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The ZZT Chronicle
Aug. 21st, 2005 03:39 pm |
This is fantastic, but you'll have to take my word for it. |
Preamble
In the beginning there was ye DOS prompt. The almighty Tim Sweeney (now head of the even more almighty Epic Games) created a Cursor and a way for it to move, and on the second day added obstacles for this Cursor to circumnavigate. As it evolved, he looked upon his creation, and spake "I shalt name thee ZZT", for he wished ye program to appear last in all BBS lists for some reason.
Many moons, digits and cubits later, ZZT hadst a huge following on the tirade of chaos known as AOL. Xabbott sought to bring order to ye chaos, and created ye Site, the ZZT Archive. Administrators were appointed, and Xabbott mysteriously disappeared. The community grew, IRC-log "sagas" about its participants were written, and the Creator known as Tim Sweeney happily informed them that he had lost the source code in ye Hard Drive Crash, ensuring its code was a mystery forever.
It was at this time that our brave hero, Wong, stumbled upon the site. In these ancient times, Wong was, to be fair, a bit of a n00b lam0r. Yet he was willing to learn from the wisdom of ZZTers who had come before, and was given the title "The Perfect Midbie", being neither new enough to be a newbie or old enough to be an oldbie. Such was the way of things.
Suddenly the one known as Xabbott returned. Spake he thusly: "What's going on here, then?" and flung all the existing administrators in to the Abyss of Normal Memberdom. And there was a great wailing and gnashing of keyboards. In a bid to escape this sudden tyranny, ye erstwhile Administrators appealed to the semi-almighty Underdogs for hosting of a New Site. And spake Ye Underdogs, "Yeah, all right." Ye new Site, known cryptically as Z2, sprung forth and the ZZTers followed their saviours in to ye land of Milk and Honey and Chocolate Digestives. Xabbott went in to ye Huff and closed ye Original Site.
As time passed, Wong managed to shaketh off his midbie status, and won a coveted Game of the Month award for shoe-horning ye Semi-Complex RPG System into ZZT's humble limits under the name of "The Mercenary". "We shalt appointeth thee a Moderator", bespake the quasi-mighty ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
madtom, who was then the head of ye New Site. "Go fortheth and moderateth." Because he'd forgotten to put his teeth in that day.
And moderate he did, until a sudden database deletion obliterated ye Entire Forum. The people called for a Reshuffle, and the existing administrators re-appointed those in their favour to run ye Site. Wong was none too happy, and felt the same way about ye people spamming the forum with ye new Ravebaron emoticons (a palette-cycling monocle and suit-wearing man). "Thou art not fascist enough", the Admins said. "Besideth, thou hast rubbished the name of ye Ravebaron, so bog ye off."
So Wong concludedeth that the Community had suffered Critical Damage to Life Force, and went off to post billions of reviews on ye Daily Click instead, getting himself noticed and appointed as Admin by the leader in a moment of temporary insanity. For Wong, ZZT was forgotten, apart from for his Avatar, which he continued to leech off their forums in an act of Small Defiance. And so ye Chronicle came to a close.
Point
So, to the point of all that nonsense above. I recently rediscovered ZZT on my hard drive - an ancient game and creation system by Tim Sweeney of Epic Games. The default games provided with it were best described as "puzzle adventures" - walk around shooting at things, picking things up, pushing things around and so on to progress.
What made the game unique was the World Editor, based on an immensely powerful (for the time) object-oriented procedural language (it's even more fun than it sounds) known as ZZT-OOP. Each object in the game runs separately, and can send and receive messages from each other to instruct them what to do.
ZZT is very simple in terms of its graphics - they are constructed entirely from ASCII characters, with the face representing the player, Omegas for "lion" enemies, Ös for bears (see the resemblance?) and so on. This can be rather off-putting for people (even fifteen years ago it was pretty sub-standard) but I think that it adds to the whole geek charm of it.
And I played it again today. I had forgotten just how great it was - it's true that I still dislike most of the community surrounding it, because to the outsider, it looks like a disaster. Entering it is like walking in to a large party that you haven't been invited to, where you're expected to understand and appreciate all the in-jokes that have built up over fifteen years. The majority of the community and I seem to differ in our views of what ZZT should be about, as well - the general concensus seems to be to push for more complex and involved ZZT games with huge and intricate plotlines, but I prefer to keep things simple in the same vein as Tim Sweeney's original worlds, all those years ago.
My ZZT creations can be found on Z2 by searching for "Wong" - "The Mercenary" won GOTM, and the other most notable creations were Tower and Great Pyramid of ZZT, where I had decided that the whole idea of what was currently expected of ZZT was too complex and reverted to making puzzle adventures in the same vein as Tim Sweeney's own. The community were rather divided as to whether this was a good idea or not.
