# historicalsource/hitchhikersguide

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams (Infocom)

Repository: https://github.com/historicalsource/hitchhikersguide
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/hitchhikersguide
Language: ZIL
License Family: other
Topics: infocom, meretzky, zil, interactive-fiction, towel
Last push: 2019-04-16T03:03:14+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2698, "days_push": 2696, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1091, forks 139 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:33.164934+00:00)

## What it is
A historical archive of the source code for Infocom's 1984 interactive fiction game The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, written in ZIL (Zork Implementation Language). It preserves the development snapshot for education and research, though the code cannot currently be compiled into a playable Z-machine file.

## Use cases
- study how Infocom interactive fiction games were written in ZIL
- research historical game development practices at Infocom
- explore the source of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game
- learn the Zork Implementation Language from a real codebase
- preserve and analyze 1980s game source code
- research how interactive fiction parsers processed input

## When to choose
- you are researching the history of interactive fiction or Infocom
- you want to read authentic ZIL source code for study
- you are doing historical software preservation or academic work

## When to avoid
- you want to play the game rather than study its source
- you need a compilable, buildable codebase
- you want a modern interactive fiction authoring system

## Facets
- artifact type: dataset
- maturity: maintenance
- function: interpreter, parser, programming-language
- domain: gaming-tools, education, programming-languages
- platform: cross-platform
- tags: interactive-fiction, infocom, zil, z-machine, source-code-archive, historical-preservation, douglas-adams, history

## Member repositories
- historicalsource/hitchhikersguide (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:33.164934+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:49:08.404828+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/historicalsource/hitchhikersguide (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:33.164934+00:00, sha 74ad10236442)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.