itch.io

I've been mulling over having the game autosave every 100 kilometers or something, sounds like that would be a welcome addition.

Lots of folks have hit that scenario, including someone on a twitch stream today that hit it right at the end of the game like you did - no one else had the game freeze at that point. I will add a small note to the ame page about potential conflicts with browser, but I'm not an emulator writer so I don't know that I can diagnose.

I'm surprised DOSBox made it that far.  It breaks for me pretty much as soon as I pick my crew. The first line of description on the game page:

The download is also packaged with a custom emulator that plays it fluently.

Thx 4 report. I'll have a fix out - look for 1.04.2 on the title screen

so uh.. oregon trail, mille bornes, hal needham, ftl except just the bits where you're not fighting, the geneva international motor show, the ware tetralogy, accelerando, the fiction and dire nonfiction of robert evans, oh THE FOOTNOTES ON THIS GAME are something else. I really want to put up the feelies page so I can list a bunch of these things.

Thanks to @this.Lewashi(); for this kind review:

What a blast of an adventure! Every time I thought the game was going to end, it just kept going. I got attached to my little business and all the wacky events occurring throughout this adventure; I recommend playing through the whole thing if you have a couple hours to spare. Impressive! 5 stars

You got it! Zeta is the premiere bespoke ZZT emulator we don't deserve, but exists anyway.

Yes, in challenge mode. Edit: the needles from the trees, the red xs on the ground, the tree knotholes, they're environmental cues. They matter a lot more in challenge mode when misreading the environment is a lot more punishing. But you can't count the needles under a tree and say "seventeen needles means this, eighteen means that" you just need to feel it out.

https://stale-meme.itch.io/cold/devlog/993868/cold-v12-is-out it had been a few months and when I came back to it after reading your comment, I saw right away that Day 1 doesn't provide enough info. I've adjusted the way Day 1 is presented to highlight a few more steps. If you happen to wander this way again, give it a shot and let me know if it helped.

From empty file to full release, 9/2/23 to 12/28/23. So three months and change.

*looks up who that is*

*watches*

*watches some more*

O_O

Jacob Geller needs to be told about this!

I wish I'd had the foresight to enter this trooberfest because I would vote for you 10 thousand million times. I know this wasn't an easy few weeks to try and make a game in and you were sick for part of it, but what you made I have no words. The Arantesverse continues to deliver straight bangeroos. Not as many play-y game-y things as last entry but so much sumptuous art and story. Something about reading "enjoy being a short queen for now, you can save the galaxy later" hit me right in the feels. I don't know. I'm losing my mind over this. People need to know about this.

Did you tip the mechanic at least?

Nothing in the game is hidden or locked. The OBJ code for the three-armed bandit is in the following locations:

• Render code for the reels and handles:
  
  • GFSOBJ\REEL.OBJ
  • GFSOBJ\HANDLE.OBJ
• Input handling:
  • GFSOBJ\W9IMP.OBJ
• Time tracking + Board change handling:
  • GFSOBJ\STBASIC.OBJ

Additionally, some onboard objects are present that handle various aspects of the bandit's function. These are all on the three-armed bandit board, titled "%Story% Week 9":

• [9,13] @l4wild
  • Handles the random speeding up and slowing down of the reel.
• [29,8] @L5capture
  • Displays the number that appears at the top right of the Bandit.
• [2,3] @taunt1
  • Displays the quotations at the top left of the screen.
• [9,14] [9,15] [9,16] @Handle1 @Handle2 @Handle3
  
  • Tracks the number of pulls of a given handle. After 18 pulls of any one handle, "GIVE UP" will appear as an option on screen.

Final notes:

There is some cheeky code in GFSOBJ\HANDLE.OBJ that is probably the code you're looking for. It's the critical code determining the value of the number in the top right of the bandit, and whether the reels stop. Local5 and Local7 are the primary variables involved.

I'm not going to say that it's entirely about you. But if you can guess which part is about you specifically I will pay pal you enough money fo a local cookie 

On the board with the yaks, touch all the yak tails. THeir eyes will glow.

