VΘXΔM: a Z-Machine, Glulx, and Å-machine interpreter in Python

It feels superficial to comment on the name, but I suggest that you rename from VΘXΔM to Voxam.

The Greek letter Θ is a theta, pronounced “th”. The Δ is a delta, pronounced “d.” And, in Greek, X is the letter chi, pronounced “kh” (as in “chiropractor”).

VΘXΔM would be correctly pronounced “vthchdm,” with no vowels. When I say it out loud fast, it sounds like “vithctim.”

(You aren’t the first (and won’t be the last) to do something like this. Early posters for The Odyssey (2026) spelled it ΘDΨSSΣΨ. The Ψ is a, psi pronounced “ps”, and the Σ is a sigma, pronounced “s”, and so this word would be pronounced “Thdpssssps,” perhaps the sort of sound you’d make to invite a cat to approach you.)

To respond more substantially…

IMO, automapping works substantially better in cooperation with the author. Almost all ADRIFT 5 games support a map of rooms; the ADRIFT IDE lets the author position rooms on a canvas (like you can in Trizbort), and customize connectors between rooms (adding explicit bends to keep the connectors from overlapping with rooms).

When playing an ADRIFT 5 game with a map, you can pan and zoom the map, you can see exits that you haven’t tried yet, and even click on a room of the map to auto-walk there.

A big :+1: from me there.

I’ve been working on Spatterlight’s ADRIFT support recently, and, to that end, I’ve been working on a Glk extension to support author-provided maps in games.

It’s intended to support “rasterized” (PNG/JPG) maps with a “you are here” overlay, or a map that reveals itself room-by-room as you play (“fog of war”), implemented via SVGs.

Historically, automappers have tried to deduce what room you’re in, perhaps by trying to parse the transcript to read the room name. But rooms can change their names, and multiple rooms can have the same name (as in the classic IF mazes). A naive transcript parser can barely even detect room names (especially if they don’t have access to stylehints, which often add bold styling to room names).

But when the interpreter knows where you are, knows which exits you can use to leave a room, and when the author positions the rooms on a canvas, you can get quite far.