Zip Infinity for Version 6

(a work in progress)

Many years ago (literally... some of these files have a 1995 creation date) I set out to build a version of ZIP Infinity which would handle version 6 Infocom files and have proper scrollback. It sort of worked, but barely and slowly. So I abandoned scrollback and just supported V6. This worked: I was able to run Zork Zero, Journey, Shogun, and Arthur. Though I took a few shortcuts (the screen had no backing store), and color rendering was not quite what it should be. Eventually I decided that because nobody was writing V6 games and no one was going to build files in the Infocom format anyway, there was no point in continuing.

Fast forward to 2001. A better file format, Blorb is now available. The last bits of Infocom's odd color rendering have been deciphered. A few more or less V6 compliant interpreters are available. And L. Ross Raszewski enters a V6 game, "Moments Out Of Time", in the annual IF competition. There's no help for it; it's time to dust off the old code.

First thing to do: fire up the old code and run it on Moments. Much to my surprise, it runs nearly correctly. No sound, of course. Some display anomalies. But quite usable.

Zip Infinity V6's current state is better:

Currently not quite right:

The experimental Zip Infinity V6 (Carbon) is now available. Tested only on OS 9.2.2 running under Classic (CarbonLib required) and under OS X, and not for long. This is (non-)release 3.