Resurrecting Zag

[Dannii]

I made a debian package for Kerkerkruip: github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/tree/ … ges/debian

But unless you personally know a Debian developer is very unlikely that it will get accepted. You could make an Ubuntu PPA (or join this one), or just offer the .debs for download (which is what we do for Kerkerkruip.)

[Banbury]

@Dannii

I made a debian package for Kerkerkruip: github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/tree/ … ges/debian

But unless you personally know a Debian developer is very unlikely that it will get accepted. You could make an Ubuntu PPA (or join this one), or just offer the .debs for download (which is what we do for Kerkerkruip.)

As it happens, I know a few Debian developers . If I give them a ready-made package, they might know how to get it accepted. It’s worth a try.

[Dannii]

Oh, well in that case it’s worth trying. And if by any chance they were fans of Kerkerkruip then we would still like to get it in Debian someday.

[wyatt8740]

@Banbury

Thanks for the in-depth comments. I’m glad someone is using Zag. That makes the whole effort more fun.

If you could have a look at the Mac OSX app and suggest improvements, that would be very helpful. I had thought of buying my own Mac, but even the smallest one is sooo expensive. It sucks, that there’s no legal way to emulate Mac OSX.

Got my late 2006 imac used at a HAM radio festival (HAMfest) for $150
I can play around with it, sure. Will have to transfer my server on that mac’s Mint installation to another computer first, though.

@Banbury

I’ll add a toggle for the anti-aliasing. Sorry for not thinking of it myself. I know, that some people don’t like it.

Thank you! (hugs)

@Banbury

And I did install Mint, but I had to use Xfc. My computer doesn’t like anything else.

MATE does not require hardware acceleration, if that’s what you’re referring to. It’s forked from Gnome 2.
My Debian box has Xfce and MATE on it, and My Pentium M laptop (from 2005 and still kicking) uses MATE exclusively. It’s a rather robust desktop.

Although I understand if you simply prefer XFCE - it’s fine by me.

@Banbury

Do you have by any chance experience with creating Debian packages? I’m thinking about submitting Zag to Debian, Ubuntu and the likes. But I haven’t done this for a few years now, and I forgot most of it.

A bit, actually. Made a clang 3.2 package for my debian box, and even made some .deb packages for the jailbroken iPhone’s apt (like the git interpreter - just never released my .deb because it would conflict with the git program people use for code maintenance).

It would be tough with a java application, I have no idea where the .jar would be saved, but I would assume it would be run with a shellscript containing something like:

[code]#! /bin/sh
which java -jar /path/to/zag.jar “$@”

The “$@” above passes all command line arguments to the java program.[/code]

So, yeah, I’ve made an apt package or two. But I have no idea how java programs would be properly packaged.

And you don’t really need to know a debian developer, but if I really tried, I could probably find Ian Murdock (founder of debian) - he lives in my town (unlisted number, though, and I don’t know if he has any power there anymore).

You could just ask someone on the debian mailing lists, though. It isn’t supposed to be hard to submit packages to debian - they want as much software in their repos as they can get (or so I would hope).

[Banbury]

I fixed most of the bugs with file streams. There are still two issues left, but they are special cases, that shouldn’t happen in most games. Right now I have to give it a rest for a while, or I go crazy.

Kerkerkruip is a nice test case for Zag. It uses a lot of special functions other games do not. I found two bugs, that made Kerkerkruip unplayable. But it should work now with the latest build.

[wyatt8740]

I just want to say again, I really, really, really appreciate that you’re doing this. Zag has deserved some more love for a while now (and it’s the only up-to-date graphical interpreter for linux besides gargoyle, which I refuse to use). Thanks for the work, and I hope you don’t get tired of my (mostly wildly guessing) bug reports anytime soon :\

I’ve just barely used java beyond a single minecraft mod two years ago, and a pong game I made five years ago.

And your latest patch DID fix antialiasing, and your version now seems fully playable for me. I guess I can start playing with this now!

[Banbury]

@wyatt8740

I just want to say again, I really, really, really appreciate that you’re doing this. Zag has deserved some more love for a while now (and it’s the only up-to-date graphical interpreter for linux besides gargoyle, which I refuse to use). Thanks for the work, and I hope you don’t get tired of my (mostly wildly guessing) bug reports anytime soon :\

Please keep the bug reports coming! And the feature requests. That’s what I really, really appreciate .

[wyatt8740]

Maybe a menu where one can select from the available system look and feels?

Or making the program check the system’s ‘swing.properties’ file to determine look and feel, if an entry for it exists, before defaulting to the ugly metal theme.

Just to help a bit more, here are the ‘look and feel’ strings I could find:
javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel
com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel
com.sun.java.swing.plaf.motif.MotifLookAndFeel
com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel

by the way, haven’t tested the windows look, but GTK and Motif both have issues scrolling during text input. try it and you’ll see what I mean. Nimbus and Metal have so far been the only ‘look and feel’ settings that work.

