Could we bring ZZT back?

NOTE: I HATE A LOT OF YOUR ZZT GAMES, SO WATCH OUT!

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Nomad
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Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

The scene is dead.....but could it be resuscitated?

I think so.
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Nomad
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

Some thoughts...

PROBLEMS:
  • The zzt community, back in the day, was made up of kids, teenagers. All those kids have grown up, and have better things to do.
  • Today's kids and teens have other game programs that scratch the same itch ZZT did for us, like Minecraft, etc.
  • The good games are sometimes hard to find, since there was... let's face it, tons and tons of garbage games.
  • Even many of the games incorporate obtuse mechanics that you have to be "in the know" to understand. (using ? commands to set flags to bring up inventory menus and stuff like that)
  • The games that exist are decades out of date in regards to modern references, etc. which seem to be so important these days.
  • The art work in a lot of the games is very difficult to visually parse. Recently I looked at some games that I used to really appreciate the artwork in... and to be honest, its hard to look at. ZZT is at it;s best when things are minimalistic, and much of the envelope pushing artwork looks pretty rough these days.
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Nomad
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

SOLUTION IDEAS:

>Good publicity. That ebook about zzt is coming out sometime.....
>advertisements on gaming forums...?
>NEW GAMES!
>NEW GAMES
>NEW GAMES
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

WHAT NEW GAMES NEED: (my opinion)

Clear, easy to understand graphics.
Simple mechanics.
Less text.
Geared towards new comers.
Innovative ideas.
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Nomad
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

MY STORY:

Recently I've been introducing my two kids to the old DOS games I used to play. My 6-year-old son has especially taken to them. He loves commander keen and bio menace. It's been awesome re-experiencing these games with them.

This got me thinking about ZZT. I loaded it up, downloaded a few games, (including the only one I ever published), and started puttering around.

For the first time in over a decade, I opened up the editor and tried to make a functioning board. At first, I was just wanting to show the kids how it worked and what kind of stuff you could do. But before I knew it, everybody had gone to bed, it was 2:00am, and I was engrossed in ZZTing..... or whatever it was we used to call it.

I've spent free minutes over the last few days opening ZZT back up and messing around. I've got a single board I'm working on.... currently it's far more complex and advanced than anything I ever made back as a teenager.

I've rediscovered what it was I liked so much about ZZT. It's the challenge of it. It's the fact that the game engine is so clunky, so limited......getting a complex system of objects functioning together is a real thrill. There is reward there, it is engaging and exciting.

I may stop messing with it in a few days and forget about it for another decade.......

But I would love to see other people out there getting to experience the game again like I am now...... could it happen?
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YES. We WILL bring it back.

Post by Appetite4 »

Hi Nomad,

For the love of all that is decent, I am certainly trying. I am TRYING to make sure ZZT is remembered. Check out ZZT Ultra in "ZZT Clones and Editors" to see how things are going.

Between what I'm working on (AS3 project), and what wcgcs is working on (HTML 5 project), we want to make sure more people find out. So we build a ZZT engine anyone can pick up and play (same controls), that can be hosted, deployed, and linked-to anywhere (web-based), advertised publicly (this site), and backwards-compatible with existing content (tricky without any genuine source code, but possible).

But there are two things we need if we want this to truly take off, both of which you had identified: promotion and fresh content.

I just built a comprehensive demo and posted it to Indie Game Developers on FB. That's one way to promote. I could also post several games that we make to online triage sites like Newgrounds. Note that we'd only want to do this with content that is GOOD, or else we achieve the opposite effect (people would think that ZZT sucks).

As for fresh content? Look at what MZX has done over time: it has evolved. Definitely not everyone would agree with this, but I say ZZT will need to evolve as well, or else it goes the way of the Gramophone.

Just my two hundred bucks (my opinion is worth more than two cents).
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Nomad
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

Whoa.

