The Zork Library Forum

Zork Nemesis runs fine on Win 7 x64. However, my keyboard does not have a pause key. Is there an alternative you can program, e.g. F8 (which pauses media on my keyboard playback controls)? I would like the option to change the key that is used. Thank you!

I don't know if the author of RanRelief if still around.

If you just want to run the game with better control over panning, you may with to run the game through the new program called ZEngine that supports running Zork Grand Inquisitor and Zork Nemesis.

The wiki for ZEngine has info on setting it up depending on your operating system, game and game version.

https://github.com/Marisa-Chan/zengine/wiki

I am in the same situation as others here -- I cannot get Zork Nemesis to run in 64-bit Windows 7. Actually, I *can* get it to run -- but with incredibly frantic panning. Even that I can live with; I just use the arrow keys instead of the mouse.

But there are several puzzles that require vertical panning -- one in the Water world (the instruments on the stage), and one in the Fire world (right after the Seven Bells puzzle). I have tried everything -- all of the suggestions online, everything I know to do -- and cannot get past this. I've tried Game Speed Changer, Game Speed Adjuster (which blew my system away!), Speeder (which came closest), PanRelief, and others. But not one of them makes any difference. The game still runs with panning so fast that I cannot solve a couple of the puzzles.

So I went through the details of ZEngine. And I've done everything there. I was most hopeful for this tool. However, what happens is this: After loading all 3 CDs to my hard drive, making the changes noted (e.g., editing the Zork.dir file), adding the subscripts (which work wonderfully), I run ZEngine, and a small (640x480??) window comes up. It's entirely black. If I move my cursor around, I see the menu light up -- with only the RESTORE option available. I click on RESTORE and it actually comes up with the names of all of the game saves that I have created so far! They seem to be active, as they change from blue to white as I move over them. I can even click on any.

And that's when everything ends. The ZEngine window goes away, and nothing else happens. There is no ZENGINE.EXE process running. It has just disappeared, without a trace, or even an error message.

From online comments, I am beginning to think that ZENGINE is my only hope of finishing Zork Nemesis by giving me access to the couple of vertical-panning puzzles. But I just can't get there. I read other users who seem to have it working in 64-bit Windows 7.

Please help!!!!

You might try SCUMMVM. I visited their site this morning, and read that they have added support for ZN and ZGI to the daily builds. It's not in the official releases yet.

Go to scummvm.org, click on "Downloads" (right side of the page) and scroll all the way down to "Daily builds". There are some binaries there, one of which a 64-bit Windows version.

I am playing Zork Nemesis using the 32-bit version now. I did have to download and install some extra fonts (the engine showed a message to do this), but it seems to work.

(my first post, btw).

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm willing to try it (even though it will mean starting the entire game over again). However, I am not really familiar with SCUMMVM. I know what it is, and what it does; I just don't know how to use it. I've downloaded the 64-bit version for Windows 7, and will be installing it shortly. (There's also a "tools" file; and I don't know if I need that one as well.) But where do I find the ZN game file? I went to their Games page, but don't see either ZGI or ZN there.

Any help you can provide would be very welcome. Thanks.

Most of the games playable through SCUMMVM are not available for download; the relevant game files are to be provided by the user. In the case of the Zorks, you can use the same procedure as described in the Zork Library to copy the game files to your harddisk. If I read your earlier post correctly, you have already done that, so you're set in that regard.

Next, install and start the SCUMMVM program. It will come up with the launcher with an unpopulated games window. Click on the the "Add Game..." button and navigate to the Zork Nemesis or Zork Grand Inquisitor directory; select the directory and click on "Choose". The launcher should then show a pop-up with the game's particlars and it will also appear in the games window. Select the game and click on "Start".

SCUMMVM will now possibly display a message about required fonts and quit. The fonts can be downloaded here: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/freefon ... 120503.zip. Unpack the zip file and place the .ttf files therein in a new directory in either the Zork directory or the SCUMMVM install directory (which resides in Program Files). Now, restart SCUMMVM and click on "Options...". Click on the "Paths" tab and click on "Extra Path". Navigate to the directory containing the ttf files and click "Choose". Then click "OK".

The game should now hopefully work.

I should probably mention that I’m not normally a Microsoft Windows user; I’m testing this on an old IBM Thinkpad running 32-bit XP that I have lying around here for the occasional test, so YMMV.

I'm trying to run ZN on a Dell XPS 8700 desktop with Windows 7 (64), a 3.1 GHz processor, and NVIDIA GE Force GT 635 graphics card. After a lot of trial and error I managed to slow down the panning rate using PanRelief with the following settings:
minimum top = 75, minimum left = 133, minimum right = 510, 0% panning speed
Left/right panning seems to be working great at these settings, but up/down panning is blindingly fast and doesn't allow stopping between top & bottom extremes. I've tried setting the "minimum top" setting from 25 to 300 in 25 or 50 unit jumps with no effect on the up/down panning speed.

Has anyone figured out how to slow down the up/down panning rate?

One other piece of info: A previous contributor mentioned that with Windows Vista you needed to open both Panrelief and ZN in "run as administrator " mode to get the panning slowdown to work. That is definitely also the case for running on a Windows 7 (64) system.

Pan Relief isn't really recommended anymore. It was a workaround before we had better options to run Zork Nemesis. I recommend using ScummVM. See our installation guide for using it at https://www.thezorklibrary.com/installg ... ummvm.html