Smash ZZT

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Appetite4
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Smash ZZT

Post by Appetite4 »

Finally, here's a work-in-progress screenshot of Smash ZZT (for ZZT Ultra).

The controls, as you might imagine, are twin-stick simultaneous move-and-shoot. You can do this in ZZT Ultra by overriding the PLAYER type and altering how inputs are read.

Early control tests are promising. Now I just need to program in about 3000% more mayhem.
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Smash ZZT:  work in progress
Smash ZZT: work in progress
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Aggressive Grunts

Post by Appetite4 »

Smash ZZT now has lions and ruffians filling the "grunt" enemy roles characteristic of Williams overhead shooters. Spawn events are in the form of massive packs of these enemies from one of the four doors at the arena edges.

I have to be careful when controlling the spawn events--these enemies are a lot more aggressive with their overridden code than the original ZZT versions would have been. The player's firing rate is quite rapid (one move + one shot can be taken per turn). But if the spawn rate is even close to the firing rate, the arena fills up with enemies and the game becomes impossible.

Smash T.V. mitigated the difficulty by maintaining a fundamental maximum arena density, which throttles the spawn rate whenever there are too many actors already present in the level. I'll need to do something similar, if I don't want people to pass this game off as unwinnable.
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Lions and Ruffians on Steroids
Lions and Ruffians on Steroids
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by Commodore »

How "true" is this staying to the core ZZT mechanic? I see a bomb. Will there be different weapons? (spread gun, rocket?) I'm excited about playing zzt with two-axis controls, it always seemed that it would be a natural control scheme.
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by H1~~ »

With a name like Smash ZZT I imagined something more akin to taking inspiration from the game mechanics of the Super Smash Bros. franchise.
You know, like fragging enemies based on a combination of the amount of damage done in a single hit/frame, and how much damage they have already taken, going over a certain thresshold with weaker enemies having lower thresholds etc.... rather than health going down to zero.


Though I suppose that wouldn't make much sense in a tile-based game like ZZT...
But I digress.


Will the player be able to shoot diagonally?
Or is it just independent moving and shooting in axial/compass directions?
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Mechanics

Post by Appetite4 »

The core mechanics will be designed to resemble Smash T.V., not so much ZZT. Summary of plan so far:

1) Everything will be diagonal-enabled in this game. Pushing is limited to cartesian directions, but this rarely needs to happen. Player movement and shots can go diagonal, which is handy. The enemies also move diagonally, which isn't so handy.

2) All weapons and powerups that appeared in Smash T.V. will also appear in Smash ZZT. You won't have just a wimpy pea-shooter anymore. There will also be a few unique ones in Smash ZZT.

3) This game makes big use of ghosted status elements as a way to have multiple objects on one square momentarily. This is mostly done to facilitate pickups, stepmines, and projectiles not blocking actors' movements.

4) The "bombs" are synonymous to "Mr. Shrapnel". You might remember that home versions of Smash T.V. had them frag into 8 pieces. Because I'm an arcade purist (and a complete asshole), my bombs frag into 16 pieces.

5) Maybe this goes without saying, but this is a one-hit-kill game. You don't get HP; you get lives. Extra life pickups are generous, but Williams shooters are not, in a general sense, supposed to be.
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3000% More Mayhem

Post by Appetite4 »

So far, the "mayhem" promise is coming through on Smash ZZT. All pickups work as expected, most weapons work as expected, and the scripted door spawn events are nearly flawless.

Curiously, I haven't grown the game's world beyond one room so far. This is a striking departure from how most ZZT world files play out as work is completed--so much hinges on the objects working correctly, that very little in terms of the actual board design is even relevant at this point.

Arenas are supposed to be composed of mostly negative space. What board variation exists is usually in things like stepmine placement. The rest is scripted enemy spawn events, a point at which ZZT has traditionally been weak.

I guess I'm trying to set some precedents in this quarter. I want ZZT Ultra to favor dynamic spawn events in ways that let things get out of control quickly (and thereby require all those awesome weapon pickups).
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Magnum weapon slices through foes
Magnum weapon slices through foes
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Re: 3000% More Mayhem

Post by Commodore »

Appetite4 wrote:so much hinges on the objects working correctly, that very little in terms of the actual board design is even relevant at this point.
Sort of swinging it towards more of a modern programming ethos in that respect, rather than everything being case-based, and after all OOP is supposed to be object oriented. Still, hoping that I get to blow up a giant fat-man on a tank tread, which I can only imagine to be special cased.