Shortly after blasting off my posts into what I thought was a dead void......I find out about this ZZT utra project. To say the least, it looks amazing. The amount of progress made already seems to be more than any ZZT clone before it. This could be.... the start of something big.
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Commodore »

I think zzt's 80 column format is one of the major things holding it back. These days the only games people play on big screens are the latest ps4 and xbone titles, while games that resemble zzt are on smart phones, where you would be squinting to read text. To really get popular, you need to get make it an app, with a server repository of user worlds people can comment/like whatever facebook style on. But you can't just build a great system, you have to sell it somehow (figuratively), get people excited, in particular with thoughtfully designed worlds already included, following some massive social media blitz. How like that con-artist with the commodore licence was able to get coverage on slash-dot/bbc/abc just by selling a PC with a built in freeware emulator in a replica case.

I don't think vanilla ZZT will have any sort of renaissance unless there is something pointing back to it, I'm not sure its able to point back to itself.
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Appetite4 »

Commodore wrote:I think zzt's 80 column format is one of the major things holding it back.
I did some serious thinking about this point. I also looked up some "modern style guides" for how to publish text in today's user interfaces (read: phones and tablets). While the information I found out wasn't specific to any one type of device, a lot of things are starting to make sense in terms of characters-per-line (CPL).

The supposed "ideal" CPL ranges from 40-55, at least at the beginning of text presentation. But most text that people actually read is more along the range of 50-75 CPL.

It can't be a coincidence that the original scroll interface for ZZT falls within this range (about 45 characters across). In all likelihood, Tim Sweeney knew what he was doing.

Anyone notice that wcgcs elected to shave off the 20-character GUI portion altogether, favoring mouse-over expansions and overlays? It's a strategy worth pursuing. That makes the primary interface only 60 characters across.
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Commodore »

I imagine a scaled approach, if it would not be too processor heavy. What i mean is a board could be 5000x5000 and the chars would be pixels, or the screen could be zoomed to 20x20 for a tile based puzzler, different windows could have different scales so there could be a sidebar on either game with readable text. For larger pixel-like screens there could be "sprites", essentially an object where every char is the object. Editable/scalable tile graphics, but basically still enough of the core of zzt where with special casing you achieve a degree of compatibility (100% relies to much on 1990 code and DOS traits.)

The charm of zzt for me is that the code itself is not challenging, but given enough digging, it becomes more complex and can be applied to complex subjects. I think there needs to be a sort of line drawn between two worlds of code: "Here is the simple code, look, you can code (town substitute) with it. BTW here's an example of a ray-caster and a platformer."
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by tapeworm »

ZZT Ultra looks very nice. I don't know what it would take to generate more interest in ZZT among people who aren't already nostalgic about it, but I think something like this could inspire me to work on a ZZT game again.

It looks like the editor has some good features. One small (?) thing that I think might improve the editor is to allow direct mouse selection of patterns and colors. Also, I wonder if there could be a mouse shortcut to switch between editor types (and maybe between pages within the main editor). Maybe just by clicking on the title of the editor type, and maybe having a clickable "tab" count over to the right of the "ZZT Ultra Editor" when you are in that one (page 1, 2, etc)?
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by ajc »

Hello Gentlemen,

I too have been introducing DOS games to my kids in recent days. My five year old son has taken an interest in ZZT which has sparked me to start working on a couple simple projects.

The reality is that all a working scene needs to survive is a small number of people who both make games and play the games made by other active community members. If there are people performing both of these tasks, a tiny community, even with just 2 - 4 people, can be enough to have some fun with ZZT again.

It was nice to read this topic. I would be very interested in playing some newly made ZZT games again. As for now, I'm working on a somewhat simple game designed to relearn ZZT-OOP while giving me a chance to learn how to draw some interesting boards again. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with something playable. Best of luck gentlemen.
Currently working on: ZZTV 11.2 Channel Escape from the Burning Building - ON HOLD
Currently Playing: Burger Joint
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by bitbot »

Hey guys. Could we bring ZZT back to it's glory days? Nah.

But in all fairness people were saying ZZT was dead back in the 90s. The output may not be what it once was, but there's some good stuff in the works.

We really do need to tighten up z2/zzt.org for history's sake.
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by ajc »

Of the people reading/participating in this topic, are any of you actively working on a game?
Currently working on: ZZTV 11.2 Channel Escape from the Burning Building - ON HOLD
Currently Playing: Burger Joint
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Re: Could we bring ZZT back?

Post by Nomad »

i am
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