Inform for Apple II

Hello,
I was wondering if the is a version of inform available for the Apple II?
If anybody knows of anything along these lines, please let me know.
Thanks,
Dana

Do you mean Inform 6 or Inform 7? Would other Z-code compilers do? (I don’t know of any of those either.)

This might be of use to you.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/apple2/faq/24-004-Where-can-I-get-game-creation-programs-and-informatio.html#.UgPh16x5G1Q

He asked this on the rec.arts.int-fiction Usenet/Google group, too. The answer he got is that neither Inform 6 nor 7 can run on an Apple II - they are too large. Inform 5 is possible, and executables are available in the IFArchive.

Wow, mostly useless’s link points to old information. How long has it been since gmd shut down, and since tads moved to tads.org?

Oops, sorry about that. I figured the software mentioned would probably still relevant.

Not a problem with you, but they should update the page.

Sorry I wasn’t more clear. What I was looking for was a compiler/interpreter combination.

I want the end result to run on an Apple II, but if I had to compile it on another machine that would be ok.

Thanks,

PS: Of the three files listed in the archive, two are for the //gs and the third is for converting dos 3.3 infocom games to prodos.

There may be a tool out there to take an arbitrary Z-code file (.z5, generated by Inform) and patch it into Infocom’s version-5 Apple interpreter. I know the archive has tools to extract the Z-code from an Infocom Apple disk image; in theory you just need to reverse that process…

You’d want to use Inform 6, to keep the overall file size down.

I wonder, someone has actually tought of coding a free/open source Apple/CBM/65xx Z-machine, at least v.3 ?

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

According to Brian Moriarty (one of the Infocom Implementors), a 65xx 8-bit machine could do no more than V5. That was in hand-tweaked assembly language. The overhead required for a high level language, even C, would make this task nearly impossible. If you’re good with 65xx assembly, give it a shot. There are some Z-machine terps in the IF Archive written in Z80 assembly that you can use as a guide.

I’m sorry of disappointing everyone, but I don’t consider myself a good 6502 coder… and IF people whose remember me, known also my dim view on commitment, because I have an unique slow-pacing (WIP since last century or so…)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

I actually remember reading about this on Digitial Antiquarian. A number of computers simply made it impossible, or very very unlikely, to have a ZMachine interpreter, due to their specifications. I remember reading about the Spectrum’s lack of a disk drive, for instance.

A cassette drive doesn’t necessarily exclude the Zmachine. There was Mini-Zork for the C64 which came on tape. It did push the limits of the medium and player patience though.

We’ll settle for “unlikely”, then, if Mini-Zork was the only one and it tested players beyond sanity. :slight_smile: Infocom praised their quality highly; I doubt they’d willingly and knowingly create a hardly-playable product due to hardware constraints.

(my personal doubts are worth very little in the grand scheme of things, of course)

EDIT - I re-read my “source”, or rather, “that place I read something similar to this first”, which is Digital Antiquarian. The word he uses is “impractical” and he only mentions the Spectrum, which is all around more acceptable.

Since this thread is about Apple II… erm… well, carry on talking, you folks who know what you’re talking about. :slight_smile:

Ok, I don’t know anything about AppleII and old versions of the ZMachine and all that…

… but I stumbled upon this old conversation and thought of you?

Hope it’s useful; if not, sorry :slight_smile:

Or use ZILF, if Inform isn’t a hard requirement: the ZIL port of Adventure comes out to less than half the size of the Inform version. ZILF can compile to V3, too, which might be easier to emulate.