Preparing for a real release, which colours would people prefer?
We can set background, border, text, statusline and cursor colour, and we can provide a normal mode and a dark mode colour scheme. For technical reasons, we can’t use more than eight colours in total though.
Here’s an overview of how the different combinations of C64 colours look: http://microheaven.com/ozmooonline/colours/
Of course you can also try to build a game with different colour combinations at Ozmoo Online
Not to impose on your technical discussion, but I’ve been following this topic with great interest and am very excited about an impending release!
Additionally, we can add up to four lines of text to the splash screen. Each line can hold up to 40 characters. This can be used to say something about the game, the author(s), a URL to the repo etc.
I always preferred white on dark grey on the c64, but many combinations are fine.
While this game may not be runnable as a single file on any other 8-bit systems (that I know of), we could ask Stefan Vogt or Hugo Labrande to help us build disk images for 30+ 8-bit platforms. They have setups for producing this quickly. I think people on many platforms will want to play this game, even if it requires a disk drive.
Unfortunately the latest compilation with the abbreviations comes to 53,528 bytes. If 53,504 still is a hard limit we will have to find 24 bytes somewhere…
The files are uploaded to https://github.com/heasm66/mini_zork_2_z3
No problem. We made some changes to Ozmoo about a week ago which gives us at least another 512 bytes.
I have updated the files at Minizork 2 - Google Drive
Life feels a bit empty now, when there is no more bytes to hunt…
Guess there is always Mini-Zork 3… 
And then there is Mini-Enchanter, Mini-Starcross, Mini-Deadline, Mini-AMFV…
Mini-Suspended could be done in an afternoon. It’s just IMPOSSIBLE mode.
I’ve played through the C128 one without any problems, and I’ve at least started the other two. Should I add these files to the repository, or would you prefer that I just add a link to them?
One thing I found a bit odd in the C64 single file one:
>RESTART
Your score is 0 (out of 400 points), in
0 moves. This score gives you the rank
of Beginner.
Do you wish to restart? (Y is
affirmative): >Y
Restarting.
[Not supported]
on>
I knew restarting wasn’t supported in this particular build, but where did the “on” come from?
Other than that, I did notice a very minor cosmetic glitch. If you open the purple book in the library, then look again, the white book will still refer to the purple book even though the purple book is now listed after it, not before it. I’ll fix that, but I don’t think it warrants a new release yet.
I think we can wait with adding these builds to the repo, until we’re content we’re ready for a public release.
I trust all the builds to work equally well. As usual, there are no guarantees.
“restart” isn’t optional in the Z-machine, so Ozmoo is breaking the contract. What happens when it fails depends on what comes after the restart opcode in the game. With some luck, the game doesn’t crash.
I’ve never bothered making restart fail in Frotz, but judging by the ZIL code it should just print “Failed.”:
<ROUTINE V-RESTART ()
<COND (<DO-YOU-WISH "restart">
<TELL "Restarting." CR>
<RESTART>
<TELL "Failed." CR>)>>
By the way, I have added an “extras” directory to the repository. Currently it contains Henrik’s abbreviations files and a Trizbort.io map of the game. The map isn’t as pretty as it could be, but I figured it might be interesting if someone wants to compare it to the full map.
I’ve played and completed Mini-Zork II. I’m impressed, the game captures the essence of Zork II well. But I found some strange things that could perhaps be improved.
Thanks for testing! Of course, any credits for the game itself goes to Infocom, since I just tried to fix up what was already there. I still wonder who made it, and why it was never finished. The serial number on the original game file (871123) suggests that it was developed alongside Mini-Zork I (871124).
While I have made some minor additions (e.g. removing references to the whirring sound when the carousel has been stopped), I’m generally hesitant to add things that weren’t in the original. That said, I’ll try to answer your questions as best as I can.
No, there is no flask in this version. Unlike the full game, if you read the cakes you’ll see the letters “ENL”, “EVA” and “EXP”. I guess you’re expected to figure it out from that.
You were probably under the influence of the Wizard’s Fantasize spell. A rare random effect, triggered by an effect that is in itself pretty rare, that makes you occasionally see one of the following fake objects:
I’m not sure, but I think this feature was accidentally dropped from the last official release of Zork II. It’s in the final preserved version of the source code (which is probably what this version is based on) but it’s triggered even more rarely, and when it is it will cause Frotz to crash. I hope I’ve managed to restore the original behavior here, though there are aspects of it that I still don’t fully understand.
I guess that in some sense you are inside the red sphere, and the game gives you a glimpse of what you can see outside. If you’ve moved that sphere you’ll see something different, but it doesn’t bother to implement any interactions with what you see.
The behavior is the same in the full game, but I guess I could add the sign as a special case. It would probably just repeat the description you already see, though.
The full game doesn’t understand the word “writing” either. You can read the crypt, but it only has the synonyms “tomb”, “crypt” and “grave”, along with the adjective “marble”. Since an object can have up to four synonyms, I guess it would make sense to add “writing”.
Cool, it is probably true. Since I remember Zork II pretty well I didn’t pay close attention to everything that happened unless it was unexpected, and I didn’t think that things would appear that wasn’t present somehow in Zork II.
As for the other items I understand that you want to stay close to the Infocom version, so it is up to you. I only wanted to mention what I noticed.
I appreciate the bug reports - keep them coming! - and I’ve added “writing” as a synonym for the crypt. I still haven’t made up my mind about the sign. If it was my own game, and I did not have size constraints, then absolutely. But here I’m not so sure…
I’ve tagged a Release 15. Only two bugfixes and some other minor changes this time around. So that makes this the fourth “final” release…?
I like this project, as I am one of the few who has given a high rating to Mini-Zork on IFDB. When I came back to IF after 20 years away, I decided it was time to complete Zork I. But then I saw Mini-Zork and remembered that Zork I had seemed a bit overwhelming in the past. So I chose Mini-Zork and enjoyed it a lot.
However, I am thinking about the purpose of Mini-Zork II - it sounds like the purpose is to create a single-load file for the C64, also available on tape. I suppose the game will be faster (when it has been loaded) as all the data is in RAM rather than loading from a disk drive. So if anyone wants to play it on a real C64, Mini-Zork II will run faster than Zork II with a real disk drive(?).
That also makes me wonder if there could be C128 editions. At the moment, Ozmoo’s Build Mode P (single program file) is not supported for the C128, but I suppose that it could in the future and that the game could then use almost twice as much RAM? (sorry, I am not an expert on this).
So perhaps the full Zork I and Zork II could be single load files for the C128? That may also be possible for other games like planetfall etc? And when playing in 80-column mode, the 2MHz processor would make the game run even faster…