ZipCE for PalmPC version 2.1 http://kevinnb.homepage.com (C)1999, by Kevin Buchanan, Mark Howell What is ZipCE? ------------------ In the 80's, a company called Infocom released many high quality text adventure games. They wrote these games using an imagined 'z-machine' computer, and then wrote interpreters for this z-machine for all the popular computers of the day. ZipCE is such an interpreter, written for Windows CE. It is based on the excellent Zip by Mark Howell, and ported to Windows CE. There are many new infocom type games written by other people now, using the Inform compiler. Installation ------------- This program can be installed using the "Mobile Devices" window: 1) Copy ZipPPCMIPS.exe or ZipPPCSH3.exe (depending on your CPU) to the "\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" directory on your PPC. 2) Copy any games you have (*.dat for original Infocom games, *.z3, *.z5, *.z8, etc) to "\My Documents" or "\Storage Card\My Documents" directory. What are some of its features? -------------------------------- The main highlights of this program are its resizable proportional fonts in the text area (vastly improves game readability), and its selectable 8x8 or 4x8 font in the status area (makes games like Bureaucracy and Trinity playable). It also supports the graphics font used by Beyond Zork and has full color support (try Photopia). A bug that could cause Beyond Zork to crash towards the end of the game is also caught. The arrow keys are supported, and function keys may be supported. I havn't tried the function keys on the PalmPC version yet - it requires a special program to enable you to press the alt key. I'll post details on my website once I try it. I may change the way function keys are pressed on the Palm version - use something other than alt. Function Keys: Windows CE Key Translated to alt-q F1 alt-w F2 alt-e F3 alt-r F4 alt-t F5 alt-y F6 alt-u F7 alt-i F8 alt-o F9 alt-p F10 alt-[ F11 alt-] F12 These keys come in handy in Beyond Zork as shortcut keys (use 'define' to change the shortcuts in Beyond Zork). Save and restore is done with Martin Frost's Quetzal code, resulting in much smaller save files. The width of the status window can be changed, as well as the size of the font. Go to the Format menu. If the width of the status window is larger than the screen size, you can scroll the window by tapping the right or left side of it to scroll in the desired direction. The text window will also scroll in the same manner. This is so that you can read text boxes like the game Curses makes. These games make the status window larger, draw the box, then shrink the window back to it's original size, so that the text box overlays the bottom window. Half of this text box can be off the screen if the status window wider than the screen. To see an example of this, start Curses, and type inventory. Input Modes ------------ ZipCE can be set up to handle the keyboard in two different modes as follows: Always Show: In the 'Format' menu, click on 'Always Show Keyboard' In this mode, the keyboard is always displayed when playing a game, and cannot be hidden. Auto hide: In the 'Format' menu, make sure there is no check mark next to 'Always Show Keyboard'. In this mode, the entire screen is scrolled up when you activate the keyboard if the input line will be covered by it. After you press enter, the keyboard is hidden, and the screen is scrolled back down. Also, when the keyboard is not shown, you can tap the bottom line on the screen to press enter. Is it free? ------------- Yes! You can distribute ZipCE to anyone you want, as long as you do not get any monetary profit from it, and include all files in the original ziped file. Where can I get some games? --------------------------- Have a look at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/ Look in either the zcode directory, or one of the competition directories. There are many high quality games at this site, and they are all free! Note that Activision still holds the copyright to the original Infocom games, so there is nowhere you can get these for free (except the Zork trilogy, which they have released for free as a promotion for one of their new games). If you want to buy some of the original games, have a look at the following site for info on where to get them: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pete/Infocom/ Release history --------------- Version 1.0 Beta: First release. Save/Restore didnt work, keyboard was kind of buggy. Almost no features for the PalmPC whatsoever. Some bugs were fixed by Sean Goldin. Version 2.0: Second release. Most of the user interface code has been rewritten. Drop down word lists added. Manner in which the screen scrolls when keyboard activated changed. 4x8 status window font added. Scrollable status & text window added. Version 2.1: Added an option to change the way the keyboard is handled, and cleaned up the code a little (made the exe a little smaller). Future enhancements ------------------- Toggle between scroll screen, and tap word on display to automatically type it for you. Color dialog box to change all the text colors. Scrollback. Any suggestions people send me (hint, hint...) Standard Legal Disclaimer ------------------------- ZipCE is provided as-is with no warranties expressed or implied. You use this software at your own risk. This software has only been tested on a Velo 500 and an HP 620LX, so I don't know how it will run on other systems. Acknowledgements ---------------- Many thanks to Cameron Bowes for help testing ZipCE. I probably would not have caught half the bugs without his help. And of course, thanks to Mark Howell for making the source for zip available. Contacting me -------------- Please send questions/comments/bug reports to: kevinnb@access1.net Kevin Buchanan