List of games that don't work 100% (using an iPod Touch)

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I am currently using Frotz 1.6 (the latest at the time of writing) using an 
iPod Touch iOS 5 (or whatever Apple's calling it. Also, don't ask me about the 
gen. It was bought in January 2013 and let's leave it at that).

This is to be a list of every game that doesn't, at present, really work 
smashingly on Frotz, as well as the reason why, as far as I could tell. I will 
add to it as I play the games. This list will include known problems, such as 
the .z6 games, because it's as well to have all these things in a big list and 
watch it dwindle to nothingness. :)

Let's begin.

007 - Alto Secreto: Crashes, simply put.
222 Contra el Cangrejo: after some seconds of working nicely, some weirdness 
ensues. The line that indicates where my text will go jumps up and down, I stop 
seeing what I'm writing, and before long, crash.

Incidently, there may be some issues with some Spanish games, probably the same 
issues that there are in Git (nevertheless they work fine on Glulx).

Balances (Glulx version): the problem is mostly due to the size of the screen, 
and the size of the hyperlinks. If we could pinch/zoom them, as per another 
suggestion, it would be perfect.

Glkchess: the display is quite off. Images are chopped in the middle. Without 
pinching, it's also not really playable. With pinching, however...

zRogue: I know, I know, it's an abuse, you don't *have* to run it. But it 
starts to display surprisingly well. Then something goes FUBAR and it 
completely stops responding. At which point there's nothing to do but to 
totally remove the game with DiskAid; because Frotz will save it as is, in its 
unresponsive state. ;)

Z-Chess: completely unplayable without arrow keys. I understand this is very 
specific, so a suggestion would be to define, in Frotz's settings whether not 
the arrow keys were currently emulated, and let the user define which keys 
would do, for the duration of the session. It's a bit of a hoop, yes, but very 
few games require this (which I know is an argument against it being 
implemented at all, naturally).

I will keep you posted as I play (might be a while since I'm currently playing 
a puzzle fest!). Feel free to add to this.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 27 Jan 2013 at 11:16

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"I'm sure you'll suggest adding an option to scale all images and making it a 
configurable option,"

Yep. :) That's my answer to everything, I know, but I tend to find it solves 
most issues to everyone's pleasure.

"but I''m really loathe to add fiddly options in the interface just to work 
around bugs in certain games."

Fair enough. They're not even major games, anyway. Mind, if the problem is 
adding options in the interface, you can skip the configurable option and 
automatically implement it in all iPod Touches, but that sort of 
non-configurable option usually breaks stuff.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 29 Aug 2014 at 11:03

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I mean, there are two reasons for this list. Firstly is so that you're aware of 
some issues, of course, and decide what - if anything - to do about them...

...but the other reason is simply for it to be documented. Like DOSBox has that 
list of games known to be supported, playable, or unplayable, you know? So if 
there's a question of whether a certain game can run in the smaller, more 
portable, handier iPod Touch, there's a list of games with known issues, and 
what causes those issues, and so people will know whether or not a certain game 
with similar characteristics can reasonably be expected to run.

But of course, if you ask me what I think is more important, supporting this 
handful of games (well, more than a handful as the list itself shows, but let's 
skip that) for sake of completeness OR working on getting V6 games to work, 
plus sound support, plus any other enhancements you might have in mind (like, 
dare I say it?, TADS games?)... well, these few oddballs should not stand in 
the way of actual progress. Especially now that you've fixed the most serious 
of the existing bugs: inline-image display and hyperlinks. It's the time to 
look to the future of iFrotz, I agree.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 29 Aug 2014 at 1:27

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Peter, could you post a link for Colditz, I cannot find it.  Thanks.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 2 Sep 2014 at 3:58

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That is, I cannot find it unless there is a glulx file hidden inside the 
Colditz download link here: http://juegosaccesibles.es/descargas/

If so, I will not bother with it.  If the author was so short-sighted as to 
only distribute a Windows exe, they don't deserve to have their game ever work 
on other platforms.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 2 Sep 2014 at 4:05

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"If the author was so short-sighted as to only distribute a Windows exe, they 
don't deserve to have their game ever work on other platforms." 

