Burger Joint made me redownload this game and join

[Zachski]

First of all! I'm Zachski. Longtime gamer, I used to lurk about the ZZT scene, and later the Megazeux scene. I never did anything of note, so no one here should actually remember me. In fact, I don't think I ever really *posted* anywhere, not even on the old AOL boards.

And now, on to the topic at hand.

Ah, I remember playing Burger Joint as a young teenager.

I remember getting stumped with dealing with the bully and having to check several objects in the editor before figuring out what I needed to do

Watching videos on it again has put me in the ZZT mood. Not even a Megazeux mood - I might work with that again but more likely I'll just nostalgia binge.

So! With that out of the way, I should get to making a game. Golly, I feel like I'm basically having to learn this from scratch again. I mean, it's been about 13-15 years, so it makes sense.

Which toolkit should I download? I figure I should at least download the supertoolkit. What about all of these external programs?

And, uh, is there a good online dictionary of ZZT-OOP commands?

I don't even know *what* I want to make anyways, I just want to make something simple and yet entertaining.

ETA: Browsing the site some more, I see that there's links to information in the "Help" section of z2! That'll be very useful. Sorry I didn't find it before making this topic

[Commodore]

Hello!

Kevedit is the defacto standard for external editors, but there is no mac version, and I have no experience running it on windows above XP. It unfortunatly does not seem to run in dosbox. ZZTAE will however. The ZZT Ultra editor is funtional too: http://www.chriskallen.com/zzt/ZZTUltra.php .

ZAP is windows only editor with some useful features (draw with mouse, import image), but has some stability issues as its incomplete. Still, I use it for things like the quick rough drawing of a board, then clean it up in Kevedit.

The external editors will get you everything a toolkit can, and more, but sometimes toolkits are nice for ideas.

As for learning the code, the built-in help is still pretty good. I would recommend peeking at the always useful encyclopedia: http://zzt.org/zgames/z/zeol.zip

[Zachski]

Thank you very much!

I forgot how simple the code could be, and yet it's still quite complex to work with. I managed to program moving stars for a title screen - didn't even copy any code from the Encyclopedia, I did it entirely on my own ingenuity. Definitely gonna have to use a toolkit to make the game look decent, I could probably stand to spruce up the title screen.

I'm making sort of a personal fangame for the Star Fox series - the game I always wanted to make as a kid but didn't have the skills or patience for.

If I complete this, it'll technically be my first completed project. Not counting the, uh, ZZT-OOPless stuff I made as a kid that never got uploaded to the internet. Probably because I didn't know how

I'm not going for anything majorly long. I wanna work my way up to the external tools, since not only is that what this site suggested, but that's also my natural inclination.

I had fun just designing the title screen, though, so that's a good start. Not making any promises, though, promises are the little deaths that kill projects.

I could probably go for something of a shmup level, though I might have to borrow some coding from the encyclopedia for that.

Programming some simple enemies for ground combat would be good, too - the KISS philosophy must be obeyed.

[bitbot]

Welcome Zachski, Good ideas so far.

Here's a link to my collection of essential tools. You should probably avoid the original editor altogether.

[Zachski]

Welcome Zachski, Good ideas so far.

Here's a link to my collection of essential tools. You should probably avoid the original editor altogether.

I'll switch to one of those after I've either finished or abandoned this project.

However, I don't anticipate it taking too long to do this. I am making a simple game, after all. I don't anticipate that it'll be anything revolutionary or blow any minds, it's just a simple expression of my creativity.

But I'll definitely look forward to the power I can get with those tools.