z2

Hello all,
I'm new here... Been playing around with ZZT again after a long hiatus. It seems that importing music is some sorta well-guarded secret, so I thought I'd share a technique with everyone. Quantum P's MOD2ZZT is an excellent tool for importing MOD files, but how about MIDI? I'll show you how to prepare a MIDI file for MOD2ZZT conversion.

You'll need:
OpenMPT (free)
MOD2ZZT (free)

Step 1:
Open the MIDI file in OpenMPT and reduce the number of tracks to 1 or even 2. I like to cut and paste (IT style) and merge a few tracks for a nice effect.
Step 2:
Once you've cleaned up your song, hit the shrink button on each pattern to condense the number of rows to 64.
Step 3:
Click Save as... and make sure you put the .MOD at the end cause it isn't in the drop-down!
Step 4:
Now at the command line type something like: MOD2ZZT INPUT.MOD -O OUTPUT.ZZM

Done! Hope this helps somebody out there with their musical woes... LONG LIVE ZZT!!!
Also, check out this portable ZZT for WIN32:
http://zzt.org/upload/ZZTBOX.ZIP

Now how about getting ZZT running on a web browser???

I think there were a couple implementations for a browser. I recall seeing one on Nanobox, don't even have the link for that anymore though.

Thanks Saxxon! There's a nice archive here in java.
http://www.classicdosgames.com/online/zztfull.html

Now to implement this for one's own retroactive game. Hmmm...

I've seen that web version before. dosbox in java. Not bad, but you can't really save and restore games. A slick web enabled ZZT, I think, would give it some new life. If you could click on a game to play it, then edit it and submit it directly back to the archive, that would be something.

I'd like to write a completely backwards-compatible ZZT clone in C. That way, you'd have both a desktop version (bypass DOSBox) and a web version (via a C-to-Javascript compiler like Emscripten, a toy I've been meaning to try out sometime). It's easy -- all I need is spare time! :)

Commodore wrote:If you could click on a game to play it, then edit it and submit it directly back to the archive, that would be something.

Okay, now that would be really cool. I don't know about editing arbitrary games from the archive (some authors might not take kindly to that), but what you're saying reminds me of a wiki philosophy, except applied to ZZT. Instead of having wiki pages, you'd have wiki boards.

Quantum P. wrote:I'd like to write a completely backwards-compatible ZZT clone in C. That way, you'd have both a desktop version (bypass DOSBox) and a web version (via a C-to-Javascript compiler like Emscripten, a toy I've been meaning to try out sometime). It's easy -- all I need is spare time! :)

Commodore wrote:If you could click on a game to play it, then edit it and submit it directly back to the archive, that would be something.

Okay, now that would be really cool. I don't know about editing arbitrary games from the archive (some authors might not take kindly to that), but what you're saying reminds me of a wiki philosophy, except applied to ZZT. Instead of having wiki pages, you'd have wiki boards.

If you do happen to find that spare time I'd be happy to help out :)

Saxxon wrote:

Quantum P. wrote:I'd like to write a completely backwards-compatible ZZT clone in C. That way, you'd have both a desktop version (bypass DOSBox) and a web version (via a C-to-Javascript compiler like Emscripten, a toy I've been meaning to try out sometime). It's easy -- all I need is spare time! :)

Commodore wrote:If you could click on a game to play it, then edit it and submit it directly back to the archive, that would be something.

Okay, now that would be really cool. I don't know about editing arbitrary games from the archive (some authors might not take kindly to that), but what you're saying reminds me of a wiki philosophy, except applied to ZZT. Instead of having wiki pages, you'd have wiki boards.

If you do happen to find that spare time I'd be happy to help out :)

A web enabled text GCS as a distribution platform... sounds like a dream project! Imagine how fast it would be! There's a ton of source code kicking around guys... and I've got time to spare!

If you guys made a web ZZT version, I might actually start playing ZZT again.


until then, :drussrox:

dave2 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:03 pm If you guys made a web ZZT version, I might actually start playing ZZT again.


until then, :drussrox:

And then… *looks around*
…we did