Does anyone remember how to load a saved game in the original Zork 1?

[Mahaloth]

It's an old game.

I saved by typing "save", but how do I load it? It says it doesn't know the world load and open is an in game command.

[Sofis]

I'm pretty sure it's restore.

[twit]

I remember playing that game years ago and I think the command MIGHT simply be LOAD though it's been too long to remember.

[Lynn Bodoni]

I'm pretty sure it's RESTORE as well. Man, it's been ages since I played any Zork.

Keep a light source handy, and watch out for thieves!

[Neidhart]

ZORK . . . what a great game. Rocked my world back in 1979.

[tanstaafl]

My obligatory Zork thread link.

[Hello Again]

Amusing results when you do the following: say "xyzygy" and
jump

Zork knows a lot of verbs, just play around and see what happens.

Remember you can us abbreviations: u=up d=down w=west z=wait g=again (repeats last command). The shortest word for your light source is "lamp" vs. lantern.

FYI, I'm 90% certain it's Restore

[Hello Again]

oh, yeah, some other stuff I just remembered. If you want the room to be described *every* time you enter it, type VERBOSE. If you *never* want to see the room description, type SUPERBRIEF. The "standard" setting -- getting the room description the first time you enter it -- is called BRIEF.

[Hello Again]

tanstaffl -- what's up with the Zork link? It's definitely different than the game I played.

SPOILER:

I found Raamses' coffin but the sceptre wasn't inside. What the hey? Also, I didn't encounter the enraged dwarf at the foot of the trap door, perhaps that was just luck? Or the thief in the labyrinth, now that I think of it. I found an item I didn't remember: a coil of wire.

[lno]

Hello Again, I think you mean xyzzy, which is an Easter Egg in nearly every interactive fiction game there is.

If you're playing old interactive fiction games for nostalgia's sake, may I recommend looking at the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition which is happening right this very moment? Thirty games have been entered this year -- I haven't played any of them yet, but I do every year (and entered a game last year). Some of them will be absolutely abhorrent, but each year there are four or five games that, in my opinion, are superior to anything that Infocom put out.

Anyone can play, anyone can judge, anyone can enter.

Now, to get back to working on the entry I intended for this year but never finished...

[Hello Again]

dag, lno you're right. The history of xyzzy, as I understand it, is that it was a magic word in one of the first popular text adventures, called IIRC "Adventure." I found a copy on Compuserve back in the 80s and, jmho, of course, Zork I has several sections that are freely um... "inspired" by Adventure.

[Anamorphic]

Hey, lno, what was the game you entered in the IFComp last year? Is it still available online? I'd love to play it.

And yes, still replaying the occasional Infocom game, I can confirm that it's 'restore' to load a game.

[lno]

The game I entered was Jane, Anamorphic. The linked file is a .z5 file, which you need to run through a Z-Code interpreter program.

If you're on Windows, then WinFrotz is one of the most popular interpreters. For Mac OS X 10.1.2 or higher, there's a Mac version.

Jane was my first attempt at writing interactive fiction, and the source code is horribly, horribly ugly. It's also somewhat non-traditional, so don't expect the "gather treasures and solve puzzles" style of game. It also had one of the greatest standard deviations in its scoring - people either loved it or hated it.

I came in tenth in a field of thirty-eight -- not bad for a rookie, I tell myself.

[Anamorphic]

Thanks for the link, lno. I do already have Zoom, a Z-code interpreter for Mac OSX, and it loads it just fine. I'll try to start playing it later today, if I get a chance. Congrats on coming in 10th... sounds great even not considering it was your first try. And the 'non-traditional' part sounds to me like a plus...

[lno]

Hey, sounds like you're already pretty familiar with IF. I hope you enjoy it - if you've got any questions or comments on it, feel free to drop me a line at the email in my profile.

[Smeghead]

I just want to tell everyone that I have all three original Zork games on my Palm Pilot.

Thank you.

[tanstaafl]

Originally posted by Hello Again
tanstaffl -- what's up with the Zork link? It's definitely different than the game I played.

That link (which is actually someone's 404 page, btw) is an implementation of the original Zork. It predates Infocom. When Blank and Lebling went on to found Infocom they wanted to publish Zork but it was too big for the computers of the day. So, they split the original in two. Some things got moved around and put in one or the other (to fit in with the "collect treasures" objective of the first and the "defeat the dungeon master" objective of the second). So, everything is not in the same place as the Infocom versions. (You may have discovered that the map is somewhat different too and that the parser is not as robust as the later Infocom one.) Think of it as an earlier draft.

Ino - Is the IF Competition still around? I played around with Inform for a while and wrote one game (The Awakening which is still probably somewhere in the IF Archive. It was my first attempt and it looks and plays like one. ) but never entered anything in the Competition. (Tried to write one once but never finished.) I've been out of touch with the IF community for several years and didn't know it was still around.

And, I have Frotz for my Palm too. And about a dozen games (that I really plan to finish someday )

[toadspittle]

I just want to tell everyone that I have all three original Zork games on my Palm Pilot.

Thank you.

Hello Sailor! Where did you find such a thing?

[rjung]

Dunno about Smeghead, but I bought all of Activisions' "Infocom Classics" CDs a few years back, for $5 a pop. After copying the Z-Code files onto my iMac and getting a copy of Frotz, I've now got the entire Infocom game library at my fingertips.

