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In Super ZZT, 1 gem = 10 health I believe. That's why they are so few and far between in Super ZZT games. Also, DosBox supports Super ZZT - it's what I've been using to test my editor.

In Super ZZT, not all enemies are worth 2 points. Dragon Pups are worth 1.

My philosophy regarding developments and upgrades is this: If it doesn't play in the original ZZT or Super ZZT, don't do it. Call me a purist of sorts. Also, I believe the reason SuperZZT didn't take off is because the editor wasn't openly available so it didn't pick up. By the time it was discovered, most people were so used to the original ZZT editor (and so many games were made since) that most never really looked to Super ZZT. I honestly believe if Super ZZT shipped with an openly available and STABLE editor, it would've had a lot more games.

Keep up with the excellent work on this ZZT clone, though. There are many out there that have attempted, but DreamZZT seems to be the most accurate and complete thus far. (not to mention still being worked on, which is a real merit.)

Saxxon wrote:I honestly believe if Super ZZT shipped with an openly available and STABLE editor, it would've had a lot more games.

I think the fact that the editor sucked and was bugged to hell was a bigger problem then having it hidden. I was trying to make a Ultima style battle engine for it and it kept deleting code seemingly at random. Had we seen an external editor sooner I think it might be a different story. But the main complaint I hear about SZZT is that 40 column mode looks terrible, especially with the way the screen and status bar are laid out. I tried to remedy this by using a font, and it seems to help, since the text is such a pain to read for some reason.

If someone hacked it to run in 80 column mode that might be worth replacing the original with. The reason no one uses zzt 4.0 or the like is because there's little point in making a game that can only be run on one version when every other game works fine in the original.

I checked regular ZZT and the bears are also only worth 1 point, so I updated DreamZZT to match.

Haha! It wasn't working in DOSBox 'cause I moved monster.szt into my DreamZZT folder instead of copying it. Now it works, which will make things a lot easier.

Commodore wrote:If someone hacked it to run in 80 column mode that might be worth replacing the original with.

I can include an option to run SuperZZT games in 80 column mode:



I guess the border can be optional too.

If you're going to add an 80 column mode why not just add a 80 column, 50 row mode?

Things look a bit tiny with 80x50, not sure I like it.

Plus, the debug console will make it even tinier.. I think I'll keep it at 40x25 and 80x25.

is there a full-screen mode in dreamzzt?

Personally, I like it. Smallness doesn't bug me nearly as much as having stuff not on the screen, which is why I always crank my desktop resolution.

Maybe have an options menu or something for it?

I made it a console command: That will resize the visible game board to the specified width and height (in characters).

Below is the result of "viewport 8 8":


The standard ZZT and SuperZZT visible sizes are 60x25 and 30x25 (this includes the border in SuperZZT too). The DS's screen is 32x24, so if you want to preview how a game looks on the DS, use that.

Anyone recognize what game the above screenshot is from? :P

Entrance board in Dungeons of ZZT. I am a ZZT wizard.

haha yup that's the game

What's it look like when you blow it up but you keep the proportions the same? Like, maybe 80x50 in SZZT just looks stretched because that's not even remotely the same ratio as the original proportions. You said that SZZT is supposed to be 30x25, so what does, say, 60x50 look like, for example?

Of course, going by what you said the original proportions are, that would make a 2x-sized regular ZZT window 120x50...but why would you need to blow up regular ZZT?

there seems to be some confusion here about the actuall display size of the game window (60 columns the width of a board) with the mode dos is put in to display it (80 columns across the whole screen including status bar.)

Also I meant a hexedit of szzt.exe to make it do that, but oh well.

It's useful to enlarge regular ZZT for non-computer displays. For example, the DS's screen can only show 32x24 which is smaller than a ZZT board, so the engine needs to be able to scroll it. Same for the Dreamcast, while it can show the full board it's difficult to see on a TV, so I might enlarge the screen a bit to make it more visible.

The screenshot 8 posts up is the right ratio (80x50 in DOS screen terms, 60 x 50 in actual visible board terms). The one above it was 80x25 (or 60x25 visible).

DreamZZT 3.1.458
============

New Features
* New debug console command: viewport <x> <y> resizes the visible board size
* DS will pause game and go to sleep when closing the lid

Bug Fixes
* Shooting a bear is now only worth 1 point
* Gems give you 10 health points in SuperZZT
* Play 'Ouch!' sound effect / message when time runs out
* Reset the timer when time runs out
* Properly execute ZZT-OOP following an #if condition

Downloads
DreamZZT for Windows
DreamZZT-lite for Windows
DreamZZT for Mac OS X
DreamZZT for Nintendo DS