Zork

From Mudpedia

Zork It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. Developed by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, Dave Lebling Initial release 1977 Written in MDL Language English Type of software Interactive Fiction Website http://www.infocom-if.org

Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written between June and September 1977 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language. All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group.

Three of the original Zork programmers joined with others to found Infocom in 1979. That company adapted the PDP-10 Zork into Zork I-III, a trilogy of games for most popular small computers of the era. Part of the reason for splitting Zork into three different games was that, unlike the PDP systems the original ran on, micros did not have enough memory and disk storage to handle the entirety of the original game. In the process, more content was added to Zork to make each game stand on its own.

Zork is set in a sprawling underground labyrinth which occupies a portion of what is called the Great Underground Empire. The player is a nameless adventurer whose goal is to find the treasures hidden in the caves and return alive with them, ultimately inheriting the title of Dungeon Master. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures, objects and locations.

Contents 1 Zork series 1.1 The original Zork Trilogy 1.2 Later additions to the series 2 Dungeon 3 References

[edit] Zork series

[edit] The original Zork Trilogy

• Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980, Infocom)
• Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981, Infocom)
• Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982, Infocom)

[edit] Later additions to the series

All these are text-only unless otherwise noted.

• The Enchanter trilogy:
  • Enchanter (1983, Infocom)
  • Sorcerer (1984, Infocom)
  • Spellbreaker (1985, Infocom)

• The Zork Quest series:
  • Zork Quest: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988, Infocom, interactive computer comic book)
  • Zork Quest: The Crystal of Doom (1989, Infocom, interactive computer comic book)

• The Zork Anthology comprises the original Zork Trilogy plus:
  • Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987, Infocom)
  • Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988, Infocom, text with some graphics)

After a six year hiatus, the following games were produced:

• Return to Zork (1993, Infocom/Activision, graphical)
• Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands (1996, Activision, graphical)
• Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (1997, written by Michael Berlyn and Marc Blank (original Infocom implementors) and released by Activision to promote the release of Zork Grand Inquisitor)
• Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997, Activision, graphical)

In 2006, an over-the-phone version of Zork entitled Zasterisk entered beta testing. Programmed by Simon Ditner using Asterisk and the Festival Speech Synthesis System, players can call in and play Zork over the phone by speaking voice commands. The results are read back by the automated text-to-voice synthesis system. It is now known as Zoip, a reference to VoIP.^[1]

As the latest installation of the Zork series, Legends of Zork, a persistent browser-based MMORPG became available at http://www.legendsofzork.com on April 1, 2009.

[edit] Dungeon

Late 1977 a hacker obtained a copy of the Zork source code, which was subsequently spread.^[2] The leaked Zork source code was later used by Bob Supnik, a programmer at DEC, to create a Fortran IV port, which allowed the game to run on the smaller DEC PDP-11.^[3] Late 1977 the Zork authors had decided to rename Zork to Dungeon, and Supnik subsequently released his port as Dungeon in January 1978.^[4][5] Somewhere in 1978 the Zork developers received notice from Tactical Studies Rules, the publisher of Dungeons and Dragons, who claimed trademark rights to the name Dungeon, and they subsequently changed the name back to Zork.^[6] When Zork became a commercial product at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This Fortran version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions.

The Fortran port of Zork was widely available on DEC VAXes, being one of the most popular items distributed by DECUS. It went through multiple modifications both to incorporate more features from the original and to track changes in the MDL version. In the late 1980s, the Fortran version was extensively rewritten for VAX Fortran and became fully compatible with the last MDL release. It had one extra joke: an apparent entrance to the Mill (a reference to DEC's headquarters) that was, in fact, impassable.

[edit] References

• Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages. MIT Press. 2003. ISBN 0-262-13436-5.