[GetDizzy]

This is a topic that keeps coming up on discord and I find it genuinely fascinating to see people's responses, so I figured I'd bring it up on here too!


For me, I found MegaZeux and ZZT both on AOL some time between 1997 and 1999 (it's honestly kinda fuzzy?), while searching for flight simulators on AOL Games (miscategorization, yay!).

The first games I played were the Violence games (link here) which amused the heck out of me at age 10 but were honestly kind of terrible in retrospect. From there I remember playing the Cans series as it was one of the most downloaded, and I found my way into the community through things mentioned in there. I'd found out about IRC previously due to some pokemon mirc script rpg thing iirc, and I just kind of popped into the channels mentioned. Only #zzt was still barely active, #mzx had either moved or changed names or something by that point. I found mWorld shortly thereafter but never participated in the forums, not even lurking much really. My sole contribution to mWorld was uploading a game that was on DMZX's vault but has since been hidden because it's really terrible

[Galladin]

Nice topic! =)

For me (and the other Finnards), well...back in 2001 we were at the ripe age of 14 or so and got interested in turning our roleplaying sessions and other wild teenage frustrations and fantasies into video games. Can't recall which ones we tried first - needless to say, we didn't know much of coding and still don't - but eventually Jauhis found Megazeux (probably via mWorld or something) and presented it first to Jester and then to me. The first games I recall playing were Brotherhood by Herc & Hydra (one of my favourite MZX games of all time) and ZzCrook's Legend of Omega series. I remember going all "wow" when I found out how overlays worked. =D

I think we all then proceeded to join DMZX early 2002 and later, unfortunately, found the #mzx IRC channel and continued spamming there.

[Revvy]

It was 2000; I was 10 when several people in older brother's grade 8 class discovered MegaZeux somehow, and he brought it home to share with me. I spent a lot of time playing Caverns, and the first games we downloaded from mWorld were Empire and the Zeux sequels, followed by the Encyclopedia and Bernard the Bard (these last two blew my mind). I discovered DigitalMZX's forums in 2001 when I had non-dialup internet at school in a mostly self-directed, unmonitored learning environment. I tried out IRC for the first time in 2002, and Exophase made fun of me the very first time I joined so I didn't return for a long time.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

Among all the shareware games I played a long time ago was ZZT, its editor feature being mindblowing back then as it allowed the creation of all kinds of custom worlds for it. I never actually made anything noteworthy with it (just simple crap for myself), but I loved the worlds that other people made. Eventually, I learned that the creator of Code Red made something like ZZT but better so of course I checked that out. And yep, it was like ZZT but better.

First game? Probably Caverns like everyone else. And then afterwards, I don't exactly remember but it's probably the classics. Y'know, Honor Quest, Cans, Bernard The Bard, Engine, the usual.

[Spectere]

I found MegaZeux (v1.07) back around 1994/1995 thanks to Sivion ZZT constantly yammering on about it. I snagged it from AOL keyword PC GAMES, back when that was a thing.

It's a bit harder to remember the first games I've played due to it being so long ago (and me being 10, etc etc). Obviously Caverns blew me away at the time, and I know I played Blue Buckaroo when it was still somewhat new. I distinctly remember playing the MZX version of PDS, but I can't find it for the life of me, and I remember being impressed by Scott Hammack's Party On because it was the first MZX game I had played that indicating what direction the player was facing (built-in support for facing direction was added in MZX 2.x).

Oh yeah! Freakish Town! Can't forget about that. Same with Darkness, Honor Quest, etc. Funny, there's a lot of popular titles that I just sort of missed for one reason or another (Engine, BtB, etc).

[Elig]

You know, it was so long ago now that I don't entirely remember. I think that I came to it through ZZT. I was a big fan of Super ZZT, which I had bought in a store on a shareware floppy disk (one of those big old floppy disks), and at some point after we got the internet I must have been searching for it and found ZZT. It's probably around that time that I also found MZX, but I'm not 100% sure exactly when it happened. I was definitely using a 486 at the time, so that should give you a feeling for the era.

