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Old 01-14-2024, 03:47 AM   #9
diegoocampo
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Posts: 71
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Join Date: May 2012
Device: PocketBook Inkpad Color 3
Quote:
Originally Posted by orontee View Post
I'll definitively try to implement a PocketBook UI for interactive fictions but I first want to understand what format is still alive; Not sure Z is where efforts are worth investing...
You are right about this. I was focusing on Frotz because I knew it was very basic and portable and since I have zero experience with C++ and Linux development it seemed a less daring challenge.

With Z-machine only you still get A LOT of good IF games and there is still some activity going on nowadays. Z-machine games evolved themselves, if they have extensions ending in .z3 or .z5 those are built for older versions of the interpreter, with no images or sounds. If their extensions are .z8 or .zblorb, they are more modern and can contain some media files.
But yes, it is a limited interpreter and there are other options.

A much more interesting port would be Gargoyle https://github.com/garglk/garglk/ that includes a big number of interpreters, including Z-Machine (it includes a ported version of Frotz) and more modern ones (but not all the big modern ones), in a single package. And it was actually ported for Kindle https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=223455
With Gargoyle you would be covering most of the IF games available out there. The full list of supported interpreters is here https://github.com/garglk/garglk/wik...rpreter-Status

There is also lectrote https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote that also covers a lot of interpreters but this is based in Electron (a Javascript framework) so maybe even harder to port.
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