Inform - ZMachine - Interpreters

About interpreters  

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Glk-based  

Sources  

Glk-based interpreters

These interpreters were created using the cross-platform Glk I/O API. For the Z-machine, Glk is a two-edged sword. On one hand Glk-based interpreters are readily portable between platforms for which a Glk library exists, and will operate similarly to Glulx interpreters. It also allows the author to defer a lot of complicated GUI work to the Glk library.

The downside is that although Glk was designed for interactive fiction, its display model is a poor fit to the Z-Machine's (V4/V5 are problematic, V6 is impossible), and the need to pass through two separate portable APIs limits flexibility; it is generally preferable to have a tuned "native", Z-machine interpreter - indeed that is the main reason for using the Z-machine.

Nevertheless, on some platforms the Glk-based interpreters score over the available conventional interpreters, particularly with regard to Blorb and Quetzal support.

MS-DOS Nitfol  (Version 0.5 / 991025)  Evin Robertson Download  
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Blorb ???; Quetzal savefiles.
MS-DOS 32-bit Nitfol  (Version 0.5 / 000719)  Evin Robertson, compiled by L. Ross Raszewski Download (1524KB) 
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Blorb sound and music; Quetzal savefiles. Built with GlkDOS 0.19.1.
Nitfol source (tar/gzip)  (Version 0.5 / 991025)  Evin Robertson Download  
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Support for Blorb sound and music, depending on capabilities of Glk library; no graphics; Quetzal savefiles.
Nitfol patches  (2003)  Simon Baldwin Download  
Patches for Nitfol 0.5 to fix a crash, run V2 games, display accented characters, remove unwanted flickering in XGlk-built nitfol, and fix undo/redo
Nitfol patches  (2003)   Download  
Linux Glk executables of Nitfol 0.5 compiled with the patches in nitfol-0.5-patches.zip, compiled by Simon Baldwin.
Nitfol source (zip)  (Version 0.5 / 991025)  Evin Robertson Download  
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Support for Blorb sound and music, depending on capabilities of Glk library; no graphics; Quetzal savefiles.
Linux Zeal binaries  (Version 1.1 / 000422)  Jeremy Condit Download (380KB) 
V1-V5, V7 and V8 support, Quetzal savefiles. Uses Glk.
Zeal source  (Version 1.1 / 000422)  Jeremy Condit Download (380KB) 
Source for a Glk-based interpreter providing V1-V5, V7 and V8 support and Quetzal savefiles.
GlkZip source  (Version 0.1 / 990617)  Daniel Schleper Download  
Port of XZip 1.8.1 to Glk.
GlkZip patch  (001030)  D.J. Picton Download  
Patch for GlkZip 0.1, which includes all the changes in XZip 1.8.2 and also fixes a bug which prevents help menus from displaying correctly in some games.
Linux GlkZip  (Version 0.1 / 000504)  Daniel Schleper Download  
Linux binaries of GlkZip for terminal and X
Mac OS Nitfol  (Version 0.5 / 000417)  Evin Robertson, compiled by Andrew Plotkin Download (353KB) 
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Blorb?????; Quetzal savefiles.
Windows Nitfol (patched)  (Version 0.5 / 011206)  Evin Robertson, patched by David Kinder Download  
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Blorb sound and partial music, no graphics; Quetzal savefiles. Patched to support separate Blorb resources.
Windows Nitfol  (Version 0.5 / 991026)  Evin Robertson Download  
V1-V8 support (partial V6). Blorb sound and partial music, no graphics; Quetzal savefiles. Only supports Blorb resources packaged with Z-code (see above).


Last updated 30 November 2004. This site is no longer supported; information may be out of date.
Maintained as a historical archive by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. Copyright 1993-2018 IFTF, CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
This page was originally managed by Kevin Bracey or Cedric Knight.