151 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
151 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
Frotz is a very portable program and as such has been ported to quite a
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lot of different platforms.
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These are actively-maintained ports and their webpages (if known):
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WinFrotz
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Frotz for machines running Microsoft Windows.
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http://www.d.kinder.btinternet.co.uk
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AmigaFrotz
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Frotz for the Amiga series of computers.
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(no webpage)
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FrotzCE
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Frotz for PocketPC machines running WindowsCE.
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http://www.pyram-id.demon.co.uk/FrotzCE.html
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(Based on 2.32)
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DOS
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Good ol' DOS
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(no webpage)
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Kwest
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Frotz ported to KDE.
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http://users.pandora.be/peter.bienstman/kwest/
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EbmFrotz
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Frotz ported to Franklin's eBookman.
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http://www.twpo.com.au/cwarrens/ebm
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Nobody maintains these ports:
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-----------------------------
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Pilot Frotz
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Frotz for Palm Pilot machines.
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http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/2367/
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(Link has been dead for several months)
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Frotz might work well with these platforms:
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-------------------------------------------
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Apple IIgs.
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I'm fairly sure that with its greater memory capacity than the ealier
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members of the Apple II family, at least text-mode Frotz should be
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doable. Perhaps even graphics and sound could be done.
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RISC/OS
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I don't see why not.
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Texas Instruments TI-92 and TI-92+ graphing calculators:
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With a Motorola 680000 of some sort and loads of nifty development
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software, it should be a worthwhile effort. Look at
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http://www.ticalc.org or all sorts of interesting things that have been
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done with this calculator.
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CP/M:
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Usually we'll have a 64 kilobyte limit to memory. Fortunately there is
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a solution in the form of an interpreter written in Z80 assembly called
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ZXZVM available at the IF Archive. It seems specific to the Spectrum
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+3, PCW16, and PCW10 CP/M machines. I'd be most pleased if someone with
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one of those new IMSAI Series 2 machines is able to get ZXZVM working on
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that machine. However, at http://www.imsai.net, the new machine is
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described as having 1 meg of static system memory. Given all this,
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Frotz might be doable on some more beefy CP/M machines.
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Frotz probably won't work on these platforms:
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---------------------------------------------
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Apple II:
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The IIe and IIc with expanded memory (at least 143k) might be enough for
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running up to V5, but I'm not sure if Frotz will appreciate working in
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such a small space. Yes, I know that several Solid Gold editions were
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released for Apple II.
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Commodore 64:
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Memory is limited to a bit less than 64 kilobytes. In the heyday of
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Infocom, the C64 could barely support V4 games.
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Commodore 128:
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Probably same troubles as with Apple II.
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Atari 8-bit:
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Probably troubles as with the Commodore 64.
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Wireless phones:
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They might have enough memory to handle Frotz, but I have severe doubts
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about how usable any sort of Interactive Fiction can be on such a
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device. Phones were not designed to be used as general-purpose
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terminals.
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Digital cameras:
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Someone ported the venerable arcade machine emulator MAME to a Kodak
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digital camera some time ago. There should be enough space and
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processing power to run Frotz, but as with wireless phones, IF is
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impractical on such a platform.
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I asked Brian Moriarty, author of several works of Interactive Fiction
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for Infocom about the feasability of porting Frotz to machines using the
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MOS 6502 (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 and 128). Here is his
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response to my emailed question:
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Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 18:54:51 -0400
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From: Brian Moriarty <prof@ludix.com>
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To: Dave <dgriffi@cs.csubak.edu>
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Subject: RE: porting Frotz to 6502 machines
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The original 6502 ZIPs were hand-written in assembler, and
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the resulting binaries were usually quite small (around 8k).
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Of course, a C compiler wouldn't be quite as efficient.
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The larger problem is that many of the later Z features (beyond
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version 2) simply won't work on an Atari, C64 or Apple II,
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either due to RAM, display or disk drive restrictions. When moving
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into versions 3 and beyond, we decided to leave that class of
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machine behind.
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-----Original Message-----
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From: Dave [mailto:dgriffi@cs.csubak.edu]
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Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 6:43 PM
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To: prof@ludix.com
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Subject: porting Frotz to 6502 machines
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Brian Moriarty,
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I was wondering if I could pick your brain a bit on Z-machine portability.
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One of the ongoing goals for the Frotz project is extreme portability,
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including to all sorts of old architectures. I've been pondering porting
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Frotz to 6502 machines such as the C64, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit
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computers. Doing some investigation with the CC65 6502 C compiler brought
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me to the conclusion that Frotz would produce a binary too large to fit in
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the memory of these machines. Apple IIgs might work. Given your work on
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making Z-machine interpreters for these machines (albeit in assembly, I
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assume) would this be an accurate assumption?
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Also, given what I've found out about the new upcoming IMSAI Series 2
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machine, this might be capable of handling Frotz.
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