♦ Livestream of 9 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (0:58) "Death" by Wantchat8 (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/deathwc/]
• (9:36) "Line Wars, ZZT Style: Part One" by T ChonG [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/linewar/]
• (17:00) "PipeLine (The NL Demo)" by Comthought (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/pipedemo/]
• (23:26) "Random Number Generator" by Alexqoft (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/randomaq/]
• (27:57) "Shooting Gallery" by JoeyBHere [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/sgallery/]
• (35:57) "The Firing Squad Game" by Unknown (1994) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/squad/]
• (42:30) "Star ZZT" by Matthew Darragh (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/stardemo/]
• (57:02) "ZOCRPGZZT" by ZOrangeCow (2000) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/zocrpg/]
• (1:20:12) "Schmukz" by Matt Perrotti [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/schmukz/]
That's right, 9 worlds, as we trim away a number of very short games off the unpreserved queue with an unfortunate number still remaining.
Size may not be everything, but it's hard to get invested in games that are over in just a few minutes, leading to a very chaotic stream where games start and end so quickly you might blink and miss em entirely.
We begin with "Death" of course, which turned out to be a basic editor playaround game with a focus on providing the player with creatures to shoot above all else. It's a bad sign that this was one of the more enjoyable games of the set. Shooting creatures, grabbing keys, and racing to the exit may not be the most inspired gameplay mechanics, but they do work. Of course, as the author's first game it has some mistakes like not needing to get every key to reach the exit and some mis-positioned transporters that lock players out of a bonus room filled with supplies.
Then "Line Wars", a basic Tron Light Cycle engine game that couldn't stick its landing. The player's bike and controls run at cycle three, leading to a very mushy level of responsiveness in what's meant to be a fast-paced arcade game. The enemies have guns, which is a reasonable way to add some extra challenge in ZZT where you can't really track the player controlled vehicle, but the trails everyone leaves behind them are made of breakables. The code is arranged in such a way that the enemies will constantly shoot free of any trails they're about to crash into. I'm not sure it's possible to crash them at all honestly.
The one thing it has going for it is that when you do crash, the board is cleared and the entire arena resets to an initial state allowing you to try again and again. Were it possible to actually succeed, that would be a welcome touch compared to having to restart the world after each crash.
"Pipeline" isn't to be confused with WiL's puzzle game of the same name. This is a demo for a ZZT newsletter that I do not understand why they bothered. The menu shows four levels, of which only one is actually available, while its passage points to an undefined board causing ZZT to crash! Changing to the board manually leads to a puzzle where there are gaps in a line wall and you need to place the correct pieces of pipe in their place to connect everything. It's get big pre-school energy (not that that stopped me from running out of time on the first attempt). The board exit then also crashes ZZT.
"Random Number Generator" shows a simple method to roll random numbers from set of powers of 2. A few objects place unique elements in the corner and an object parsed which ones can/can't be found on the board to add up a roll. It's a basic demonstration that isn't wrong, though it's also not the best way to generate such numbers. Probably helpful for younger authors though!
"Shooting Gallery" turns the tables, as in this gallery you are the target being shot at! Run through a few rooms with spinning guns and obstacles ranging from conveyors to invisibles, and fight survive to the end. Another game that does what it says, but isn't too exciting.
"The Firing Squad Game" is a real chicken and egg problem. It's a single board of various targets to shoot that I know we've seen in another game, though I can't recall which. The real question is which game actually created the board!
"Star ZZT" is another baffling entry. It's world made by somebody who didn't make the custom character set, and shows some, but not all of the changed characters within. These are accompanied by descriptions that often aren't true of the modified characters at all, and to top it all off, the font itself makes some rather weird changes for something meant for ZZT worlds. I'm going to have nightmares about the bears. I didn't think you could pull off body horror with a single color and 8x14 resolution.
Now, "ZOCRPGZZT" however, makes more sense. It's an RPG toolkit with a number of pre-fab objects to compile into a board to create an instant RPG engine with support for 4 heroes and 3 enemies, as well as custom mechanic tweaks via adding other objects to imeplement accuracy features, damage variance, and randomizer for which fighter acts first. It's actually a really cool idea, and the modularity of it is really ahead of its time. This is the kind of thing that would definitely be helpful to budding coders around the time of its release.
The code is commented and makes it clear what lines you can edit for custom messages and adjusting what attacks players have access to. The only real issue is that it can be unclear what objects you actually need, especially as they're all identical in appearance. Still, we managed to throw together an RPG battle (albeit one lacking in things like animation) without having to write any code that wasn't just text messages!
And lastly, Schmukz, a slightly longer adventure about recovering stolen goods from the university bully. You're a frail nerd who dies quite easily, and needs to find a number of arbitrary items and wacky ways of getting them to successfully recover your things and put a stop to the bully. Some unpleasant dialog adds a lot of friction to an otherwise decent game if you can stumble across the solutions to some of its more esoteric puzzles. There's potential here that definitely wasn't realized.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/deathwc/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/linewar/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/pipedemo/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/randomaq/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/sgallery/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/squad/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/stardemo/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/zocrpg/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/schmukz/
♦ Originally streamed on December 8th, 2024 ♦