[lno]

Originally posted by tanstaafl
Ino - Is the IF Competition still around? I played around with Inform for a while and wrote one game (The Awakening which is still probably somewhere in the IF Archive. It was my first attempt and it looks and plays like one. ) but never entered anything in the Competition. (Tried to write one once but never finished.) I've been out of touch with the IF community for several years and didn't know it was still around.

Still around and going strong (or as strong as the miniscule community can be). rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction are the two newsgroups dedicated to it, and the Competition has continued unabated - check ifcomp.org for the status on this year's and all future. I believe the judging period ends on November 15th, so download the current entries and give them a try!

(And it's lno, not Ino!)

[Smeghead]

Originally posted by toadspittle
Hello Sailor! Where did you find such a thing?

If I remember correctly, which is a pretty big if, whatever company owns the rights to the Zork games had them available for free download a couple of years ago. Then all I had to do was find a Palm-compatible compiler.

[Skeezix]

I seem to recall that m'self. They were all released as freeware (but only the z-code files) by Activision, in a promotional gig for... oh hell. The newest Zork title at the time. Wasn't Zork: Zero, I don't think...

tanstaafl, just what was The Awakening all about? I know I recognize the title, but like yourself I haven't been to gmd, nor dusted off my interpreters in a spell, now. Matter of fact, I think the last time I played any int-fic was the last time lno started a thread on the subject, and that was the first time I'd played in about a year and a half.

(Ah, here it is.)

Did it start with the player waking up in an open grave in a rainstorm?

[cletus]

/slight hijack

If anyone is interested in some more good IF games, check out this site and this site.

I'm still working my way through most of them but I've found some wonderful stuff. Beautiful descriptions, amazing imaginations, surreal settings, some of the best works I've seen. To get you started, I recommend photopia from my second link and anchorhead from the first. Sorry to hijack but it's so rare nowadays to find people to talk to about IF's.

[cletus]

I just went over Skeezix's link (SDMB is slow at this time of night ). Lno, I guess you're already familiar with those two games. Might I sugget Shrapnel or I-0 from my second link? They are a little... unique... but fun nonetheless.

I-0 has somewhat adult humor so might want to keep away from the kiddies. If I was a woman and I was stranded in the desert, I would do the same thing to hitch a ride.

[Cliffy]

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/

This site is a great resource for old Infocom games. It also has all three of the original Zork games available for download. This is legal, Activision currently owns the Infocom library and made the original Zorks freely available a few years ago while promoting its own multimedia games set in the world of Zork.

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/interp.html is a page of the above site which links to interpreters (software engines whereby you can run these games as well as others written in the same language) for many operating systems, including the Palm Pilot.

The site hasn't been updated in a couple years so some of the links may be broken, but it's still a treasure-trove of information.

--Cliffy

[lno]

Originally posted by cletus
Lno, I guess you're already familiar with those two games. Might I sugget Shrapnel or I-0 from my second link? They are a little... unique... but fun nonetheless.[/b]

I-0 was the first game of Adam's that I played, and it was pretty fun. It gave rise to the "You <euphemism for masturbating> as much as the next girl, but this is neither the time nor place" in-joke which is still going strong on IFmud. (You 'beat the Yankees' as much as the next girl, et cetera).

I wasn't a big fan of Shrapnel or Varicella, but 9:05 was amusing. Not much replay value, but it had a good hook to it.

[tanstaafl]

Originally posted by Skeezix
tanstaafl, just what was The Awakening all about? I know I recognize the title, but like yourself I haven't been to gmd, nor dusted off my interpreters in a spell, now. Matter of fact, I think the last time I played any int-fic was the last time lno started a thread on the subject, and that was the first time I'd played in about a year and a half.

Did it start with the player waking up in an open grave in a rainstorm?

Yeah, that was the one. I still like the basic idea of it but I think there were a few places where it was a bit too obscure and I really didn't do a good enough job of letting the player know what was going on. It could certainly use some polishing.

Originally posted by lno
(And it's lno, not Ino!)

Oops! Sorry.

[cletus]

This thread has inspired me to play some IF again. Any games in particular you would recommend from the current competition?

[Meeko]

I knew the xvzzxz what ever from the game Adventure, didnt know it was also in Zork.

You are standing in a field, in front of a white house.There is a mailbox here?

Um, Hey Zork, its me Meeko, remember that game I played the other day?

You used the words "Um, Hey, its, me, Meeko, remember, that, game, I, played, the, other, and day in a way I dont understand.

um ok..... "Load Game"

Loading the game proves futile.

(l)ook

You are in a helpless situation. Give up now, and thr Grue and Thief will take pitty on you. Also, got anymore Brown Sack lunches for me?

[Skeezix]

tanstaafl: T'were a decent game, I thought. As you say, a bit unpolished, perhaps, and I'd have to find my IF CD* and replay it to go into detail, but you entertained me with it, FWIW.

'Course, I'm a big fan of games like yours, Babel, Horror of Rylvania, and that no-inventory Vampire game (it was from a mini-comp, IIRC) so mebbe t'was the subject matter that won me over.


*_{On preview, it dawned on me that I should clarify that: No one's been redistributing or selling your stuff unasked. I was forced to perform a format + reinstall of my OS a long while back, and alla my IF stuff got backed up to a CD beforehand, to save me the time/bandwidth of getting it all back from the IFarchive again. (Well, obviously that's not all I backed up, but there was enough IF to merit a seperate CD just for all my interpreters and game files.)}