Essential Tiles

[Quantum P.]

I'd like to know what types of tiles you guys consider essential for modern ZZT games. Some things are obvious; you have to include the player, objects, and passages. However, there are some things that I don't know; for example, how often do you guys use "dummies" (players without stats, I think), "black holes" (empties with stats), or board edges?

To rephrase what I just asked, what tiles would you consider essential enough to put in a toolkit if you were making one for yourself?

[superbowl shuffle]

All the shades of the chronos toolkit, passages, objects, and inverse shades. After that I would say empties, dummies, discreet-looking transporters, lines, and maybe discreet duplicators. Thing about toolkits is the object limit will fuck them up so objects and passages may not be able to coexist in their magnificent rainbow of color coordinates. But they can all be backgrounded in exactly twice the time with fakes.

[MadTom]

This is a good thread! Nobody fag it up.

The most useful "non-typical" item for me has always been player clones, used for between-board and within-board transport and menu engines in particular. I always found messages like "go into the passage plz!!" very disruptive to the flow of a game.

I have never once used monitors or edge-of-boards. Lately, more and more I'm getting into art, music, and most of all storyline (I love good stories) rather than engine-driven or action-intensive gameplay, so I don't usually need to do clever things. I'm not really a programmer.

I don't know if this counts, but for high-detail art I also find the half-block characters in text mode extremely useful, especially for these languages and lettering I seem to keep making up. It helps save memory and beat the object limit.

[Zenith Nadir]

i used to use pretty much everything i put into paranoid machinations semi-regularly, apart from the dead enemies. and even they were sometimes handy!

also; text half-blocks for the win

[Ellypses]

I use boulders with stats for puzzle game purposes, because it's WWAAYY better then a cumbersome object that emulates it if you want one that doesn't rips up the carpet (nice baby-smooth bottom). And dead duplicates for more various size of dots. Most mono coloured text would do find too, like lines, and bobbles and Os.

Oh, and coloured ricochets too.

[Swashbuckler]

Since the majority of my games are engine or puzzle-based, I use a lot of boulders and duplicators. I'm currently playing around with monitors and board edges, just to see what I can do with those.

[Dr. Dos]

Player clones are very useful obviously. They're the reason for Aura, and the special edition of MRWAIF which i doubt i'll ever finish, also that little engine i made where you shoot things by pressing space when aligned and enemies do the same, other than the whole shooting 4 enemies in multiple directions with one bullet thing. And the Zaphod is Fat engine,

I like making libraries with Kevedit, I have a nice one with preprogammed arrow objects that move another object when you contact them, as well as counters that increase or counters that decrease.

[Commodore]

I don't think there's too much a monitor can do that's helpful outside of how zzt uses it. A few dead players do help make crowds.

The white text lines and blocks are useful, a black on black passage it good. A player clone of course. I haven't really found a good use for board edges, but they are pretty interesting and it's one of those little things that might make a game that much better if used properly. I also like a super fast duplicator.

Oh and a black on black lion for all those random engine generators gets a lot of mileage from me.

[wil]

the most used tiles of me that are not makeable in regular zzt editor:

* the following tiles:
passage
solid
normal
breakable
water
fake

* in these color combinations:
dark blue on dark blue
dark blue on black
grey on black
dark grey on black
black on black

** the following tiles:
statless duplicator
n/s blinkwall
e/w blinkwall
ammo
gem

** in these color combinations:
dark blue on black
dark green on black
dark red on black
dark grey on black
grey on black
white on black

** white text of the following chars:
7 8 9 249 250 220 221 222 223

*** other assorted
black on black board edge (i do actually use this rather more often than i thought i did)

[MadTom]

Blinkwall rays are good statless option for linewalls that you don't want to "corner" as they do.

[Commodore]

yep, but then if you're not using white you need objects for those corners.

And while I know that there is the 4.0 "fix" out there, I still try my damnest to avoid using water as walls.

[Zenith Nadir]

agreed with commodore 500%+

HATE water being used as wall, i'll even go as far as to use objects in a pattern to stop the player coming into contact with it

or preferably, a normal equivilent. there's only one pixel's difference between the appearance of water and normal when the colours are inverted, after all.

[Micah]

im just here to CONTRIBUTE madtom

i like dark red fakes because it is bloody!