Zork (game)
From IFWiki
| Zork a.k.a. Dungeon | |
|---|---|
| Game | |
| Main links | |
| Published | 1979 |
| Credits | |
| Authors | Tim Anderson, Mark Blank, Bruce Daniels, Dave Lebling |
| Reception | |
| IFDB rating | 4 out of 5 (33 ratings) |
| Gameplay | |
| Interaction style |  Parser |
| IFDB play time | 160 hours |
| Technical details | |
| Authoring system | MDL |
| System | PDP-10 |
| Browse the games database • Edit this page | |
- Note: "Dungeon" redirects here. For other game called Dungeon, see Dungeon (disambiguation).
This is the mainframe version of Zork that was later split into three parts and sold as Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III by Infocom.
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.)
Ports
- Note: The ports should all get their own IFWiki page, each of would have relevant "Source code" and "Play online" links.
- 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
Versions
Release
Date: 1979
- "50 Years of Text Games" (link below) states "First Appeared: late June 1977" and "In February 1979, Zork’s creators declared it finished in part because they had run out of room to keep building".
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 posting: Dungeon/Zork endgame - rgif thread begun April 10, 2007.
- The spoilerful map of Dungeon. (Although the endgame is intentionally omited.)
- Zork at TV Tropes Wiki.
- Github: heasm66 - Various versions of Mainframe Zork for the Confusion MDL interpreter.
- I7 Dungeon - A sourceforge project to translate Dungeon to Inform 7.
Date: 1979