Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!kinder
From: kinder@teaching.physics.ox.ac.uk (David Kinder)
Subject: Re: Any active development on INFOCOM interpreters (itf, pinfocom)?
Message-ID: <1994Feb2.180445.15644@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk>
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References: <TYTSO.94Feb1012935@tsx-11.mit.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 94 17:56:57 GMT
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Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@athena.mit.edu) wrote:
: Is anyone still doing any active development on the Infocom
: interpreters?  

: The most recent version of itf is 4.01, which is dated September, 1992.
: There also seems to be a 4.02 beta release floating out there, but even
: that seems to date to November, 1992.  Is there a more recent version of
: itf?

InfoTaskForce seem to have disappeared at the end of 1992. The 4.02 beta
contains some additions (eg. BeyondZork undo/restore works) which I've
added to my port of 4.01, but I'm not sure about all the stuff that they've
added. Exactly who the InfoTaskForce were and how they found all the info on
th details of the game format is unclear - perhaps they were old Infocom
employees.

I've been working on fixing all the problems with my port of 4.01 for the
Amiga, adding stuff like BorderZone time-outs, and BeyondZork function key/
colour etc. support. If anyone's interested in the Amiga source, let me know.

: I'd love to see support for the version 6 (graphics) files, although I'd
: suspect that'll be a toughie.  Speaking of which, has anyone ever
: published the dataformat for the version 6 datafiles?

No-one seems to know anything about v6 games. The problem is that as
interpreters progressed through v5 to v6, the concept of one interpreter
which could run anything seems to have been lost - each game seemed to
require its own interpreter. That's not to say that the task is impossible
thought - especially if an old Infocomie posted some info on v6.

: I've made a few changes to itf to handle silly things like 'backspace'
: more smoothly on my system, and I'm trying to figure out where's the
: best place to send them.

All that kind of stuff goes in the IF-archive at ftp.gmd.de. Upload it into
/incoming/if-archive (I think) and mail blasius@gmdzi.gmd.de to tell him
what you've uploaded.

David


