Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Infocom Text Game Source Code Released on GitHub (Including Zork)

posted by chromas on Friday April 19 2019, @01:28AM   Printer-friendly

takyon writes:

You can now download the source code for all Infocom text adventure classics

The source code of every Infocom text adventure game has been uploaded to code-sharing repository GitHub, allowing savvy programmers to examine and build upon some of the most beloved works of digital storytelling to date.

There are numerous repositories under the name historicalsource, each for a different game. Titles include, but are not limited to, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Shogun, and several Zork games—plus some more unusual inclusions like an incomplete version of Hitchhiker's sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Infocom samplers, and an unreleased adaptation of James Cameron's The Abyss.

Also at Motherboard.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Infocom Text Game Source Code Released on GitHub (Including Zork) | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 17 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:14AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:14AM (#832057)

    But as you say, most of those games don't have open source licenses. It also isn't limited to Infocom, they have mirrors from an account called videogamepreservation, which includes crack.com(which are gpl), but also introversion releases, which despite the promise back in the Uplink days of open sourcing their source code is all proprietary licensed if you buy a developer cd from them. Those games in turn are 15-20 years old, and there are ones that are almost 40 years old in there as well. This collection actually makes a good discussion for copyright reductions, since this gives a very clear example of the amount of public knowledge that is being lost thanks to the current copyright limits and the lack of requirement for copyrights on binary code to require submission of the original source code to the Library of Congress or related body in another foreign jurisdiction.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @01:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @01:16PM (#832136)

    This collection actually makes a good discussion for copyright reductions, since this gives a very clear example of the amount of public knowledge that is being lost thanks to the current copyright limits...

    A great point, and an opportunity that was completely missed by these articles.