RT11 / RSTS-E games

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-05-08 06:52, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 12:45 AM, John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 08, 2015 at 03:47:13AM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> Cool. I know that Infocom did publish ZORK I for RT-11, but I haven't seen it
>>> myself.
>>
>> At one point they had RT-11 versions of most of their games.  I bought a
>> copy of Sorcerer from them (for $35) a trillion years ago, and disassembled
>> and commented it.  I later tried to use it to play Hitchhiker's Guide
>> (which was never released for RT-11) but I think it was a microscopically
>> different version of the Z-machine so there were problems.
>
> The Z-machine for RT-11 that Infocom released only handled v3 images.

I only knew of the V1 version, for the original Zork I. I never knew 
that Infocom released anything past Zork I for RT-11.

> HHGTTG definitely had a v5 version, but without looking, I can't
> remember if the first version was v3 or v4.  The difference between v3
> and v5 is not microscopic - it's on the order of 4X in terms of object
> and string capacity.  ISTR in v4, they added some real-timey "status
> line" stuff, for games like "Seastalker", and bumped up some of the
> memory addressing limits.

Yes, V5 is substantially different from V3. You cannot hack up a V3 
Z-machine to handle V5 games. You need to change a bunch of stuff. Not 
only is the game format different. Some opcodes also changed.

Seastalker is actually a V3 game, but it requires some functions that no 
other V3 game have.

> You can run a v3 game comfortably in 48K bytes, painfully in 32K
> bytes, even on an 8-bit host.  You essentially can't run v5 game on
> 32K because the "impure store" and the interpreter won't fit (or it
> _might_ fit but with not enough free pages for the parser to remain
> resident).  Some of the later games essentially required 64K or even
> 128K of mem.  Once machines jumped to 256K or more, the paging system
> fell away and the interpreters just sucked the entire game file into
> RAM and moved pointers around.

Depending on version, even 256K is not enough to such it all into 
memory. But Infocom themselves only got to V6, which I think might fit 
in 256K...

> As for the PDP-11, one _could_ write a split-I&D interpreter for
> larger games (to have ~64K of game/string space) but you'd have to
> really want to play a later game on that platform to make the effort
> pay off.  There are over a dozen v3 games you _can_ play with 64K of
> total space that play just fine.

Um? Where have you been? ZEMU have been around for about 15 years now. 
It runs all V1 to V8 games, and runs under both RT-11 and RSX. I seem to 
remember that I've even run most of them without using split I/D space, 
but normally I do built it for split I/D space under RSX, as well as 
some other memory tricks to speed things up, but any Infocom game fits 
fine with just a straight 64K memory space, and most fits fine with much 
less.

(ZEMU do have issues with Zork Zero, but that isn't a memory problem, 
but issues with graphics and the fact that the code behaves differently 
depending on which platform it things it runs on, and appears to have 
various bugs and issues in general, sadly enough.)

On MIM:: (once more)
.zem/li/sy
-- System games --
Game      Release Serial Inform Z-Machine
ADVENT    5       961209 6.05   5
AMFV      77      850814        4
BALLERINA 1       991128 6.21   8
BALLYHOO  97      851218        3
BEYONDZOR 57      871221        5
BOMBER    3       971123 6.13   5
BORDERZON 9       871008        5
BUREAUCRA 116     870602        4
CUTTHROAT 23      840809        3
DEADLINE  27      831005        3
DOGSLIFE  1       981015 6.15   5
DREAMHOLD 5       041231 6.21   8
ENCHANTER 29      860820        3
HEROINE   3       001211 6.21   8
HITCHHIKE 31      871119        5
HOLLYWOOD 37      861215        3
INFIDEL   22      830916        3
KITTEN    6       031116 6.21   5
LEATHER   59      860730        3
LURKING   203     870506        3
MOONMIST  9       861022        3
NEVER     10      000928 6.21   5
NORDANDBE 19      870722        4
PLANETFAL 37      851003        3
PLUNDERER 26      870730        3
SAMEGAME  1       980731 6.15   5
SEASTALKE 16      850603        3
SHERLOCK  21      871214        5
SORCERER  15      851108        3
SPACEZ    1       980710 6.15   5
SPELLBREA 87      860904        3
STARCROSS 17      821021        3
STATIONFA 107     870430        3
SUSPECT   14      841005        3
SUSPENDED 8       840521        3
TRINITY   12      860926        4
TROLL     3       980518 6.15   5
VIOLET    1       080929 6.31   8
WISHBRING 69      850920        3
WITNESS   22      840924        3
ZDUNGEON  13      040826 6.14   5
ZOKOBAN   1       990810 6.21   5
ZORK0     393     890714        6
ZORK1     88      840726        3
ZORK2     48      840904        3
ZORK3     17      840727        3
ZTUU      16      970828 6.13   5
905       1       000210 6.21   5
ZTREK     1       000229 6.21   5
.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol