Kris Davidson wrote: > If this has been done before in another language could someone please > tell me, if not I was wondering is its possible and what the easier > way is to create an IRC bot that allows you to play Zork: > > I was thinking of just creating a simple Python IRC bot or finding an > existing one then have it run Zork and read/write from stdout/stdin. > > Is that possible? Is there a better or easier way to do it? Are there > any existing programs that do something similar? > > Or just really anything else people have to say on the subject.
The easiest way would be to start with a standalone Z-code interpreter that does just basic stdin/stdout transactions, get a licensed copy of the Zork data set, and hook it up via a subprocess -- in other words, just what you suggest. I haven't done recent surveys, but there are _many_ portable Z machine interpreters such that I'm sure one or two would suffice. (You'd also have to play buffering/fcntl games to make sure that it doesn't block, but those are in the details.) The bigger picture would be writing a full Z machine in Python, which is something I embarked on for my own amusement a while back but never got far enough to do anything useful at all, given the size of the task. -- Erik Max Francis && [EMAIL PROTECTED] && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis Wyrd has swept all my kin / all the brave chiefs away! / Now I must follow them! -- Beowulf -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
