= Dorothy
Introducing Dorothy a Z-Machine interpreter library. The Z-Machine is
the
virtual machine used by many commercial and amateur works of interactive
fiction.
Dorothy is mostly C (taken in part from Frotz) with a Ruby interface.
The goal
of the project is to provide the base for writing interpreters and other
tools.
You can get the code from Github:
http://github.com/eki/dorothy/tree/master
Currently, most of the core instructions are implemented and tested.
But, a
sizable number of instructions are still on the todo list. Those
related the
the Z-Machine’s screen model are mostly missing. As are save, restore,
and
restart instructions.
= Demo
It’s functioning well enough to power the demo here:
= RubyGems
Sorry, no gem available for this release. Go to Github to get the code.
= Sample IRB Session
eki@indus> irb -r dorothy
m = Z::Machine.new( “minizork.z3” ) # Create a new machine from the given
=> #<Z::Machine:0xb7cd7be0> # filename
Z::Machine#run executes instructions until the program finishes or
until
it needs input and none is available.
m.run
=> nil
The machine writes output to an array. Each token is the result of
one of
the print instructions.
m.output
=> ["MINI-ZORK I: ", “The Great Underground Empire”, “\n”, "Copyright
(c) 1988
Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.\nZORK is a registered trademark of
Infocom,
Inc.\nRelease ", 34, " / Serial number ", “8”, “7”, “1”, “1”, “2”, “4”,
“\n”,
“\n”, “West of House”, “\n”, "You are standing in an open field west of
a white
house, with a boarded front door. ", “You could circle the house to the
north
or south.”, “\n”, "There is a “, “small mailbox”, " here”, “.”, “\n”,
“\n”,
“>”]
m.output.clear
=> []
You can feed input into the machine via Z::Machine#keyboard. The
machine
usually wants a full line of input, though sometimes it will try to
read
individual characters. Z::Machine#run will only proceed if there’s
enough
input available.
m.keyboard << “open mailbox\n”
=> “open mailbox\n”
m.run
=> nil
m.output
=> ["> ", “open mailbox”, “\n”, "Opening the ", “small mailbox”, "
reveals ",
"a ", “leaflet”, “.\n”, “\n”, “>”]