
Museum of ZZT - DanBC
https://museumofzzt.com/
======
enneff
ZZT had a programming language called "ZZT OOP" and you could write scripts
that would be performed by objects in the game. The objects could move around,
change shape, and send messages to each other. It was difficult to get them to
cooperate—they'd move at different times and fall out of sync—such that you
had to add synchronization code to keep them working together. Thinking back
on it now, this odd little environment actually taught me some lessons about
distributed systems.

~~~
endgame
Have you seen Preposterous Machines? Some lunatic made a Mandelbrot renderer
in ZZT-OOP:
[https://museumofzzt.com/file/p/prepostm.zip](https://museumofzzt.com/file/p/prepostm.zip)

~~~
enneff
I hadn't seen this, thanks. Lunatic indeed!

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unwiredben
Anna Anthropy's book about ZZT (and really about the culture of game
development that thrived around the game) is very good.
[https://bossfightbooks.com/products/zzt-by-anna-
anthropy](https://bossfightbooks.com/products/zzt-by-anna-anthropy)

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jkoschei
I loved ZZT! I can't remember which was first for me, that or QBasic, but I
have many fond memories of being 8 years old and hacking away on little games.
I think I started with both at about the same time, and they instilled a love
of code. The idea that you could just type in a few words and make the
computer do what you wanted was pure magic to my young brain.

In hindsight, the limitations of ZZT were very freeing — with such a limited
palette of options, you couldn't bite off too much more than you could chew,
and you had to get creative to make anything work as intended.

My palette has increased since then, but the principles are still the same. I
haven't touched ZZT in years, but in a way my career has been built on it.

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DanBC
ZZT was an early example of a game that included a level editor and scripting
language. Lots of people say they got their start in development work by
modifying games, and their "this is how I got started" stories are interesting
to me.

Sometimes on HN you'll find someone involved in the original game, and their
stories are usually interesting.

~~~
Cthulhu_
And it's IMO a critical piece of game history - ZZT, in part thanks to its
level designer, became quite successful and allowed Tim Sweeney to found Epic
Megagames, which had a number of successful shareware games afterwards (also
thanks to Cliffy B) like Kiloblaster (I remember that one) and Jill of the
Jungle, Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit, until in 1998, a good seven years
after ZZT, they made Unreal. And again, part of what made Unreal and later
Unreal Tournament popular was its level editor and programming interface -
which became available to other game creators in the form of the Unreal
Engine, which still is a popular choice a lot of the AAA games of today.

So think again when you hate on emoji :p.

(I wanted to do the ascii smiley face but it doesn't seem to be supported.
2018 everyone).

~~~
dasyatidprime
David Newton did a whole video series on the history of Epic Megagames, in
fact.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-36gm0W-VKneGghS9-8X...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-36gm0W-VKneGghS9-8XOvOl_m7Zf2IF)

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Severian
First shareware game I bought back in the day. I think I might still have the
original 3.5" floppy somewhere in my basement. Played it on my parents Tandy
1000 TX 286.

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VectorLock
Its fun to look back and remember the original IBM PC ROM character set had a
smiley face when "emoji" seems like such a recent development.

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nevster
I misread that as ZTT and was looking forward to seeing something quite
different...

