this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
254 points (95.7% liked)

Games

43548 readers
1791 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The glory days of Epic Games are long gone and Tim Sweeney is a god damn moron.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

Lesser known, but I cannot recommend enough going back and exploring the worlds of ZZT (and by extension, MegaZeux) as an early, amateur game engine. The projects are raw but endearing and an absolutely wonderful time capsule that still has a niche but dedicated following.

https://museumofzzt.com/

https://www.digitalmzx.com/

Some day when I have the time, I'd like to make an extended engine similar to this. Something with a simple scripting language, extreme flexibility in character and color sets. Ability to run and host your own game worlds over SSH or something similar. Just like a real spit in the face for triple A and going the complete opposite direction of minimal but super accessible.

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 hours ago

FuckyeahZZT!!!

So good.

[–] Malix@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

somehow missed zzt entirely, never played it, seen some random screenshots back in the day and thought it was some kind of weird nethack -clone with occasional ascii graphics. But also the only few screenshots I recall looked like nethack, with ascii smiley -character instead lf @ as user avatar.

So... it's some kind of game engine which you can script to make any kind of game, kinda?

[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That's it exactly.

It's unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it's designed around very limited ideas, but that said it's still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.

MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.

You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182

It's the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven't beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.

Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it's about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can't process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so ...

[–] Malix@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago

that does sound quite cool. I'll have to check this out, feels like something I would have really enjoyed as a kid.

Thanks!