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.
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Infocom Text Game Source Code Released on GitHub (Including Zork)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @02:15AM (2 children)
I've got nowhere on this game from the first screen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @04:41AM (1 child)
The only way to get anywhere in HHGG was to abandon reason and embrace silliness. If I recall correctly, I got about halfway through the game and gave up because it just got too silly.
I remember them selling t-shirts that said, "I got the Babel Fish", which was a major accomplishment in the game.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 19 2019, @05:21AM
I breezed through it, since I had seen the show a few times.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @02:30AM (4 children)
Well no, because there is explicitly no copyright license granted. So look, but don't touch. Definitely do not build upon. This is quite intentional, as seen in the zork1 readme:
I thought github required public repositories to be under a free license?
Big disappointment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @04:38AM
Do you ask for permission to beat off too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:14AM (1 child)
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
A great point, and an opportunity that was completely missed by these articles.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:48AM
Not to turn... morbid, but I think the reality is someone realised they were aging.
I keep excellent backups, but I surely don't expect my relatives / friends to keep good care of, and to ensure my backups are safe.
I can just imagine someone sitting, realising they're 70 or 65.. they have these backups, and everything would be lost forever should one pass. Yet, perhaps, they don't have the legal authority to release said backups... and certainly not add a new license...
So, they did what they could.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday April 19 2019, @03:06AM (7 children)
It looks like this code does not have a license. Thus, it is completely proprietary; you can't do anything with the code legally. In practice, Infocom probably won't sue you.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @04:38AM
It's obviously a trap. If you compile it, you will be eaten by a grue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:46AM (1 child)
That is right, unless you happen to make something beautiful or popular. Then they will totally sue your pants off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @01:52PM
Well, then don't make anything that is beautiful nor popular and quit your bitching.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 19 2019, @02:58PM (1 child)
What's the copyright horizon date? I think we're past 50% of 75 years already...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @04:30PM
So they've only got 30 years to get it extended? Or longer if the extension is retroactive ...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday April 19 2019, @04:48PM (1 child)
From the README.md of the Hitchhiker game:
So you are allowed to look at it and talk about it, but nothing else.
Which probably means that if you consider the mere possibility that you'll ever in your life want to write adventures, you're probably better off to never even look at the code.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday April 19 2019, @07:46PM
That's not a license, and it's not written by the copyright holder. The author of the readme almost certainly has no authority to issue licenses or otherwise give permission to anyone to use the code in any way. You aren't allowed to even copy the code (got clone it).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @09:01PM
I took a look at the code.
It's written in LISP. (Well, a LISP dialect where they use angle brackets instead of parentheses. Seems like a pointless change from the standard...)
If you were writing the code today, it would be more structured and in a different language.
Maybe you can glean some text input parser inspiration from the code, but that would be about it.