Greetings From the Museum of ZZT!

[Dr. Dos]

#11263

Dr. Dos here! I run the Museum of ZZT, the largest and most active ZZT archive. You might remember me showing up as a guest way back in the Hugo’s House of Horrors episode of all places. I’ve been a long time listener, but not much of a participant, which I suspect that will change in February!

Needless to say, I’m very excited to see ZZT picked for the month, and wish to make myself available for to answer any questions folks might have, but I also have a few for the club!

– What games will be focused on?

Are folks planning to focus on the original official worlds (Town, Caves, Dungeons, City) or will there be more exploration of the full ZZT catalog? It’s got a 35 year history, and a number of great games for those looking for something fun to play or just something weird. ZZT’s had a bit of a revival over the past decade and having shifted from games being made by teens to games being made by folks in their 30s, the quality of modern big releases is really a sight to behold. There’s a lot more planning and care put into newer games than the make-it-up-as-you-go style seen more in the 90s/2000s.

The Museum’s recently added jumpstart page Play ZZT Online sets up an in-browser copy of ZZT loaded up with all the official releases (original series, Best of ZZT, and ZZT’s Revenge) from 1991/1992. More importantly, the end of the article links to some compilations of worlds recommended for beginners as well as other popular hits past and present.

It can also be a lot of fun to just jump around and see what you find. Even when ZZT games aren’t particularly good, they’re often weird and interesting! Plus the built-in cheats make it usually fairly easy to skip buggy or brutally unfair sections. (The perils of putting 13 year olds in charge of game development). If there’s anything in particular you’re looking to see, feel free to ask!

– Is there any interest in Club members creating their own ZZT boards/worlds?

Half the fun of ZZT is in creating your own games with it! A month might not seem like a lot of time, but ZZT is simple enough that plenty of games and boards have been made under short time constraints. The 2021 Make a Neat ZZT Board Contest-Jam Type Thing Compilation was an event where folks with no ZZT experience were challenged to create just a single board with no rules other than providing a purple key to collect for completing it. Not only is it a lot of fun to make something, but the folks in the ZZT community are always excited to see what newcomers bring to the table. If anybody makes something, no matter how small, please consider sharing it on the Museum of ZZT! I’d be happy to play and stream your creations myself as well!

The Make your Own ZZT Worlds page provides links to modern editors (which are preferable to the one built in to ZZT even for beginners as it can sometimes delete code or corrupt boards) as well as a number of tutorials, demonstration worlds, and other guides. Truthfully, you don’t need any of it to figure ZZT out, but it can be nice to have a ZZT-OOP reference handy that isn’t crammed into one of ZZT’s little pop up message windows.

—

Lastly, to save folks some headaches: Zeta is an emulator dedicated to emulating just enough of DOS to play ZZT (and Super ZZT), and is highly recommended instead of using DOSBox. It has native builds for Windows and Linux so it’s no trouble to get it to run on modern OSes. Its web version is what’s used on the Museum to allow most ZZT worlds to be played in the browser.

DOSBox runs ZZT, but for reasons that I don’t think anyone has ever really dug into, the keyboard inputs are a bit laggy which make faster paced games significantly more difficult, and it starts slowing down when running complex worlds even when the CPU cycles are cranked up.

For the best experience, please either use ZZT v3.2 (the final official release) with Zeta, or check out ClassicZoo, a source port with native Windows/Linux versions that maintains compatibility with vintage worlds while adding several quality of life features. (It also has a DOS version that works with Zeta). A lengthier overview of all this is available on the Museum’s ZZT Versions page.

…But if you’re going to be ZZTing on some retro hardware, feel free to just run the original program!

—

Looking forward to February! If anyone has any questions on playing, making, or selecting a ZZT world to explore, don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll be checking these forums regularly, and plan to hop onto the IRC come February. The ZZT community also has its own Discord server which you can find a link to on the Museum. We’re always excited to have new folks ZZTing!

[Tijn]

#11264

Yes! Welcome! This is great that you’re here, I really hope you’ll join us on the podcast too!

[Tijn]

#11265

Also I think/hope there’s definitely some interest in not only playing ZZT games, but also creating them, so help with that is definitely great!

[Tijn]

#11266

As for what games people will focus on: I hope everything! Of course we’ll have a little look at the original ZZT, but I definitely plan to browse all the custom games people have made over the years and hope others will do so as well.

It feels a bit like the situation with Doom, where the custom maps are the bulk of what keeps the community engaged nowadays. But unlike Doom, I feel the content that comes with ZZT is quite limited, so the community stuff only becomes even more important.

[carbontwelve]

#11267

Its serendipitous that I was listening to the Hugo’s House of Horrors episode as I opened this thread to read. I am genuinely excited to have an excuse to pick up ZZT again for the first time in what must be twenty years.

The Museum of ZZT is one of those incredible websites that someone can loose an entire weekend in just browsing around and exploring its many, many treasures. I have visited it briefly several times over the past few years but look forward to having an excuse to spend an hour or more finding some gems.

[vga256]

#11283

So glad you’re here Dr. Dos! I had thought of you and the museum as soon as the topic was announced.

[butterburp]

#11298

Looking forward to this! I might try and brave the Dosbox experience, just to keep that righteous 4-3 aspect ratio. If you ever come up with that feature in Zed, please let me know. Eagerly anticipating what the random/roulette features on the museum site will come up with!

[Edit: I’m a doof. Looks like ZZT is itself inherently widescreen, even in a 4:3 DOS window.]

[Dr. Dos]

#11300

Check out (the non-DOS builds of) ClassicZoo! It has a few alternate video modes available including stretching to a 4:3 aspect ratio