I do know that the first MZX game I played was Caverns of Zeux, which was mindblowing at the time, especially it's sound track which was state of the art for the era. At the time, the graphics really weren't that bad because aside from Doom most everything was in crappy dos low res low color 2d anyway. I remember being really impressed with the intro and music, and loving the gameplay. After that, I played most everything that I could get my hands on for MZX for a long time. I remember when the MZX encyclopedias came out, and being really impressed with them. The cans series I played one at a time as they came out, Bernard the Bard, but in the really early days there were far fewer actually good games. So I tried stuff like Blue Buckaroo when that came out. FCM is probably the first really good MZX game I remember playing outside of the original included MZX games.

I wish I remembered more about the exact first time I tried it, but all I remember is how mindblowing Caverns was the first time I played it. Caverns is a great game, I still think Caverns is pretty mindblowing.

[djtiesto]

Patalano gave me a disk with MZX on it and a few games... he found ZZT because someone he used to talk to on AOL gave it to him and wanted to make a game about him (or something like that?), then he got me into it... when he told me about MZX, it sounded amazing - I was mostly attracted to the MOD music and the character edit features. The first MZX games I played were Freakish Town, Star Force, Weirdness, and of course Caverns. Liked Caverns the best out of those! This was around the spring of 1996 - can't believe it's been 22 years already!

[iamgreaser]

Wanted a game I could play on my HP 95LX. ZZT was that game. MegaZeux was also in the list but didn't look like it would work.

Eventually thought I'd give MegaZeux a whirl. Yeah. First game was, oddly enough, Bomb Brothers. Why? It was featured and I thought why the hell not.

[djtiesto]

Oh yeah and I remember Dan also telling me about Empire, and its character selection system... didn't get to play it until later on but just hearing about that influenced Engine's character selection system.

[astral]

AOL file libraries searching for "game creation" and I distinctly remember playing Castle of the Aardvarks and Zog the Hunter very early on.

[Bramble]

This gamer friend of my brother's gave us a floppy disk with ZZT. Then he gave us MZX. I remember playing Caverns and the graphics blowing our freaking brains out. Compared to ZZT, the new GMS felt limitless. At the same time, Pizza Man for ZZT was my favorite game I had played, so I created MZX versions and found ZeuxWorld online (probably by a search?) ZZ uploaded my games and that got little teenage me so excited that I kept making games. Then, when ZeuxWorld disappeared, I asked - through IRC or AIM or something - where my lovely website had gone. They laughed at ignorant Bramble and said DigitalMZX was the new place.

Caverns
Cans series
Bomb Brothers
Adlo
Engine remix
Brotherhood
Bernard the Bard
Weirdness

...to name some.

[Sai'ke]

Revvy, on 08 January 2018 - 10:44 PM, said:

I tried out IRC for the first time in 2002, and Exophase made fun of me the very first time I joined so I didn't return for a long time.

I don't remember how I found MZX. I think it was by accident after having played ZZT for a long time and looking for ZZT resources.
I remember Ghent introduced me to iRC at the time. I still had a lot of growing up to do and was a really irritating kid though, so maybe that wasn't the best idea

I think the first mzx game I played was BtB. Even before I properly played Caverns. I was greatly impressed by it. I was especially enamored by the mood and music and how different times of day brought out different characters. If this is all possible, the possibilities must be endless!

Back then though, I was always sad that you couldn't compile mzx games into standalone EXEs. Because you know, it wasn't proper programming unless you made an EXE

[Verasev]

Sai'ke, are you ever gonna join the mzx discord?

[Sai'ke]

Yes!

It took a while, but I'm there.

[Graham]

I too am very fascinated by this topic and will get all nostalgic from time to time about origins of stuff like this.

