z2

I have entered the following code into an object placed 1 space above the very lowest row on the screen and in about the middle column:
ubon is merely a flag that determines when this goes into effect.

For some reason, the object will not put anything south. Is that supposed to happen, or is it totally freaking out?

~FYNDR

Sounds like the Bottom Row Glitch. Go to Mirror Image Games' web site and find Smallhacker's version of ZZT, 3.5, which fixes the problem.

Jazzy's right; you can't #put anything in the bottom row, because of some off-by-one error Tim Sweeney made when he wrote ZZT. For compatibility reasons, though, I'd recommend a workaround rather than a modified version of ZZT. I can think of at least two ways to create the same effect:

* Replace the tiles that are supposed to disappear with objects that #die when commanded to do so.

* Replace the tiles with a different type of terrain, but one that looks the same. For example, if the terrain on bottom row is originally a dark green solid, replace the tiles you want to disappear with dark green gems on a dark green background - then just #change gems empty.

Thanks, guys. I also thought of that idea with the row of objects dying, but wanted a different effect, so I'll try Dos' second idea.

In highly unrelated news, does anyone here know who Garrison Keillor is? He does the popular radio show entitled "A Prairie Home Companion", and I'm probably the only person at my high school who listens to it. I asked everyone else if they knew about it, but they were all like, "What's a Garrison Keillor?". Then, the stabbing commenced.

~FYNDR

your game is exploding because it sucks

Garrison Keillor agrees



he wrote a Guy Noir sketch devoted solely to how much your game sucks

There are no compatability errors between ZZT 3.2 and 3.25. At least, none that I have ever discovered in the 3 years I've used it on a daily basis...

There is a good degree of reverse compatibility in that 3.2 games should run fine in ZZT 3.25, but there isn't as much compatibility if you're going the other way (for example, if FYNDR used #put statements in a way that doesn't work in ZZT 3.2). I'm just saying that wherever possible, games should not depend on an unofficial version of ZZT.

But that's just me being ultra-purist, I guess. ZZT 3.25 will play almost every ZZT 3.2 game ever made - I've only seen one engine that depends on the #put bug, and in my opinion, it wasn't a terribly useful one.

and if you're going to use a modified version of zzt anyways, you should use wil's 4.0 instead.

But yeah, I never touch the stuff.

I'd gladly use ZZT 4.1 (thank you Viovis) if it weren't for the fact that he took
out all the sound effects. Maybe that's just *me* being a purist, but I happened to like those sounds. =( Oh, and like I said elsewhere, you're also
still limited to 150 objects, contrary to what the .txt file says. I do love the
fact that he pushed the board size to 32kb though. I use 4.1 to make and
read a journal, mostly because no one else in my family knows how to get through the primitive locks I've put on there (eg have all the boards labeled !nono;{boardname} and one another labeled :nono, and put in a ?+password system on the main board). Anyway, that's just me. =/

!nono;{boardname}

pressing ESC instead of enter will still load that board in the editor

don't tell your family that :D

You can also read every program script and board name by loading the zzt world in notepad.

don't tell your family that either!

I kind of knew all that already. :(

Or did you

gingermuffins reads his sister's zzt diary! how could you invade her privacy??? >:(

I LOVE TO STATE THE OBVIOUS SORRY