ZZT Ultra

Discuss how totally awesome Bang! is here.

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Commodore
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Commodore »

I mean, I respect your purity ideal, but look around, there ain't many of us here. Why discourage?
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Appetite4 »

ZZTBandit wrote:These Flash, 3D/VR ZZT gimmicks are a disservice to the community for personal gain.
A "gimmick?" You for real, Dave? This project does not charge money, the source code is open, feedback from the community has been listened to, with changes carefully catalogued, and all of it has been in the developer's spare time. If this is for personal gain, I'm certainly not richer for doing any of this.
ZZTBandit wrote:I've done SQA 10+ years for the government, I know what I'm talking about. I rather discuss the future of ZZT than get into a pissing contest, but you're pretty much hell-bent on this "next gen" thing, so be it.
On the subject of pissing matches. I've resisted calling out your narcissism and passive-aggressive behavior for two years, but I've had enough. You are going to regret throwing your credentials around.

I've been a professional software engineer for much longer than you've done QA. I've designed situational awareness software for the U.S. military. I work with a wide variety of languages, not just Flash. I've made over two dozen games. This is to say nothing of the prolific writing I've also done (professionally and non) or the dozens of presentations (some entirely off-the-cuff) I've delivered to audiences.

Why do you root for someone else's failure? You never liked this project and seemingly never wanted to get involved (other than sending me feature requests, many of which I've granted). Yet somehow you genuinely believe that I'm personally attacking you simply by creating software that you don't like.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by ZZTBandit »

Trolling hard, holy shit. I'm used to QA guys catching flak. I said that to get a rise out of you, sorry. I hated my job and don't even have credentials to throw around. I'm done with software development.

Sorry to hate on your project, I do secretly admire your work. I actually think we'd get on IRL but online is another matter. You've done a good job finding that line... These are politically charged times. I never thought of myself as misogynistic, but add that to the list. Everyone's got their cause it seems. Anyway, all this hard work for nothing has really grinded my gears!

I QUIT.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Smilymzx »

ZZTBandit wrote:I QUIT.
G'DAY SIR!!!

Also, This is going to sound crazy, If there would be a v1.1, I would still like a way for the editor to utilize more text elements, corresponding to an array of up to 16(*), right now ZZT ultra uses a subset of 6(**) ZZT's default

(*)= the 16 correspond to the maximum textmode colors, of which ZZT Ultra mode could handle for text elements

(**)= the 6 correspond to the following BG colors on White FG:
Dark Black (0F)
Dark Blue (1F)
Dark Green (2F)
Dark Cyan (3F)
Dark Red (4F)
Dark Purple (5F)
Dark Yellow/Brown (6F)

Still, If I had the program that creates the binaries from source (of which I will still never get), This would be much easier!!!
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Commodore »

You're better than that friend. Pessimism has gotten the better of you. I've patiently tried to ignore your offhand negativity towards Chris because you are a great ZZTer. Both of you have been the most productive community members in the past two years.

I believe this problem is larger than Chris too. Deleting posts, changing email addresses every few months, new user identity, and there are more things that make me think that there are things in your real life that pale to the problems of a BBS in the hinterlands of the internet. I, of course, can only speculate on these things, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

This is public and not a PM because I'm wearing my Admin hat now, not something I frequently do because part of me is nostalgic for the anarchy of the boards of yore. But now when we have but a handful of users, this threatens our very fabric.

Smzx: this is not a bandwagon and that's not helping. Chris is justified in his outburst because he has been as patient, if not more so for the simple fact that he is the target, than I have been.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by ZZTBandit »

Aye, aye captain! Nothing personal. It's wrong of me spew all over the fora. I'll seek out a healthier outlet for the rage. Definitely conjuring up the dead in half my posts here, don't wanna do that! But hey, I'm just following the cookie crumbs of my predecessors.. We're all a little batshit crazy as far as I can tell.

This isn't about me anyway. It's about ZZT ULTRA, DOWNLOAD IT TODAY!
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Smilymzx »

ZZTBandit wrote:Aye, aye captain! Nothing personal. It's wrong of me spew all over the fora. I'll seek out a healthier outlet for the rage. Definitely conjuring up the dead in half my posts here, don't wanna do that! But hey, I'm just following the cookie crumbs of my predecessors.. We're all a little batshit crazy as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I apologize for yelling, I actually was quoting Wonka (R.I.P. Gene Wilder...), and I was meant to be funny, not serious...

The same apology goes to everyone else who took it seriously too!
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Source control decisions

Post by Appetite4 »

I finally got off my rear end and created a git repository for the ZZT Ultra source code. It's not on github yet, but we now have versions 1.0 (original) and 1.1 (Smash ZZT and Hall of Music updates) so it's a good foundation on which to build new material.

It's also very necessary for an HTML 5 conversion. Looking over the massive amount of code that must be converted from AS3 to JS, it puts me in a difficult spot when it comes to managing the code in ways that don't involve source control. All code converted would have to be managed separately from the AS3 code, because all-in-one conversion is hopelessly optimistic given the architectural and language differences.

The HTML 5 build itself is also a tough endeavor in its own right. Although proof-of-concept has verified that nearly every existing feature is tenable, it's daunting to convert every single line (using scripts or component replacement), and then just turn on a "switch" and have everything work exactly the same.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Ellypses »

The heck I just missed?

