Zork (game)

Zork
Game
Main links	Play online IFDB
Published	IFDB: 1979*
Author(s)	Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling*
Reception
IFDB rating	4 out of 5 (33 ratings)
Gameplay
Interaction style	Parser
IFDB play time	160 hours
* The asterisked content is taken directly from IFDB. If it is accurate, please edit this page and it to our database.
Browse the games database • Edit this page

Note: "Dungeon" redirects here. For other game called Dungeon, see Dungeon (disambiguation).

Versions

Release

Date: Date unknown

• Zork was originally written in an obscure LISP-variant language called MDL (and sometimes informally referred to as 'Muddle'), designed at MIT, which ran on the operating system ITS (also designed at MIT) for the PDP-10, a large computer of the 1970s. Matthew Russotto has created an MDL interpreter that is sufficient to run this original Zork, called Confusion. (The link gives the source, a Windows executable and instructions on how to get it to work with the original Zork MDL program.)
• A DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) engineer, Bob Supnik, acquired the ITS source code for Zork and converted it to Fortran. This version is commonly known as 'Dungeon' and is widely available, both as Fortran and as mechanically converted C source code. Several versions can be obtained from the games/pc and games/source directories of the IF Archive.
• An Inform 6 port of the original MDL source code has been created by Ethan Dicks: zdungeon.z5.
• A C++-17 port of the final 616-point MDL source code has been created by Jeff Claar: zork_cpp

Links

N.B. Many IF Archive games are temporarily unavailable in the UK.

• Zork - at IFDB.
• Zork (portal) - 1977's work at 50 Years of Text Games.
• Newsgroup postings:
  • Dungeon/Zork endgame - rgif thread begun April 10, 2007.
• The spoilerful map of Dungeon. (Although the endgame is intentionally omited.)
• I7 Dungeon - A sourceforge project to translate Dungeon to Inform 7.
• Zork at TV Tropes Wiki.

Note: To refer to this game from another page, you can type {{game citation|Zork (game)}}. This will display as Zork (Anonymous; Date unknown).

Date: Date unknown