Z-machine stories on os8088

An independent Z-machine interpreter with save/restore, scrollback and transcript output.

Mini-Zork I open on the os8088 desktop. The player stands west of a white house, opens a mailbox and reads the leaflet inside. A strip at the top shows the room, score and move count. — Z-machine output in the desktop interpreter.

Bundled stories: 15
Story dates: 1977-2007
Input: Keyboard

01 / Interpreter and provenance

Interpreter and provenance

The os8088 package is written independently; it is not a port of Stefan Jokisch's Frotz despite sharing the name. It executes Z-machine story files and integrates their text, status display and file operations with the desktop.

The compatibility reference is the Z-Machine Standards Document 1.1, including its screen, input and save-state contracts.

02 / Demonstration

Demonstration

03 / Story captures

Story captures

Colossal Cave Adventure open on os8088. The player enters a small brick building and finds a bottle of water, a brass lamp, food and keys. — Colossal Cave Adventure story-file adaptation.

Zork: The Undiscovered Underground open on os8088. The Grand Inquisitor sends the player into the Great Underground Empire, and a MORE prompt pauses the long introduction. — Zork: The Undiscovered Underground.

Photopia open on os8088. Against a dark screen, one character asks for a story and another suggests they tell one together. — Photopia; colour changes mapped to the monochrome display.

The INFOCOM folder open on the os8088 desktop, showing Mini-Zork I, two Infocom sampler disks and Zork: The Undiscovered Underground. — Configured story-file directories.

04 / Input and saved state

Input and saved state

File > Save Game and Restore Game use Quetzal saved-state files. Story > Transcript writes a text record. Scrollback is separate from story execution state.

05 / Feature limits

Feature limits

Timed-input challenges are disabled through the story capability flags. Sampled effects are approximated by tones. The port's own picture format is supported; Infocom's illustrated-game resources are not generally supported. Stories that exceed available memory are refused at load.

Use text-oriented stories for the tested path. Keep your own licensed story files separate from the freely distributed examples.

06 / Build the story disk

Build the story disk

make zdisk assembles the separate interpreter/story image and fetches the configured freely distributed examples. Open a story directly or use File > Open Story. The build manifest, not this page, defines the included titles.

make zdisk

Download os8088 Source The other programs