Boot To Zork

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Posted by Unknown on Monday September 23, 2013 @10:10PM from the you-have-been-eaten-by-a-grue dept.

Seemingly to inflict more suffering upon himself, Matthew Garrett (lord of getting things to boot using EFI) decided that booting directly into Zork would be cool. Quoting his weblog entry: "So, Frotz seemed like the natural choice when this happened. But despite having a set of functionality that makes it look much more like an OS than a boot environment, UEFI doesn't actually expose a standard C library. The EFI Application Development Kit solves this particular design decision. Porting Frotz ended up involving far more fixing up of Frotz bugs that tripped up -Werror than anything else. One note, though - make sure you include DevShell in the list of required packages at build time, otherwise file i/o will mysteriously fail." Grab the code, assuming you have a copy of Zork (or any other Z-machine game, as long as you name it ZORK1.DAT, I think).

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Anyone else feel like they're having a stroke? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-23 22:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

What is this word salad?
1. Re:Anyone else feel like they're having a stroke? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-24 00:24 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You RTFA and paid the price. Now get out.
2. Re:Anyone else feel like they're having a stroke? by TWX · 2013-09-24 01:29 · Score: 2
  
  Heh. I'm waiting for someone to compile it for the Cisco platform... I'd love to play Zork via 9600 baud serial connection on a $100,000 core router... to the exclusion of doing any actual routing, of course...
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
3. Re:Anyone else feel like they're having a stroke? by Lumpy · 2013-09-24 02:06 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  And he was eaten by a Grue.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not the grue! by dreamchaser · 2013-09-23 22:14 · Score: 5, Funny

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
1. Re:Not the grue! by RivenAleem · 2013-09-23 22:47 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Grue Screen of Death
2. Re:Not the grue! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-24 00:26 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You are likely to be eaten by a GRUB.
3. Re:Not the grue! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-24 02:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  ===ZorkOS v.1.0===
  You are in a filesystem of twisty symbolic links:#>_
Text based adventure as a boot option? by bejiitas_wrath · 2013-09-23 22:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

Someone do this, I loved playing the text-based adventure games as a kid. Someone should bring these back. They had amazing graphics as you saw the world in your head. Nothing like the 1080p games they make now. But Zork is a classic and the ability to play it now is incredible. Pity that graphics now is the selling point instead of gameplay and story development.

--
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
1. Re:Text based adventure as a boot option? by gl4ss · 2013-09-23 22:42 · Score: 2
  
  there's plenty of "interactive fiction" nowadays.
  pretty much nobody gives a shit about it though. and then there's plenty of indie games and jap rgp's where the graphics are just a sideline.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
2. Re:Text based adventure as a boot option? by mendax · 2013-09-23 22:42 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I agree. The text-based adventure games are much more fun. The cyberspace equivalent of the Theater of the Mind.
  I loved the Fortran-based MIT Adventure. I still have the source code of the version ported to Control Data Cyber mainframes that was floating around the lower-tier (not UC) California state universities, all of whom had Cybers, in the 1980's. I'll probably port it to C one of these days for shits and giggles one of these days so I can relive my undergrad days a bit.
  
  --
  It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
3. Re:Text based adventure as a boot option? by Joce640k · 2013-09-23 23:06 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Someone do this, I loved playing the text-based adventure games as a kid. Someone should bring these back.
  If only there was a way to search for things like that on the Internet...
  
  --
  No sig today...
4. Re:Text based adventure as a boot option? by hawkinspeter · 2013-09-23 23:29 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  If you type 'bing' into the google, you get taken to a site that can search for things like that.
  
  --
  You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
5. Re:Text based adventure as a boot option? by badboy_tw2002 · 2013-09-24 05:10 · Score: 2
  
  "Pity that graphics now is the selling point instead of gameplay and story development."
  Oh that old chestnut, whheeeeeeee... Here's some facts:
  #1) Things weren't as great as you remember them
  #2) There were always shit products that focused on graphics. There were always fantastic games that focused on graphics. Here's one that people love: Doom. Yet its one of the all time best ever games, and an immediate classic. Why? Graphics.
  #3) There are many many games that have great stories, intriguing gameplay, etc. You don't play any of them. You haven't even looked for them. Your contact with gaming is most likely commercials or occasionally glancing at what your kids are playing.
  True story: when the second computer game ever was completed, it was shown to the one guy that played the first game, and he complained about the focus on graphics and the lack of story.
Like in the old days. by cheetah_spottycat · 2013-09-23 22:18 · Score: 5, Informative

I think it's only fitting, keeping in mind, that in the old Amiga/Atari days, booting directly into your games was an absolutely normal thing to do - hardware resources were scarce, and the last thing you wanted was sharing RAM and precious CPU cycles with an OS running in the background.
1. Re:Like in the old days. by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2013-09-24 00:13 · Score: 2
  
  And even booting from floppy most of the OS was still there it just didn't execute the presentation layer for instance on the Atari ST TOS was available as were all the other OS level API's.
  
