User articles.

[MadTom]

Return of the user articles!

Dr. Dos and I have written three of these things between us so far, and I'd like to see a lot more made. I know that quite a few of you have made discoveries or know things about ZZT that not many others would, and if there are graphical, musical, or programming gurus out there who'd like to submit it'd be neat help for newbies and potentially very interesting for oldbies.

It doesn't have to be too long or inordinately detailed; if you don't feel that you can get your point across using HTML, you're more than welcome to include screenshots or even publish the whole article as just a ZZT game (that's what the 'Format' column is for).

I intend to prepare an article comparing ZZTAE and KevEdit in the near future ... is anybody else interested in submitting anything?

[Quantum P.]

Neat. Just one technical question on how the pages are accessed. I assume that index.php is being called, and from the URL I can see that it is being passed the short name of the desired article. This same system is used for the bulk of the site. If the number of pages on Z2 grew considerably, wouldn't we run the risk of having pages collide (having the same name)? Of course, we'd always be able to come up with unique names, but it just seems like it would get awkward after a while, and you would want a system that had two parameters. For example, you would query <u>http://zzt.org/?p=userart ... ame</i></u> in order to retrieve the article. I don't know, maybe I just worry too much, but it might be worth considering...

[Commodore]

I'll have something on your desk by the end of the week, provided the bats don't get me.

[MadTom]

Neat. Just one technical question on how the pages are accessed. I assume that index.php is being called, and from the URL I can see that it is being passed the short name of the desired article. This same system is used for the bulk of the site. If the number of pages on Z2 grew considerably, wouldn't we run the risk of having pages collide (having the same name)? Of course, we'd always be able to come up with unique names, but it just seems like it would get awkward after a while, and you would want a system that had two parameters. For example, you would query <u>http://zzt.org/?p=userart ... ame</i></u> in order to retrieve the article. I don't know, maybe I just worry too much, but it might be worth considering...

No, you're quite right; this has already occurred to me. Neither craNKGod nor Mr. Alert made the User Articles page, I did. We don't actually have a fantastic number of pages, but I suppose a directory hierarchy is pretty important ... I might fix it up on the next update. Assuming I can adapt the PHP!

[Furry Jesus Freak]

CORRECTION: Dos KevEdit DOES NOT need a blinkx .bat file. It already ignores flashing, and no comments from the peanut gallery. Or the almonds.

[Dr. Dos]

i only use kevedit for copying and pasting but i know there's a BLINK key which is v or something.

A QUICK CHECK SAYS I'M CORRECT.

[MadTom]

Dos wins. Unless you have an older version of KevEdit, or something.

Another thing I've noticed (and I don't know if this is common knowledge) is that when ZZT is windowed, flashing stuff sometimes appears as it would in BlinkX. Maybe that's what Jazzy means.

[Furry Jesus Freak]

I have the DOS version; I got it straight from Z2. Pressing "V" makes the tiles you put down afterwards (Until "V" is again pressed) blink. I run it in full screen mode, BTW. (Strangely enough, it won't work in real DOS. Weird.) However, it doesn't show the actual blinking, it just looks odd, like it would if blinkx were active. Oh, and I just got blinkx yesterday, so it is NOT blinkx that does it to KevEdit.

[Quantum P.]

Another thing I've noticed (and I don't know if this is common knowledge) is that when ZZT is windowed, flashing stuff sometimes appears as it would in BlinkX.

I've seen that effect before. Dos programs in Windows don't run on the system, but in a top-notch Dos emulator. The same thing happens in, say, DosBox or Bochs, where most of the major system specifications are met, but a lot of the little details (like blinking text) are left out.