Well said. I subscribe to that view as well. I have to, because I'm a bit of a 
collector of IF and CYOA, and if the author doesn't allow me to download a 
game, I have to draw the line somewhere. I'll only go through so many hoops.

In this case, though, we happen to have a link. :) It's ColditzMulti (stands 
for "multi-platform file", fancy way of saying raw file). 
http://www.caad.es/superglus/colditz/ColditzMulti.zip

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 2 Sep 2014 at 10:19

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Ugh, I just spent a couple hours debugging the quote box issues in Aesthetic 
Deletions and it turns out it's the game's fault in not dealing with formatting 
correctly when the column width < 80 (it's 65 in Frotz on an iPhone or iPT).
You can see the issue in other versions of Frotz, like Unix Frotz, as well.  
But NOT in FrotzGlk (used by Garglk), which made me spend a lot more time 
looking at it.  Turns out, FrotzGlk takes a shortcut for reverse video in the 
upper window in ZMachine games and makes the entire window reversed, not 
allowing for individual characters to be selectively reversed.  So the quote 
box happens to look okay because the unreversed characters still draw in 
reverse. 

But the game is still buggy.   Haven't checked La Adventure Rural to see if 
it's the same deal.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 6 Sep 2014 at 7:20

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Oooh yeah, it's not a good game. Aventura Rural probably does the same - 
Spanish games are generally hacky (sometimes on purpose; they get ambitious. 
Sometimes not on purpose, and merely due to the tools they used).

Not a big deal. If it's the game fault, I'm taking it off this list when you 
next update Frotz - it doesn't even make the text unreadable. Thanks for 
looking into it so deeply.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 6 Sep 2014 at 9:46

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By the way, how many columns does the iPT have in landscape mode? I mean, what 
if simply starting a game in landscape mode gave the game the columns it needs 
(something I've tried but which didn't work)? Surely it's not 65 on portrait 
and landscape mode both?

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 6 Sep 2014 at 9:48

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Actually, on iPhone and iPT, Frotz always reports 65 columns for Z-machine 
games for either landscape or portrait.
Z-machine doesn't have an event model that allows games to resize dynamically 
like Glk can.
Text buffers are allowed to resize and reflow their content anyway because 
games don't control the formatting directly, but output to window 1 (the status 
line, sometimes expanded to show block quotes) is cursor-addressable by the 
game, which does it's own formatting.  It can't be changed midgame (rather, 
there's no way to report to the game that this has happened), so I have to 
report a pessimistic column width that will work in both portrait and landscape.

One idea to better address this limitation might be to tell the game the screen 
is wider than it is (80, say), and then dynamically remove spaces to shrink 
fixed width output after the game as output it.  Garglk actually does something 
like this, and it seems to work okay.  I've been planning to experiment with 
that for some time now.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 4:09

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The Le Temple de Feu bug is the game's fault.  Verify by running in a desktop 
terp and resizing the window.  It doesn't respond to window resize events at 
all.  The glk spec says that windows which are resized smaller should clip 
previous content to the background color (white by default), and then then game 
never redraws it, so you just see the top part of the banner.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 4:13

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I have solutions for two different issues causing accented characters to print 
'?'s in Zmachine games.
(All extended characters printed in the status line showed up as '?', and only 
extended characters with code points > 256 printed '?' in the text buffer 
window.)

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 4:14

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The special weirdness with Le Scarabée e le Katana is because its filename has 
a DOUBLE extension:
 otto_scarabeekatana.gblorb.blb

This is confusing Frotz.  Rename it to just end in gblorb for better behavior.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 5:51

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"output to window 1 (the status line, sometimes expanded to show block quotes) 
is cursor-addressable by the game, which does it's own formatting.  It can't be 
changed midgame (rather, there's no way to report to the game that this has 
happened), so I have to report a pessimistic column width that will work in 
both portrait and landscape."