My family moved to Pendleton, Oregon in 1993 and I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about it. I didn't want to leave my friends and pendleton seemed remote and kind of country western like. I dropped out of school and spent many days staying up into the wee hours of the morning and sleeping until late afternoon or early evening. About this time my parents purchased a used IBM 286 used and it had a dozen or so games on it from the previous owner. ZZT was at the end of the alphabetized DOS menu system. When I saw how horrible it looked, I didn't even bother to play it for more than 5 minutes. I played the other games like Commander Keen. One day my younger brother told me you could create your own games within ZZT and I was shocked. We spent many hours together making crappy games that no one would want to play or did play besides us.

Around 1996 my parents upgraded to a used 486 and we got dial-up, Yay! I instantly thought about ZZT and how it was likely people were making and uploading games for it. Sure enough, I started checking out other peoples games and was blown away! There were even some that had hacked in more colors and some cooler characters and such (hello Super Tool Kit). I also started hearing whisperings of an improved GCS that a certain prolific ZZT'er had created. This was what I wanted! More options, more freedom to design my games as I chose with less boundaries in the way. I checked out caverns and thought it was a great showcase for MegaZeux 2.51, the version I began with. I downloaded a bunch of games and the ones that stand out are Weirdness and Bernard the Bard. I was enamored with these two and studied their robotic programs until I too could make animations in my player characters and such.

I worked on Amnesia from 1996 to 1998 when I moved back to Sheridan, my hometown, to be with my friends again. I no longer had access to a computer so I asked my brother to release what I had so far. I was delighted at the response it got but when I got access to a computer again, It felt dated and I really didn't feel I could be very enthusiastic about finishing it. So I just moved on to other ideas I had.

MegaZeux has been with me all this time. sometimes more and sometimes less, i'll step away for close to a year at times but always come back to it like an old friend. I love it and it's gotten me through some difficult times. The loss of a child, divorce, depression at various times. I love the problem solving aspect of game creation and seeing my ideas come to life. I love making games so much that I find it hard to really finish one. I guess it doesn't help that I never really have a plan and that I'm not very good at it. Oh well, I'm continually getting better. I really wish I was more engaged in the community but I don't know how to be. I guess I don't feel like I have anything to contribute most of the time. I find it hard to communicate online too and much prefer other ways.

One final note is that I think the latest work to MegaZeux's editor is some of the best I've seen and I'm eternally grateful to Lachesis, Dr. Lancer-X, Exo, AJS, Alexis and the many others who have poured considerable time and energy and love into it over the years. It warms my heart to see that this thing is still alive and kicking after so many years. Thanks for the memories guys! Sorry I rambled on, I'm getting old.

[Sai'ke]

Wow man. Sorry to hear about the rough times you had to go through. Hope things are looking up again!

Have you ever thought about stringing together some unfinished games into a single experience somehow? Might be able to come up with an overarching story that strings them together somehow. Or maybe even something about how those projects came to be? I remember playing a game called The Beginner's Guide that did something like this. It was pretty cool.

I love your avatar by the way.

[Graham]

Sai'ke, on 19 February 2018 - 06:00 AM, said:

Wow man. Sorry to hear about the rough times you had to go through. Hope things are looking up again!

Have you ever thought about stringing together some unfinished games into a single experience somehow? Might be able to come up with an overarching story that strings them together somehow. Or maybe even something about how those projects came to be? I remember playing a game called The Beginner's Guide that did something like this. It was pretty cool.

I love your avatar by the way.

Thanks Sai'ke, things are getting better everyday but I'm going through a very hard time right now and I never thought it was something that would happen or that I wanted. All I wanted was to be a husband and a father and come home to a house full of kids and play with them before dinner. Instead I come home to an empty apartment and sit in front of the computer all night part of the week. I have my son with me part of the week and this is the highlight of my week. without him, I really wouldn't have a reason to be here. Ugh! I'm sorry to spill all of that here to a bunch of people that don't know me but I've been desperate to talk about how I'm feeling and I don't really have anywhere to do that. I think I need to reach out to employee assistance or something to get some counseling but I haven't done it yet.

Moving on. Yes, I've been thinking of doing this but I want to actually finish a game first (Servo). Once I do that i'd love to put together previous attempts into a sort of an interactive museum that explains how I arrived at that point.

