ARM Club 3

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ ARM Club 3 / TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso / hensa / programming / zip2000_1 / !Zip2000_!Help < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-11-28 | 16.5 KB | 397 lines

Welcome to Zip 2000! ==================== Zip 2000 is a Standard interpreter (Revision 0.2) for Z-code programs. In plain English, that means if you want to play Infocom interactive fiction, or games written with the Inform compiler, this is the program for you. Features include: * Support for Version 1,2,3,4,5,7 & 8 games. * Full conformance to Graham Nelson's "Specification of the Z-machine", Revision 0.2. * Colour support. * Timed-input support. * Sound support. * Mouse support. * Full function key/cursor key/keypad support. * Full foreign language support (including runes). * Easily adjustable screen size. * Full use of outline fonts. * High speed - the fastest Z-code interpreter for RISC OS What's Z-Code? -------------- In the dim and distant past, when one could buy more than one type of computer, a certain company that wished to produce interactive fiction wanted to come up with a portable game file that could be played on any number of microcomputers. So they invented an imaginary computer called the Z-machine, which ran an imaginary language called Z-code. They then compiled their games for this machine, and effectively wrote a Z-machine emulator for each computer they wished to support. This program is a Z-machine emulator for RISC OS. With it you can play any Infocom game (except Arthur, Zork Zero, Journey or Shogun), and games produced with Graham Nelson's Z-Code compiler "Inform". How do I play an Infocom/Inform game, then? ------------------------------------------- First, find your story file. Infocom games are most readily available in the form of the "Lost Treasures of Infocom" packages. Buy the PC version, then copy the "XXXXXXXX.DAT" files onto your hard disc (or a RISC OS floppy). Give them more sensible names, and set their type to "Z-Code". Then, just double-click on your chosen story file. A number of Inform-produced games can be downloaded over the Internet. Undoubtedly the best source for all things interactive-fiction related, is Volker Blasius' IF-archive, at ftp.gmd.de. Two of the best freely- available games are "Curses" by Graham Nelson, and "Christminster" by Gareth Rees. Games are generally archived with the extensions ".z5", ".z8" etc. Download them, and set their type to "Z-Code". Then, double-click away. Z-Code programs were formerly given (unofficial) filetypes 061-068 (Z-Code1 to Z-Code8) indicating which version they were. The extant versions are: Versions 1 & 2: Used by very early Infocom games. You probably won't find any of these. (I never have). Maximum file size of 128K. Version 3: Used by most Infocom games. Only supports simple text displays, with limited split- screen support. Version 4: Full support for split-screen operation, custom status lines and real-time input. Text effects (italic etc.) added. Maximum file size increased to 256K. Version 5: Added support for "undo"ing, colours, character graphics, and mouse input. Version 6: Radically overhauled the screen model, adding multiple windows and graphics. Also increased the maximum file size to 576K. Cannot be interpreted by this version of Zip 2000. Versions 7 & 8: These were created by Graham Nelson. They are exactly the same as Version 5, except internal changes allow larger game files. (320K and 512K respectively). This is now deprecated, as an official filetype (11A) has been allocated for Z-Code programs. You can find out the version of a story file (regardless of its file-type) from Zip 2000's "About this file" dialogue box (see below). What widgets does Zip 2000 have? -------------------------------- Well, for starters you can alter the screen size while running. This might cause some games to get a bit confused though. I would suggest you find a screen size you like then use the Choices dialogue box to save it. If you have the registered version, you can also choose which fonts to use for display. Any text already on the screen may become wrongly aligned when you change font, but any new text will be OK. The font you choose as your "fixed-space" font _must be_ fixed space, or the screen display will go awry. Some odd fonts (such as System.Fixed) will not produce nice results, as they are somewhat differenly aligned to most other fonts. The Choices dialogue box contains four options: Quick loading: Don't pop up the "The story is loading" message while loading the file. Pause on exit: When a game quits, wait for a keypress before closing the window. You might find some games tend to print lots of text, then quit. Turn this on if you want a chance to read it. Show caret...: Normally the caret is only shown while inputting a line of text. Turn this on to show the caret while waiting for a keypress. Confirm quitting: Ask if you really want to quit the game when you close the window. The Save button saves these options, plus the screen size, and any options on the Utilities menu. Ah yes, the Utilities menu. This currently contains two options. "Claim F12" sets whether Zip 2000 claims F12 and passes it to the game, or ignores it and lets the Wimp bring up the command line. "Line editing" [registered version only] enables the command recall - use the up and down