Windows

Because I no longer have my laptop with Visual Studio, I will be unable to produce Nero or DiscJuggler CD images, and will be unable to do any further Windows releases for DreamZZT. In place of the Windows builds, I will be releasing MS-DOS builds compiled with DJGPP in dosemu. Unfortuantily, these will not be able to access the DZZT.NET homepage, and will run slower because of the way Windows 2000 / XP handle DOS applications.

As for Dreamcast CD images, I will continue to release plain files, and probably BIN + CUE images. If anyone knows of a way to generate SBI files from linux, please let me know.

The next release of DreamZZT, which includes saved game support, should be out by next week.

After almost two years of hibernation, I’m proud to announce the first new release of DreamZZT! Head on over to the DreamZZT homepage and check out DreamZZT 3.0.31226 for the Sega Dreamcast, Microsoft(R) Windows(TM), and Linux!

Please be aware that DreamZZT 3.0.31226 is a beta release and may still have some bugs. It has been tested with and will only play the Town of ZZT and any other tested games available from the DZZT.NET homepage. It does not currently support game saves, and may not be suitable for new users at this time.

Happy holidays!
-Sam

Greetings! Here is the first of hopefully many project-related updates!

My current active project is recreating the classic ZZT Game Creation System. ZZT is an ASCII-based system where you move your little smiley face around to interact with objects. The shareware version came with one full game, called The Town of ZZT, which I am currently using for testing. There are many many excellent games from many genres available at z2, as well as a download of the original MS-DOS version.

Important Note: The following screenshots and demos are of a pre-release version of DreamZZT and are subject to change at any time. Please link to this page directly and not to the screenshots, as there is no guarentee they will always be available at their current location, and they may represent bug and features that may not be available in a public version. These screenshots are a collection from several different platforms, including MS-DOS, Windows 2000, linux, and the Sega Dreamcast. The list of supported platforms is subject to change at any time. For information on the latest official release of DreamZZT, please visit the DreamZZT homepage.

Now that we’ve got the disclaimer out of the way, lets start our tour of DreamZZT 3.0 running Epic Megagames’ Town of ZZT. These screenshots have been scaled down so I don’t take up everyone’s friends pages. If you want to see the full image, just click on it!

Our first top on the tour is the the scroll in the center of town, welcoming you to the game.

Users of the original ZZT will note several things missing from the status bar, and that the scroll-like text window has been replaced by a simple box.

Now, lets talk a walk into the store.

This is the Armory in the Town of ZZT, where you can exchange gems for ammo and torches, and uncover a few secrets too! There are several objects missing from the board, noteably the spinners in the Guardian puzzle, and the door to the stock room, making that puzzle extremely easy until those objects are supported 🙂

Now we’re going to demonstrate one of the major improvements to DreamZZT 3 over the previous releases:

Hyperlinks are now fully functional inside text dialogs, allowing you to interact with the store owner. After selecting “Torch” from the list of items, we see the store owner’s one-line responce at the bottom of the screen:

Darn. Too bad there’s no cheat to give us gems, eh?

Spoiler alert! The following two screenshots give away the secret to one of the first puzzles you must solve in the Town of ZZT. For those of you who would prefer to solve the puzzle on their own, please stop reading now. There is no further information in this post besides a summary of the Bank of ZZT puzzle.Spoiler alert!

I am very pleased to announce the first fully-solvable puzzle in DreamZZT’s history: The Bank of ZZT. As an added bonus, DreamZZT doesn’t support “dark” rooms yet, so you don’t need to light a torch, and you can see exactly how the bank vault works.

Here we see the Bank of ZZT in all its glory — naked, and undark. This puzzle is a very interesting combination of pushers, sliders, boulders, and ZZT-OOP scripting. By pushing A, B, C, D, and E into the correct combination, you line up the boulders at the top, allowing the pushers to open up the bank vault. Pushers, Slider, and Boulders are a new addition to DreamZZT 3.0, they were previously unsupported.

After entering the correct combination and pusing the “push” boulder, we see that the pushers have moved the sliders out of the way, allowing you to enter the bank vault and steal the key and gems. Congratulations! You’ve obtained the first of the 7 purple keys!

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more DreamZZT news, coming to a LiveJournal friends page near you!

-Sam