Top all-time · #2821
Zarf Updates
Personal blog · blog.zarfhome.comgamesculture
Zarf Updates is a personal blog at blog.zarfhome.com about games and culture. Since 2017, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “The Visible Zorker”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Zarf Updates, Andrew Plotkin's blog, for posts on Infocom and Zork source code, the ZIL and Z-machine history, and the Visible Zorker visualisation. Comments cite these as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Interactive fiction, narrative in games, and so on
Most-linked posts?
- The Visible Zorker4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-01-14
- All that Infocom interpreter code4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-11-21
- The Myth of Google’s Plus3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-08-26
- What is ZIL anyway?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-19
- A Treasury of Zork Maps2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-08
- Your load is too heavy: Zork deep reading2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-31
- A note on content restrictions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-03
- Microsoft buys Activision – what happens to Infocom's text adventures now?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-13
What Hacker News says?
It does, at least Zork runs, see http://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source... and https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/38990
Comment linking /2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source-code.html
on “Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games”Submitted Your load is too heavy: Zork deep reading as a story · 231 points
HN discussionA commenter on Zarf's blog ( https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-sourc... ) reports that ZILF is capable of at least building the Zork source to something that will start up, though given the warnings produced during compilation it's not going to work perfectly...
Comment linking /2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source-code.html
on “Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games”Submitted What is ZIL anyway? as a story · 204 points
HN discussionThe others don't seem to have the MIT license pullreq added, so they are not open source; the source code is merely available. The repos have a note: "This collection is meant for education, discussion, and historical work, allowing researchers and students to study how code was made for these interactive fiction games and how the system dealt with input and processing. It is not considered to be under an open licen…
Comment linking /2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source-code
on “Microsoft makes Zork open-source”Submitted Infidel goes wild as a story · 185 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of when the Infocom folks moved from the functional MDL to the micro-friendly ZIL, while keeping much of the syntax of the former: http://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/what-is-zil-anyway.html
Comment linking /2019/04/what-is-zil-anyway.html
on “Technical Breakdown of a new NES game written in Lisp”Submitted Tabbed out on the Oregon Trail as a story · 114 points
HN discussionRe: the Visual Zorker visualisation, see Andrew Plotkin's associated blog post: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2025/01/the-visible-zorker [ commentless HN discs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42769679 ]
Comment linking /2025/01/the-visible-zorker
on “Zork: The Great Inner Workings (2020)”Submitted These violent delights as a story · 81 points
HN discussionIn http://blog.zarfhome.com/2017/08/your-load-is-too-heavy-zork... , Andrew Plotkin was pointing to an Inform 6 version of Zork by Allen Garvin , http://plover.net/~agarvin/zork1.txt derived from the original decompiled Z-machine code.
Comment linking /2017/08/your-load-is-too-heavy-zork-deep-reading.html
on “The DUNGEON (Zork I) source”Submitted The Tic-Tac-Toe Mysteries of Xerloc O'Xolmes as a story · 44 points
HN discussionImplementation details here: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2025/01/the-visible-zorker
Comment linking /2025/01/the-visible-zorker
on “The Visible Zorker”Submitted I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry as a story · 29 points
HN discussionGo straight to the source: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/11/infocom-interpreters
Comment linking /2023/11/infocom-interpreters
on “Infocom's ingenious code-porting tools for Zork and other games have been found”Submitted The Age of Bronze and Steel as a story · 21 points
HN discussionmore backstory - https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/11/infocom-interpreters
Comment linking /2023/11/infocom-interpreters
on “Zork Zcode Interpreters Appear Out of Nowhere”Submitted The Visible Zorker as a story · 6 points
HN discussionDiscovered this via Andrew Plotkin’s rebuilt blog: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/06/welcome-to-the-new-blog
Comment linking /2023/06/welcome-to-the-new-blog
on “Adding comments to your static blog with Mastodon”Submitted Zork is now open source as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIf you're at all interested in digging through the Zork code yourself, you no longer need to know Z-machine assembly: the source code for most Infocom games was released/leaked a few years back, and is available here: https://github.com/historicalsource/ It's written in ZIL, which has a somewhat Lispy feel (for a bit of background, see another post by Plotkin here: http://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/what-is-zil-anyway…
Comment linking /2019/04/what-is-zil-anyway.html
on “Zarf Updates: A treasury of Zork maps”Submitted A note on content restrictions as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted All that Infocom interpreter code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Myst Online Material Released as CC BY-NA-SA as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Note on Content Restrictions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI web scrapers: a data point as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Visibile Zorker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Zork 1 with annotated panels showing its internal state and source code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Microsoft cancels next surprise hit game as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Microsoft buys Activision – what happens to Infocom's text adventures now? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
