Portal in ZZT,

Post by **Zenith Nadir** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 11:54 am

no, we are nowhere near 4chan

somewhere between the western irc isles and the sea of memes, perhaps

jesus why am i even thinking about this, i hate xkcd... not as much as i hate 4chan, though

Post by **Dr. Dos** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 7:36 pm

Nadir what's your avatar from

Post by **Zenith Nadir** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 8:26 pm

it's an illustration by a toy designer called touma. he rules

OH, look what's here, it's the small knuckle bears on my cd player's left speaker

i love these little guys, i'll take pics of my right speaker's projected "save our planet" kb display when i get them in too

Scribbit · Post by **Scribbit** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 9:09 pm

I made a title screen of it:

Also, I got portal. I'm so excited. I played the first 10 levels and then let my brother have a turn, he did chip in half the cost when we got it. Downloading through Steam was worth it, because we didn't have to pay for shipping or anything extra. It's a quick play so far, but that doesn't stop it from being delightfully wacky when the distorted spacial relationships completely disorient you, or when GLaDOS says something humorous and twisted. "Touching the floor here will result in a negative remark on your grade. Followed by death."
I like destroying cameras and am well on my way to the "Camera Shy" achievement. It sometimes lags on the computer but most of the time that's OK because if it went much faster I'd lose track completely. Also, I have a better grasp of GLaDOS' special brand of twistedness now, I may change some of the speech in PortalZZT based off it. It's too bad gravity doesn't have a big effect on PortalZZT since it's a top-down game, but I don't like ZZT platformers so I'll work through it.
PortalZZT is getting weird run-time errors. I think I fixed the portals well but the cameras are doing some weird things and the error occurs while trying to leave chamber 01. Ah well, probably DosBox or KevEdit doing something weird.

I think I might know how to fix the box-checks:

Code: Select all

#change boulder sliderns
#put w green sliderns
#change sliderns boulder
#if any green boulder blue:putboulder
#put w empty

I think this will keep the boulder checks from obliterating the switches. The only problem is that portals would "suck in" boulders. I'd have to either put the portals in places this is unlikely to be a problem, or somehow make them know if the player is pushing the boulder that way. Maybe [#if alligned w]. Is there an easy command like that to check which way the player is facing? Maybe I'll need to use an extra player clone to know which way the player is moving and account for boulders and portals. The engine would also have to use this infrequently, at least enough that you could move the boulders without them turning into sliders on you! I'll go try this and see if it keeps the boulders from obliterating switches.

Commodore · Post by **Commodore** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:08 am

i'd suggest some shadowing on the logo, pick a lighter colour combo and put it on two perpendicular sides, then put a darker colour on the opposite sides.

like so:

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 3:53 pm

It looks like the James Bond gunbarrel.

re: runtime errors

There is a file on the archive (I think it's called Runtime Errors) that might help you identify the problem. In addition, binding something back and forth a lot can cause a runtime error when leaving a board.

Scribbit · Post by **Scribbit** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:46 pm

The boxes don't work. Again. Moving a box over a fake seems to destroy the fake, is this related to the runtime errors or just normal? I'll test it with the normal ZZT editor.

the Runtime explanations helped. My error was 203 at 0B40:05A8, the "Corrupted Board" error. I'll try exporting all the boards I need with the ZZT editor and import them into a new world. There's some extra boards that might be making the file too big, I'll backup those somewhere else.

EDIT: woah, that was weird. I was exporting the boards with ZZT and got the runtime error again! I'll export with KevEdit this time. For that matter, I can just rename the file and extract the boards to a new world with KevEdit.

EDIT AGAIN: Dang! Transferring with KevEdit doesn't seem to stop the errors! I'll have to either have to export the board seperatlely or re-make it!

