Sorry for the double post, but since there's a wait on the upload queue for both the z2 and Museum of ZZT archives, I figured it would be worthwhile to share some screenshots from Marksman and War of Myseri and provide some background information on them.
Marksman was set up to be an action/comedy game in which you, as the title character, decide to join your local chapter of the Heroes Club:
Upon entering the club and meeting its members, it immediately becomes clear that no one in the club has any talent whatsoever. The game has you go down the line and profile each of the members in turn:
Regardless, you are tasked with helping the Heroes Club in their ongoing struggle against their arch-nemeses, the League of Ne'er-Do-Wells, who are similarly profiled:
Like I said, the plot was pretty much lifted directly from Mystery Men (though inadvertantly!) so I ended up scrapping the project.
Meanwhile, War of Myseri was set up to be a direct sequel to my earlier adventure/puzzle game Myseri, taking place seven years after the events of the first one. Gameplay for the first half of the game was set up to be split between the two heroes Thorn and Arcrius as they seek to take down the Northstar Rebellion at the behest of the King:
The game starts by following Thorn the wizard as he leaves Castle Desser in search of a mystic artifact that will bring back the third hero (the player character from the original Myseri) to the realm of the kingdom:
Unfortunately, he runs into some resistance along the way, courtesy of the Rebellion:
Meanwhile, Arcrius is given a mission to infiltrate the Northstar Rebellion's base in the mountains to the north. A former thief, he must use stealth to sneak in and plant explosive charges at strategic points of the structure and then make his escape before lighting the place up:
I had most of a stealth system worked out - including a lockpicking system and part of a guard alert system - but I ran into a major technical hurdle. Basically I wanted to set it up such that a guard can only see the player if they 1) have line-of-sight, and 2) are facing towards the player. I had some problems with guards incorrectly noticing the player when they are behind them, which I tried to resolve in various different ways before I decided to put the project on hold. Shortly after that, I went to college and then forgot all about it. I checked the code recently and it's doing something with torches/gems to try and achieve a sight-blocking effect, but honestly I don't know what the hell is going on there.
Anyway, feel free to take a look at them once they're up in the archives (or just go to the uploaded games section I suppose, if you're impatient).