MegaZeux: Game creation system released in 1994 and still being developed today | Hacker News Reader

MegaZeux: Game creation system released in 1994 and still being developed today

digitalmzx.com

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I used to be a part of the MegaZeux community years ago. It was a group where curious creatives would come together and learn how to program or to create digital art. The releases for MegaZeux have been plagued with demos, "engines", and utilities. Relatively few finished games have actually been released, which really isn't surprising considering how complicated games can be. But it was a great and supportive community where people cut their teeth learning game development concepts.

It's interesting to see some go on to bigger projects in programming (Gilead Kutnick aka Exophase) or music (Sai'ke, Emalkay), and animation (can't remember the name of who I'm thinking of for this one in particular, but he released some very well-made animations on Newgrounds before entering the industry).

MegaZeux has a built in language called Robotic that was basically a limited BASIC, but organized in entities called "robots". There were also graphical hacks that let developers adjust the appearance of the ASCII characters or change the color palette. There was a lot to it for the time.

The Day of Zeux, or "DoZ", was always a fun test where teams would organize and create a game in 24 hours based on a specific topic given by judges. My first entry humbled me pretty hard since I went into it cocky about my capabilities, but my teammates abandoned development and we came in dead last. I tried in a later year and my team then created a game about escaping from a prison, which even had multiple endings. We didn't win, but we were near the top that time.

If it wasn't for MegaZeux, I probably wouldn't be a full time developer today.

I hope college went well for RoSS. Also, long live Frozen Cow Industries

Exophase is the best programmer I’ve ever met. Also, he’s the one that accomplished the port from DOS to Windows (IIRC, having nothing but the decompiled binaries to work from) back in the early 2000’s, and is probably the reason there’s still a community today. I could see MZX having died out otherwise.

He's a great dev. Despite that, a friend and I would troll him pretty hard on IRC. There was a user who popped on at some point named Elig who was good friends with him. We speculated that it was a fake alter ego of his (Elig is Gile backwards, short for Gilead).

Also his name Exophase came about because someone asked him to name a boss, but it was too cool a name for someone's game, so he used it for himself

As someone who frequently dabbled in but rarely contributed to the MZX scene, I can concur. There were a lot of formative experiences in it, even though the nature of the tools, unlike ZZT which has always been very productive for a certain kind of gameplay, often drove creators away from completion and into demoscene-esque hacking to break the limits and make their games more like "real" games. I was most engaged with it in its first years before going open-source, 1995-98 or so. The development since then has made it even more of a curiosity, with so many ways to customize your project in a way that will vastly expand its potential scope.

But it was a friendly environment to start in, and didn't try to push you towards professionalizing as tends to be the case with modern game engines - there were plenty of MZX games that I enjoyed and completed in test mode after getting softlocked by some bug and going out to the editor to fix it. There's a lesson in that, for sure - far different from the climate of Steam review comments.

Ahaha, I wondered if MegaZeux would ever make it to HN. Which one of us posted this? Been using MZX for 20 years. It’s what got me into programming. It’s a treasure.

There’s something about the programming model (“robots” so easily model people conversing and doing silly things) that allows you to just casually sketch out whatever’s in your head. That’s given rise to so many quirky, funny games for this system in a style that might never be made in any other context, except of course its predecessor ZZT. Dive into the archives and have fun.

The community, to my knowledge, still meets up yearly and also has impromptu hour-long game jams.

Me too, this was one if the first things I learned to program. This and MIRC scripting.

Blast from the past for sure. MZX, TurboPascal and mIRC scripting were some of the first things that got really into development after migrating from my brother's hand-me-down C64 and later an Amiga 600.

Another system like this is BYOND [0] (which stands for "Build Your Own Net Dream".) I think it started in 2001.

It has a number of problems, but there are a few games with fairly active communities that are built on top of BYOND, like Space Station 13. [1]

[0]: http://www.byond.com/ [1]: https://spacestation13.com/

BYOND holds a special place in my heart. It introduced me to software engineering and the client-server model!

somewhat buried in the helpfile is context (pasted below). Seems to be based on Tim Sweeney’s first attempt at gamedev, a text editor in Pascal that he turned into a game called ZZT[1]. Users could create their own games with the scripting language. MegaZeux is an offshoot.

    Overview of MegaZeux

    ...

    As you may already know, MegaZeux is a game system which
    allows you to play almost limitless worlds with
    dated-yet-charming graphics and with excellent digitized music
    and sound. Not only are there several MZX worlds out there
    already, but new worlds are being uploaded to large websites
    like DigitalMZX. However, the best feature of MegaZeux is the
    World Editor.
    
    Using the World Editor, ANYONE can create the world of their
    dreams. Make it as simple or complex (well, almost), as easy
    or difficult, as long or short as you please. We aren't just
    talking about worlds made up of petty, pre-programmed enemies
    and objects; MegaZeux has its own, easy-to-use PROGRAMMING
    LANGUAGE called Robotic that allows you to create objects,
    engines and worlds that do almost anything you desire. Not only
    can you make your own game with the editor, but every world
    MegaZeux can play can be opened in the editor. Take a look at
    how other games tick!
    
    For the newest user, it's recommended that you play Caverns,
    the first ever MegaZeux game, to get the feel of simple yet
    well-designed games in MegaZeux. You may wish to read the help
    section entitled "Controls" to learn how to play MegaZeux.
    
    If you're more adventurous, start with a more complex game like
    Demon Earth or Bernard the Bard, or a prettier game like & or
    Fritz Blitz to see what kind of graphics functions, bells and
    whistles MZX can offer.
    
    Once you have the feel for the game, feel free to dive into the
    World Editor and get messy! You should probably read the help
    section entitled "The World Editor" first.
    
    To go to one of these sections now, hit Enter after aligning
    the arrows with one of these choices. Press ESC now to exit to
    the game.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT

I was into ZZT and so I got the first version of MZX back in 94. I played with it a lot, though never really finished and released anything major. Some version of the game I’m in the credits as a beta tester.

While I was doing BASIC and stuff before then, ZZT and MZX definitely pushed me along the programming path even more strongly.

I was really into ZZT for several years. I played and made several games.

I liked MegaZeux for it's technical improvements over ZZT (sound, music, graphics), but I didn't like the programming language. It felt inconsistent and unfinished. Also, there were few great MegaZeux games at the time.

If anyone is curious, Alexis Janson is the original author of MegaZeux https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Alexis_Janson . She also made some of the best ZZT games.

I wonder when he made the transition. He was Gregory throughout his creation of MegaZeux, and after he announced his departure from the project

I find this inspiring. As I am looking to start my own community driven project, I can only hope that I can find enough people that share my vision.

To get an idea of the game you can try out the original version on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MZX102

there are many BASIC communities around as well!! now that i think about it, we should learn from what they are doing right. BASIC and variants have communities with super awesome survival skills.

Oh wow, it's basically ZZT. I loved that game in the 90s.

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