Status Line now plays z4 games

(Status Line Classics editions shown)

Trinity

A Mind Forever Voyaging

Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

Bureaucracy

v2.0 Features

• z4 game support
• Custom, hand-drawn font adds bold and italic, which also supports inverse and various combinations*
  Here we can see mixed fonts in Bureaucracy.
  
• Vastly improved split-screen rendering, with classic screen-scrolling like days of yore
• Various improvements here and there to speed up functions
• Much more accurate core engine (even for z3 games)
• Simple beep/boop sound effects (Bureaucracy makes heavy use of this)
• Horizontal input cursor allows for more on-screen text
• Games up to 256K in size are now supported
• 1px inset on text to improve general readability
• Source code always available at GitHub from now on

Last but not least

Hand-crafted, custom builds of Infocom classics from original source designed to work great in Status Line.
See below for Status Line Classics!

Game-Specific Notes (original game files)

• For the BEST gameplay experience, see below for Status Line Classics. If that is unappealing to you, you will have generally much better results with the "Masterpiece" editions of the games. 
• Thanks to Fredrik Ramsberg for narrow-screen patches on Trinity, AMFV, and Bureaucracy
• Trinity draws interstitial quotations that are cropped off
• A Mind Forever Voyaging does a lot to simulate PRISM's computer environment. Elements like "Library Mode" should still be usable, even if text (like the file list browser) is rendered off-screen. Chapter headers will render off-screen, under the assumption being there is a minimum of 40-character wide screen. Again, it is ugly but non-essential to gameplay proper.
• Bureaucracy has a number of "forms," "computer screens," and "signs" which really do require a 40-character screen. During "form inputs" the input field cursor may be off-screen, but should still work. If you don't see a cursor, type a letter and see what the input prompt says. You should be able to ascertain which field is active and enter appropriate information.
• Nord and Bert status line will sometimes appear to be missing letters.  There can be cases where this renders the game a little confusing (listing exits), but it seems to be generally playable. Invisiclues may be rendered in two columns depending on the chapter. The second column is usable, but is cropped harshly.

Status Line Classics (custom game files)

tl;dr: visit my GitHub repository to download custom builds of some Infocom classics. Note: when updates to the z4 game files (not to be confused with Status Line updates) are published in the future, save games will not transfer from a previous build to the new build.

• Status Line Classics, on GitHub

ntl;wr (not too long; will read)
All of the above under "Game-Specific Notes" is true for those playing the original z4 releases. However, I took it upon myself to investigate the original source code for the games listed above and have hand-crafted customized builds which accomodate Pico-8's small, adorable screen.

Lightly bruising sacred cows

I need it to be known, first and foremost, that I approach modifications to the original Infocom games with reverance and care. I do not do anything to modify the main corpus, except where the formatting exceeds the boundaries of Status Line's screen. Even then, I put care into ensuring a visually pleasant layout is presented that maintains the flavor and spirit of the original presentation.

This meant going back to play the originals on the Amiga and seeing how the presentation looked, or even (in the case of Trinity's quotations) going back to the original poet's work to see how it was written/formatted. Hanging punctuation, adjusted hyphenation, columnar alignment, and more was scrutinized pixel-by-pixel. In the end of course these are all subjective decisions, but I do want to put minds at ease that I strove to be a good care-taker of the originals. All I'm interested in is putting in the minimal change necessary to adapt the classics for a new generation of machines.

While this first release of the modified games focuses exclusively on Status Line and the Pico-8's unique screen size, the long-term goal is to make these games generally accomodate a wider variety of screen sizes. To my mind, this is simply "game preservation."

Visit my github to find .z4 files to download, to report layout bugs, or even make your own contribution to the project.

The Resurrection of Bureaucracy

During the course of this project, I discovered that the existing source code to Bureaucracy does not build a playable game. This was due to two factors:

1. The only existing code (r160, unpublished) has a bug which prevents the player from using the telephone, which renders the game unwinnable (you have to call a taxi to go to the airport).
2. The amazing ZIL source code compiler ZILF itself had a subtle bug with assigning certain global variables

Thanks to the amazing (and super fast) work by Jesse McGrew and @heasm66, Bureaucracy is now buildable and playable from source code. Chalk one up to game preservation!

I believe this Status Line Classic edition is the first and only playable release of the existing source code in public distribution. (other builds are available, but the source to those builds does not exist)

Status Line source code, now on GitHub

The project is getting complex enough now that I need to get its versioning under control. I've committed every version from 1.0 to 2.0 into github, and that will be the place to grab the source code from now on.

https://github.com/ChristopherDrum/status-line