z2

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:16 am

http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/ZAP-0009.zip
A lot of features added today. These are included in version 9:

* Fixed Dragon Pup and Stone of Power animations.
* Stone of Power has been added to the F1 items list.
* Fixed stat creation when selecting elements from the drop down box.
* Changed the font and palette access features. You can also revert to the defaults now.
* Added a new method for testing: you may now start ZZT with the loaded font and palette file. Please note these files must be located in ZAP's main folder if you are going to execute them with ZZT. If you want to test the world without these things, the option is still available in the File menu.
* Added lines to the config file: Font, FontCommand, Palette, PaletteCommand. These allow you to load a font and palette when ZAP starts. Also, the "Command" lines are how the palette and font files are executed.
* Moving off the edge of the edit window with the keyboard now scrolls the window.
* Made the scroll bars larger for easier navigation.
* Added letters to access more things in the Options menu.

I found out something about fonts as well. Apparently Windows XP doesn't like it when you change the font in fullscreen mode. So if you are using fonts and/or palettes, you may want to run them with DosBox.

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:12 am

http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/ZAP-0010.zip
Version 10 has even more fun stuff to play with.

* You may now play music in the code editor. This won't follow program flow, though. It just takes all the #play lines and jams them together. I may upgrade this later.
* A new optimization feature has been added for #BIND objects. If you've got a lot of objects that are one-line #bind objects, you will want to use it. ZZT internally stores which objects are binding what in the file format but you can't set this in the normal editor. Now you can make good use of it. Binders Keepers dropped about 1.3kb, or roughly 19% of its original size when using this. Consider what it could do for a full game...
* A new addition for Recent Files can be found in the File menu. This information is stored in the Windows Registry on a per-user basis.
* Added flags in the world info editor so you can edit all 16 of the Super ZZT flags. I believe the 16th one is used as the status item (or "z" as they call it in-game). Also fixed the World Info window so the flags disappear and re-appear correctly depending on the game.
* Fixed the configuration file included in the zip so it won't try to load a font initially. My bad.

Any other feature requests? And on another note, is anyone actually using ZAP for creating ZZT stuff now?

Smilymzx · Post by **Smilymzx** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:19 am

Saxxon wrote: Any other feature requests? And on another note, is anyone actually using ZAP for creating ZZT stuff now?

We still need you to implent ZZT to SZZT conversion, Then probrably put in BLINKX support if needed.

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:27 am

Smilymzx wrote:We still need you to implent ZZT to SZZT conversion, Then probrably put in BLINKX support if needed.

The question is, do people actually use SZZT? :P I suppose blink mode can be implemented in the next release.

For ZZT to SZZT, it'll actually be a lot of work. Maybe a dialog that determines what water gets converted into, etc... (most likely floor for graphics sake, but that might break a couple games) and it would also have to modify the OOP code to fit in a 30-char wide window... it's more work than you think and will probably be used only for novelty reasons. Still, it gives me something to do with my time, I suppose.

It would be just like that ZZT to MZX converter. Except not as useful.

Smilymzx · Post by **Smilymzx** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:06 am

Ok, At least add a Copy-and-Paste mode?

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:15 am

Any other feature requests?

could you make ESC exit all dialogs, similar to the internal editor?

And on another note, is anyone actually using ZAP for creating ZZT stuff now?

it runs a little slow on my bad machine, but i have found some niche uses for it. I don't program anything in it, but I sometimes touch up art boards or draw circles and the like. It's also good for working with blinking things, since they can't be seen in Kevedit. the test feature doesn't work for me, but then again it doesn't in kevedit either, and i get the same functionality out of ZUnder anyways. font support works nicely

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:40 pm

gingermuffins wrote:it runs a little slow on my bad machine, but i have found some niche uses for it.

Yeah, I was able to test it on a 266mHz running Windows 98, it is slightly sluggish but still usable.

gingermuffins wrote:the test feature doesn't work for me, but then again it doesn't in kevedit either, and i get the same functionality out of ZUnder anyways. font support works nicely

Huh, wonder why that's the case... have you tried placing ZAP in the same folder as ZZT? The test feature is designed to be run that way. Maybe I'll add something in the config file that allows you to choose how you want to set up the command line for ZZT. You could probably find a clever workaround for the test feature then.