[Sai'ke]

Oof, I'm really sorry to hear that man. I wish there was something I could say or do that'd make things better. I'm glad you still find some strength from hanging out with your son though. How old is he? Do you play MZX games together? Or is he not that old yet?

I hope you find the help that you need. If you want to talk more, you can always hit me up in a PM. I'm not sure how much I can do to help, but I could at least listen.

Hang in there!

The game looks cool by the way. I just had a quick look-see on youtube. Impressive. And cute robot!
I guess the avatar is from the game? I'm curious about the story in it.

[T-Bone]

Found ZZT on AOL. Later on found out about online custom games when visiting my dad's place when surfing the web for the first time on my own in 1995 or 1996 I believe. I would download them to a bunch of 1.44 disks i always had in my pocket.

There was a lot of neat personal sites people had back in those days to showcase their ZZT games. I found out about MegaZeux through them. First person I ever emailed was actually Chronos from the ZZT/MZX community.

I was introduced to web development and game development through the ZZT/MZX communities. Funny to think that back in those days the only reason why I wanted my own Dial Up connection, was just so that I could download people's ZZT and MZX games. ZeuxWorld is where I would pick up my stash of MZX games.

first ZZT game I actually completed was inspired by all of the ZZT default games. Called Union Town:
http://gamers.build/UNION.ZZT

First MegaZeux game I ever completed was called Jetpack Man and was heavily inspired by the classic Jetpack DOS game.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 05 March 2018 - 06:04 AM

[GetDizzy]

Oddly enough my first ZZT games were the Yoshi's Island series by tucan and the Yoshi series by Chris Kohler. Not great games but I had fun with them.

My all time favorites have to be either ESP or Code Red though, still. Maybe Teen Priest or Edible Vomit as well.

[Elig]

Code red is definitely my favorite ZZT game. I loved it when I was a kid/teenager and still love it today.

[djtiesto]

Insidious, on 14 March 2018 - 05:20 PM, said:

Oddly enough my first ZZT games were the Yoshi's Island series by tucan and the Yoshi series by Chris Kohler. Not great games but I had fun with them.

My all time favorites have to be either ESP or Code Red though, still. Maybe Teen Priest or Edible Vomit as well.

I met Chris Kohler at E3 2006 and told him how much I loved the Yoshi games back in the day.

[CJA]

Got ZZT from a "100 Great Games" CD, looked up more stuff about ZZT online and found links to MZX 2.51. This was probably five years or so before I went to DMZX to actually release something.

[Exophase]

Found ZZT looking for random games on AOL and while I played some games in it I didn't really get much out of them. The extent to which you could program objects in the game was completely lost on me. While looking for more ZZT worlds I saw mentions of MZX but thought it was either another ZZT game or another kind of enhancer like STK. So I didn't bother with it for a while until I saw people talking about it and figured it had to be something else. After finally playing it I kind of wished I'd found it sooner. It was surprising how much of a difference some pretty modest improvements over ZZT made, especially the mod music.

This was version 2.07 and some time in the first half of 1996, back when I was 13. I remember it was before version 2.49+ came out in August, which was when the new sound engine (BWSB) was added, and it was supposed to be the last set of minor versions before the big 3.x rewrite that would strip away a bunch of the limits.

[Risu2112]

Friend exposed me to ZZT around 1994, sometime in 1996 (I'm either 12 or 13 at this point) he came by with floppy disks that had Megazeux, which we ran on my 286. The computer wasn't quite fast enough, it was almost 10 years old by this point, so we'd only get around 5fps for most games.

First games I played were caverns, alien wars 2, then 1, then Talon's tale pretty shortly after that. I have a very vivid memory of the first robot I made, it was the tutorial robot that moved around in a square. I assigned it the little mouse character from caverns, and it was deeply empowering.

