frotz

Z-machine interactive fiction interpreter

TLDR

Play Z-machine game

$ frotz [game.z5]

Set screen width and height

$ frotz -w [80] -h [24] [game.z5]

Play in dumb terminal mode

$ dfrotz [game.z5]

Load a saved game on startup

$ frotz -L [savefile] [game.z5]

Restrict file access to a directory

$ frotz -R [/path/to/directory] [game.z5]

Play with abbreviation expansion and ignore errors

$ frotz -x -i [game.z5]

frotz is an interpreter for Infocom-style interactive fiction (Z-machine games). It runs text adventure games in formats from Z3 through Z8, including classic titles and modern IF works.The tool provides terminal and graphical interfaces for playing these games, with support for save/restore, transcripts, and input recording.

PARAMETERS

-a

Watch attribute setting.

-A

Watch attribute testing.

-b color

Background color.

-c n

Context lines for scrolling.

-d

Disable color output.

-e

Enable sound effects.

-f color

Foreground color.

-F

Force color mode even if disabled in config.

-h rows

Screen height.

-i

Ignore fatal Z-machine errors.

-I n

Interpreter number to report to the game.

-l n

Left margin in characters.

-L file

Load a saved game file on startup.

-m

Enable mouse support.

-o

Watch object movement.

-O

Watch object locating.

-p

Plain ASCII output only (no accented characters).

-P

Alter piracy opcode.

-q

Quiet mode (disable sound effects).

-r n

Right margin in characters.

-R directory

Restrict file read/write to specified directory.

-s n

Random number seed value.

-S n

Set transcript width (0 to disable line splitting).

-t

Set Tandy bit.

-u n

Number of undo slots.

-v

Show version information.

-w columns

Screen width.

-x

Expand abbreviations "g", "x", "z" to "again", "examine", "wait".

-Z n

Error checking mode (0=none, 1=first, 2=all, 3=exit on error; default 1).

PREVIEW

West of House
You are in an open
field west of a house.

>

CAVEATS

Some games require specific Z-machine versions. Color support depends on terminal capabilities. Save format may not be portable between different interpreters. Three variants exist: frotz (curses), dfrotz (dumb terminal), and sfrotz (SDL graphical).

HISTORY

Frotz was written by Stefan Jokisch in the mid-1990s as a portable Z-machine interpreter. It became one of the most popular interpreters for Infocom games and modern interactive fiction. The name references the spell from Zork.