Monthly Archives: May 2006

Use the source, luke!

DreamZZT’s source code is now available under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2. The source can be browsed or checked out of my public Subversion repository, and is also available from the DreamZZT homepage. In order to build DreamZZT, you’ll first need to build tiki.

To celebrate, I’ve put together the first binary release of DreamZZT in close to 3 years: 3.0.4-beta1. Downloads are available for Windows, Mac OS X (10.4 universal), and Linux. Due to technical issues, builds for the Dreamcast are not available at this time. So head on over to the DreamZZT homepage and grab a copy!

Known issues with this beta:

  • There is no menu when you push ESC, just press S to save or close the window to quit.
  • There is no file browser, so saved games will always be ‘saved.sav’ and New Game will always load ‘town.zzt’
  • The game doesn’t pause when debug command ‘warp’ is executed, allowing debug messages to overwrite the board selection dialog box.

Please report any other bugs either in the comments here or over at the forums.

Buzz Buzz Buzz

Woah, I went to feed my fish this morning, and there was a dead bee floating in the tank! I have no idea how it even got in there, but I guess my fish kicked its ass.

SNEEZE

And in other news, I hate pollen.

PLANTS! STOP HAVING SEX RIGHT NOW! IT MAKES MY NOSE RUN!

That is all.

#send sam:update_journal

You can now execute ZZT-OOP statements directly from the debug console. I put together a quick little demo video of the debug console that you can grab here (8 MB, QuickTime 7.1).

I also made a lot of progress in moving the source from C to C++. I’ve decided DreamZZT 3.0 will be open source (GNU General Public License, version 2), so I guess I have to make it presentable 😛 All of the objects in the game world are now represented by their own C++ classes, which is a pretty good start. I still need to create classes for the boards and the overall world.

As for what still needs to be done before I start rolling out public betas again, here’s a quick to-do list off the top of my head:

* Sharks
* Slime
* Stars
* Slap the GPL header on top of all the source files
* Grab the drum patterns from kevedit and add them to my music player (yay, GPL!)
* Finish rewriting the guts in C++
* BUGS BUGS BUGS!

?zap

For those of you that need to cheat while playing ZZT, DreamZZT now has an interactive console that can be brought up by pressing the ` key (inspired by Kev‘s mzxdbg).

Lions, Tigers, and Bears! Oh my!

I made a lot of progress on DreamZZT this weekend. I finally got around to writing the AI for bears and ruffians, which just leaves sharks, slime, and centipedes left to do. The centipedes are going to be the most complicated to write, so I’m going to continue to ignore them for now. If you want to play Centepede, go to an arcade 😛

I also got sound working! Just the melodies for now, no drums, but it’s a lot more interesting with noises 🙂 I tried to capture another movie with Snapz Pro X, but the sound gets pretty choppy while recording, so you’ll all just have to wait ’til it’s released.

You are blocked by an invisible wall.

I put together a quick little video that demos some of the visual improvements DreamZZT has over the original ZZT. This video shows off the animated water effect, as well as the improved torch effect. You can grab the Quicktime video here (780KB).

DreamZZT is finally back to the point where The Town of ZZT should be completeable, though the lack of bears, ruffians, and centepedes makes it a little less challenging. I hope to at least get bears and ruffians working soon, but I think I’ll hold off on centepedes for a while longer (they’re probably going to be the hardest to write, because of the way they move).

I’m hoping to have a playable demo out in a few weeks.

DreamZZT 3.0

I’ve gotten a few queries about the status of DreamZZT lately, so for anyone wondering about it, I give you this: