Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!tcdcs!vax1!rwallace
From: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Zork Zero
Message-ID: <42462@vax1.tcd.ie>
Date: 16 May 89 20:05:20 GMT
References: <2134@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <5625@microsoft.UUCP> <917@mks.UUCP> <9616@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <925@mks.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Laboratory, Trinity College Dublin
Lines: 21

I got the Amiga version of Zork Zero recently. It's quite a nice game but there
are a couple of problems. First the file requester for the save and restore
options. These might be needed on lesser machines but the Amiga has
multitasking. The whole point of this is that if you want to know what files
are on the disk you just flick back to the Workbench screen and either open the
disk window or type DIR in the CLI. The requesters are an irritating waste of
time. OK this might be a matter of opinion but there's another thing that
isn't. Some perfectly ordinary commands take shall we say an excessively long
time to execute. For example go to the bend NE from the end of the drawbridge.
Type INSTALL NW PASSAGE IN NW WALL. The program took 3 minutes 21 seconds to
come back with the response that there was no NW passage in evidence. You might
say the Infocom parser is very sophisticated but it's really nothing unusual by
today's standards. If I'd typed in KILL THE STICK INSECT BY STEPPING ON IT
WHILE SINGING "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE" and had the parser understood it it might
be another matter but _any_ command the Infocom parser understands should come
back in less than a second on a machine as powerful as the Amiga. Nice game,
pity about the system.

"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie