zork-1977-07

Zork source code, 1977 June-July

This repository contains the source code and binary files for June and July 1977 versions of Zork, an interactive fiction game created at MIT by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling. The files are a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tapes of Tech Square (ToTS) collection at the MIT Libraries Department of Distinctive Collections (DDC).

File organization and details

zork

The files within this directory are the Zork specific files from multiple tape images from around the same time period in 1977. They are from the 9005143.tap, 9005183.tap, and 9006255.tap tape image files within the /tots/recovered/vol2 directory of the ToTS collection. Most files are written in the MDL programming language and were originally created on a PDP-10 timeshare computer running the ITS operating system.

The files were extracted from the tape image using the itstar program. The filenames have been adapted to Unix conventions, as per the itstar translation. The original filename syntax would be formatted like, MARC; ROOMS 241, for example. All files have been placed into this artificial zork directory for organizational purposes. The files extracted from the tape images were put into sub-folders with a corresponding name to the tapes listed above.

The madman, marc, and taa directories in each sub-folder contain the source code and binary files for the game. Some of the files remain encrypted as found in the tape images.

The program used to start the game, ts.zork, is in this marc directory.

Files with extensions .nbin and .save are binary compiled files.

The ar2.tv file is an ITS archive file. MIT DDC digital archivist, Joe Carrano, extracted the contents of the file into the ar2.tv folder using the itsarc program. Also included is a file listing (ar2.txt) which shows the original timestamps of the files as extracted.

codemeta.json

This file is metadata about the Zork files, using the CodeMeta Project schema.

LICENSE.md

This file describes the details about the rights to these files. See Rights for additional information.

README.md

This file is the readme detailing the content and context for this repository.

tree.txt

A file tree listing the files in the zork directory showing the original file timestamps as extracted from the tape image.

Preferred Citation

[filename], Zork source code and binary files, 1977 June-July, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tapes of Tech Square (ToTS) collection, MC-0741. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Distinctive Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts. swh:1:dir:ba6df51bcfdf51ba361bbf595332ce035a3a75f6

Rights

To the extent that MIT holds rights in these files, they are released under the terms of the MIT No Attribution License. See the LICENSE.md file for more information. Any questions about permissions should be directed to permissions-lib@mit.edu

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lars Brinkhoff for help with identifying these files and with extracting them using the itstar program mentioned above.