Zork: The Great Inner Workings (2020)
21 comments
·January 20, 2025seanwilson
dullcrisp
> The bugs were funny though. Like you had to tell it you can't put a car in a tree, that you shouldn't bury bread in the dirt, and a vending machine can't dispense vending machines.
My god, leave those in!
seanwilson
It does sound fun, but there would have to be some layer to control the amount of wackiness, or it would feel random to the point of meaninglessness. Something like the "procedural oatmeal" problem I think.
ndiddy
If anyone's interested, here's a pretty good overview of Infocom's internal development tooling (how they got from the ZIL source code to a compiled story file). https://github.com/ZoBoRf/ZILCH-How-to
Additionally, this site is a really cool visualization that lets you play Zork while being able to see its internal game state and the corresponding source code to where you currently are. https://eblong.com/infocom/visi-zork1/
raldi
Years ago I made some maps of things like which rooms of the game have the “sacred” bit, and what it means.
If you’re interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/10dtch/i_spent_my_we...
7thaccount
Modern interactive fiction is pretty amazing.
I like Zork a lot, but I've never made it even halfway through the game. Knowing that you can permanently lose by doing certain things (does breaking the mirror count? I can't remember) puts a damper on my enthusiasm. The infocom parser is pretty good, but I sometimes run into issues where I know what I need to do, but can't get the parser to accept my commands. This happened in planetfall where I needed to get a key under a grate, but eventually gave up and looked up what the parser wanted.
Some modern additions are automatic maps and fast travel so you don't get lost in an infinite labyrinth and have to write your own maps (it was fun once, but I wouldn't want to do it each game). Fast travel is nice, so I can get back somewhere without having to type N N E NE N and so on.
As for this thread and more relevant comments, I had no idea the parser variables were named after the authors. HN knowledge never ceases to amaze me. I wish there was a convention or something once a year.
raldi
If you’re a fan of the genre, Zork I is worth playing through (with hints if necessary) precisely because it’s an example (the example?) of the early explorations of the art — back when it was about, “Hmm, we should make the game do if someone tries to break the mirror” and then implementing a response.
It wasn’t so much about finishing the game, it was about exploring the playground.
MetaWhirledPeas
> Modern interactive fiction is pretty amazing.
Got any recommendations?
Like you, I was never able to get into Zork. I really enjoyed it, until I inevitably became stuck. Hearing you say this could be permanent really seals it. It's one of those games that's more fun to recollect than to actually play.
7thaccount
Anything by Emily Short has really good writing and prose. They vary greatly by length too. I think she mainly writes for commercial projects these days, so I haven't seen a release in awhile of just something for fun.
fenomas
My canonical answer is "Violet" by Jeremy Freese:
Eric_WVGG
Adam Cadre’s games are excellent. https://adamcadre.ac/if/
failrate
CEJ Pacian makes excellent modern IF. I recommend checking out Gunmute and Red Prince.
FatalLogic
>We can also make an educated guess that MARC refers to Marc Blank, who was one of the initial creators of Zork, but I couldn’t figure out who JW could be.
JW: That was probably Jerry Wolper. He was a coder and designer at Infocom in the later 1980s
ghaff
I had forgotten Jerry actually worked at Infocom for a bit. And no one else with those initials comes to mind. He was part of the film committee that Marc and others were involved with as well.
Eric_WVGG
Weird to learn that the three Zork games were one game split, given that they're so tonally different. (the first having basically no narrative at all, the second being profoundly silly, and the third being fairly serious and dark)
stevekemp
I guess it depends on how you view it.
Originally there was a Zork game, then a company was formed and they decided to repurpose their existing game as their first project/product because they had no other inspiration.
The existing content was too large to fit into the small computers available at the time, so only parts of the prior-art were used in the "new" game.
Zork [1] was popular so the idea of a sequel was raised, and of course the content which was left out was then used the second time around. And repeat.
I think it's fair to say there was no cohesive intentions to make three games initially, and you can kinda see that from the "plot".
atum47
I was working on a text adventure myself. It was before llms became a thing. My solution to the commands was to use simple words, not phrases. Pick key, walk north, look fireplace...
Instead of just a game I realize as I writing a game creator as well and the score kept getting bigger, so I decided to take a break. That was 4 years ago.
I do want to fishing it one day
riiii
One thing I'd like to see AI used for: draw the Zork scenery based on the in-game text description.
MetaWhirledPeas
That's a fun idea. The lack of continuity will be amusing, especially given the sparse descriptions of everything.
KerrAvon
The later Infocom games — I’m thinking especially Moriarty’s evocative Wishbringer, Trinity, Beyond Zork — have much improved writing in general; it might be interesting to see what an LLM actually does with those.
adamrezich
That sounds like the perfect use for LLM image generation!
I tried making a random text adventure generator a while ago, where the idea was I would fill it with items and item combinations, and ask it to look for the most crazy/interesting chain of item manipulation puzzles e.g. key opens chest, to get the matchbook, to light the dynamite, to blow open the safe, to get the money, to buy the ticket.
I thought the idea was really promising at first but my finding was there's just not that many interesting puzzles based around real-life item interactions, so it wasn't fun to play (without going further by adding a plot, NPCs and graphics).
If the item interaction is too everyday, it's too obvious and boring (like a key to open a door), and if it's too obscure it feels unfair (like a blowtorch to the neck of a wine bottle to open it), so it has to be somewhere in between and there's only maybe a few hundred types of interactions like this. When you look into it, you'll notice the same item interactions reused in lots of adventure games too e.g. bolt cutters + chain, torch + batteries, spade + ground.
Maybe sounds obvious when you think about it, but it wasn't obvious when I was prototyping.
I think this is one of the reasons escape room games devolve into obscure logic puzzles. And also why adventure games got criticised for having super obscure (moon logic) puzzles. And also why a lot of adventure games feature things like time travel and magic and NPCs, as it lets you introduce new rules for item interactions.
Another aspect is filling the game world with lots of items, locations and general red herrings so that the connection between items that is usually obvious isn't immediately obvious because you can't keep them all in your head.
The bugs were funny though. Like you had to tell it you can't put a car in a tree, that you shouldn't bury bread in the dirt, and a vending machine can't dispense vending machines.