4. What is the Z-machine? What's Glulx? The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the 1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play) run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction. The Z-machine is the closest we have to a world standard for adventure game files, but it has its limitations, and a different imaginary computer known as Glulx is gaining in popularity. It's approximately true that the same designs can be run through Inform to produce games for either Z-machine or Glulx. (The differences mainly lie in pictures and sound effects.) Click here to return to the table of questions.
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Last updated 24 September 2003. The librarian in charge of this page is Graham Nelson (graham at gnelson demon co uk) assisted by C Knight. Please email any comments, suggestions or corrections to cedenqs@inform-fiction.org.