[Banbury]

The font sizes are overridden in the source code for all fonts. I’m not sure why.
There’s a comment:

// a hack to get around abysmally poor font substitution performance

Since Zag was originally written for Java 1.3 (I believe), this might no longer be necessary. I’ll see, what happens, when I remove it.

[wyatt8740]

@Banbury

The font sizes are overridden in the source code for all fonts. I’m not sure why.
There’s a comment:

// a hack to get around abysmally poor font substitution performance

Since Zag was originally written for Java 1.3 (I believe), this might no longer be necessary. I’ll see, what happens, when I remove it.

Thanks

By the way, running openJDK 1.7.0 on OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard now, just for this project, as to be relevant to more ‘modern’ OSX versions (so now I can answer java 7 OSX questions).

Anyway. that was painful, and I hope never to have to do it again. So, I’m uploading it somewhere where others can find it. Probably not the best place to be distributing binaries from some guy on the internet (me), but I hope someone finds a link when they google it. It will save them hours. So here’s a binary of openJDK 1.7.0 (java 7) for OS X snow leopard:
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/573 … 22.tar.bz2

Unpack it under /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines .
then, run

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home

set this in your ~/.profile and ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile) if you want to keep this as a default.

Mainly uploading this because the program actually looks different when compiled for Java 1.6 than for Java 1.7.

Java 1.7:
i.imgur.com/NiwSTMH.png
Java 1.6:
i.imgur.com/Kdi9wG0.png

[wyatt8740]

@tetractys

@Banbury

Something similar does exist indeed. It’s called twisty and was created by Google no less.

It’s not the same. Twisty is a z-machine interpreter. Zag is a glulx-machine interpreter. I don’t know any glulx-interpreter written for Android (Zag for Android would be the first), but I may be wrong, so if you know any, let me know. Thank you!

You could probably just compile git or glulxe with the glkterm UI and a terminal app on a rooted droid phone.

I don’t even have a droid phone, but google has an ‘android emulator’ for linux. I’m on it. Will try my hand at compiling it.

I’m pretty sure it will work - I’ve managed it on an iPhone.

[wyatt8740]

I’m looking, really, I am, but I cannot spot any bugs (besides that the swing.properties file appears to still have no effect for me in selecting a theme.)

[Banbury]

@wyatt8740

I’m looking, really, I am, but I cannot spot any bugs (besides that the swing.properties file appears to still have no effect for me in selecting a theme.)

The reason for this might be, that the file is called zag.properties . I’ve attached a sample to this post. Just copy it to the zag folder and replace ‘system’ with the fully qualified name of the theme you want to use.

Other than that I’m elated to hear, that you can’t find any bugs. I have to implement a few missing functions, yet. So I can concentrate on this.
zag.zip (175 Bytes)

[Banbury]

I have fixed the last small bugs known to me. Zag should be almost 100% compatible with the Glulx spec now. I’m preparing a release, which should come out within the next week. Until then I’d like to encourage everyone to test it mercilessly .
After the release I’ll start working on the Android port. This will take some time, as I have little experience with Android programming. But I’m optimistic, that I can deliver something in due time.

[wyatt8740]

Sounds awesome! I’ll keep pounding away at it!

edit: in my spare time this evening I also uploaded an android build of git with glkterm. A bit buggy until you set up a good terminal like vt100, but here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15537

Not making it a release because it’s not very easy to set up and I don’t have a physical android device to try it on, only google’s emulator. My parents tossed my original iphone (which could run android) back when I was 14, and I haven’t gotten an android device since.

[Banbury]

I just released Zag 1.1.0:
viewtopic.php?uid=4035&f=38&t=15530&start=0

Thanks to everyone, who helped testing.

I didn’t manage to upload the file to ifarchive. If anybody could help out here, I would be much obliged.

[wyatt8740]

@Banbury

The reason for this might be, that the file is called zag.properties . I’ve attached a sample to this post. Just copy it to the zag folder and replace ‘system’ with the fully qualified name of the theme you want to use.

Other than that I’m elated to hear, that you can’t find any bugs. I have to implement a few missing functions, yet. So I can concentrate on this.

Thanks for this! Somehow missed this post earlier. This works fine for me!

I just attempted uploading zag to IFarchive, by the way. I guess we’ll see if it gets accepted.

[Banbury]

@wyatt8740

I just attempted uploading zag to IFarchive, by the way. I guess we’ll see if it gets accepted.

Thanks! I really hope they accept it. The current version on IFArchive is rather old.

[zarf (Andrew Plotkin)]

In general the Archive accepts everything. It may take a few days to be filed, though.

(Everything on-topic, I mean. Not pirated copies of The Sims or PHP viruses, both of which show up occasionally in the FTP drop box.)

[farvardin]

I’m trying to use this new version of zag to server glulx files on our website (for example ifiction.free.fr/jeux/lupercalia/lupercalia.jnlp ).
But I can’t launch it, because it says it’s not signed: “Caused by: net.sourceforge.jnlp.LaunchException: Fatal: Application Error: Cannot grant permissions to unsigned jars. Application requested security permissions, but jars are not signed.”