[Verasev]

I initially found zzt on one of those electronic catalog thingies that came with another epic megagames software (I think it was Jill of the Jungle). Remember these? It had a cool looking advert for zzt in it that looked like something I had tried to make in qbasic. Intrigued, I ordered it from epic megagames. I spent like 5 dollars and they sent me zzt, super zzt, two floppy disks full of zzt worlds, and a hard copy of a guidebook to some of those worlds which i still have. I proceeded to make a shitty game starring me and my childhood friends which you can find packaged with Chaos Warrior on z2.

I forget when and how exactly I found megazeux. I remember I was looking for something that was like zzt but had more features. I know I came across Zeuxworld before I came across DMZX.

[AlphaCoder]

So I found it because I used to play/create ZZT in the pre-MZX days and eventually migrated over to MZX.

I've never created an MZX game, despite knowing the robotic language quite well. I'm certain I never will.

And though I've played most (maybe all) of the big hits, the only MZX game I've ever finished was Caverns of Zeux. Nothing else ever compelled me to go all the way.

[Jeep Dragon]

I remember the first time my twin brother and I had heard of ZZT. We got it not long after it was released. It was probably before our father even started experimenting with a Bulletin Board System called "Ground Zero."

One day when we were 11 years old, our father said to us something like, "I ordered a new computer game for you guys to try out. It is called 'ZZT'. I read that it has like about a hundred screens on it. That should be a challenge for you. It should arrive in the mail in about a week."

We kept asking our father every day when it would arrive and were excited when that package of 2 or 3 5&1/4-inch floppy disks came in the mail with "ZZT install disk #" on those white labels at the top. After installing ZZT and following the instructions to run it in DOS, our father played the Town of ZZT a couple minutes and ended up dying on the part where you have to get around the lakes while dodging the bullets. We decided to play it afterward to see if we could get past it. We probably did once, but didn't get far afterward.

I remember pressing 'E' by mistake a couple times and thinking that the yellow border with the cursor was some kind of glitch. After we played the demo and tour worlds, it dawned on us that that 'E' was for an editor. Our excitement for ZZT increased dramatically as we would create boards then challenge our father to play them. After our father enrolled in the Ground Zero BBS, he noticed that someone had uploaded a ZZT game on it (can't remember what it was called). We insisted that he download it and he kept refusing for a couple days, but eventually downloaded and played it for a couple minutes. We found that game to be easy and take about 5-10 minutes to beat, but we would play it often just for the thrill of it being someone else's ZZT game from Ground Zero.

We would get regular newsletters from Tim Sweeney of Potomac Computer Systems where it would advertise the registered games of ZZT, a ZZT game-making contest, and plans for a Super ZZT. We kept asking our father if he could register ZZT to get the Dungeons of ZZT, City of ZZT, and Caves of ZZT, but he would reply with, "Why pay money for those games when you can make your own for free?" We would also joke about entering the ZZT contest, but never bothered to make anything good enough to try.

Eventually, our father bought a registered copy of ZZT, providing us with more zeal for ZZT as well as more inspiration in making our own games. Not long after Super ZZT came out, he surprised us by ordering a copy of it. When it arrived, we played Super ZZT's 'Monster Zoo' until we were sick, but also felt sick when we could not find the editor on it. That made us stop making ZZT games, because we were hooked on the features of Super ZZT and bummed thinking that it didn't have an editor. Our parents kept trying to convince us that it just didn't come with an editor when we kept pressing keys to try to find it.

Well, that withdrawal was short lived when we got the next newsletter that had "Yes, Super ZZT Does have an editor!" as one of the sections that said something from Tim Sweeney like, "A lot of ZZT game designers wrote in asking where the Super ZZT editor is. Well, umm, we didn't intend to make it a feature of Super ZZT. This was a monumental goof on my part -- I didn't realize how many people love ZZT for its editor! But now after dozens of letters, I know better." then it explained that you can get to it by typing "SUPERZ/E" to run it then 'E' gets to the editor.

