The Green Herring

In 2021, I did a #furry #ZZT #cyberpunk action/puzzle game, "Cyber Purge". In 2024, I overhauled it for itch.io! Become a nonbinary hacker and rescue an immersive VR game from a fascist! Old-school shooting/puzzle-solving await!

thegreenherring.itch.io/cyber-

#FurryArt #IndieGame #ANSIArt #Art #MastoArt #FediArt #PixelArt #ドット絵#ANSI #Textmode #TextmodeArt

Jan 25, 2025, 18:52 · · · 0 · 0
vga256

when i was a kid, you could build a simple game or application by dragging and dropping a few UI controls, and gluing them together with a few dozen lines of BASIC or Pascal or HyperTalk. it might take 15 minutes, at most, to get your little character walking around on the screen. this is how we ended up with a lot of hilariously good and cheap shareware you could share on BBSes in the 90s.

for the past year i've been quietly working on building a software thingie that doesn't exist anymore. i've been building a software toolkit that's kinda like Visual Basic and HyperCard and Borland Delphi, designed for making tile-based 2d games.

i've been using it to build my own little goofy games, and improving on the drag'n'drop IDE as i figuring things out. it's not done yet, and has a long ways to go before it's ready for other people to start making their own little applications and games. think PICO-8 or ZZT if they had grown up on a steady diet of Windows 3.1 and GeoWorks Ensemble instead.

i'm really, really bad about polishing turds to infinity and never releasing them. to break that habit, i've built a mini-website for the IDE/Shareware Creation Kit. it's called Exigy, named like a bad 80s metal hair band or richard garriott game.

exigy.org

i'll be posting weekly blog/devlog updates there, so i don't irritate anyone with them on this account. there is an rss feed button at the top right if you hate my demonic php and css.

#shareware #ultima #php #blog #smolweb #zzt #indiedev #hypercard #vintageApple #exigy

Dec 05, 2024, 17:52 · · · 4 · 0
rose (escaped not sanitized)

@vga256 I made a significant part of a Pagan sequel in #ZZT, but those were the days when keeping backups was expensive. So the obvious happened.

My Hydros boss fight was pretty, uh, boss!

Might be the second or third game I ever attempted.

vga256

i've been posting a lot of my shareware research lately, because i've been working on a project for the past few months with a blend of Windows 3.1 & GeoWorks Ensemble used as inspiration.

Exigy is a tile-based game creation kit that lets you make windows 3.1/95-styled games, like spiderweb software's Exile or rick saada's Castle of the Winds. hell, you could remake the Microsoft Entertainment Pack if you wanted to :)

the editor is very intentionally built to work like MS Visual Basic: you can drag and drop any GUI element into the game editor window and script in your own actions with lua. it even comes with its own built-in sprite editor, so you can create your art while you work.

games are modified in real-time with no compiling. the entire thing is built in Love2D.

think of it as ZZT for windows 3.1 if that had ever existed. 😆

#zzt #shareware #dosgaming #windows95 #win31 #exigy #gamedev #geoworks

Jul 03, 2024, 18:31 · · · 0 · 0
vga256

written in oral cursive

twelve fucking years of dragging Adventure Game Studio, kicking and screaming, away from being a Sierra/LucasArts game creation tool.

i tried to make you simulate real structs, but you insist that they're too hard to implement. classes? inheritance? basic constructors? forget it! i'm creating everything by hand like it's still 1989!

you made me drag and drop, by hand, 4000 UI buttons in a grid to simulate a 64x64 2d tile map. why? because the engine can't create new objects at runtime.

functions can only use other functions that exist "above" themselves in the project tree. have a function you need that exists in a file underneath the current one? it won't compile!

i'm pissed off now, AGS.

look, I go to you. I stuck up for you. you no help me now?

I say: fuck you ags. I do it myself.

today i'm starting work on a 2d tile-based RPG engine with a drag'n'drop world editor, sprite editor, and runtime scriptable npc behaviours. think ZZT with mouse support and 256 colour sprite graphics.

all in love2D, which has only improved and deepened itself over the past fifteen years. 🙏

#programming #gamedev #adventureGameStudio #zzt

Apr 03, 2024, 16:30 · · · 0 · 0
Konstantinos Dimopoulos

So, ZZT! is apparently alive and well and available for free on the Epic Store. store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/zz

#zzt #retrogaming

Enron Hubbard

🎮 #EmojiZoo: Changing the name from #ZZTMoji to stay in line with the newer nomenclature other #ZZT remakes have used, such as ClassicZoo and OpenZoo.

The original mockup felt too busy, and wasn't close enough to the original ZZT screen, so I made these two. Both are 80x25, which is in line with classic terminals and the original.

The one with the wide sidebar is the closest to the original ZZT, but I have a feeling it'll get a bit weird once I start mixing text and glyphs in the same area. So as a favor to future me, I decided that text would only be in dialog boxes, and the main interface would be purely glyphs. Health meter on the left, inventory/equipment on the right.

And yes, those are anatomical hearts for the health meter. The regular heart glyph was throwing things out of alignment, and the anatomical one entertains me more.

vga256

seven years ago, graphic designer dave bock created an adorable little #zzt zine for a 1st year graphic design project.

the zine is called "bitmap 45 - zzt", and chronicles his experience growing up in #canada with #bbs door games and #shareware

it has a very stylish layout with monochromatic visuals.

it disappeared from the web several years ago due to linkrot. thankfully, /|/|emeGameSoft hung on to a copy.

here is that pdf for your enjoyment. thank you dave for sharing this personal passion project with the world 🙏

vga256.com/dialup.cafe/uploads

TheMightyGlider

Did som further progress on my battle system in ZZT.

#zzt #gamedev

TangoBunny

Epic Games should be on stage getting an award for #ZZT, not #Fortnite.

Now -there's- a creative mode.

#GameAwards #EpicGames #EpicMEGAgames