arrows to recall previous lines of input. This will disable the use of the cursor keys in games - you may want to turn it off for Beyond Zork, for example. The "About this file" dialogue box is slightly unorthodox. It shows the release number and serial number of a game file, plus its Z-code version. The file size displayed is that reported in the file's header - not the space it actually occupies on disc. When typing a line of input, Ctrl-U can be used in the normal RISC OS fashion to delete the line. Escape has the same effect. Where do saved files go? ------------------------ First, saved game files are stored in !Zip2000.Resources.SavedGames, if you just type a leafname. You can type a full pathname to put it elsewhere. Future versions will incorporate drag & drop saving, but personally I think it's easier just to type in a filename while playing a text adventure. This default location can be altered in Zip 2000's !Run file. Secondly, transcript and record files are, by default, stored in the same directory as !Zip2000. Thirdly, auxiliary files saved by games are stored in !Zip2000.Resources.Files. (If a game wants to save a file PLAYER.AUX it will be saved as !Zip2000.Resources.AUX.PLAYER). You mentioned sound support. How does this work? ------------------------------------------------ Well, currently there are only two games that support sound: The Lurking Horror, and Sherlock. Here I will explain how to play The Lurking Horror with sound. Buy Lost Treasures of Infocom I (PC version), then download Stefan Jokisch's archive of Lurking Horror sounds from ftp.gmd.de. Install his sound files (LURKINnn/SND) into the Resources.Sounds directory inside Zip 2000. Next, you will need to convert your PC release 203 Lurking Horror into Release 221 (the Amiga version). Stefan supplies a program to do this, but it's a PC one. I have recompiled it for RISC OS, and you will find it in the Utilities directory. Use it to update your story file, as Stefan explains. And that's all there is to it. When you run The Lurking Horror, you will now be scared out of your wits. The procedure for Sherlock is similar; again the conversion program is in the Utilities directory. Technical stuff ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In general, if a game tries to play sound n, Zip 2000 will look in the Resources.Sounds directory for the file "ssssssnn/SND", where ssssss is the first six characters of the story file's leafname, and nn is the number of the sample (padded to 2 digits). So Sherlock's sounds might be stored as "SHERLO03/SND" upwards. The files should be Macintosh format ".DAT" files, as archived at ftp.gmd.de by Stefan Jokisch. You mentioned mouse support. How does this work? ------------------------------------------------ You click on the window. This will only work if a game states that it wants to use the mouse in its header. The only (pre-V6) game that I know of that uses this is Beyond Zork - you can click on the map display to move around. I notice that Zip 2000 puts the full title of a game into it's title bar. How do they do that? ---------------------------------------------- By cheating. The file !Zip2000.Messages contains a full list of all known Infocom games, plus some Inform ones, matching release/version numbers (as shown by the About this File box) to full names. You may feel free to add new games to this file. How much do I pay you for this wondrous program? ------------------------------------------------ Nothing, unless you particularly want to. Zip 2000 is shareware, but there is no compulsion to register - you may continue using this freeware version for as long as you want. If you wish, you can send me £10 to get hold of the registered version. The registered version features: * Full command recall and line editing * Selectable fonts + sizes * Support for Superior Software's "Speech!" * Cut & Paste / Drag & Drop of story text * Debugging support, including a link to Mark Howell's TXD disassembler, RNG re-seeding, and more stuff to come * Various other useful PD utilities with DDE frontends chucked in. Not all of these have been implemented at the time of writing, but registered users will be informed of new versions via e-mail, and will be able to obtain them for free. Plus, if you register, you can ask for one new feature of your choice. As long as it's sensible, and not more than a few hours work, I will add it to Zip 2000 before sending you your copy. (If lots of people ask for a really complicated feature I will put it in). Most new features will only get added to the registered version. However, any improvements in performance, or in conformance to Graham Nelson's Standards document, or bug fixes will be added to both versions. When you register you should include either a disc + stamped addressed envelope, or an e-mail address where I can send your registered copy. You will be able to get future updates in the same way (but without the tenner!) So, like, what's the history of this thing? ------------------------------------------- Version 1.00 (17-Nov-95) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ First public release. Conformance to Graham Nelson's proposed Standard 0.2 (15-Nov-95). Version 1.01 (20-Nov-95) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New features: File size now extracted from header. Bugs fixed: When the screen size was changed, the game wasn't told. When games