Anyways, passing a brick of text about what zzt ultra best runs on. I'd never been a fan of learning a billion languages to know what works best on what platform, just wondering which is considered to be the international auxiliary language and just master that. Be my luck it runs like ass on all platforms.

Doing my annual check up on everything is all. Good luck still.
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Version 1.2 -- Ready to go, and now on github!

Post by Appetite4 »

As of version 1.2, the source code is now officially tracked on github!

https://github.com/Appetite4/git-ZZTUltra

There are a TON of changes with this version. See the change log. Or just start playing with the engine now.

The change highlights are: much better options screen (much clearer what each option does), two more #PLAY octaves, UNDER and OVER placement protocols, improved GUI editor, customizable scroll interface colors, and scrolling marquee commands.

Scroll interface color customization was way harder than it had any right to be--I had to basically tear out the entire MovieClip frame and start over. But adding the lowest two octaves was arguably even worse--believe it or not, the PC speaker cannot physically generate accurate sounds at the lowest end of octave zero! But with some Audacity tricks, I managed get the sound samples I needed.

This should knock out a lot of changes people have been waiting on. I hope the wait was worth it.
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HTML 5 tracking

Post by Appetite4 »

Here's a list of progress I've made with converting the AS3 source files to JavaScript:
  • (DONE) ZapRecord
  • (DONE) IPoint
  • (DONE) ZZTProp
  • (DONE) utils
  • (DONE) ZZTBoard
  • (DONE) ElementInfo
  • (MOSTLY TESTED) . SE
  • ZipFile
  • ASCII_Characters
  • CellGrid
  • Sounds
  • FxEnvelope
  • parse
  • input
  • ZZTLoader
  • editor
  • zzt
  • oop
  • interp
Roughly speaking, the files are organized in ascending order of difficulty. Not sure what I'll do with ZipFile, since there doesn't seem to be any native support for the INFLATE format. How many people have used the ZIP load capability in ZZT Ultra so far?

The strategy I'm taking with class representation is to use the relatively new "class" definitions for JavaScript. I could have also taken the old-school "everything is a function" approach. But I figure anything that makes the code more readable and more in line with expectations of other languages is the best bet.

Quite frustrating that some features, such as "import module", are supposed to be part of the HTML 5 standard now, but not supported by any browser. For now, I'm using the script file-based load system in the HTML HEAD tag.
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Even more HTML 5 progress!

Post by Appetite4 »

More HTML5 conversions:
  • (DONE) ZapRecord
  • (DONE) IPoint
  • (DONE) ZZTProp
  • (DONE) utils
  • (DONE) ZZTBoard
  • (DONE) ElementInfo
  • (MOSTLY TESTED) SE
  • (CONVERTED; UNTESTED) ZipFile (Not possible across all browsers?)
  • (DONE) ASCII_Characters
  • (PARTIALLY TESTED) CellGrid
  • (CONVERTED; UNTESTED) Sounds
  • (CONVERTED; UNTESTED) FxEnvelope
  • (CONVERTED; UNTESTED) parse
  • (CONVERTED; UNTESTED) input
  • ZZTLoader
  • editor
  • zzt
  • oop
  • interp
The visuals are coming together in the HTML 5 version. Mouse input leaves little to the imagination. A bit annoying that you have to offset the mouse canvas coordinates from the overall window, but that's how you do it in HTML 5, apparently.

But keyboard mapping...good grief!

Different browsers have different policies for how scan codes are accounted for during key-down and key-press events. Also, Firefox yields key-press events for all keys (including those without actual character codes), while Chrome DOES NOT generate the events at all for those without character codes. Except for SPACE, ESC, and a few others. Just because.

I'll only be satisfied with a unified system of character codes and scan codes. It will all match what I've already established here, or my name ain't Chris: http://www.chriskallen.com/zzt/editors.html#guikeymap
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Dr. Dos »

The amount of keyboard handling JS code I've written before realizing the attribute I was checking doesn't exist outside of Firefox is too much.
Visit the Museum of ZZT
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Apologies for the old post you may have just read.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Appetite4 »

The ZZTLoader and editor components are now converted (but untested) in HTML 5. I'm ready to die now.

What I mean by that last statement is the shear length of the files--over 6,500 lines of solid muscle, for the editor, alone--and there are many more multiples of this number of lines yet to come. When you consider that so much of the legacy file write operations have to be re-designed (no ByteArray in JS), it's a special type of annoyance.

Also, I'm wondering about the overall size of the code itself, and if that can be a dealbreaker with some web browsers. SWF files are generally compressed and compact after compilation, but JS is not...
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HTML 5 core conversion done!

Post by Appetite4 »

I now have .js files created for all ZZT Ultra components! The application as3js has been invaluable.

Getting the new converted code to actually work is another matter. ByteArray instances need to be converted to something similar, like DataView. Sorting functions need to be reworked, the "as" and "is" operators require different implementations. So many subtleties will give me errors for no other reason than "just because we can."

Some components will need a big overhaul. Upload/Download popups, a different scroll interface, a new Toast error message box, a new Sounds class, and possibly even a unique text area control. I'll be happy when I can simply get the title GUI to load!
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