z2

Pardon me for barging in like this, but can somebody inform me on just why the best ZZT site on the Internet has just declared this wonderful old game 'dead'?

Lack of updates? Interest in general? What is it?

This doesn't mean that the site is about to...gulp...vanish?

well lack of interest is the main reason. Observe handy graph:



saying zzt is dead has been popular for at least five years now.

Dang.

Unfortunately, such is to be expected. By now I really expect most everything that can be done with the ZZT-OOP engine has already been done at least once. There are by now quite a lot of 'tropes' that keep popping up and it's getting harder to make a game with any sort of originality to it.

And of course when you get right down to it there are game engines that are just as usable and way more powerful nowadays. Even the user-surly Dromed (which I work with) runs circles around ZZT in terms of intractability and content.

I'll still have a place in my heart for that funny little game with ASCII graphics and PC speaker-music. I just hope it and the user-made games (which represent one hell of a lot of effort) don't just vanish.

Could we at least start putting together resources like a "ZZT Bible", consolidated resource packages and all the download-worthy games in one nice neat ZIP file?

Interest in ZZT has been slowing down, but that doesn't mean that ZZT is dead or that this site will vanish. ZZT games still get made every now and then, and I've got backups of almost everything that's on z2. I've still got games I want to make, if I find the time...

I think there was talk of making a little self-contained ZZT bundle (maybe with DOSBox?), so that people who have never seen ZZT before could easily start playing some of the better games. I liked the idea, but I don't know if anything ever became of it.

Exactly, something like that would be a great start.

How about a Dosbox installer bundled with all the Featured Games, GOTM/cGOTM? That shouldn't be too hard to do for a first step.

I think I've mentioned linking to dosbox on the site, but it was shot down because what jerk can't find dosbox if he wants to run dos games.

Also I'm making games.

I guess I see the point of having a collection of the best games. But the entire archive can be downloaded in like 2 hours.

Make a torrent of all the games, when it runs out of seeders ZZT will officially be dead.

Hopefully this video I made will help a lost soul out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbfy7qvgp-Q

nice page history you got there at 0:20

i really should get an amiga emulator set up sometime, last time i tried was 5 years ago and it wanted me to configure a bunch of shit i didn't know about. i am sure times have changed

also getting dosshell is a very, very good idea. i'll do that

also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WngyCVpiFWo holy fucking shit.

Yeah, those are actually bookmarked sites, nice spot. I was actually thinking of making a video for setting up WinUAE, an Amiga emulator. I just recently got into Amiga emulation and you do have to configure some things, but I've got the majority of the games I've downloaded working. If you need any help setting it up just ask.

ZZT is dead. I finally win.

Dr. Dos wrote:I guess I see the point of having a collection of the best games. But the entire archive can be downloaded in like 2 hours.

Yes, but there are problems with trying to do that.

For one thing, it takes a lot of work clicking about to download and organize everything. Due to limitations in ZZT's ingame menus, you really want to limit how many ZZT games are available to the executable at once.

Don't underestimate the power of an all-in-one collection. I'm thinking a ZIP file should be pretty good in terms of portability and compression (the former being more important).

BTW, should the games have their reviews included?

It would be nice to just have a torrent, but it would seem like linking the pirate bay or something on the frontpage would be in poor taste.