z2

Well I decided to start making a graphical zzt, heres a before and after.





I'm going to try to make it completely backwards compatibly for the moment. First off though I need to make an engine that mimics zzt and can run zzt files. So there won't be any eye candy for a while.

I'm open to any suggestion or ideas.

first off, get rid of the space between tiles, that looks kind of dumb

also, make sure it takes care of zzt's shortcomings while preserving the things integral to how some games work

actually who cares, you won't finish it anyway

It's not that it's a bad idea, Nixon. Until we see some sort of proof (besides a screenshot) we are relunctant to get our hopes up.

Maybe you could make the grid toggleable? I can imagine times when a grid would detract from an art board.

Making a ZZT clone? I've got all the information you'll ever need about the internal workings of ZZT... but you have no idea what you're in for.

I have an suggestion...

DO A GRAPHICAL SuperZZT! And throw out the 256 char bull too while ya at it.

Don't worry I have a fair idea of what I'm getting myself into. Saxxon that information would be very useful, saves me a lot of work.

So far I have the file loading done and can display all zzt boards properly. I can load and display all boards in town of zzt in less than 2 seconds.

I'm now beginning to work on a ZZT-OOP interpreter.

I started making this in good old Qbasic but decided to move to FreeBasic so that it would work well in windows and have the possibility of a linux port.

Heres an .exe to show I'm actually making something.

http://www.geocities.com/sitenixon/FBZZT.zip

Here's one of my source files. It contains practically every ZZT constant you'll ever need. It may seem somewhat unoptimized right now, but it's done this way for overall cleanliness. I may move it all into an array for quick reference.
http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/modElements.zip

Also, this is a very descriptive guide of how ZZT works. The second one is a VERY in-depth examination of gameplay.
http://nanobox.chipx86.com/mwenc/
http://nanobox.chipx86.com/mwenc/1.4/exam.txt

And... don't use QBasic. My VB project is close enough to be just as evil.

Saxxon wrote:Here's one of my source files. It contains practically every ZZT constant you'll ever need. It may seem somewhat unoptimized right now, but it's done this way for overall cleanliness. I may move it all into an array for quick reference.
http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/modElements.zip

Also, this is a very descriptive guide of how ZZT works. The second one is a VERY in-depth examination of gameplay.
http://nanobox.chipx86.com/mwenc/
http://nanobox.chipx86.com/mwenc/1.4/exam.txt

And... don't use QBasic. My VB project is close enough to be just as evil.

He is not using Qbasic, He is using a variant in which it is compatible called
Freebasic. Freebasic is better and is open source, Plus there are less bugs
in Freebasic!

So If you want better speed and code, Use Freebasic. There are also no limits and possibilities unless you do not know basic language!

Smilymzx wrote:He is not using Qbasic, He is using a variant in which it is compatible called Freebasic. Freebasic is better and is open source, Plus there are less bugs in Freebasic!

Nixon wrote:I started making this in good old Qbasic but decided to move to FreeBasic so that it would work well in windows and have the possibility of a linux port.

He already mentioned that he uses it.

An application having "no bugs" would be more dependent on the abilities of the programmer, I believe :) But, to each their own. I'm not going to bash anyone's programming language preference here.

At any rate, good luck on this project. It seems lately that editors and clones have picked up again...

Hey those links were great. I'm still going, slowly though, it is starting to make more sense. Anyway I have a question, some of the objects weren't displaying on the board, so I printed out the Kind of tile relative to where the object was and found that it had a zero, while some had 36, the 36's worked. Is this normal or have a stuffed up my code some where?

Should have a simple walking engine soon.

Oh, and there may be the possibility of a xbox port, though this would be difficult to do without owning a mod'ed xbox. I have seen a FreeBasic game played on an xbox though, but thats a long way away.

In ZZT (1, 1) is the upper-left corner for stat X,Y locations. That would make (60, 25) the lower-right.

Well I have a basic walking demo now. It features
- Zzt's player clone glitch
- Board changing
- Collision / Board changing collision
- Characters easily changed in tiles text file

Current issues

- Not all characters display yet
- Collision for all tiles not done
- Object flicker, will fix eventual with a screen buffer

Added source code, can be opened with notepad, its pretty ugly though.

http://www.geocities.com/sitenixon/zztfb003.zip