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From: mattack@eskimo.com (Matt Ackeret)
Subject: Re: Porting Infocom Titles: Amiga to DOS/Windows
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Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 23:25:34 GMT
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In article <4k19lm$pei@secmon.sarnoff.com>,
Aaron Marks <marks@sarnoff.com> wrote:
>Any chance anyone has heard of or successfully ported Infocom games from the
>Amiga to DOS (or any platform-to-platform port)?  My intuition tells me that
>it should be doable.

	I'm guessing that you are new to this group, since this is a commonly
covered topic.  That is not meant as disparaging or a complaint.

	General remarks:  All of the Infocom games are written in a generic
format, an imaginary machine code.  Each computer that plays the games
interprets that imaginary code.  So all you have to do, for the vast majority
of the games, is copy the 'data file' over to the destination machine.

	This process varies depending on source and destination computer,
but I believe the Amiga can read and write MSDOS disks, so there is no 
problem.  If not, just hook up a null modem cable between the computers and
send the file that way, or use a literal UNIX account as an intermediary.

	If the source machine does _not_ have 'generic data file' games, 
the process is more difficult, but not impossible.  I am under the impression
that most of the full-disk versions are for 8 bit computers, or early 
copy protected IBM versions.   Basically, if nobody has written the utility
to do it, you'll "just" have to figure out how the data is put on the disk
and extract that data into a file.  It's been done at least on many Apple II 
Infocom games, I dunno about other platforms.

	Then you just need an interpreter on the destination computer..
Either a real Infocom interpreter, or get one of the freeware interpreters
on ftp.gmd.de.

	If you have more specific questions, e-mail me.

	Of course, you can't transfer the datafile and use it on the
destination computer _AND_ then sell the original.. It's just like copying
a program any other way.
-- 
unknown@apple.com		Apple II Forever
These opinions are mine, not Apple's.
