Posted 2004-08-22
I haven't seen much written about this in the past two years, so I
thought I that would ring in on the state of interactive fiction
interpreters for OS X.
Here is a snapshot of the landscape. The assessment criteria are
arbitrary and reflect my own preferences.
| Interpreter | Version |
Author(s) |
v6
z-code |
Mac
OS Classic |
Mac
OS 10.2 |
Mac OS 10.3 | Mac OS 10.4 | Resizable
Window |
Bit
mapped fonts |
Download URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infocom
pre-v6 |
Unknown |
No |
Yes |
Yes (in Classic) | No |
n/a |
n/a |
|||
| Infocom
v6 |
Unknown |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
n/a |
n/a |
||||
| MacFrotz |
beta
7 |
Application
by Scott Lahteine. Frotz core by Stefan Jokisch. Frotz core ported to UNIX by David Griffith. |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
home
page |
||
| Nitfol |
0.5 |
Evin
Robertson. Glk Library by Andrew C. Plotkin. |
No |
Yes |
Yes (in Classic) | Yes |
Yes | home
page if-archive |
||
| 0.5
Carbon |
Evin
Robertson. Glk Library by Andrew C. Plotkin. Carbonized by Matthew Russotto. |
Yes | home page |
|||||||
| MaxZip |
1.7.8 |
Andrew
C. Plotkin. Zip code base by Mark Howell. |
No |
Yes |
Yes (in Classic) | Yes | Yes |
if-archive home page |
||
| Zip
Infinity Carbon |
1.4.1 |
Application
by Matthew Russotto. Zip code base by Mark Howell. |
No |
Yes |
Yes | No | No |
Yes |
home page |
|
| 2.1X2
/ "V6" (Non-)Release 3. |
Application
by Matthew Russotto. Zip code base by Mark Howell. |
Yes |
No | Yes (in Classic) | Yes (in Classic*) | v6:
n/a. other: Yes. |
home page |
|||
| Zoom
|
v1.0.0 |
Andrew
Hunter |
? |
No |
No |
? |
? |
home
page |
||
| v1.0.1
|
Yes |
Yes | Yes |
No |
home
page |
|||||
| v1.0.2 |
No | ? | Yes | home page |
||||||
| v1.0.3 | No | ? | Yes | home page | ||||||
| v1.0.4 | Yes | ? | Yes | home page | ||||||
*About Box will crash Classic
As you can see, the ifarchive
is unfortunately not the best place to
go to get the latest versions of OS X interpreters.
There are good things about all these programs. It's a tough choice,
but my favorite is Nitfol 0.5 Carbon.
Nitfol 0.5 Carbon is shown below running Spellbreaker with Dave Cotter's Apple II Font 1.1.
Everyone has done a nice job here with the resizeable, integrated
scroll bar. It
even supports copy and paste!
As an aside to developers, it seems to me that any future
development of the Mac Glk library
would reasonably start here. The change logs in the source
distribution do not cover the carbonization effort to run native on Mac
OS X, so I derived a diff file
for reference. It may also have been necessary to change the Nitfol code in order to work
with Project Builder / xCode.
Despite the hassle, Infocom's version 6 z-code games were kind of fun. Especially Zork Zero, with its geographical text frames, room icons, and games-within-the-game.
The same characteristics that make an interpreter good for other versions don't necessarily make it good for version 6. Your options for playing version 6 games are Infocom's own v6 interpreter, Zoom, and Zip Infinity v6 Carbon.
The strong suit of Zoom is it's ability to handle graphics-laden v6 z-code without sacrificing window resizing for text-only games.
However, as you can see, text is framed a little oddly. Ironically,
this may be due to Zoom's faithfulness in correctly implementing the blorb
spec.
For whatever reason, the prereleased Zip Infinity v6 Carbon does a better job of handling this.
However, like its non-v6 counterpart, it does not support screen resizing at all. Despite the title, Zip Infinity v6 Carbon only runs under classic on Mac OS 10.2 or 10.3. Maybe it ran natively in earlier OS X versions.
If you are willing to forgo blorb and quetzal support, you can still of course use Infocom's v6 interpreter, which shipped with Zork Zero, Shogun, Journey, and Arthur. Just move the game application file to the directory with your Z-code story file and graphics files.
It should be noted that none of these options support copy and paste, but then again neither do WinFrotz and WinFrotz2002 on Windows.
Update 2006-03-06
Ivan Drucker has thoughtfully brought some great Zoom updates to my attention (about which I have revised the above chart), and has provided the following information on running z-code on OS X using Java and Terminal:
Zinc 1.0.4: <http://zinc-if.sourceforge.net> This is a pure Java app, so it runs on Mac OS X 10.2.3 with Java 1.4.1 or later . . . it plays z1- 5/8, allows you to customize fonts and colors, and has a couple of novel features: an integrated mapping tool (which is clunky, and not really integrated into the actual game), and, more interestingly, the ability to play collaboratively over a network. I haven't tried the latter but the idea will keep it on my machine
Command line interpreters: Perhaps they don't count, but I think there's a certain charm, given what you're using them for. JZip 2.1: Mac OS X binary is available at this page: <http:// www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010407020830755> (bundled with the Zork trilogy). It plays z1-5/8. I was able to start up AMFV with it and it looked about right. The JZip project page is at <http:// jzip.sourceforge.net>, but has no link or mention to the OS X build. Frotz 2.4.1: I'm sure you know this already, but the Mac OS X binary (with a friendly Mac OS X installer and ReadMe) is at <http:// www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/frotz-2.41- MacOSX.dmg.sit>. (There is also a 2.4.3 executable inside the MacFrotz distribution, but it does not format nicely since it's actually DumbFrotz.)
dhorlick-at-comcast-period-net