Re: Portability (was Inform Competition ?!!)


Fri, 26 May 1995 11:03:08 -0400

cinnamon@one.net (r. n. dominick) writes:
> One thing I worry about about using Inform for IF ... well, if I ever
> decide to sell (gasp!) a bit of IF, either as a "sequel" you get when
> registering or as a plain commercial product (locally advertised or
> whatever) -- well, what are the legalities of commercially distributing a
> game derived on a copyrighted structure (ZCode)? What are the chances
> I'll be able to give out ZIP in the .ZIP file or on the diskette of this
> game? How many computer novices will be turned off by or totaly unable to
> go and find an interpreter on their own -- even if I give an
> address/upload the interpreter to the same place/whatever? Do I really
> want to write my own run-time for Zcode?

ZIP is freeware. XZip is freeware, and I wrote it (except for the code
I lifted from ZIP); I would be thrilled to death if you bundled it
with a commercial text game. There are free ports of ZIP to
everything.

I'm (slowly) working on a Mac port of XZip, if that makes any sense;
it will have the capacity to make stand-alone Mac executables. I'm
explicitly including a statement that a stand-alone executable of your
Z-code game will be yours to do with as you want.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."