Though in this instance I suppose it is more demo than game, so focus on clearly written code that can be taken as an example. That is, don't use the ZZT-style single letter object names/labels to save memory, and clearly label and even comment your code.

Straying OT:

It seems to me that Ultra could do a bresenham line algorithm with char half-blocks. Is random painting of text/cells supported like this?

It would be cool, and it seems like the framework is already sort of there, that there could be a wiki-like library of code tricks like this. For example, with that demo world you made: individual tricks and techniques could be isolated and categorized so that if someone wanted to use one, they could import the bit that contains it. That way it would contain no extraneous code. To browse it in-game, perhaps it would be possible to link to other worlds through the standard dialog box, like a hyper-link.
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Most objects implemented

Post by Appetite4 »

Commodore wrote:Hoping that I get to blow up a giant fat-man on a tank tread, which I can only imagine to be special cased.
You'll get your wish...but I dare not give away too much more.

I intend to document this game well. Hell, I'd forget how I did a lot of it myself if I didn't document it. And I'm sure that when all is said and done, plenty of folks will want to look under the hood.

All weapons and most objects in the game are now implemented. Those that remain are unfortunately the really hard ones. The higher-tier foes from Smash T.V. have irregular behavioral patterns, so I have to spend more work per object type from now on.

From the screenshot, you can see I've introduced a unique mechanic: the N2 gun, which freezes enemies. You can wall off parts of the arena temporarily by creating frozen-foe barriers. This is only a momentary "safe zone" of course, because enemies still conduct pathfinding when blocked.
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Ready to rock

Post by Appetite4 »

I just completed all the basic types for Smash ZZT! You'll see plenty of lions, ruffians, bombs, centipedes, bears, tigers, spinning guns, and much more.

Some new enemies didn't really fit into the ZZT world but will still be present because they're Smash T.V. staples: stepmines, orbs. Orbs attack in a manner similar to blink walls (i.e. get out of the way or you're toast).

You're going to really hate the tigers in this game. Unlike the original built-in behavior, tigers are bullet sponges, and they shoot in 360-degree spread fire patterns. This will give Smash ZZT a unique non-rectilinear bullet-hell characteristic (unless you have the presence of mind to eliminate tigers quickly).

The firepower available to you will help you rise to the challenge. All weapons are rapid-fire, and many are multi-shot. You have a magnum, a shotgun, a flamethrower, a nitrogen sprayer, and a grenade launcher.

Now I'm off to do some map design. I just thought of the hunters from The Running Man...hmm...
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Footage example!

Post by Appetite4 »

Since descriptions can't do this game justice anymore, I'll just let you see a minute of footage.

https://youtu.be/I0E3Bj89dec

If you are wondering, most rooms will not be this balls-to-the-wall hectic, at least on the normal difficulty.
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by Commodore »

Yow! That looks great!
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by H1~~ »

Will there be any aspect of adventure or storytelling to Smash ZZT?
Or is it basically a high-powered arcade game?
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by Commodore »

I'm gonna guess it's pretty straight-forward action, just like the source material. It is a tech-demo of sorts after all, crafting a narrative not as straight-forward, since there are so many forms they can take. I imagine some path-finding/cursor system might be able to generate a "point-and-click" style game, some myst-like games seems more feasible than so far exampled in zzt.

I like this as a "launch title" so to speak. A Town-like world would be cool, but I think this has a bit more glitz, which isn't a bad thing when trying to attract people who don't see much glitz in ascii in the first place.
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The Narrative

Post by Appetite4 »

Commodore, it's fitting you talk about "narrative." Smash ZZT will indeed be action-oriented, but it will have a few cut scenes at the beginning and end of the adventure. While it might seem that mindless action is devoid of narrative, that has never been entirely true of Williams shooters.

Defender was rescue-themed despite the blasting action. Robotron 2084 had a rather complicated explanation for what was happening (in its attract-mode text). Smash T.V. told a Running Man-like story. N.A.R.C. basically lifted its own narrative clean from the bumbling real-life War on Drugs of the era.

My aims for Smash ZZT are similar: gear towards action, and have a simple but fitting story. Another project I have in mind, though, will be a lot more story-intensive (Fall of ZZT: The Curse of Production Quality).
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Re: Smash ZZT

Post by H1~~ »

Will you need DOSBox to run Smash ZZT?
I'm still not following if this a 'ZZT Clone' or an indepdenent app inpiured by ZZT.
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