Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom (1996) - findings

Established against a physical pressing read on an Apple Silicon Mac with a Pioneer BD-RW BDR-XS07U. The general method and its pitfalls are in docs/imaging.md and docs/hfs-extraction.md; this file holds only what is specific to this disc.

Identity

Hybrid CD: one Mode 1 data track carrying an ISO 9660 catalog (260 KB slice, pointer structure only) and an HFS catalog (308 MB volume holding everything). Volume Masterpieces, created 18 June 1996, modified 22 June 1996. drutil status reports 150515 blocks; 150515 x 2048 = 308,254,720 bytes of user data is the number to verify any image against. 879 catalog entries: 113 directories, 766 files. See disc-info.txt for the captured TOC and slice layout.

The pressing is Redump-verified. A full raw dump made 2026-08-29 hashes byte-identical to redump.org disc 64685 (serial CDD-3640-101-U3); see checksums.txt. Every finding below therefore describes the reference pressing, not a variant or a damaged copy - including the LHSOUND.ZIP provenance question, now settled: Jokisch’s freeware sound package genuinely shipped on the commercial disc.

Structure

The HFS volume is the whole disc. MAC and PC are sibling folders alongside shared DOCS, PCDEMOS, ACRODOS, and DOS/Windows installers at root. There is no separate PC filesystem tree to merge - extracting the HFS volume once yields everything.

Mac and PC builds diverge for Sherlock, Seastalker, Wishbringer, Leather Goddesses, Planetfall, Arthur, Journey and Zork Zero. Do not merge the two trees by filename; keep them as siblings.

Zork Zero: how the changing border frames are built

The location-sensitive border frames (castle, outside, underground, plus the hint screen) are pictures 5-8, named CASTLE-BORDER, OUTSIDE-BORDER, UNDERGROUND-BORDER and HINT-BORDER in the leaked ZIL source. The game draws whichever frame SET-BORDER picks as a single <DISPLAY pic 1 1> - there is no platform branching in that code path, and picture geometry is queried at runtime through PICINF, so each platform’s picture library is free to cut the art differently behind the same picture numbers.

• Mac (PIC.DATA/CPIC.DATA, 483 images each): pictures 5-8 are full-screen frames (480x300 hi-res, 320x200 color), columns included; one draw paints everything. The Amiga art is reportedly built the same way.
• PC (ZORK0.CG1/ZORK0.EG1, 503 images each): the same numbers hold only the top banners (640 x 29-39), and the libraries carry twenty PC-only pictures, 484-504, that the leaked ZIL never references: eight column strips (60-86 wide x 161-171 tall - four left/right pairs matching the four frame themes), ten invisible 0x0 entries, and two 20x7 fragments. The IF Archive .MG1 shows the same banner/column split.
• Both platforms use invisible pictures as a layout-data channel: entries such as 383, 417 and 422 have zero or hairline dimensions and exist so the game can read per-platform metrics through PICINF (picture 417 “measures” 0x127 on the PC but 0x186 on the Mac).

Where the PC columns get composited: in the r393 story file itself, confirmed by disassembly (routine at 0x1baf8 in ZORK0.ZIP). It draws the border picture at (1,1) - which on the PC is just the banner - reads the banner’s height and width back with PICTURE_DATA, selects the column pair for the current border (5 -> 497/498, 6 -> 501/502, 7 -> 499/500, 8 -> 503/504), then draws the left column at (1+height, 1) and the right column at (1+height, width-colwidth+1). Crucially the code stays platform-agnostic: each column draw is guarded by a PICTURE_DATA existence check, so against a Mac-style library with full-frame borders and no pictures 497-504 the same code draws the frame and silently skips the columns. The compiled SET-BORDER sits directly after it, matching the leaked source line for line; the leak (picture constants ending at 483, the Mac library’s count) simply predates the r393 border rework. Neither the leaked ZIL nor the shipped ZORKZERO.EXE (the generic 47,494-byte 6.71 interpreter) contains any of this - it is all r393 z-code. The split also makes sense on 1989 PC hardware: on a region change, redrawing a 640x37 banner and two column strips is far cheaper in EGA planar memory than repainting a full 640x200 frame.

Loose ends from the disassembly: the invisible PC-only pictures are read via PICTURE_DATA as expected (486, 487 and 496 observed), confirming the layout-metrics channel; the two 20x7 fragments 484/485 appear in an r393 picture-preload table alongside the U-BOX/D-BOX/BOX-COVER button pictures, so they belong to that on-screen button UI, though their exact draw sites use computed operands and were not pinned down.

Analyzed with scripts/picdir.py against this disc’s picture libraries, txd from ztools 7.3.1 against this disc’s ZORK0.ZIP, plus the ZIL source at https://github.com/historicalsource/zorkzero (globals.zil SET-BORDER/INIT-STATUS-LINE, picdef.zil).

