From: dmarsh@dmarsh.UUCP (Dan Marsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re:  The True Story of Infocom?
Distribution: world
Date: 28 Jul 92 03:49:04 EDT
Organization: Poor College Students 'R' Us

In article <Paul_Trauth.0kah@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US> Paul_Trauth@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US (Paul Trauth) writes:
>I'm not really sure Activision forced Infocom to add graphics; it may
>have been something they wanted to do. But i have a feeling that the
>outside-written games released under the Infocom name (that mech game,
>Mines, etc...) may have been forced on them.

The latter goes without saying, but I'm not sure about the former...I have
a hard time believing a company who said, "We stick our graphics where the
sun don't shine," would reverse that just a few years later.  At the time,
they said they don't use graphics because computer graphics pretty much
suck.  When they did release graphic games, the state-of-the-art was nice,
but the lowest common denominator was still pretty crummy.  Journey was a
nice game, but the graphics blew cheese.  Zork Zero was better at
integrating graphics, but seems to try too hard to do so:  Every possible
graphically-oriented game was included in Z0, most of which could have been
done just as easily with text, such as the Double Fanucci puzzle, or the
Tower of Hanoi puzzle.  Arthur was almost exactly the same as every other
company's games, except that the text engine was better.  Shogun was more
of an illustrated text-game than a graphic-text game.  The point is, if
they wanted to wait until the graphics on the screen were as good as the
ones in the mind, like the old ads said, they moved too quickly.

>In a message dated Fri 24 Jul 92 23:51, Dmarsh@dmarsh.uucp (dan Marsh)
>wrote:
> DM> And what are the Infocom people up to now?

>They've scattered, it seems. The original Imps (the ones behind the
>earliest games) seem to have vanished, but the later Imps have been
>sighted. Brian Moriarity had something to do with LFL's "Loom", Meretzky's
>written those Spellcasting 101 and 102 games...

Never heard of Loom; I've seen the IBM version of Enchanters Get All the
Girls or whatever for sale, but I've never played it nor seen it played.
<A> are Meretzky's games any good, and <B> likelihood of Amiga versions?
I thought the Enchanter series was Infocom's best, and Spellbreaker was
their best game.  Meretzky was responsible for 2/3 of the Enchanter series.
So, I'm interested in seeing whatever he puts out...

> DM>   Presumably Activision owns ZIL now, but could the Infocom
> DM> people be persuaded to write a new Zork-engine and go back into
> DM> business?

>A friend of mine who's been mucking with z-code a lot (someday i'll get his
>interpreter onto an ftp site) is contemplating creating a modern z-machine
>type thing, which won't be hamstrung by byte-only addressing modes and low
>memory, and will also have ample hooks for graphics, sound, animation,
>etc... i dunno how he's coming on it, tho.

I guess I don't know much about Z-code.  I thought that it was proprietary,
owned by Infocom, and sold to Activision with the rest of the company.  Is
there a language description in some 20-year-old magazine, and Infocom just
picked up on it?  If it's not proprietary, howcome Infocom's competitors
(such as they were) never used it, and if it IS proprietary, how can your
friend use it?

I'm not trying to be snooty, I'm just trying to ascertain whether, since
your friend can write Z-code, the remaining Imps can also write (and
release?) games based on Z-code without running into legal problems.

If so, why haven't they done it?

--
Dan Marsh                               ...!wybbs.mi.org!dmarsh!dmarsh
Marsh's First Law of Agressive Driving:  If you're not dead, it worked.