Like many of the things that I attach myself to, ZZT is very much a love or hate thing - many people find its crude appearance difficult to get round, but like I said, I think that's what makes it special. Its community was a major part of my life as I was just starting out on the Internet, which makes it rather special to me in its own way as well. It's also more complex than it looks on the surface - indeed, its involved ZZT-OOP language is capable of things that would be very difficult to achieve in the Multimedia Fusion which I hold in such high regard. Of course, another advantage is that the file sizes of its worlds are tiny, very rarely getting to even 200kb.
ZZT can be downloaded here, and it's fantastic.
In the beginning there was ye DOS prompt. The almighty Tim Sweeney (now head of the even more almighty Epic Games) created a Cursor and a way for it to move, and on the second day added obstacles for this Cursor to circumnavigate. As it evolved, he looked upon his creation, and spake "I shalt name thee ZZT", for he wished ye program to appear last in all BBS lists for some reason.
Many moons, digits and cubits later, ZZT hadst a huge following on the tirade of chaos known as AOL. Xabbott sought to bring order to ye chaos, and created ye Site, the ZZT Archive. Administrators were appointed, and Xabbott mysteriously disappeared. The community grew, IRC-log "sagas" about its participants were written, and the Creator known as Tim Sweeney happily informed them that he had lost the source code in ye Hard Drive Crash, ensuring its code was a mystery forever.
It was at this time that our brave hero, Wong, stumbled upon the site. In these ancient times, Wong was, to be fair, a bit of a n00b lam0r. Yet he was willing to learn from the wisdom of ZZTers who had come before, and was given the title "The Perfect Midbie", being neither new enough to be a newbie or old enough to be an oldbie. Such was the way of things.
Suddenly the one known as Xabbott returned. Spake he thusly: "What's going on here, then?" and flung all the existing administrators in to the Abyss of Normal Memberdom. And there was a great wailing and gnashing of keyboards. In a bid to escape this sudden tyranny, ye erstwhile Administrators appealed to the semi-almighty Underdogs for hosting of a New Site. And spake Ye Underdogs, "Yeah, all right." Ye new Site, known cryptically as Z2, sprung forth and the ZZTers followed their saviours in to ye land of Milk and Honey and Chocolate Digestives. Xabbott went in to ye Huff and closed ye Original Site.
 |
Yes, I know, but looks aren't everything. |
madtom, who was then the head of ye New Site. "Go fortheth and moderateth." Because he'd forgotten to put his teeth in that day.And moderate he did, until a sudden database deletion obliterated ye Entire Forum. The people called for a Reshuffle, and the existing administrators re-appointed those in their favour to run ye Site. Wong was none too happy, and felt the same way about ye people spamming the forum with ye new Ravebaron emoticons (a palette-cycling monocle and suit-wearing man). "Thou art not fascist enough", the Admins said. "Besideth, thou hast rubbished the name of ye Ravebaron, so bog ye off."
So Wong concludedeth that the Community had suffered Critical Damage to Life Force, and went off to post billions of reviews on ye Daily Click instead, getting himself noticed and appointed as Admin by the leader in a moment of temporary insanity. For Wong, ZZT was forgotten, apart from for his Avatar, which he continued to leech off their forums in an act of Small Defiance. And so ye Chronicle came to a close.
Point
So, to the point of all that nonsense above. I recently rediscovered ZZT on my hard drive - an ancient game and creation system by Tim Sweeney of Epic Games. The default games provided with it were best described as "puzzle adventures" - walk around shooting at things, picking things up, pushing things around and so on to progress.
What made the game unique was the World Editor, based on an immensely powerful (for the time) object-oriented procedural language (it's even more fun than it sounds) known as ZZT-OOP. Each object in the game runs separately, and can send and receive messages from each other to instruct them what to do.
ZZT is very simple in terms of its graphics - they are constructed entirely from ASCII characters, with the face representing the player, Omegas for "lion" enemies, Ös for bears (see the resemblance?) and so on. This can be rather off-putting for people (even fifteen years ago it was pretty sub-standard) but I think that it adds to the whole geek charm of it.
 |
An extended editor makes things marginally easier on the eye. |
My ZZT creations can be found on Z2 by searching for "Wong" - "The Mercenary" won GOTM, and the other most notable creations were Tower and Great Pyramid of ZZT, where I had decided that the whole idea of what was currently expected of ZZT was too complex and reverted to making puzzle adventures in the same vein as Tim Sweeney's own. The community were rather divided as to whether this was a good idea or not.
Like many of the things that I attach myself to, ZZT is very much a love or hate thing - many people find its crude appearance difficult to get round, but like I said, I think that's what makes it special. Its community was a major part of my life as I was just starting out on the Internet, which makes it rather special to me in its own way as well. It's also more complex than it looks on the surface - indeed, its involved ZZT-OOP language is capable of things that would be very difficult to achieve in the Multimedia Fusion which I hold in such high regard. Of course, another advantage is that the file sizes of its worlds are tiny, very rarely getting to even 200kb.
ZZT can be downloaded here, and it's fantastic.
