No player hole on title?

[meldels]

I created an object that replaces the hole the player makes in the titlescreen; however the game crashed. Any other solutions? Also if it's not known about already, the ability to crash the player may be useful to someone.

[Commodore]

The player actually is a piece of code essential for zzt to intercept keyboard commands. In the game it reads the cursor keys, shift, and the keys for commands. On the title screen it is replaced with an object called a "monitor" that reads the keys used too operate the title screen.

[meldels]

I see, is it possible to see/edit the player/monitor's code? And is it possible to use the monitor in a non-title board?

[Schroedingers Cat]

You cannot edit the player or monitor's code. You can use a monitor on other boards, but I forget what applications it might have. You should check out that encyclopedia that Commodore linked to in the other thread, since it has all sorts of wacky and wild programming tricks. I think there's a board or two devoted to monitors.

[meldels]

Oh, do you think the encyclopedia would have all the answers I'm asking about, so I can go there instead of clogging z2?

[Schroedingers Cat]

It should answer many of the questions, but feel free to ask whatever you feel needs asking. The encyclopedia just has a lot of Really Cool Stuff that might help inspire you to make some ZZT.
It also have code for some commonly-used objects (such as doors) that do not exist in ZZT by default.

Also, check out ZZT Syndromes, by Barjesse, and (though Nadir might hate me for this) I found ZZT Crime, by WongChungBang to be insightful when I first started ZZTing.

[Quantum P.]

Regarding "clogging z2": if you have a bunch of questions to ask, you don't have to create a bunch of new threads; just make one thread and put the questions in there. EDIT: I see you've already done this

And we're usually happy to answer questions, even if the answer's already in the encyclopedia. Don't worry about it too much, and welcome to z2!

[meldels]

Thanks, well are you sure there's no way to merge threads, because if people reply in the other threads and I have a response, I'm sort of obligated to reply in that thread |:/.

[Commodore]

Not a big deal. Just keep new questions to this one, and the other threads should resolve.

Also: there was irc for zzt a while back, but even when it was at the height of its popularity, discussions rarely centered around zzt.

[wil]

okay, here's how you no hole

there is a spot just off the screen where the monitor will still read keypresses

that spot is (in hex) 3E 0B

at least I think it is, it might be 3F 0B or 3D 0B, but the Y value is 0B (I'm 99% sure) and it's definitely 2 squares off the edge of the screen to the right (inside the blue sidebar)

so if you hex edit you can move the player object to that location and then you have no hole in title screen

I forget how i learned it but it is true

[Commodore]

It's true! 3E,0B works, or at least I didn't have to test any other value. Lyon throws an array out-of-bounds error.

[Saxxon]

)

It's true! 3E,0B is works, or at least I didn't have to test any other value. Lyon throws an array out-of-bounds error.

Wow. That's pretty awesome. That location is outside the board memory area which just so happens to contain 0x03.

I really don't like to include pieces of the original executable if I can help it. But I'll see what can be done.

Great find.

Edit: come to think of it, ZZT actually sets the value to monitor on the title screen, couldn't you could have it anywhere beyond the right border (61,x)? And if the object index is > 0, you could probably find element 36 buried somewhere in there.. ZZT finds a location in memory by using (BaseBoardMemory + (((X * 27) + Y) << 2)) because tiles are stored vertically in memory.

[wil]

If I remember correctly I tried a 00-0A and got crashes, 0B worked, which is why 0B stuck in my mind. Then I didn't end up using it ever mostly because I forgot I'd discovered it.

[Saxxon]

I could make a special provision for 0B in Lyon, but only on the assumption that everyone will be using that specific value.

[Commodore]

Why can't you just make a special provision for objects outside the visible screen? Say an object could have $ff,$ff as its x.y. In ZZT it'd point to some garbage spot in memory, much like how pressing play in the above example allows the player to run around the sidebar, which sends the x86 bad opcodes when the player runs into data zzt doesn't interpret. If lyon allowed the full byte, not just the values that show on the screen, it could cope so long as it knew it was off the screen and didn't try interact with the data it's running over like it's board data.