  --
  Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
2. Re:Like in the old days. by operagost · 2013-09-24 03:14 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Heck, we had to do this with PCs in the late 80s through the mid 90s before OS/2 and Windows 95. People had DOS boot menus in autoexec.bat so they could choose to boot up with maximum conventional memory, or to emulate EMS in XMS for Lucasarts games. I loved OS/2 because, while the Windows 3.x people had to exit and maybe reboot to play a game, I could fire it up from my desktop for a quick break of X-Wing and quit right back to the paper I was working on. That was amazing back then... unless you had an Amiga. But then, Amigas didn't have memory protection, so you'd better remember to save the paper first.
  
  --
  
  Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Never mind the Steambox ... by SirGarlon · 2013-09-23 22:31 · Score: 2

Never mind the Steambox, here comes the Zorkbox!
For bonus points, someone do this on a Raspberry Pi. :-)

--
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Interactive Fiction is very alive by dwheeler · 2013-09-23 22:42 · Score: 4, Informative

These games are now typically called "Interactive Fiction"; there are LOTS of them, and they are still being developed. It's a small community, but active. Two good post-Infocom games are Bronze (by Emily Short) and Anchorhead (by Michael Gentry).
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction
A gentle intro: http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/

--
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Re:Question by mwvdlee · 2013-09-23 23:17 · Score: 5, Funny

Because he can.
And, more importantly, because you can't.

--
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Transcript by jabberw0k · 2013-09-23 23:59 · Score: 5, Funny

> BOOT Your way is blocked by a tall, bald pirate. > KILL PIRATE With what, your bare hands? > INVENTORY You have: One hard disk drive, /dev/hda One CDROM drive, /dev/cd0 One USB drive, /dev/sda A rather large magnet A DVD containing LinuxMint > EXAMINE HARD DRIVE The disk appears to contain a bootable copy of Windows 8. > ATTACK PIRATE WITH MAGNET The pirate parries, and your magnet hits the hard disk drive. READ ERROR, SECTOR 0 >
1. Re:Transcript by Blaskowicz · 2013-09-24 00:05 · Score: 2
  
  Your disk actually had a Windows bootloader with an entry for Windows 8 and an entry for a linux partition, your CDROM drive has either died or can't read the LinuxMint DVD-R, and your USB isn't bootable.
  You're dead!
2. Re:Transcript by sandman_eh · 2013-09-24 00:52 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well the pirate doesn't have the usual avian on his shoulder, so it not a PARROTY ERROR
  
  --
  Master of Peng Shui.Ancient oriental art of Penguin Arranging)
Next Step by securityfolk · 2013-09-24 00:54 · Score: 2

Boot to CircleMUD?
Thanks for that summary by Brucelet · 2013-09-24 01:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is going to sound sarcastic, but in all sincerity, thanks, Slashdot, for posting a geeky story full or technical jargon. You used to be able to come here and find tons of stuff like this: obscure notes with enough confusing details to inspire you to go look something up and maybe even learn a thing or two. Good to know that News for Nerds still does occasionally happen.
The weakness of UIs by anchovy_chekov · 2013-09-24 01:59 · Score: 2

I asked a colleague for a connection to a database. He gave me a login to a MS Windows remote desktop.

I asked again. And he gave me a port and an IP address. I followed this down to where I wanted to go.. I could see where I needed to be. Open this door, unlock this puzzle. In my mind's eye I knew the path because I'd drawn the map.

I didn't need the visual metaphors that someone else had made. They were mere fantasies, imagined by minds that saw things the same way. Distractions. Illusions.

Give me the command line and my metaphors are my own.

It's dark down here.. and my sword is glowing blue.
Re:Question by dns_server · 2013-09-24 02:13 · Score: 2

This is not running an operating system, this is in efi the replacement to your bios.
EFI can do a lot of stuff, there is a text editor, interactive shell and python interpreter so it is something that you can write programs in not just operating system boot loaders.
I have installed this as a boot entry on my laptop and it does boot directly to zork in no time