Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Tagged: level 9, acode, if, interactive fiction, history, preservation, open source

I know a lot about Infocom but a lot less about Infocom’s competitors – particularly their UK competitors. Magnetic Scrolls, Topologika, and Level 9 were landmarks in the field, but I was barely aware of them in the 80s and never really followed up in the modern era.

(I think I had a pirated copy of Knight Orc circa 1990, but I never finished it. And what I remember doesn’t match Knight Orc so maybe I’m thinking of another game entirely? O the embarrassment.)

Happily, my ignorance does not impede anybody else. Mike Austin, one of the original Level 9 crew, has just released a treasure trove of Level 9 material scanned from (a treasure trove of) old floppy disks.

As the announcement post says, this includes the source code for Level 9’s A-Code compiler (yes, directly inspired by Infocom’s Z-code). Also documentation, specifications, and the source code for many of the games.

Everything is presented as found on the floppies, so don’t expect to get a toolchain up and running in a hurry. Some of tools have been organized under "sys sources", but a whole lot more is just dumped out in the "floppy disk archive" tree. And almost all the code in sight is assembly.

The readme refers to the "acode compiler, squasher and interpreters". I’m not entirely sure what the "squasher" stage is; my guess is that it turns a compiled game into a runnable disk image (for Atari, PC, or whatever).

In any case, work continues. Another 500 floppies remain to be scanned, along with a large pile of paper documents. "More are coming fairly soon," comments Mike.

I don’t know the games, but I know this is tremendous news. Thanks and congratulations to Mike and everybody who is helping.