That started an insane obsession with Super ZZT. My brother and I made a lot more games on Super ZZT than we did in ZZT. One thing we loved about Super ZZT was that the 'H' key (meant for 'hint') was programmable, which we would use for all kinds of stuff in our games such as charging up super attacks in fighting games or opening inventory menus. As we would continue to get the newsletters, we saw Potomac Computer Systems change its name to "Epic Megagames" and start advertising games like Jill of the Jungle and Jazz Jackrabbit. We never bothered buying any of those games because we knew that they didn't come with an editor. However, as we saw those games start appearing on shelves in stores and heared people talking about them, we had to brag to people that we knew about the company when it first came out and would talk about ZZT and Super ZZT, usually resulting in confused scowls from those people.

I believe that it was sometime during the Fall of 1996 when our mother surprised us by getting a new computer in the mail that had Windows 95 on it and a *gasp* actual CD Rom drive! A couple months later, our parents signed up for dial-up Internet, making us the first of anyone we knew who had an Internet connection. Not long later, we decided to search it for ZZT and Super ZZT games and gleefully started downloading every game that we could find. We would get annoyed when something called "Megazeux" would keep showing up on the ZZT and Super ZZT websites. We would just ignore it and assume that it was some kind of complex GCS that was nothing like ZZT.

One day, my brother decided to read some websites about Megazeux. He came to me and told me about it that it was supposedly like ZZT but way better. I would tell him not to bother with it. He downloaded it and tried to play it, but it may not have come with Caverns of Zeux on it. It would just give an error that it can't load Caverns.mzx then show the blank editor. My brother looked at the editor for a couple minutes while I kept bugging him to forget it and look for more Super ZZT games. He tried saving a game as "Caverns" then re-running Megazeux to find that it would load his game instead of getting the error. He told me that the problem was that we didn't have the Caverns game and that he was going to look for it. I kept begging him to forget it and just stick with Super ZZT. When he finally downloaded it and started to play it, it wasn't playing any music or sound. As he was playing a little of Caverns, I continued to beg him not to bother with this "cheap ZZT clone" and look for more Super ZZT games. He told me that Megazeux is supposed to have sound and started fiddling with its settings and kept re-running it to see if the sound would work.

After a few attempts and enduring my naggings against his efforts, the magical Megazeux moment happened--the Caverns of Zeux blew us away with it's amazing intro music. My brother started playing it while I watched it in glee and drooled over the potentials of our amazing replacement for Super ZZT. My brother downloaded Weirness, which fascinated us with it's graphics. We didn't know about the char editor at first, thus we would edit either Caverns or Weirdness and rip a board out to put it into the editor and delete everything so that we could use the charset. One time while I was editing a Weirdness board, I accidently ran into the char edit screen and noticed all the frames of the player in it. I then edited Caverns and opened the char edit to notice the set of chars. We were then thrilled to find out how chars were edited. We kept fiddling with the editor, trying to figure out how to get music. When we finally did by examining the help, we started going through the robotic commands list to see what kind of things it can do that Super ZZT cannot. As soon as we saw commands like "lockplayer" and "move player dir" I said, "We can use these commands to make a side-scroller!" I demanded that he let me see if I can make a jumping engine.

After several hours of looking at the help and experimenting, I got my jumping engine in and started work on my first game called "Blazer," which was heavily-influenced by Super Metroid. My brother wanted to work on a side-scroller as well, but I told him that if I was making one then he should make an overhead shooter. He reluctantly agreed and we started taking turns working on our games.

A couple days later, my brother found a page that mentioned the #megazeux IRC channel. My brother joined it under the nickname "Zeuxhead" and was surprised that all of the people in the channel were the same people who made a lot of the games we had just downloaded. It felt like we were chatting with celebrities. Later on in that first day we found out that Greg Janson was one of the people on the channel and started chatting with us. We chatted with him until everyone else left but him. We thought we were in paradise having a one-on-one chat with the one who made Megazeux, because we never got to do that with Tim Sweeney.

