
About Flashonate
----------------

Flashonate is a Z-Machine interpreter based on the open source Muttonate 
javascript interpreter by Q.P. Liu (http://www.geocities.com/qpliu/if/). It
was basically a copy and paste job, though some source code massaging was
necessary to make things work.

The whole thing was made using the OpenLaszlo flash compiler, so you'll need
to install that if you wish to compile the source (http://www.openlaszlo.org/)

This is basically a "proof of concept" and many nice things you would expect
from a Z-code interpreter aren't present. Like loading story files from an
external source, for example. Instead, the story file is base64 encoded and
compiled into the final SWF. Loading from an external source shouldn't be 
too difficult - I just haven't done it yet.

Only saving to memory currently works. Flash programs are given a bit of 
storage space by the browser. So in future it might be possible to do proper
game saving.

Feedback can be sent to: peter.rogers@gmail.com

The original Muttonate readme follows:

About Muttonate
---------------

This interpreter implements a subset of the Z-Machine Specification 1.0 
(http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/specification)

It recognizes only version 5 and 8 story files.  It makes no attempt to support
any Infocom quirks.  Making Infocom games available on the web wouldn't be 
legal anyhow (if I were to dig that Activision CD I got in 1994 out of 
somewhere in my closet).

A single save (to memory) is supported.  Subsequent saves overwrite previous 
saves.

This interpreter loads base64 encoded story files, since XmlHttpRequest tends 
to mangle binary data.

Except on fast computers (as of Jan 2006), this interpreter is too slow to be 
playable with most story files.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (as of Jan 2006) does not appear to support the 
styles white-space: pre and position: fixed, which cause the layout to be wrong
with that browser.

Except for scrolling appropriately, this interpreter seems to display things 
reasonably with Safari and Firefox (as of Jan 2006).

Problems with this interpreter or with the story file can lock up the browser.
Firefox has protection against infinite loops.  Safari does not.

I do not know if this interpreter works on other browsers.  (Except lynx and 
links, on which it would not work.)

The malyon (http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/emacs) source code and its tracing facility were very helpful in the making of this interpreter.