I figured that - not because I really understand the tehcnicalities of what 
you're talking about, but because I know that if I resize my desktop Frotz 
interpreter the text onscreen doesn't adapt to the new size. I was wondering 
instead whether, by starting the game in landscape mode (be in landscape mode 
when you select the game from the list) it might return a bigger value. So if I 
find something's not working well enough in portrait mode, I can try and 
restart the game in landscape. Who knows, previous savegames might even still 
work and adapt to the new display. No?

Of course, your idea, which I don't really understand, is fine to. In the end, 
whatever works, and whatever you're happier with.

Temple de feu: I understand the game not drawing the banner properly, indeed I 
figured as much, but I could correct that by pinch/zoom. My actual point was 
that pinch/zoom doesn't stick; after every turn it resets to the previous size.

Accented characters solutions: yay!

Scarabee: Right-o. I hadn't actually noticed, if you can believe it!

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 9:45

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Arthur: The Quest For Excalibur - it works!! It actually does work, even though 
it's a z6 game! No graphics, naturally. Also, the game differentiates "system" 
messages (like parser errors) from game messages, and while the latter display 
as normal, the former display, in WinFrotz, at the bottom of the screen. In 
iFrotz, what this means is that the system message appears right after your 
input line; no paragraph break, no nothing, it's just a run-on sentence. Also, 
there is an option to turn off text, but you have to press "F6". Now, if iFrotz 
could emulate the "Function Keys"... :) A suggestion, if possible, would be for 
iFrotz to actually capture and recognise the commands "F1" through "F10". This 
could be toggled off for games which actually required the player to enter, at 
some point, "F1" through "F10". Finally, the hint system is navigationable, but 
hard to read - hint topics are run-on, instead of listed as normally.

But it's playable!

ASCII Cars - This is a zAbuse anyway, but it's impossible to play without arrow 
keys.

Encouraged by the success of Arthur, I imeddiatly tried other z6 games. I won't 
get into them at present, because I won't test them thoroughly yet, but I can 
certainly get Zork Zero to load; there's a HUGE slowdown, but once I get past 
that it appears actually playable! But again - more info in time.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 10 Sep 2014 at 9:45

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Ekphrasis - the introduction has graphics with text, that rather require 
pinching to be readable, but for some weird reason I can't resize it, so it 
remains far too small. Also, the graphic bar on the LEFT side of the screen 
takes up the entire space, it's huge and I'm sure it's taking up a lot more 
space than it should. Makes it unplayable. But I'm sure it's the game's fault.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 10 Sep 2014 at 9:51

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El Edificio 25 (http://www.caad.es/fichas/el-edificio-25.html): Seems to play 
great, pity that the very first image is cropped.

Also, sorry about forgetting:

Cristal Rojo
http://www.caad.es/fichas/el-cristal-rojo.html

Ekphrasis
http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=dkx1r6fivxc1j3u7

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 10 Sep 2014 at 9:56

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Some comment about images: I don't believe there are major bugs left in glk 
support for them.
Images which are cropping like the first image El Edificio 25 are because the 
game is displaying the image centered without scaling.  Not really anything I 
can do about it without violating the spec.
Images that won't let you zoom them without snapping back while at a prompt are 
because the game is updating the image on a timer.  This obviously interferes 
with usability of zoom but I'm not sure what I could do.  
Maybe pause timers when you're actually performing the zoom pinch gesture?

The reason Frotz resizes images back to their normal size if you've zoomed them 
before continuing at a prompt is because many games only redraw partial images, 
such as highlighting the current room on a map.  If the image has been zoomed 
or panned, the drawing would happen in the wrong spot on the image.  I might be 
able to compensate, but since the main reason for zooming is to be able to read 
details, it doesn't seem like holding the zoom position is important.  (The 
other case you mentioned in Le Temple de Feu was actually wanting to compensate 
for a bug in the game instead, so, meh.)

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 8:19

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"Some comment about images: I don't believe there are major bugs left in glk 
support for them."