exited, anything printed since the last new-line wasn't displayed. Conformance improvements: random 0 (randomise RNG) was not implemented All sorts of screen handling stuff fixed, in particular: Buffering in upper window on V4 and earlier. Initial cursor position in V4 and earlier. Character wrapping when buffering off. Style changes in upper window being passed to lower. erase_window -1 & -2 sorted out. The illegal command @sound_effect (no parameters) caused a crash. It now simply beeps. Version 1.02 (22-Nov-95) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New features: You can now choose whether the caret is displayed while waiting for a character. Function keys F1-F11 now always claimed - F12 is toggleable. Quitting behaviour overhauled. [REG] Command recall part of line editing implemented. [REG] Smart quotes, ligatures and dashes. Conformance improvements: Accented characters are now correctly lower-cased when put into input buffer. Backspace now returned from read_char (this was an omission from revision 0.2 of the Standard). Foreign quotes (« and ») swapped - a mistake in revision 0.2. Interrupt routines were being called with the timeout as a parameter. Return is now passed to the game as code 13, rather than 10 - this is required by Bureaucracy. Version 1.03 (23-Nov-95) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bugs fixed: Memory was often lost when a game using sound was quit. Repeated sounds didn't work properly in V5. Conformance improvements: Sound callback routines implemented - Sherlock's sounds now operate correctly. Delete input code changed from 8 to 127. Version 1.04 (27-Nov-95) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New features: Sound data now stored in a dynamic area, rather than the module area. Official filetype allocated. [REG] Selectable fonts. Paging system removed to speed up interpretation (it was broken anyway). Various other optimisations made. Bugs fixed: The save opcode was not correctly implemented in V4 - it was not possible to save on many V4 games. Text was often a couple of pixels out of line in upper window. Some upper window flicker removed. Nasty memory corruption fixed - printing a complicated line of text (lots of style changes) would mangle the game's dictionary (if you were lucky). The size of a Version 7 game was wrongly read from the header for the purposes of the verify opcode, and in a number of other places (although note that Inform 5.5 also puts the wrong size in the header - these bugs would cancel each other out for V7 games less than 256K). Conformance improvements: The return value of the read opcode was -1 (rather than 0) if it was terminated by a time-out. The nop opcode was not implemented (!). The get_cursor opcode was not implemented. Trapped divide by zero errors nicely. Now more rigorous trapping writes outside the dynamic area. Tokeniser revised - it was being over-clever. [MORE] prompts improved. set_font 0 wasn't implemented. Alternate alphabets can now be changed at run-time. Fourth parameter of print_table was not implemented. Characters 0 and 13 in text did not behave as specified. Mouse position was only updated on clicks. It should now be possible to write a doodling program (!). Own up, who helped you with it? ------------------------------- Well, by far the largest credit goes to Mark Howell, on whose Zip interpreter core this program is based. Many thanks, Mark. Graham Nelson made lots of encouraging noises as I sent him two new versions a day during early development. He also suggested all sorts of features, some of which have actually been implemented already, and wrote the excellent Specification of the Z-machine to which Zip 2000 conforms (all 73 pages of it!). He also writes great test files! (Advert: Download your copy of Jigsaw today). Stefan Jokisch provided help with the sound support, and guided me through the Zip source. His list of Zip bugs was most helpful. Philip Banks wrote the excellent DataVox module that Zip 2000 uses to play sound effects. Are there any bugs^H^H^H^H unexpected features? ----------------------------------------------- If you play Beyond Zork, with a non-standard colour set (eg white on blue), on a machine with RISC OS 3.5, in a 32-thousand colour mode, you will notice that the character graphics' colours don't match. This is a limitation of RISC OS 3.5. I could work around it, but it's probably not worth the trouble. RISC OS 3.6 is fine. There's nothing to stop you typing a line wider than the window. Don't do it. It's not big and its not clever. The game will grab the caret every time a read or read_char happens. This does not normally matter, unless timed input is going on (eg Border Zone.) And where can I contact you when I find more "features"? -------------------------------------------------------- My e-mail address is kevin@iota.co.uk. My physical location is: Kevin Bracey, 36 Field View Drive, Downend BRISTOL BS16 2TT Please let me know of any bugs you find, or any suggestions you have for future versions. Licence arrangments ------------------- Zip 2000 is Copyright 1995, Kevin Bracey. The unregistered version may be freely distributed, providing you distribute the whole application directory unaltered, including this file. The registered version is licenced to a single user, who may use it on any machine, but may not give it to others or use it on more than one machine simultaneously.