Hail to the Maker!


Tim Sweeny
(he's still making Unreal now a days...)

For all of you who just wandered in here, ZZT started as a text editing program. Somewhere before v1, Tim made it into a game. This was a fairly run-of-the-mill game for it's time. Other games like it are "Castle of Kroz" (which I beat) and "Rouge" (although ZZT has NOWHERE near as big of a legacy) But what really set ZZT aside is the letter E. E for the Editor option, which allowed anyone who had ZZT, or even the demo, to make a world of thier own on the very same level of the actual game. Many games today rely on massivly powerful 3d engines. The programming of these engines, and all they can do within it, is a feat. But a large portion of work lies within the art. Where the program is a clever tool to manipulate, art is data. And each textures needs to be made seperately. Each level to be thought out and tested simply for the "feel" of them. ZZT tapped an endless source of artists, planners, designers, and thinkers. They took Tim's cute little town and city and turn them into WORLDS! Even some programmers got in the mix and opened up new realms for the artists to go for. There is no doubt that they have surpassed the maker long ago. The only problem with this marvelous concept is that it's very hard for tim to get money from this. Tim can't sell other's work (unless a deal is struck like with Myth: Worlds) and the fact that he's a little more famous for making this is very intangible. This, and the fact that editors are so bloody complicated now, both leave the masses of artists and thinkers with little to do. (but have you seen the mods for unreal?)


I'm not actually part of the ZZT cult as of right now. I will probably never really get into it. But when I was something around.... what, 9-12 yrs old, ZZT city was a GREAT game. Seriously great. When that disk corupted I was seriously unhappy. I cried.

I started making a world a while ago, I have no plot line in mind, no ultimate goal, not even an idea of what's beyond the forest, but I DO know the general shape it's going to take. I'll work on it when I feel like, it's nothing great, or even good, but it's ZZT:
Adventures of PhIL: Prince of Insufient Light
A world I created, but it's nowhere near done. So don't even bother getting it.

uh, yeah. ZZT.org (an extensive cult site, big archive) seems to have suddenly transfered athority and was then immedetly dropped. It has been replaced with "ZZT will lightning strike twice?"
What the hell? They just dropped it? Tim himself could at least keep it up as an archive if nothing else. The reason I like ZZT is because it's such a crappy game but it's a testement to how much of an impact one person can be. It's stayed around this long, and had that big of a following, and it just got dropped! IT'S THE STONEHENGE OF THE PC GAMEING INDUSTRY! Don't bulldoze it! In the day and age of Microsoft and XP, the feeling that someone can make a difference is nice to feel now and then.

ok, um. I've checked again and zzt.org now wants a password and such...
So............
Is someone doing something with it?

Nope, it's gone.
Alas, someone realised what they were doing with their life.

more to come....
Reboot