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Zork I, Zork II and Zork III are now officially open source (www.gamingonlinux.com)

submitted 2 months ago by cm0002@no.lastname.nz to c/opensource@programming.dev

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Microsoft announced today that they're preserving a bit of history here - with Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III now officially and clearly open source. The source has been around for a while but now it's all proper.

From the announcement they said:

Today, we’re preserving a cornerstone of gaming history that is near and dear to our hearts. Together, Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License. Our goal is simple: to place historically important code in the hands of students, teachers, and developers so they can study it, learn from it, and, perhaps most importantly, play it.

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[-] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

I unfortunately don't have much time to play games.

I've tried Zork a few times, but I always get stuck near some clearing, and I don't know where to go. Basically at the start.

Anyway, curiosity combined with imagination, yeah, could be fun.

Main reason I haven't tried it is pretty stupid. I don't know how to save and reset, otherwise Zork is also on our SDF pubnix. But I also didn't really go out looking. You can try it without sign-up on telehack.com. Also, why the hell can't I run telnet (freezes or takes long time to respond) on Arch + KDE in terminal emulator (I tried 2), but it works in TTY?

And a list of many BBSs: https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/