The ZZT Thread

[Kroogah]

Before making Unreal, Epic Megagames made a nifty little game maker known simply as ZZT. Probably the easiest computer game maker known to man. It was like QBASIC with graphics. All ASCII graphics. I made dozens of games and downloaded dozens of games during middle school...sadly zzt.org seems to be no more, but I was wondering if anyone else here ever had ZZT...

[scooterb23]

http://www.autofish.net/zzt/

Try this Yash...and anyone else of course... :)

[Kroogah]

<3

Good games to start with:

Burger Joint
Code Red trilogy
This Game Has No Point

Now I got a reason to dig up my old games.

[ClubNinja]

Mmm... ZZT....

I spent many hours with the Kingdom of Kroz games, which I assume(d) were ZZT games. Either way, good stuff all around ;)

[davidbrit2]

ZZT is fucking awesome. And go download Megazeux. It's like ZZT on steroids. MOD music support, scrolling, tons of colors, SAM sound effects, very advanced programming features (I actually made a platform game engine), customizable character tables, etc.

[Kroogah]

Megazeux. Hell yes. I had that for a little bit but it intimidated me because there was so much more shit to DO. I should try it again.

[DDCecil]

Yep, ZZT and Megazeux are the greatest. Never finished making a game in ZZT, but I did make Doomsday Dream Legend 1+2 for Megazeux, which I highly recommend :D

[Sotenga]

Holy crap, ZZT! I forgot about how many times I played it as a young'un, but I didn't play it as much as my brother did. Who knew that the chronicles of a smiley-faced dude exploring dungeons and fighting off spades... I mean, ruffians would be so much fun? I think I've still got a good load of ZZT programs on my computer... or maybe they were with the old, crappy computer that our family sold... still, I'll have to ask my brother, or find out myself, how to install ZZT onto my computer.

Am I the only one who loves dying on purpose, then entering the life cheat afterwards to play the game in ludicrous speed? :D

(Off-topic, I watched Spaceballs again recently. Try and guess the reference there! Still off-topic, I know I said this before, but Yashiro's avatar is funny. That guy looks familiar, but I can't identify him...)

And to redirect the topic in the right direction, I've even seen a ZZT RPG! Damn. :eek 2:

[davidbrit2]

Who knew that the chronicles of a smiley-faced dude exploring dungeons and fighting off spades... I mean, ruffians would be so much fun?

Ha! Then you should know that the ruffians are in fact clubs! :-) What were the spades, again? Trees in Super ZZT? That sounds about right, I guess.

[pango]

http://zzt.the-underdogs.org/

[Dire 51]

Still off-topic, I know I said this before, but Yashiro's avatar is funny. That guy looks familiar, but I can't identify him...

That's Andy Capp, lovable drunk. Homer once realized that Andy was onto something the way he sleeps on his couch.

There was a Castlevania ZZT game over on the Dungeon for the longest time, but it seems to be MIA now.

[Jorpho]

Mission: Enigma is a really swell ZZT game.

But by far the greatest game of that era is Jeremy LaMar's Bernard the Bard, for Megazeux. There were a lot of ambitious Megazeux projects at the time, and this was one of the few that made it to completion. It ranks right up there as one of my most enjoyable gaming experiences of all time. I remember the game crashing on my old 486, simply because 8 MB of memory wasn't enough for it! It has varied gameplay, an ingeniously revealed plot, swell graphics, and probably the greatest MOD soundtrack I have ever heard. (How can anyone fail to enjoy Skavena's "Catch That Goblin!"?)

I am not exaggerating. Please, go play this game so I can stop feeling like I'm the only one who has played it.

[WiseSalesman]

God, I loved ZZT. I had an enormous (terribly written) adventure game I created too. It's probably still on a 3.5" somewhere.

[Jorpho]

(I guess I haven't convinced anyone?)

[davidbrit2]

If you can find me a Mac OS X port of ZZT, I'll gladly give it a go. :-)

[Jorpho]

Bernard the Bard is a Megazeux board, actually. I imagine it should run fine under DOSBox (or Bochs, failing that).

mWorld (http://mworld.rydia.net) suggests you can get it off Fileplanet at http://dl.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?classicgaming/mworld/btb.zip .

[Ze_ro]

Am I the only one who loves dying on purpose, then entering the life cheat afterwards to play the game in ludicrous speed? :D

Don't play it like that too long, or it'll go to plaid.

--Zero

[Jorpho]

Anybody? :sob:

[Ze_ro]

By the way, there's a rewrite of ZZT for the Dreamcast called DreamZZT (http://www.c99.org/dc/dzzt/index.php). It even does sound, and lets you load levels from the disc. Very nicely done, although the graphics seem a little fuzzy (maybe that's just the old 1084S I'm using though).

I'd love to give Megazeux a try, but it seems like the project was abandoned partway through a good transition to open source, and it needs GGI (a quite obsolete graphics library). Someone really should convert it to SDL or something.

--Zero

[Jorpho]

I have confirmed that Megazeux does indeed run quite nicely under DOSBox. It is available right here (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=359&package_id=696), or on Underdogs if you prefer.

[Jorpho]

So, anyone going to try Bernard the Bard now?

[Jorpho]

Last call! ;)