Findings that correct or extend the published catalogs

• LEATHER.SCR is present (1,408 bytes) in PC/LEATHER/, and _LEATHER.COM is 12,004 bytes, which is Infocom MS-DOS interpreter 3N - the only build that loads a boss key screen. So the Leather Goddesses boss key works on this disc. Doherty’s Infocom Fact Sheet notes the LTOI1 IBM packages dropped it, and is internally inconsistent about the filename (LEATHER.DAT in one section, <GAMENAME>.SCR in the interpreter table). The disc settles it: .SCR.
• PC/LURKING/DATA/LHSOUND.ZIP (589,733 bytes) is Stefan Jokisch’s freeware sound package, shipped on a commercial Activision disc. Contents: fourteen LURKINxx.SND files matching Doherty’s count of fourteen sounds, UPDATELH.EXE plus C source, and LURKING.CNV at 129,944 bytes - exactly the length Doherty gives for release 221.870918. The README is signed by Jokisch and mentions Frotz as unfinished, dating it before December 1995; internal file dates run January to August 1995. So a PC owner of this disc can convert the shipped r203 to r221 and play with sound on a Sound Blaster, contrary to the usual claim that Lurking Horror sound was Amiga-only.
• Seventeen games ship with populated SAVE directories: Ballyhoo, Deadline, Enchanter, Infidel, Lurking, Moonmist, Planetfall, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker, Starcross, Stationfall, Suspect, Suspended, Witness, Zork I, Zork II, Zork III. Sizes 10.8-15.3 KB. PC/LURKING/SAVE/LURKING.DAT contains the serial 870506 (confirming it was made against the shipped r203), the strings 872325412 and uhlersoth - the login and password for the opening terminal puzzle, which were feelie-based copy protection - and an input buffer holding save. These are real saves. Their timestamps are all 22 June 1996, the same stamp as nearly every file on the disc, so the dates reflect mastering rather than when the games were played - confirmed by the Zork Legacy Collection disc, which carries byte-identical Zork I-III saves dated 11 June 1996.
• Zork Zero’s PC graphics are incomplete. PC/ZORK0/ has .CG1, .EG1, .ZIP and the interpreter but no .MG1 and no .EG2. Arthur and Journey have all four. This is the same omission Doherty documented for LTOI1’s IBM packages, carried forward - and carried forward again: the 1997 Zork Legacy Collection disc ships the same four files, byte-identical, with the same two missing.
• Mac and PC Zork Zero are different releases. MAC/ZORK ZERO/STORY.DATA is r296.881019 - the first release - while PC/ZORK0/ZORK0.ZIP is r393.890714. Another instance of the Mac side shipping older masters (see the 1995 dates on Mac Zork I-III above).
• Mac Sherlock ships its sound. MAC/SOUND/ holds thirteen SDAT files (S3-S17) plus four 32-byte M files dated February 1988. The Mac Sherlock is r26.880127, the sound build.
• Two provenances of PC story file. Games with a DATA/ subfolder have files padded to round sizes (92160, 122880, 153600); the same files are duplicated in a shared PC/DATA/ - a directory that resurfaces, byte-identical, inside the Windows installer archive on the 1997 Zork Legacy Collection disc. Games without one have the .DAT in the game folder at natural size +1 byte, matching Doherty’s note about IBM data files padded with a trailing $1a. Examples: LEATHER.DAT 129,023 vs 129,022; WISHBRIN.DAT 128,905 vs 128,904; TRINITY.DAT 262,065 vs 262,064.
• Every interpreter matches Doherty’s size table: 11394=3L, 11402=3M2, 12004=3N, 12640=4A, 12682=4E, 12688=4D, 33946=5J, 47442=6.68, 47494/47528=6.71.
• Mac Zork I, II, III and Beyond Zork are dated 3 April 1995, a year older than the 19 June 1996 stamp on every other Mac game.
• PCDEMOS/PLANETFALL/planetfall.avi (4.2 MB) is likely promotional footage for the cancelled Planetfall: The Search for Floyd.
• VERYLOST/ on both sides holds aborted game proposals (Amnesia, Boston, Creation, LG2 ideas, Oz, Thriller, Trek, Truffles) and three issues of the internal Infodope newsletter. The Mac copy of MISC/ has one file the PC copy lacks.

Open items for this disc

None.

Resolved 2026-08-29: creation dates on extracted files. scripts/hfscopy.py now restores them from the MacBinary header via SetFile -d. The restored dates carry provenance: MAC:SOUND:S3 was created 1988-02-08 (the original Sherlock sound build), and Mac ARTHUR (1992-10-29) and ZORK I (1991-10-28) carry Lost Treasures-era creation dates under their 1995/1996 modification stamps, consistent with Activision reusing the earlier masters.

Resolved 2026-08-29: full-disc image with Redump-comparable hashes. dd bs=2352 count=150515 against the raw whole-disc device produced a track that hashes identical to the Redump entry; see checksums.txt and the method notes in docs/imaging.md.