ZIL & ZILF Useful Links

Authoring Other Development Systems
1

All the ZIL files to download https://bitbucket.org/jmcgrew/zilf/wiki/Home

ZIL Group on Facebook

Learning ZIL on Google docs: The documentation on the ZIL language https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gwy2VpnqXwMIf3wQFgYJD-lFyeyXr1FqGbOIJefreTY/edit

Zil Quick Code example (thanks Adam): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FPwwQUla5ceI4TIVWAuaOThL_0S6eAOP/view?fbclid=IwAR1yyPq6cwsJqogX8uJcIWf9pqRhEooJR-RXLCtNRlTE2Lz6mrnTxMmZEOA

Infocom source code that we’ve tweaked/fixed so it compiles using ZILF is here … https://github.com/The-ZIL-Files?fbclid=IwAR2VtrrOT2nc2mefX_BFIet9xCoSLJyacHiuYN2oaGKOztt9e24LgL-w9kU

Historical Source - Overview A collection of historical source files for education and perusal https://github.com/historicalsource?tab=repositories&fbclid=IwAR0nIe9oM7EZmZXwfgoxN-uQ_I4RI5j5nfER5wziHxDt-10rUtXgt0tdvtk

The original Infocom source code as uploaded by Jason Scott recently… https://github.com/historicalsource?tab=repositories

Articles - History
Long Lost ‘Zork’ Source Code Uploaded to GitHub, But Few People Understand It Apr 18 2019 https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xdk8/long-lost-zork-source-code-uploaded-to-github-but-few-people-understand-it?fbclid=IwAR3JzPUWLQo5ikmaEm5FVseUkB53kz_PCHGsrkX0cljtcsTZ5tYY-hoeg1A

The History of Zork https://web.archive.org/web/20090116035446/http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/zorkhist.html

PDP-10/its https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/813?fbclid=IwAR27b_Kh-EQCQ2eZM1TH6uYdFwG_s6aRUV_JBZEy3-rxlA1kOkP2iNwWk2A Bob Supnik usually gets the credit for … borrowing Zork source code. But there was anoher: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/813

VIDEOS
ZIL - Where to start - Quick Code Guide: How to write and run an ultra-simple (1 room, 1 object) game in ZIL https://youtu.be/VMflK-xjyg0?fbclid=IwAR1t1_oef9xXRqAFpV0w0UjI40YHIvIJbZPh79g1P2nCbi82YTAxiUYC5II

Game On! - Infocom text games and ZIL 1:21:50 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416801231?fbclid=IwAR0ENXQSxEBgZkq5qva19pJSJBvKE3xJXK-K98orNwAC25gJ4YujL2Mrg1c&sr=a&t=17s

Zork - Infocom - Zork Implementation Language 4:44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KITo4oW-Ojw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2Fdnvx6gbWLlzhAhyqZ6H9btF3jYc1ZIW9llyZbA7Vjy75yRQ9FADoAaQ

Banana Retro Published on Apr 23, 2019 A nice quick overview video, featuring an interview with Dave Lebling, on Zork and MDL and ZIL.

ZIL - Zork Implementation Language - History of the Language 8:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oPIXEn7xcE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3XNbTT5NAv2r4NNgc13JZe5Y_8SUvDExz86ddxmvkLIfmHbQKjdU42Kbk

Banana Retro Published on Apr 25, 2019 ZIL is short for Zork Implementation Language, a programming language (based on MDL) developed by Marc Blank and Joel Berez of Infocom, and is a descendant of the artificial intelligence language LISP.

Footage recorded by Jason Scott as part of his Get Lamp interview archive.

Original interview video here: https://archive.org/details/getlamp_b…

The Infocom Source Code Episode 19:27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT1kAmQ7nYc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3o2g5h5tmvjk9oYWGPq1q70XGByccVVi_yFucp5H_iWu6aa-e3rvQ75ho

Jason Scott Published on Apr 28, 2019 The Infocom Source Code Episode: The Specialness of Infocom, The Craft, The Z-Machine, Z-Machine Glories, Full Sentences and Every Platform, GET LAMP, The Infocom .ZIP File, A Release, Stu Galley, Github, The Clones and Branches, Steve and Kevin have a chat. An episode about the release of the Infocom Source Code on Github. It’s currently available on the HistoricalSource collection there: https://github.com/historicalsource

The ZIL Language is now having a little renaissance and I hope to see some actual games come out of it. Until then, I’m not kidding - type in the name of any Infocom game and you can probably be playing it within seconds.

I recommend a walk through the document Steve Meretzky wrote at Infocom to explain the ZIL source code here: https://archive.org/details/Learning_…

Here’s the video of the chat with Steve and Kevin: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416801231

5 Likes
2

I notice that Planetfall & Stationfall have a bug with their turns, which makes the turns in the status bar start on 2484, or something like that. It also does not restore a saved file well, as it starts again with no inventory and nothing else there. Zork sometimes randomly stops working and everything you say outputs as “[PRSA] [PRSA] …” and when you save, the same thing as Planetfall happens. Oh, and many (mostly Gold) versions don’t have a compiled file in it. But otherwise…:+1:

3

That’s a feature. The games don’t show number of moves, they show in-game time measured in “millichrons”. Each day is 10 chrons, or 10,000 millichrons. Different actions may take different amounts of time. (And if that seems confusing, wait until you see Suspended, where the “score” is actually the casualty rate on the planet, in thousands.)

I can’t help you with the other issues, since I’ve never seen them myself. At least not with game files I’ve compiled from the source myself with ZILF. It’s worth noting that the preserved source code does not necessarily correspond to any released version of the game. I’ve tried playing the games up to (but not yet including) Bureaucracy, and generally the source code seems to be in pretty good shape. But for some games, there have clearly been changes made since the release, and that sometimes means new and “exciting” bugs.

The save/restore thing sounds more like an interpreter issue to me… though on the other hand, that sounds pretty unlikely too?

1 Like
4

For a long time, I thought the Planetfall clock was just one of those Meretzky things, but I now think it was a clever way to de-emphasize the traditional “turn count from zero” to focus on the game’s “real” clock, which is measured in terms of days and the progression of the illness.

TC, the Infocom Fact Sheet flags some internal and “final” (which weren’t final in a commercial sense) versions that often behave quite badly. The specifics of each release aren’t available (so far as I know), but sometimes we can at least get a sense for what versions will and won’t work reliably.

I’m pretty sure that Planetfall R49 doesn’t list dropped items in room descriptions, for instance. Or something like that; it’s been a year since I messed with it. I’d never suggest playing it to anyone who wasn’t researching specific versions.

The fact sheet also identifies the “Masterpiece” version for every game released in that collection. While source code is not always available for “Masterpieces,” Zarf has kindly identified the specific release numbers in his own archive. My own writings focus on the “Masterpiece” releases as well. I think any “commercially released” source/game is a good plan B.

pdd.if-legends.org/infocom/fact-sheet.txt

That’s not to say that your problem is related to versioning (I haven’t seen it myself), but there are many instances of archived sources and story files that were never tested for external use. Those versions may have all sorts of problems.

2 Likes