April 28, 2011

The inspiration behind Terminus, Zork, is a fantastic game. Here’s a guide for how to set it up to play on your Linux machine (tested on Ubuntu >= 12.04).

Download

First, you need to download the game itself. Here is the link from Infocom, the company that was created by the original programmers of Zork. The Mac binaries of Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III are all available.

Software packages

You need to install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install frotz uudeview

frotz will be used for running the game, and uudeview is for uncompressing the files.

Go go go!

1. Download the .hqx file of your choosing from the Zork download page.
2. Move the .hqx file from the download location to a location of your choosing using the mv command.

3. Uncompress the .hqx file using the uudeview command with the -i flag (to disable interactivity).

   uudeview -i zorki.hqx   	
   

4. Use the frotz command to play.

   frotz ZORKI  	
   

5. PROFIT!

Enjoy the fun that is Zork!