ESC should clear all dialogs next version. As in ZZT, if you press it in the Code window, it will save your changes. (If you need to discard your code changes, you'll need to use the Cancel button.) BlinkX may be seen in the next version... who knows? :)

Smilymzx · Post by **Smilymzx** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:05 pm

I wonder when will the next release come?

And I still wanted cut-n-paste support, if not already implented.

Ellypses · Post by **Ellypses** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:17 pm

For the szzt feature, I like to also have a (40x25)'s 24 x 20 view port simular to the actual szzt gameplay, not like szzt editor's tiny box. Only bigger,... and uglier.

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:05 am

A small update.

Version 10b:
http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/ZAP-0010b.zip

* Rewrote some parts of the ASCII engine to be a lot more efficient. This program should run a bit better on older machines now.
* Fixed an error where characters 0 and 255 were not drawn. This really only caused problems with custom fonts that used those characters as something that wasn't blank.
* The visual char selection for objects is now much wider. Mouse-over the image for the character number in both decimal and hex.
* Added a couple options to the configuration file: "baseone" - changes the coordinate system so the upper-left corner is (1,1) on the main panel - it's not fully implemented so coordinates shown elsewhere will not match, base one coordinates only apply on the main edit window at this time. "continuouslines" - this allows you to change between the "broken" line system and the "continuous" line system. This new line system works just like when you're using the pencil tool in MS Paint. "doublesize" - this feature was already in ZAP, but now you can specify whether or not you'd like to use 2x scale mode on startup. These options can all be found in the Options menu on the Edit window.
* ESC should close out all dialogs now (by default, this will SAVE all changes. Only when you click Cancel will the changes be discarded)
* Altered the TAB order for all the dialogs to be more logical. When navigating the dialogs using the keyboard, it should now go from left to right, top to bottom. Exception: The Code Editor starts at the code window first.
* At the bottom of the Edit window, the object counter is now a toggle button. When enabled, you can see where your objects are on-screen from the orange highlighted tiles.

Nothing really specific to ZZT... more of a UI fix than anything.

Schroedingers Cat · Post by **Schroedingers Cat** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:51 pm

Excellent.

Two more requests: the music playing is more than a little slow, and the aforementioned program flow would be awesome(r).

A resizable window would nice, too. Fullscreen maybe?

Saxxon · Post by **Saxxon** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:42 pm

The engine right now forces any scaling to be 1:1. Meaning if you use 2x scaling, it's both twice as tall and twice as wide. I was thinking about keeping aspect ratio, but maximizing the visible size (for some monitors this would put black bars at either the top/bottom or left/right) and would require more processor power. Fullscreen would just be a fully maximized window.

Also, the music is strictly timed (even to fractions of a millisecond). Does anyone know how many milliseconds there is in a 32nd or 16th note in ZZT? If anyone's got a number, I'll toss it into the program and try it.

gingermuffins · Post by **gingermuffins** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:55 pm

http://zzt.org/fora/viewtopic ... 3542#53542

quantum wrote:A sixteenth note is 1/10 of a second, no matter what #cycle you're using.

1/32 note (t): 1/20 second
sixteenth note (s): 1/10 second
eighth note (i): 1/5 second
quarter note (q): 2/5 second
half note (h): 4/5 second
whole note (w): 8/5 second

So that would be 150 beats per minute if you're using quarter notes. However, you can emulate a different tempo by using other notes, dotted notes, double-dotted notes (yes, ZZT allows this!), and I think even triple-dotted notes - not sure how far you can go.

he also made a MOD-->ZZM converter that was pretty neat. But I don't know if he uploaded it

Post by **Quantum P.** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:30 am

http://zzt.org/upload/mod2zzt.zip

Just added it to the upload queue.

phunk · Post by **phunk** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:49 am

it seems like filling with the x key doesn't work anymore

looking good though

Zap