ZZT and MegaZeux
Webpages concerning "ZZT and MegaZeux"
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Wikipedia-Article "ZZT"
| ZZT | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Tim Sweeney |
| Publisher(s) | Epic Games |
| Designer(s) | Tim Sweeney |
| Engine | ZZT-oop |
| Latest version | |
| Release date(s) | 1991 |
| Genre | Maze |
| Mode(s) | |
| Rating(s) | |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Media | Free download |
| System requirements | |
| Input | Keyboard, Mouse |
ZZT is an ANSI-based computer game, created in 1991 by Tim Sweeney, of Epic Games (then Epic MegaGames), who later designed Unreal.
ZZT's graphics were obsolete before it was even created; it used the same style of text-mode graphics that Kingdom of Kroz used 4 years earlier. However, ZZT managed to become fairly popular because of its integration of a simple but effective object-oriented scripting language known as ZZT-oop. At the time this was groundbreaking as most functionality in prior games had been hard-coded. The language allowed extensibility that no other game was able to provide, and allowed a large degree of community involvement that extended far beyond simply creating level terrain with the built-in editor but involved writing programs to make the game run.
Originally ZZT was shareware, with only one of the four level-sets or "worlds" released without payment. The shareware versions also included Demo of ZZT, which displayed the basic features of ZZT worlds, and Tour of ZZT, which allowed the player to view select rooms (some playable) of the four worlds. Three different versions of shareware ZZT were released, with three corresponding registered ZZT versions. With about 30,000 registrations worldwide, ZZT was successful enough to finance the production of Jill of the Jungle, a game seen as Epic Megagames' answer to Apogee classics such as Duke Nukem. However when the game became obsolete it became freeware, with all four worlds of the registered version released for free. The worlds are: "Town of ZZT", "Caves of ZZT", "City of ZZT", and "Dungeons of ZZT"; they can best be described as adventure games.
In the newsletters for the registered version of ZZT, it is apparent that Sweeney initially had not expected the editor to become the most popular feature of his game. Fans' letters to him quickly established this, and Sweeney responded by encouraging registered users to make their own worlds and submit them to him. The best material from these was released in The Best of ZZT.
Third-party worlds for ZZT are diverse, they range from Shoot 'em ups to complex role playing games to a Lemmings clone. They range from the simple to the complex, from inane to brilliant. One of the more fascinating aspects of the game is the culture that has built up within and around it; catch phrases, programming tricks, and even some rather remarkable internet personalities. Many other games have been inspired from ZZT such as MegaZeux, and ZZT's sequel: Super ZZT.
Although it has been many years since Tim Sweeney first wrote ZZT, it still has a cult following, with many external utilities and advanced editors, such as KevEdit and ZZTAE, created to enhance the ZZT experience. Many have also been initiated into programming by applying it as a stepping stone.
Revolutionary or enduringly popular classic third-party ZZT games include Kudzu, p0p, Teen Priest, Bizanloo, Warlock Domain, Psyche, Burger Joint, and Sivion. Popular authors include drac0, cly5m, tucan, Madguy, and Zenith Nadir. Recent popular productions released on Z2 include Frost 1; Power, Evil Sorcerors' Party - a four-file Epic held by many to be the best ZZT game ever made - Mooseka Rules with an Iron Fist, and Thug Life 2.
Z2, the hub of the ZZT community, is presently under extensive redevelopment by its new head administrator.
External links
Wikipedia-Article "MegaZeux"
| MegaZeux | |
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 In-game screenshot |
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| Maintainer: | Exophase, ajs and others |
| Latest release: | 2.81c / December 15, 2005 |
| OS: | Cross-platform |
| Genre: | Game creation software |
| License: | GPL |
| Website: megazeux.sourceforge.net | |
MegaZeux, or in short MZX, is a game creation system (GCS) based on Tim Sweeney/Epic Megagames' classic shareware game ZZT. MegaZeux was created in late 1994 by Gregory Janson, who formed his own company, Software Visions (now defunct). Like ZZT, MZX was released as shareware and the world editor portion of the program was included for free, allowing third parties to create their own worlds without even registering. MZX improved on ZZT in almost every aspect:
- The graphics are still text-character based, but each character's foreground and background colors are independently assignable, and the character set could be edited to change the font, as well as to change unused characters such as the tilde or non-English characters into graphic symbols such as player pictures. The color palette was also made editable in version 2.00.