Having been testing 1.7.1, I agree, it's a beautiful job you've done (do you 
know, iFrotz now runs Kerkerkruip and Carma the best way it possibly could! 
Those were probably the most problematic of the intensive "proper" games in my 
list). I understand that there's only so far you can go. I'll keep the games in 
this list, because maybe one day when you feel that iFrotz is otherwise the 
picture of perfection and can't get any better you might want to come back to 
them, for a lark. ;) But really, you might have done all that you reasonably 
(and then some!) could as far as that's concerned. Feel free to move on.

Regarding updating images on timers, that might explain a lot of flickering I 
see in some games. Most recently Kerkerurip. Command line and blinking cursor 
flickering very visibly. Not an issue per se, but it makes sense now.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 9:13

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I think when I drop support for older iOS's, I can rewrite multithreaded code 
using blocks and improve glk performance, probably helping the flickering 
considerably.   
So 1.7.1 will be the last version that doesn't require iOS 7 or later.
Older devices  that can't run iOS 7 should still be able to download 1.7.1 
forever, as far as I understand.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 9:21

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Dare I dream with a playable version of Counterfeit Monkey when that happens? ;)

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 9:26

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Glkchess (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=kes9n0ngcurwzw4t): An abuse, which 
looks like it would work except that it doesn't make any attempt to resize 
images, making it all but unplayable. Might not be an issue in larger iOS 
devices, and I certainly don't expect you to rush off and get this one working; 
am just listing it for convenience

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 9:41

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Narrow your eyes (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9ult5oz52vbudyyy): The main 
section of this game is very gimmicky and didn't display properly until 1.7.1. 
Right now, it displays as well as it possibly can in such a small device, so 
kudos on that!

It does require sound playback to be winnable, though. Apparently the sounds 
played are game-critical.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 10:33

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L'Ile du Phare Abandoneé (http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=204): 
HUMONGOUS graphics make the Glulx version unplayable in an iPod Touch by any 
stretch of imagination. But, there's also a ZCode version available, so that's 
something. The weird thing is that the actual image takes up less space than 
required by the image window, so I'm not sure whether it's something the 
interpreter could do something about. Probably not

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 10:50

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La Caja de Sarimek (http://www.caad.es/fichas/la-caja-de-sarimek.html): Plays 
music. As of 1.7.1 seems to run perfectly otherwise.

La Casa del Olvido (http://www.caad.es/fichas/la-casa-del-olvido.html): images 
are cropped, similar to Glass Boxes.

La Conferencia (http://www.caad.es/fichas/la-conferencia.html): Claims to 
*require* sound to play.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 11:01

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Le Pouvoir Délaissé (http://anamnese.online.fr/if/if.html): The glulx version 
plays music.

Le Scarabée e le Katana 
(http://anamnese.online.fr/site2/if/inform7/ScarabeeKatana/): Includes sound, 
which doesn't play in iFrotz yet, and which doesn't seem to be critical to 
finishing the game. 

Le Temple de Feu (annexed; I can't find the link to the R3 Glulx version 
anymore. Anyway, I think the Glulx version was discontinued as the R4 ZCode 
version is easy to find): Includes sound, not critical for finishing game I 
think. Also, a curious artefact: there's a banner on the left side of the 
screen that doesn't resize properly, but I find I can manually resize it myself 
with pinch/zoom. And then I realise that every turn the banner goes back to its 
original size. Pity - kinda defeats the purpose.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2014 at 11:13

Attachments:

• templefeu.blb

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Les Heures du Vent (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ykwpwo9rx51a12pr): Plays 
music.

Original comment by ilprimoc...@gmail.com on 12 Sep 2014 at 10:08

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La vita? Non parlatemi de la vita!'s out of memory crash is a legitimate bug in 
the game handling window resize events.  All interpreters crash or error on it, 
some when you first hit space, others you need to actually resize the window.
I've made this error non-fatal so the game survives and is playable, but it 
still prints an error message.

Original comment by spath...@gmail.com on 19 Sep 2014 at 2:28

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