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A jam submission

ClassicZooView game page

ZZT/Super ZZT world player and editor
Submitted by asie (@cbrzeszczot) — 1 day, 23 hours before the deadline
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ClassicZoo's itch.io page

What is your game a port of?
ZZT and Super ZZT (1991, Epic MegaGames)

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Comments

Any readme instructions how to launch this?
Do we need to load or create a world?

Developer(+1)

As per the official site: "For better performance (and to run on 640×256 screens), run setenv FPC_VIDEO_BUILTINFONT vga8 before launching the port. This may be fixed eventually, with ClassicZoo getting its own 8×8 font bundled." This is a limitation of Free Pascal's text mode emulation.

From there, just run the "ZZT" binary. For various reasons, worlds are not distributed with the binary - you can find them on the Museum of ZZT; the original four worlds or some recommendations! As the port is a quick job utilizing Free Pascal's (surprisingly easy to get going) Amiga toolchain, and is not perfectly Amiga-optimized, it won't run particularly speedily on an unexpanded 500/600 - a CPU accelerator is welcome.

(1 edit)

Thanks for the details! Was able to work it through!
I did prefer using the AmigaLegacy version as I prefer the DOS ANSI style graphics than the Workbench text style for this game :-)
Very good feel of a PC-DOS ANSI-art old-school role-playing adventure.

The SuperZ executable wasnt reading/listing the worlds and I also noticed when the file dates of .ZZT files were too old (1990/1991), they weren't being read/listed by the ZZT executable either.

Question, should there be emulated PC speaker sound or is it planned for future updates?

Developer

1. SuperZ is Super ZZT - that's a distinct game engine. See https://museumofzzt.com/file/s/szzt.zip for worlds (.SZT files).
2. Old file dates? That is very strange - they should all work. More information would be great to have.
3. There should be emulated PC speaker sound, but I didn't find enough time to dig into Amiga's sound architecture in time for the jam's ending.

(2 edits)

I'm running it from an emulator. I use FS-UAE v3.0.5 on Windows, which creates additional .uaem files and if I don't delete those .uaem files manually, the game will not list all the worlds, it may just list one. Seems the slightest disturbance will cause the map file listing to stop listing remaining files. I know some filesystem improvements were done on later versions of the emulator, so will have to double check with other versions and get back to you on that.

As for the listing with the date issue I mentioned, I had downloaded a maps package which the extracted map files dated back to 1990 and 1991. I had to change the file dates so to have the game read all the maps.
I was able to work-around the listing issues, but I wanted to mention it in-case you or someone else falls on the same issue and is wondering why.

I know the game is still in development, but will let you know whenever I find any issues. Not sure if this is the best place to report them.
BTW, once you die and game-over, you can still use the torch and shoot :)

Developer(+1)

The *port* is still in development - the original game was last worked on 30 years ago :-)

Regarding the torch/shoot thing - that's how ZZT acted since 1992! The goal of ClassicZoo is to accurately reproduce its behavior, and fix only those bugs which have no impact on edge-case gameplay mechanics some existing worlds may rely on (that usually translates to "cause crashes/hangs").