"First off, it is really low level. From what I understand, not even the people at Infocom wrote raw zil. Instead, they used Lisp macros that generated zil."
Is there any evidence of this? The standard guide to ZIL (written as an in-house document at Infocom for new programmers [1]) presents it very much as if people would be writing it directly. It's also not that low level, only slightly more low level than Inform 6.
The way I understand it, ZIL at Infocom was a subset of MDL. More specifically, a subset that was easy to compile to the Z-machine. This means that during development, they'd mainly write ZIL code, but they'd do it in MDL, giving them access to the full powers of the Lisp during development. (Since MDL is an early Lisp.)
Sometimes during game development they'd make use of MDL macros that were not available in ZIL, and they'd then have to either macroexpand manually, or hard-code those macros as language features into their ZIL compiler (because ZIL is not quite a Lisp and does not have support for custom macros).
Again, this is the understanding I've pieced together in my head from various sources. I don't have the full picture! Maybe I should try to get in touch with the people who were there to ask them...
Interesting read! A lot of AoC challenges involve navigating 2D grids, which can map quite nicely onto the text adventure model of connected rooms with compass direction exits (a grid of straightforward little passages, all alike). This insight led me to attempt Day 6 from last year's Advent of Code in Inform 7[1], though I ultimately admitted defeat on the second half. I've always found Inform 7's Mathematics Textbook English syntax quite charming, though perhaps I would have a different perspective if I'd ever attempted to build anything substantial with it.
Another worthy mention in this space is Linus Åkesson's dialog language[1]. From its description:
Dialog is a domain-specific language for creating works of interactive fiction. It is heavily inspired by Inform 7 (Graham Nelson et al. 2006) and Prolog (Alain Colmerauer et al. 1972).
An optimizing compiler, dialogc, translates high-level Dialog code into Z-code, a platform-independent runtime format originally created by Infocom in 1979.
Development seems dormant at the moment, but it feels more like Inform 7 'done right' to me. If my brain was a little bigger and calmer I'd be all over it. It has excellent documentation too. Very portable -- I compiled it locally under Termux on my phone with nothing but Clang.
Author here. I agree. It does seem like "Inform 7 done right" and I really like the Prolog evaluation model.
I didn't know about Dialog when I wrote this article (learned of it just yesterday!) but unless life gets in the way I will explore it in a future article.
There has been some Dialog development in the last year or so, after others picked it up (with Linus' blessing) and started work on a Community Edition:
"First off, it is really low level. From what I understand, not even the people at Infocom wrote raw zil. Instead, they used Lisp macros that generated zil."
Is there any evidence of this? The standard guide to ZIL (written as an in-house document at Infocom for new programmers [1]) presents it very much as if people would be writing it directly. It's also not that low level, only slightly more low level than Inform 6.
[1] https://archive.org/details/Learning_ZIL_Steven_Eric_Meretzk...
The source code for most Infocom games is public, they did write them in ZIL. https://eblong.com/infocom/
The way I understand it, ZIL at Infocom was a subset of MDL. More specifically, a subset that was easy to compile to the Z-machine. This means that during development, they'd mainly write ZIL code, but they'd do it in MDL, giving them access to the full powers of the Lisp during development. (Since MDL is an early Lisp.)
Sometimes during game development they'd make use of MDL macros that were not available in ZIL, and they'd then have to either macroexpand manually, or hard-code those macros as language features into their ZIL compiler (because ZIL is not quite a Lisp and does not have support for custom macros).
Again, this is the understanding I've pieced together in my head from various sources. I don't have the full picture! Maybe I should try to get in touch with the people who were there to ask them...
Interesting read! A lot of AoC challenges involve navigating 2D grids, which can map quite nicely onto the text adventure model of connected rooms with compass direction exits (a grid of straightforward little passages, all alike). This insight led me to attempt Day 6 from last year's Advent of Code in Inform 7[1], though I ultimately admitted defeat on the second half. I've always found Inform 7's Mathematics Textbook English syntax quite charming, though perhaps I would have a different perspective if I'd ever attempted to build anything substantial with it.
[1]: https://davidyat.es/2024/12/23/aoc-2024-part2/#day-6-python-...
The article mentions the Z-Machine as the earliest fantasy console. I'm wondering whether CHIP-8 would qualify?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8
Another worthy mention in this space is Linus Åkesson's dialog language[1]. From its description:
Development seems dormant at the moment, but it feels more like Inform 7 'done right' to me. If my brain was a little bigger and calmer I'd be all over it. It has excellent documentation too. Very portable -- I compiled it locally under Termux on my phone with nothing but Clang.[1] https://www.linusakesson.net/dialog/index.php
Author here. I agree. It does seem like "Inform 7 done right" and I really like the Prolog evaluation model.
I didn't know about Dialog when I wrote this article (learned of it just yesterday!) but unless life gets in the way I will explore it in a future article.
While poking around I found this side-by-side comparison of Inform 7 & Dialog. Seems instructive.
https://www.linusakesson.net/dialog/craverly/craverly_side_b...
https://www.linusakesson.net/dialog/craverly/index.php
There has been some Dialog development in the last year or so, after others picked it up (with Linus' blessing) and started work on a Community Edition:
https://github.com/Dialog-IF/dialog
Oh. From the title I thought it would be the Z machine at Sandia labs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Pulsed_Power_Facility
Sandia loves their references to Z division
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandia_Base
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Division
I was secretly hoping they would write solutions in Inform 7.