Nupanick wrote:some more puzzles for +debug (because that would be awesome, man!)
-find the one fake wall in a maze of dead ends.
This has nothing to do with objects.
-cause an object to #restore commented-out code to open a gate.
-find out what 8-letter flag must be set in the cheat box to make an object think you have an item.
-cheat on one of those annoying instant-kill trivia quizzes, just for the satisfaction of it (because I bet everyone hates those things by now).
This is the kind of stuff that's easy to think up, but is literally just reading a single line of code.
-shoot a looping object that should have been #locked but wasn't.
This one is valid, but on it's own fairly simple.
-an object paces left and right, changing tiles as it goes. Interrupt it to make it #put a fake over a solid.
This doesn't really work because I wanted these objects to act just like regular objects and not seem to be designed with viewable code in mind. Things like that don't seem like objects you'd see in another game.
-come up with a reason that you would WANT a certain runtime error, then mess with scrolls and player clones to try to create it. Or, fill a board with runtime-error bombs, and try to avoid setting them off.
I did a better version of this with the Rube Board in Own of ZZT.
-Enjoy some cliches from an outdated era of games (crowbar, slider puzzle, and an unrelated toilet).
What
-exploit a "testing sequence" from a custom help file.
Not sure what you mean by this. I know about custom help files but I know they can't do anything but display messages. While !1; CLICK HERE is valid in the official help files, custom ones do nothing with hyperlinks.
-Read a secret message from the creator, inserted into an object that usually doesn't have code (or the seemingly-unrelated toilet).
Pointless due to the menu listing the name of all the objects.
-deactivate cheat-sensors to get powers back, using each new cheat to get somewhere previously inaccessable (keys to clear a door with no key, health to walk over a series of mines, ammo to clear a breakable wall, -dark to see the inner workings of a Bank-style password system, and eventually the powerful zap to destroy an otherwise-unopenable wall and fight some sort of anti-cheat boss).
These aren't too bad. I thought it might be interesting to get more cheats as you moved on, or even ZZT-OOP commands. Being able to do things like #send any label to an object. The problem with that is that it's really easy to actually break instead of just pretend to break.
-return from the dead to defeat a gloating final boss.
I do like this one.
You need more? I can make more puzzles like these. I'm just curious whether the debug menu would have to be simulated or if an older version of ZZT actually tells you the objects' code when you use +debug.
I used file reading and storing the object's code in text files. There was some minor editing but offhand I don't recall what I actually did tweak.
I did work on it a little bit more after seeing the positive reception this thread gave it.
http://zzt.org/dr_dos/plusdebug.zip