ZORK-ABAP
A Z-Machine V3 interpreter written in ABAP. Play classic Infocom text adventures like Zork on SAP systems.
Status
Working! MiniZork runs successfully on SAP systems.
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>
What is This?
This is a complete Z-Machine version 3 interpreter that runs inside SAP. The Z-Machine is the virtual machine created by Infocom in the 1980s to run their text adventure games (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.).
Now you can play these classics during your SAP debugging sessions.
Vibecoded with Claude Code
This project was 99% vibecoded using Claude Code - Anthropic's AI coding assistant.
Vibecoded in ABAP, directly in the SAP system. No additional tools needed to be installed on SAP - just the vibing-steampunk (vsp) MCP server running locally, which gives Claude direct access to SAP ADT APIs.
This enabled a fully AI-assisted development experience:
- Code written and deployed directly to SAP via natural language
- Unit tests executed on the live SAP system
- Debugging and iteration in real-time
- No manual copy-paste between IDE and SAP
- No Eclipse, no SE80 - just conversation
The interpreter was ported from a Python reference implementation (z3_minimal.py) through conversational development with Claude.
Features
- Full Z-Machine V3 instruction set
- ZSCII text encoding/decoding with abbreviations
- Object tree with attributes and properties
- Dictionary lookup and input tokenization
- Interactive HTML console (24-line retro display)
- Automated speedrun/test mode with assertions
- Load games from SMW0 or filesystem
Architecture
zcl_ork_00_zmachine - Main interpreter (fetch-decode-execute)
zcl_ork_00_memory - Memory management (big-endian)
zcl_ork_00_stack - Call frames and evaluation stack
zcl_ork_00_objects - Object table, attributes, properties
zcl_ork_00_text - ZSCII text decoder
zcl_ork_00_dict - Dictionary and tokenization
Running
Interactive Console
SE38 -> ZORK_00_CONSOLE
Select a game from SMW0 or browse for a local .z3 file.
Speedrun/Test Mode
SE38 -> ZORK_00_SPEEDRUN
Runs automated command scripts with verification assertions.
Installation
- Create package
$ZORK in your SAP system
- Import this repo via abapGit
- Upload game files (
.z3) to SMW0 (or run from local file)
- Run transaction
ZORK (or ZORK_SPEEDRUN for autorun/test)
Development
This project uses vibing-steampunk for AI-assisted development:
{
"mcpServers": {
"a4h-abap-adt": {
"command": "/path/to/vsp",
"env": {
"SAP_URL": "http://your-sap-host:50000",
"SAP_USER": "your-user",
"SAP_PASSWORD": "your-password"
}
}
}
}
See CLAUDE.md for detailed development guidelines.
Testing
Run unit tests via MCP:
RunUnitTests(object_url="/sap/bc/adt/oo/classes/ZCL_ORK_00_SPEEDRUN")
Or in SAP GUI: SE38 -> ZORK_00_SPEEDRUN with test scripts.
Clean-Room Implementation
This is a clean-room implementation based on the publicly available Z-Machine specification:
- Implemented from the Z-Machine Standards Document 1.1 by Graham Nelson
- The Z-Machine format and specification are public domain / freely available
- No code was copied - the ABAP implementation is original work
- Architecture inspired by other Z-Machine implementations for reference
References
Z-Machine Specification
Original Zork Source (MIT Licensed)
Microsoft, Xbox, and Activision released the original Zork trilogy as open source in November 2025:
Inspiration
- zmachine - Python implementation that inspired the architecture
- xyppy - Python Z-Machine used as reference
Development Tools
License
MIT License - see LICENSE file.
The Z-Machine specification itself is public domain. Game story files (.z3, .z5, etc.) may have their own licensing terms.
Credits
- Graham Nelson - Z-Machine Standards Document
- Infocom - Original Z-Machine design and games
- Anthropic - Claude Code, the AI that wrote this
- vibing-steampunk - MCP bridge that made it possible
"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."