Now, after all that robust and boring backstory, I would say that the first games of Megazeux I remember playing were Caverns, Weirdness, Ode to ZZT, Honor Quest, and Crystal Cities. Crystal Cities was a big inspiration for making that most ridiculous game ever which was my first official game released--Outrage. No, I was not high or drunk when I made it, because I have never smoked, drank, or done drugs. I guess I was just trying to "fit in" with some of the "edginess" that I would see on the IRC channel. We would notice that most people's pages would have some kind of company name on it to represent the group or individual who made its games. We figured that that was the norm and decided to call ourselves "Eon Entertainment."

Anyways, after completing Outrage, my brother and I teamed up to work on Sponko's Legendary Journey (heavily influenced by Super Mario World of course). I think after that was during a time when we were into martial arts. One time we visited some martial arts IRC channel and saw someone with the nick name of "Tae Kwon Do Joe." We decided to start making a fighting game, but couldn't come up with a name for It after a couple days until my brother decided to name it "Tae Kwon Do Joe" off of that nickname. Of course, we had the same demo curse that many other people had at the time where we kept wanting to work on different genres, resulting in things like Silent Thunder Demo and Fatal Myth Chapter 1.

After playing Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake a lot and remembering some of the Megazeux games that had 3D mazes on them, we wanted to try to make a 1st-person shooter. We wanted an engine that could render a lot of wall, floor, and ceiling textures simply by the char and color of the floor and walls near the player. My brother made the maze-rendering engine and I made the graphics, guns, and shooting engine. Of course, with our limited knowledge of efficiency in coding a dynamically-rendered maze engine like that, it was terribly slow, but we didn't know how to do it better and be as textured as we wanted it. We were also trying to rush it during a Christmas vacation from college and got Assault out.

That's pretty much my story of how I got interested in Megazeux. Of course, since the 2000's, I haven't done much with Megazeux. I occationally experiment with it like once every several years just to see if I can make an engine with it. The last time was last year sometime when I was trying to make a better engine for Assault for either a remake or a sequel, but gave up on it for a while.

This post has been edited by Jeep Dragon: 15 July 2018 - 05:28 AM

[Graham]

Jeep Dragon, on 14 July 2018 - 08:42 PM, said:

I remember the first time my twin brother and I had heard of ZZT. ... The last time was last year sometime when I was trying to make a better engine for Assault for either a remake or a sequel, but gave up on it for a while.

Wow! That was an incredibly detailed and cool story. Thank you for sharing it I love learning about origins and how things came to be.

[Lachesis]

I was digging through a shareware disc called "1001 Great Games" in roughly 2002 or 2003 and playing the sort of bad and edgy games I played around that time. I kept seeing references to something called "ZZT" and it made me mad because I thought the name sounded dumb (I was like 11 at the time OK). Eventually I caved in and played it once I realized that, because of the assortment of "ZZT" worlds on the disc, it must have a level editor of some kind. The games included on the disc that I remember were Town of ZZT, EP/ARP World, a corrupted file that was supposed to be "Zoo of ZZT", and a bizarre half-finished copy of Ned the Knight with a different title screen than the final release (which I loved until it abruptly ended partway through the forest with no other indication of it being incomplete). I found and downloaded several more ZZT games on the Duky Inc. website. I played a lot of Alexis Janson's ZZT games and was really fascinated by Chrono Wars and the ZZT Encyclopedia. I made a lot of my own ZZT games that I never shared with anyone and have mostly lost.

I kept seeing references to "MegaZeux" but I wasn't sure what it was exactly and wasn't that interested in it. Eventually I found Zeuxworld around early-to-mid 2004, but only really used it for ZZT games and paid no attention to MegaZeux at all. Meanwhile, I found a copy of MegaZeux 1.00g on the same shareware disc and finally tried it and immediately started making my own games. Being MegaZeux 1.00g, it corrupted an RTS I was making and I made a Zeuxworld account to report the bug and Exophase got really mad at me because 2.69c had just been released or something

Anyway everyone was really mean on that forum and then Zeuxworld died and I joined DigitalMZX and uh well ┐(´д｀)┌ i don't really want to talk about the like 5 or 6 years that followed

MeegaZuex