Fall of ZZT: The Curse of Production Quality

[Appetite4]

Smash ZZT reflected my love for action games. But that's not the only game type I have in mind.

Another game, which will be an RPG, is Fall of ZZT: The Curse of Production Quality. This is going to be an absolutely crazy, fourth-wall-breaking adventure featuring a group of disenfranchised 1990s Epic game characters. They band together in an effort to find out why their game worlds are breaking apart.

This ZZT Ultra game will change up the style of the adventure. Rather than a solo protagonist, you will find new characters and add them to your group, which will eventually become a party of six. All of them will travel from room to room, with a taggable character to "lead" at any one given point. This allows for each character's diverse talents and stats to be used in strategic ways, such as how to solve puzzles and break defensive lines. Kind of like a cross between Secret of Mana and The Lost Vikings, although not by any means a carbon copy of either.

The scripting, which I've spent a lot of time working on, will be silly and irreverent, and not afraid to take shots at your biggest heroes. I have to scheme once in a while...it's good for the soul.

[Smilymzx]

Pretty cool, I've wondered about what genre of game it was gonna be,

But is it even better if it's a Adventure/Puzzle/RPG hybrid, Sorta like how the game named "Engine" for MZX turned out, but instead of Final Fantasy characters, we have Epic Game's old character roster!

Maybe a cameo from the Super ZZT smiley (2-character width) as the "King of ZZT" would be nice !

[ZZTBandit]

another flash game?

[Smilymzx]

another flash game?

ZZT Ultra is being ported to Python (with SDL) for major portability, as well as HTML5 and the usual AS3, So if you do not like flash or HTML5, Please try to wait till the Python version releases or GTFO.

Seriously, Being Butthurt against using ZZTUltra is not what the forum is for. And also not worth being angry or frustrated over.

[ZZTBandit]

another flash game?

Seriously, Being Butthurt against using ZZTUltra is not what the forum is for.

The only ones butthurt are you two, now get off my dick.

Honestly, you should probably focus on getting it to accurately play ZZT games first. You didnt even get the character set right, like cmon man. Music latency is gonna be even worse than it already is once ported but go ahead try.

ZZT in the browser? It's a wrap.
https://blog.archive.org/2015/05/08/mak ... et-archive

[Smilymzx]

Come on, Dos is soooooooooo 1982!

[Appetite4]

The start of "Fall of ZZT" begins in the original Town of ZZT. This is not a copy-paste of the original Town, though, but rather, a re-imagining of the town as a conceptual location in the larger ZZT universe.

Exploration allows you to discover that things aren't as normal as they seem. You soon leave the town and travel all over the world of video games.

[Appetite4]

Over the break, I created a new full-page dialogue system. Here are a few screenshots of characters you can converse with early in the game.

[Appetite4]

This is the first ZZT game I've ever made that has required me to make a spreadsheet. The number of items, number of characters, the upgrades, locations, secrets, storyboarding logic...it all requires it.

Things are coming together. It is helped that the ZZT Ultra GUI system allows me to create a narrative that is no longer represented by text alone. If you can show the facial expressions of the characters, you can tell (hopefully) some more compelling stories.

Doesn't change the fact that the game will be very silly.

[Appetite4]

The party management system I'm designing for this game is turning into a spiderweb of business logic. The way to select a character from the party is to touch that character ("tag" him or her). You can then move around freely, while the other party members follow a few paces behind you.

Navigation through transporters and across boards is where things get hairy. Board transitions require the entire party to be constantly removed and regenerated at the entry point. Given the need to move through complex areas, the playable character's movement must leave behind traces for the rest of the party to navigate.

Of course, when the party is attacked (for example, by a pack of tigers), the other party members need to be able to defend themselves without your explicit direction. And, in such a way that they don't get hurt or damage friendlies.

I've never favored turn-based games. I figure, it's not necessary to directly control each character's action if you make the team A.I. competent enough to hold their own. But you'll need to exercise some real leadership to get them to do something above and beyond.

[Appetite4]

In addition to the story and multiple-player-character model, I have been trying to think up some unique puzzle elements.

One that came to mind not long ago was the "rotator", which is a custom type that pushes objects around in a circular fashion. You can chain together multiple rotators to create complex rotating shapes.

There are many options with these puzzle elements. You can create counter-rotating lanes, like in the left side of the image, which need to be timed with movement. You can also create large sweeping movers, like in the right side of the image.

I've added a "DMG" member that detects if pushable obstacles are "hurt" if there is no clearance for pushing them forward in a circular fashion. There is also a "DMGEVERY" member that inflicts damage on pushables even if there IS clearance. This last option is useful for designing something like fire windmills from numerous Nintendo games, which you can observe, but not touch.

[Commodore]

Ooo! You could make a combo lock like safe tumblers maybe. An update on town's bank, if you will.

[Appetite4]

While on a trip to Italy recently, I passed some time on the train rides writing more scripts for the character interaction. The City of ZZT will be a part of this game, with several characters returning.

After writing some dialogue, it gives me some idea of how the GUIs used for character faces should look given a particular feeling or disposition during speech. This is something that I always lamented about ZZT--inability to easily convey emotion in the scroll texts.

Park Bum

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The park bum will look scared when he sees the guy who shot him all those years ago.

Dr. Bob eats a bad chili dog

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Dr. Bob struggles to say anything after eating a chili dog from the entrance to Hell.

ZZT Guy loses his trademark smile

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The star of the game exhibits a wide range of emotions, but if you had a death-and-restore-game count as high as the ZZT Guy, you'd look like this, too.

[Dark-Star2018]

Any update on this? I'm quite intrigued by this...new approach to a ZZT game.