TBH it could just as easily be "here is the self-proclaimed magnum opus of an uncurious jerk perpetually stuck in his teen years" 🤣

Oh nooo

Am I Dan Olsen in this scenario... or am I James? 😭

There are cigars in the wall of the Haus of Pain

My baby don't mess around, because I love her so, and this I know with utmost certainty.

Ha! This was a great watch, it was wild to see which jokes/references we were on the same wavelength for. Glad you enjoyed it and I hope you do more like this. Subscribed to your channel. (Also, you can hit SPACE to skip to the end of a service if you want)

With the upgrade to 1.8.13, you should be able to start a new game.

 New best. Week 68. I think with perfect play you can squeeze out one more week (nice!)

Thanks for your kind comments! To note: much of what I'm doing now wasn't possible 25 years ago or even 5 years ago with ZZT. It's only because of the rediscovery and reconstruction of the source code, and the Weave 3 modding tool (https://meangirls.itch.io/weave-3) that these games are possible in their current format. (A downscaled version of them is almost certainly still possible in vanilla ZZT, but would have taken many more months and the end result been less interesting IMO)

It's a good sign when folks play and wish there was even more game - branching paths, multiple endings, pickier customers with more complex habits. I agree, I think this one could go bigger and offer dedicated players more challenge and opportunity. A small update coming at the end of the month addresses a couple ambiguities you mentioned, but rescoping the game for more content isn't possible; ZZT is already bursting at the seams holding the current game. Still it's very cool to think about. Whatever I end up making next, I'll try to leave myself some room at the end to add more content later. (Or pick an engine that can handle more than 63.5kb at the same time lol)

You've been blessed! There's an extremely small chance that Flora and Brassica will persist through playthroughs and show up at the beginning of a future game.

How you doin chat? Can you beat this score?

Fixed - you can load your ASDF.SAV now, no problems

I'm also unable to reload my web saves - the emulator seems to be using the same db to store multiple ZZT games in and the save directories are interfering with one another. I've pinged the creator of the emulator to see how we might sort it out. Hang tight

Holy ?! It is a bug! I will patch this in a future release, but for now you can type ?noclip to get yourself back in the skypertube and type ?clip once you're inside to finish the puzzle. Thank you for finding this, I have in my notes that I tested this exact scenario, so it must have regressed at some point.

Imma test and get back to you. I thought I covered that edge case but I'll walk back through and confirm.

Food!

Aww man - when I realized how easy it was to make retrograde progress, I did feel very trolled. What a delight though. I don't know how much game there is, I played it for quite a while and I was still discovering new rooms. I'll be playing this after the voting period too.

I played this on stream, unfortunately the stream cut off before I was finished reading the rules

I went way too hard on this (349) and then the ending happened and I said "HYYUUUUUGGGGHHHH"

This is PHENOMENAL. Not only was it an amazing shaggy dog, but holy shit some of the puzzles/action sequences I felt myself approaching genuine madness. The trick to a trollgame is to keep tantalizing the player with possibility, feed them just enough progress that it keeps them playing, and then adds just enough unfair each time to ruin them. This was maybe the most effective trollgame in the lot, because it kept me playing for the longest and had me big mad nearly the entire time. I love this. Love love love this.

Holy sh- outstanding. I said aloud, to my screen, "Now this is some goddamn fuckery."

While it is wonderful that many beautiful games of length owe their existence to this contest, it's even more wonderful, to me, that the contest continues to deliver unique ZZT experiences. I've never played a ZZT game where the game is just all "figure me out in the editor, fucko, if you dare" and then makes me decide how much editing is actually required and whether I've actually "won". Bravo.

Beautiful. I managed to do the things, I am still working on the bear. The needing to rearrange the buttons for quick fiddlywinks on the zoo-zah was really a nice touch. I liked the real subtle trolls like the complete lack of juice on the pingpong to indicate whether the object was actually touched or not.

Good engine, very trolly. I like how we got different layers of annoying as we went along, an exploration of the pet peeves of the creator. I not able to beat the last level.