EDIT YET AGAIN: The run-time errors keep popping up like wallpaper bubbles! I blame the heavy use of #bind statements in the cameras. I'll just copy the object code and re-make the infected levels. Continuing with the original post:

I'm slightly colorblind and when I played Portal I saw what I couldn't see in the videos on youtube: the portals are blue and light orange, not blue and yellow. Anyone think I should change it or are my current colors better? I'd use blue and red if I had to change, because the closest to orange in ZZT is brown, and that wouldn't have the visual contrast effect I'd like.

So that's 2 questions in one post:
-Do boxes always destroy fakes, and
-Should the portals be blue and yellow or blue and red?

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:58 am

A boulder with stats will not erase fakes (ctrl+t to add stats in kevedit), but there is no way to create them at runtime, besides using a duplicator, and that wouldn't be practical in your situation.

Scribbit · Post by **Scribbit** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:09 pm

Well, that answers my question about the boxes, if not the runtime errors. I'll just make the switches as wall objects, not fakes.

EDIT: I beat portal! I'm going to try for the achievements now. Commentary mode is also awesome, it's just like the normal game except the designers talk about how they decided on level designs and mechanics.

The runtime errors are weird, I took out all the cameras in a level and they stopped, but I got the error again on my old testing board! I think I did something weird in KevEdit that corrupted the files. Oh well, I can screenshot the levels, copy the code, and redo the levels in a new file. I even started the title screen from scratch, with some shading this time. I've almost got it right, it looks almost like some cool rounded edged thingy is extruding from the screen. I'll post it when it's finished, probably in a day or two when I get around to it.
I think the corruption might have come from something I normally like about KevEdit: copy/paste. Perhaps, by cutting large portions of levels, filling the space with white-on-black water, and pasting over it again, I corrupted some tiles or something. Water has Stats, right? Maybe using it as a background was a bad idea. I'll leave backgrounds out in my re-do until I'm sure I know where everything else goes. Same goes for flood-filling with empties. There must be a safer way.

Post by **Zenith Nadir** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:53 pm

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:46 pm

You can check if water or empty tiles have stats (they don't by default) by pressing ctrl+s. It's completely harmless, just takes up memory. Empty tiles with stats will sometimes send the player sliding across them.

copy+pasting is airtight, but if you're using the windows port it may crash in the act. DOS 5.1 beta is the most stable version, but I don't think it's on the sourceforge page.

don't know what's causing the crash. if KE corrupts something, it usually crashes in the act of saving the game. save incrementally, like port001.zzt, port002.zzt, etc, so that you can backtrack if something goes amiss. (the built in editor generally accepts corrupted portions, ned the knight and warlock domain both have corrupted boards)

Scribbit · Post by **Scribbit** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 7:45 pm

Yeah, I can still reach some of the boards in the ZZT editor. I am using the windows version, I'll look for the Dos one. I have a couple backups, maybe one of them isn't corrupted. I don't remember KevEdit crashing, but I might have forgotten or forced a quit at a bad time.

P.S. cute knuckle bears, Nadir. Any theme or anything, or are they one of the lucky toys not to have cartoon shows based after them?

Post by **Zenith Nadir** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:23 pm

they're just toys... no affiliation, unless you're a touma fan, in which case they're their own brand name

i will stop spamming this thread with pictures of plastic crap, now

Scribbit · Post by **Scribbit** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:13 am

I'm trying a completely new take on the engine based loosely off Dos' first prototype, using a shot sensor and inventory-style engine. The problem is, my shot-sensor only responds every third time or so I shoot! I'm using two player clones and two breakable walls in a square formation, with two objects to check for the shot using [#if not blocked].

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:05 am

Hard to say what the problem is without looking at the game first-hand, but...

-> Are your sensor objects all running at cycle 1?

-> Do you have one idle in your loop(s)? Otherwise it will check multiple times per cycle and occasionally miss.

-> ZZT can't #put anything on the bottom line of the screen. There are hacks which fix this, but you're better off working around it. If you've got your engine objects down there, shift them up by one. (wait that can't be what's causing it)

z2

Portal in ZZT,

TEH DUBM BOXXS STLIL NO WROKY!!

Thanks 4 teh nollij.

Engine from scratch. Some assembly required.