Archive for the ‘News’ Category

IF and the iPhone March 7th, 2008

So, Apple have (finally) released the iPhone SDK today. developer.apple.com is apparently too busy celebrating this momentous occasion to actually bother to respond to any http requests so I haven’t had a chance to look at the SDK yet.

Even so, I plan to port CocoaGlk as soon as I get my hands on it, at least assuming the requirements for distributing free software aren’t too onerous. $99 for a key doesn’t sound too bad to me, anyway.

I’m not entirely sure what to expect; I haven’t played around with jailbreaking my iPhone, so I’ll be going in blind. What I think is likely, however, is that half of CocoaGlk will port just fine: that is, the GlkClient framework that interfaces with the interpreters. What is less certain is how well the UI half will port: that is, GlkView. If NSTextView is ported, and the typesetter behaves the same way, then it’s going to be really easy to get the UI working in some manner, and probably not that hard to support all the features of blorb.

Getting games onto the phone is also a bit of a challenge. I think that taking some of Zoom’s existing inventory management and connecting to IFDB might be a good idea.

I’ll post a beta when I get things working: I imagine a glulx or frotz-based interpreter is likely to be released first. I’ve been thinking about doing something with LLVM to JIT games; something that would be a curiosity on the fast machines that CocoaGlk runs on at the moment, but which could be vital to running games on the much slower iPhone.

Zoom 1.1.2 November 22nd, 2007

Zoom version 1.1.2 is now available here. The main new feature in this version is integration with the IFDB site, as well as a much improved plugin manager. This version also fixes some Leopard compatibility issues and adds support for QuickLook, both for story files (displaying cover art and bibliographic information in the Finder) and for save game files (displaying the complete transcript that lead up to the save command).

Read on for the complete change list and some screenshots…

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GlkTerm 1.0.3 August 4th, 2007

I’ve now released GlkTerm version 1.0.3. This is an update to the previous version of GlkTerm that uses the new 1.0.3 version of CocoaGlk.

Zoom 1.1.1 July 27th, 2007

Well, it seems that some of the new features in Zoom 1.1.0 had a few of the usual .0 release issues. I’m not sure how I managed to miss that TADS 3 games were failing to save.

Zoom 1.1.1 fixes these issues and adds many new features to the plug-in system so now Glulx, TADS and Hugo games all get the same save-game features as Z-Code games, at least as far as is possible with their respective interpreters.

Read on for the complete change log. Zoom 1.1.1 is brought to you by the revision number 2691.

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CocoaGlk 1.0.3 July 27th, 2007

CocoaGlk 1.0.3 is now available. This version of CocoaGlk mainly focuses on bug fixes, but also includes a couple of new features aimed at making it easier to port multimedia interpreters and customise client behaviour.

Read on for the complete list of changes.

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GlkTerm June 2nd, 2007

GlkTerm is a simple application designed to help with writing glk client applications. Download this if you want to write a new IF interpreter on OS X, or if you want to port an existing one.

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Zoom 1.1.0 and CocoaGlk 1.0.2 are out April 28th, 2007

Zoom 1.1.0 has been released. This version fixes all the remaining known major bugs in 1.1.0beta3. As usual, accompanying this release is an updated version of CocoaGlk, version 1.0.2.

There is also an updated manual for this version of Zoom.

Zoom 1.1.0beta3 and CocoaGlk 1.0.1 are out January 13th, 2007

Zoom 1.1.0beta3 has been released. This version contains many important bug fixes over the previous version, considerably improving the way that Glulx games play. It also has a couple of useful new features: a context-sensitive notes window for keeping notes on specific games, and the ability to save out transcripts and recordings of the current play session. Additionally, CocoaGlk version 1.0.1 is now available for download. This includes the enhancements in the new version of Zoom.

Zoom 1.1.0beta2 and CocoaGlk 1.0.0a are out December 5th, 2006

Zoom 1.1.0beta2 has been released. This version fixes an issue with glulx games when running on PPC Macs. Additionally, CocoaGlk version 1.0.0a is now available for download. This fixes a bug that was causing glulxe to crash on PPC Macs.

Zoom 1.1.0beta1 and CocoaGlk 1.0.0 are out November 30th, 2006

Zoom 1.1.0beta1 has been released. This version adds many new features and the ability to run Glulx, TADS and Hugo games. Additionally, CocoaGlk version 1.0.0 is now available for download. This is useful for developers wishing to create their own standalone Glk runners for OS X. It is also required for compiling the latest versions of Zoom and Inform.