Infocom
Marc Blank
['doc', 'ian mackaye', 'dave rubinstein', 'glenn beck', 'harvard', 'yoko ono', 'belgian', 'shinji mikami', 'desi arnaz', 'united states', 'chris blackwell', 'osman gazi', 'shantaram', 'robert kagan', 'byelorussian ssr', 'dwight eisenhower', 'yash chopra', 'harry christophers', 'chelsea noble', 'neal patterson', 'gediminas', 'lenin', 'rudolf dassler', 'steve jackson', 'ananta jalil', 'ukrainian soviet socialist republic', 'eleanor roosevelt', 'artaxias', 'panhellenic socialist movement', 'yasser arafat', 'spike lee', 'paul graham', 'tom anderson', 'ukrainian ssr', 'hans zimmer', 'banca intesa', 'sir martin sorrell', 'billy durant', 'giorgio de chirico', 'berenberg family', 'john delorean', 'antony jay', 'michael eisner', 'antonis samaras', 'william randolph hearst', 'bill joy', 'gandhi', 'mozilla foundation', 'liszt', 'takahata', 'archduke ferdinand maximilian', 'ramadoss', 'jesus christ', 'switzerland', 'charles cecil', 'bertil hult', 'christopher ruddy', 'freudian', 'elendil', 'russian sfsr', 'bruce pavitt', 'apoel', 'franz mehring', 'jimmy palmiotti', 'ronnie screwvala', 'sun myung moon', 'john hendricks', 'karl albrecht', 'tsar peter i', 'franklin delano roosevelt', 'burt rutan', 'oprah', 'max palevsky', 'charlie chaplin', 'mencken', 'edward i', 'david hoberman', 'rockefeller', 'charles stewart parnell', 'benjamin franklin', 'hector hodler', 'canadian', 'aung san suu kyi', 'lomonosov', 'zip2', 'hans sloane', 'queensland', 'nederland', 'soviet ukraine', 'lloyd kaufman', 'france', 'dre', 'anagarika govinda', 'piet mondrian', 'henson', 'bssr', 'italian', 'anton rubinstein', 'catherine ii']
Z-machine
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions (called story files, or Z-code files), and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a Z-machine implementation for that platform. With the large number of incompatible home computer systems in use at the time, this was an important advantage over using native code or developing a compiler for each system. The "Z" of Z-machine stands for Zork, Infocom's first adventure game. Z-code files usually have names ending in .z1, .z2, .z3, .z4, .z5, .z6, .z7 or .z8, where the number is the version number of the Z-machine on which the file is intended to be run, as given by the first byte of the story file. Version# and specification. This is a modern convention, however. Infocom itself used extensions of .dat (Data) and .zip (ZIP = Z-machine Interpreter Program), but the latter clashes with the present widespread use of .zip for PKZIP-compatible archive files starting in the 1990s, after Activision had shut down Infocom. Infocom produced six versions of the Z-machine. Files using versions 1 and 2 are very rare. Only two version 1 files are known to have been released by Infocom, and only two of version 2. Version 3 covers the vast majority of Infocom's released games. The later versions had more capabilities, culminating in some graphic support in version 6. After Mediagenic relocated Infocom to California in 1989, Computer Gaming World stated that "ZIL ... is functionally dead", and reported rumors of a "completely new parser that may never be used". The compiler (called Zilch) that Infocom used to produce its story files has never been released, although documentation of the language used (called ZIL, for Zork Implementation Language) still exists and an open-source replacement (called ZILF) has been written. In May 1993, Graham Nelson released the first version of his Inform compiler, which also generates Z-machine story files as its output, even though the Inform source language is quite different from ZIL. Most files produced by Inform are version 5. Inform has since become very popular in the interactive fiction community and, as a consequence, a large proportion of the interactive fiction now produced is in the form of Z-machine story files. Demand for the ability to create larger game files led Graham Nelson to specify versions 7 and 8 of the Z-machine, though version 7 is very rarely used. Because of the way addresses are handled, a version 3 story file can be up to 128K in length, a version 5 story can be up to 256K in length, and a version 8 story can be up to 512k in length. Though these sizes may seem small by today's computing standards, for text-only adventures, these are large enough for very elaborate games. During the 1990s, Graham Nelson drew up a Z-Machine Standard, based on detailed studies of the existing Infocom files.