I downloaded ZZT off a BBS when it came out, and to begin with it wasn't particularly impressive.
I remember switching into edit mode on the 'Town of ZZT', and tweaking the responses of the characters.
I was learning to program with Turbo C++ at the time, and actually it was ZZT's 'OOP' that really helped connect some of the concepts in my brain to what Objects were (although ZZT's objects were really sort of Actors that responded to, and could send messages).
I would come back over the years, and I remember on IRC in 94' there was a pretty vibrant community writing games.
What I loved doing was exploiting various ZZT bugs. You could for instance place the player object next to another object, and the next time the player moved they would warp to the object. You could then 'zap' the player object to release them.
One thing you could do is place a stairway to another level, and place the player object on the stairway, and the player would remain on the original level, but the graphics for the other level would be overlaid on it.
I used this to make an RPG engine, where the ASCII art for different encounters were on these other levels, and there was a special level that would basically clear portions of the ascii art to reveal the selected enemy.
There were all sorts of clever hacks developers came up for checking health by converting it to torches, and back, and all sorts of other crazy things.
I remember switching into edit mode on the 'Town of ZZT', and tweaking the responses of the characters.
I was learning to program with Turbo C++ at the time, and actually it was ZZT's 'OOP' that really helped connect some of the concepts in my brain to what Objects were (although ZZT's objects were really sort of Actors that responded to, and could send messages).
I would come back over the years, and I remember on IRC in 94' there was a pretty vibrant community writing games.
What I loved doing was exploiting various ZZT bugs. You could for instance place the player object next to another object, and the next time the player moved they would warp to the object. You could then 'zap' the player object to release them.
One thing you could do is place a stairway to another level, and place the player object on the stairway, and the player would remain on the original level, but the graphics for the other level would be overlaid on it.
I used this to make an RPG engine, where the ASCII art for different encounters were on these other levels, and there was a special level that would basically clear portions of the ascii art to reveal the selected enemy.
There were all sorts of clever hacks developers came up for checking health by converting it to torches, and back, and all sorts of other crazy things.