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iphonefrotz
Frotz Z-Machine Game Interpreter for iPhone and iPod Touch
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Code License: GNU General Public License v2
Labels: iPhone, Frotz, interactivefiction, Infocom
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iFrotz-0.7.tar.gz
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Project owners:
  spathiwa

2008/06/11 Update

I have Frotz working under the iPhone SDK and will be putting it on the App Store for free next week after I work out some issues with how to get game files onto the phone. I'll putting the source up here as soon as I can verify for sure that the iPhone SDK NDA has definitely expired. (There seems to be some confusion on the point. If anyone has al ink to a definitive answer, let me know.)

Bored of all those new-fangled graphics and dazzling eye candy on your shiny new iPhone?

Nostalgic for a simpler time?

Then take advantage of those crisp high-resolution fonts to relive the glory days of the Great Underground Empire, or play any of hundreds of great works from the Interactive Fiction archive.

A good starting point for exploring the wealth of Interactive Fiction is availale at the Interactive Fiction Archive.

I recommend using the Search option to find games for the Z-Code platform that have a 4- or 5-star rating, or looking at the top entries for the annual Interactive Fiction contest.

Please note that only games written for the Z-Code platform are supported by iFrotz, including all original Infocom games except the ones with graphics. (iFrotz does not yet support games with graphics, which can be identified in the IF Archive as Z-Code version 6).

iFrotz requires a "jailbroken" phone to install. Visit jailbreakme.com from Safari on your iPhone for a really easy way to do this (iPhone 1.1.1 only). This will free your phone for 3rd party applications and install the Installer.app program that lets you install everything else.

Installation

The easiest way to install is just to install the Frotz package using Installer.app. Just install the "Community Sources" package, which contains the installer repository (which hosts Frotz as well as other games and utilities), then look for Frotz under the Games section.

A collection of 3 Zork-derivatives (although not the original Infocom titles) is also available in the "Zork Z-Code" package.

There are hundreds of Z-Code games, and no one is likely to package your favorites for easy installation by Installer.app. But the games can be downloaded and copied to the phone without too much trouble.

Z-Code games are typically have filenames ending in .z3, .z4, .z5 or .z8 (depending on version), although game files from original Infocom media end in .dat. These should be copied to the phone's Frotz/Games folder (under /var/root/Media). There are many programs for Mac and Windows that let you access your phone's filesystem, including iPhoneDisk, iFuntastic, iPhoneDrive (not free), iPHUC, OpenSSH/scp. Note: Frotz can't read .zblorb files, even though they contain Z-Code. This will be fixed in a future version.

If you want to install iFrotz manually from the binary distribution:

  1. Download and extract the iFrotz-X.Y.tar.gz file.
  2. Copy the resulting Frotz.app directory to your iPhone under /Applications
  3. Create a directory /var/root/Media/Frotz/Games on your iPhone and copy your Z-Machine game data files there.

2007/11/04 Update

Version 0.7 released:

Screenshots

Building

Source code is available. If you have svn and a working arm-apple-darwin-cc cross compiler toolchain you can download it by doing: 

svn checkout http://iphonefrotz.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ iphonefrotz

Instructions for hacking your iPhone to enable ssh and a downloadable pre-built toolchain are available here: http://iphone.natetrue.com/

Older posts

2007/10/19 Update

Version 0.6 released:

New version now works with 1.1.1. Added game-controlled font/color support. I've gotten reports that this version still works with 1.0.2 as well, although I cannot verify that personally.

2007/09/04 Update

Version 0.5 released:

Thanks to jasonsmith of hackint0sh forums for the new icon.

2007/08/22 Update

Version 0.4 now supports:

Special thanks to allen.porter for helping with landscape keyboard support.

2007/08/14 Update

The Frotz directory has been moved to /var/root/Media/Frotz/Games as of version 0.2 so you can use iPhuc, etc. to copy the files more easily.

If you already have game or save files in the old location, iPhoneFrotz 0.2 will move them to the new location automatically on first launch.

This update also enables auto-saving of games when the phone goes to sleep or back to the SpringBoard menu -- this worked in 0.1 only if you knew to create the 'Saves' directory by hand.