Rather than create a new thread each month, I’ll just add regular updates to this one.
(Previously: The Visible Zorker, The Visible Zorker: Zork 2 )
Visible Zork 3! It’s up today! https://eblong.com/infocom/visi/zork3/
Project status report: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/05/visible-zork-3
Coming next month: Deadline.
Visible Zorker project home page: https://eblong.com/infocom/visi/
Visible Deadline is now up: https://eblong.com/infocom/visi/deadline/
Project status report: Zarf Updates: Visible Deadline is now available to all
Coming next month: Starcross.
Visible Starcross is now up: The Visible Zorker: Starcross
Project status report: Zarf Updates: Visible Starcross is now available to all
Coming next month: Suspended.
Visible Suspended is now up: The Visible Zorker: Suspended
Project monthly report: Zarf Updates: Visible Suspended is now available to all
Also on this topic: I scanned more of my folio collection. More precisely, I trawled Ebay to complete my folio collection, and then scanned more of it:
Coming next month: The Visible Witness. Also I need to scan the last two folio packages: Enchanter and Seastalker.
This will be fun to study!
Does the fact that going SW from Alpha FC to East End is impossible due to a bug affect the Visual Suspended project at all?
No, the display doesn’t rely on room exit properties.
But I did learn thanks to Visible Suspended why Infocom didn’t catch it! GO TO doesn’t use the room exit properties, so it can pass through that connection just fine. And how often are you manually typing compass directions in Suspended?
Correct.
To explain further: GO TO uses the “transit line” system, which was invented for Deadline but borrowed by Suspended. The game contains data tables which list chains of adjacent rooms. The movement handler (FOLLOW-GOAL) moves the robot to the next room in the chain without checking room exits at all. It just assumes that the transit tables and the exits are consistent.
(Hm. I should comment this area better. I did for Deadline.)
I’ve updated the Travel tab to show robot FOLLOW and DRAG status, in addition to destination.
Also, if you type GO TO ROBOT (as distinct from GO TO ROOM), it shows what robot is being looked for. (This only matters for letting the game say “Looks like I missed ROBOT” on arrival.)
I’m considering the idea of also putting the ZIL code up as static web documents.
You can already grab the raw ZIL source, so this would just be adding syntax coloring, intra-doc links, and the commentary notes. Maybe that’s not enough value to be worth the hassle. I dunno. Anybody been itching for this?
I would enjoy it, at least! I’m generally more interested in the commentary than in the live updates.
I note that you can read the commentary directly by looking at, e.g., visi-suspended/gamedat/commentary at master · visible-zorking/visi-suspended · GitHub .
That’s actually what I’m normally doing at this point; but often I find myself going to the Visi page to look up exactly what code the commentary is referring to. Having a syntax-highlighted page with the commentary and the code would be even better.
Okay, your vote as a representative Interested Person is noted.
While thinking about that, I realized that what I really want is a search field in the source tab. So I will probably do that first, but both are now on the list.
The Visible Witness is now up: The Visible Zorker: The Witness
Project monthly report: Zarf Updates: The Visible Witness is now available to all
The search field I mentioned is now working. I didn’t tackle the static web version, but I’ve got next week off so maybe that’ll be my beach project.
I have now completed my set of scans of the Infocom folio-edition packages. (That’s Deadline to Seastalker, since the original Zork trilogy weren’t really folios and didn’t have interesting contents.) (Admission: my Starcross scan is of the Commodore publication, which is generally low-quality and has a monochrome reproduction of the Mass Detector Chart. The color one is way expensive, sorry.)
Links are here: The Visible Zorker Project .