- 4-channel (MZX 2.07 and under) and 32-channel (MZX 2.48b and up) MOD music was supported, as well as SAM sound effects. Other module formats such as S3M were also supported via an intermediate format, GDM. Recent versions of MZX (2.80+) support advanced module formats, OGG and WAV directly.
- The game-object programming language was heavily based on ZZT-oop, but was also heavily improved. Commands were now stored as bytecode instead of raw text, error checking was done in the editor instead of at runtime, and arithmetic commands were present. Later versions added things such as subroutines and mathematical expressions, although the nature of these additions was often unnatural due to the inability to edit the change the keywords of the language itself at the time. Robotic currently has almost no memory restraints for code or number counters.
MZX came with a default game, Caverns of Zeux. This was a sequel to an earlier Software Visions shareware game, Labrynth [sic] of Zeux, which was a side-scrolling action game about an theologian/archeologist named Vince Louis who retrieves the magical Silver Staff from the ancient Labrynth of Zeux. In Caverns, Vince has just retrieved the Staff when it emits beams of magical power and teleports him into a vast network of caverns filled with traps, puzzles, and monsters. As incentive for registration, players could purchase the other three Zeux games, Chronos Stasis, Forest Of Ruin, and Catacombs Of Zeux, all of which dealt with Vince's quest to return home.
MZX was fairly popular with the ZZT community due to its new features, and Janson stayed around with the newly-formed MZX community for a while, releasing an entirely different game, Weirdness, which utilized the immprovements made in MZX 2.00. Weirdness, as its title implies, is a bizarre adventure game about a young boy, Jace Nyglus, who wakes up one night to discover that a large object has made a crater in his backyard. Weirdness bears remarkable similarity to Ape Software's Super Nintendo classic, EarthBound, almost appearing to be a parody of it. Shortly after Weirdness's release, Janson suddenly left the community and dropped MZX entirely (citing "going to college" and "personal reasons", though he later elaborated that he simply couldn't stand the average MZXer then), releasing all his work to the public domain. This included the beginnings of Weirdness II, which apparently dealt with Jace's adventures on the crashed ship.
MZX stayed at version 2.51 for a while until various MZXers such as Spider124, CapnKev, and MenTaLguY took the code — which had been released under the GNU GPL as a result of negotiations between the latter and Janson's successor-in-interest MattW — and began to modify it. One of the first alterations was to expand the variable limit from 50 "counters" (signed 16-bit integers) to 1000, a marked improvement. Later Spider versions also added such features as mouse support. After Spider124 stopped developing MZX others jumped at the opportunity to add new features to the GCS. Following MadBrain's v2.51s3.2 release MZX development was split into two distinct branches, the Spider branch (which would later become the mainstream MZX code base) and a small, but significant, branch started by Akwende. MZX Akwende (MZXak) is noteworthy because, while introducing features such as SMZX (a text mode hack discovered by MadBrain that allowed game developers to have four colors per character with the side-effect of cutting the horizontal resolution of each character in half) version 1 did not comply with the GPL -- the code was only made publically available months after its release and with much protesting from Akwende. MZXak also found itself slammed with controversy after its release due to accusations stating that Akwende didn't actually code many of the features that were implemented in his release; also, many people accused Akwende of keeping v2 hostage. During this controversy Koji released MZX v2.60, a version that included many features of MZXak v2 and did not violate the GPL. Koji followed this release up with v2.61 before Exophase took control of the main branch. Exophase's versions kept many of the prior improvements, but fixed many compatibility issues and added even more features, such as expanded string capability. Some of the most major changes came with MZX 2.65 through 2.70, which added several new features such as:
- Programmable sprite objects, which are drawn above the normal playing field and can be very large.
- Subroutines.
- Mathematical expression evaluation.
- An added virtual layer.
- Reintroduced SMZX, which halved horizontal resolution to achieve two-bit color, so that up to four colors could be used in one character, and added more functionality to SMZX.
Later versions added various new improvements, but the biggest change came with version 2.80, a Windows-native version that used the SDL library to eliminate hardware compatibility issues. 2.81c is the current version of MZX, and the MZX community is still at work on improving MZX's capabilities. The latest version of MZX can be found at DigitalMZX. A far more extensive amount of information on MZX can be found at its own Wiki page, hosted on (SourceForge).