COMPLETE: Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux
May. 6th, 2017 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoWell, that wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, it wasn't on the list or anything, and I'm trying to be good about sticking to that now. But here we are, I suppose.
Basically, I have a few game ideas kicking around, from a Lolo clone to an RPG to that (probably) not serious Mega Man X fan game, but I've been stuck for ages on 1) ahahaha like I have time to make games on top of the novel and everything else in my life, and 2) what GCS/platform would I even use, anyway? 1 is still an issue so don't expect anything to be happening soon, if ever. For 2, I was curious about Megazeux, having spent my embarrassing teen phase in the ZZT community and never actually having gotten into what the "like ZZT only more powerful and can do sorcery" side of it was like. Admittedly Fusion is probably a better idea for flexibility and making something anyone would actually play, but I figured learning MZX could serve as an interim ZZT --> MZX --> ??? step between something I actually know and something modern devs actually use.
So obviously step one was to beat Caverns of Zeux, AKA The Game That Comes With MegaZeux. (Or it did until recently, anyway, and it's still a recommended first download even if it's technically decoupled now.) ZZT has Town, MZX has Caverns. I'm sure someone from the MZX community can explain why the first game ever made for MegaZeux was Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, and Zeux 1: Labyrinth of Zeux didn't come out until years later. I'm also sure they've probably addressed that so many times that I'm pointing out the equivalent of the "if it doesn't scan that must mean it's free" joke. Sorry, I'm new here.
Anyway, Caverns is fairly short and simple by actual game standards--any ZZT veteran would instantly recognize this as a standard "collect the 5 Things" quest game... except that it's not. Collecting all five rainbow gems is how you clear the first area. From there, there are six more bosses, seven pendants, six crystals... it feels like a hybrid of an N64-era Rare collectathon and Wonder Boy: Fail You Have Turned Into A Furry. (Really, any game where the clear moral of the story is "Be a dragon always" is okay with me.) It's long by ZZT standards, and by that I mean it took two days to beat rather than an hour, and it's... well, cavernous.
The biggest obstacle I experienced (other than that you can Sierra-softlock your game with no warning if you go into the wrong mouse hole first) is that there is a ton of backtracking and it is frequently unclear what area you just unlocked by accomplishing whatever goal you just accomplished. Once I was in a new area, I could find my way through and beat the boss easily enough, but if the boss didn't actually give me anything except a dead end and maybe turning me into a skeleton then the sense of "okay, now what?" necessitated a walkthrough on several occasions.
Still, as an MZX pack-in it's... well, to be honest, a little daunting. Coming from ZZT to MZX, Caverns already does some fairly complicated special effects and programming tricks that kind of make me afraid to try to break into it. I mean, this looks hard already, and this is coming from someone with ZZT experience looking at a language that reviews call easy to learn and is specifically designed to be a smooth ZZT-but-better transition. And that's for Caverns, which is, again, the Town of MegaZeux. If this is anything like ZZT, well, eventually the ZZT community hit a point where games that looked like Town weren't even allowed on Z2 anymore; the entire community had advanced so much that "your game must at least use STK I mean come on" was kind of a benchmark. If this is Baby's First MZX game, what do real MZX games look like nowadays?
(Answer: Like this or this, apparently. Holy fuck this was a bad idea.)
Basically, I have a few game ideas kicking around, from a Lolo clone to an RPG to that (probably) not serious Mega Man X fan game, but I've been stuck for ages on 1) ahahaha like I have time to make games on top of the novel and everything else in my life, and 2) what GCS/platform would I even use, anyway? 1 is still an issue so don't expect anything to be happening soon, if ever. For 2, I was curious about Megazeux, having spent my embarrassing teen phase in the ZZT community and never actually having gotten into what the "like ZZT only more powerful and can do sorcery" side of it was like. Admittedly Fusion is probably a better idea for flexibility and making something anyone would actually play, but I figured learning MZX could serve as an interim ZZT --> MZX --> ??? step between something I actually know and something modern devs actually use.
So obviously step one was to beat Caverns of Zeux, AKA The Game That Comes With MegaZeux. (Or it did until recently, anyway, and it's still a recommended first download even if it's technically decoupled now.) ZZT has Town, MZX has Caverns. I'm sure someone from the MZX community can explain why the first game ever made for MegaZeux was Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, and Zeux 1: Labyrinth of Zeux didn't come out until years later. I'm also sure they've probably addressed that so many times that I'm pointing out the equivalent of the "if it doesn't scan that must mean it's free" joke. Sorry, I'm new here.
Anyway, Caverns is fairly short and simple by actual game standards--any ZZT veteran would instantly recognize this as a standard "collect the 5 Things" quest game... except that it's not. Collecting all five rainbow gems is how you clear the first area. From there, there are six more bosses, seven pendants, six crystals... it feels like a hybrid of an N64-era Rare collectathon and Wonder Boy: Fail You Have Turned Into A Furry. (Really, any game where the clear moral of the story is "Be a dragon always" is okay with me.) It's long by ZZT standards, and by that I mean it took two days to beat rather than an hour, and it's... well, cavernous.
The biggest obstacle I experienced (other than that you can Sierra-softlock your game with no warning if you go into the wrong mouse hole first) is that there is a ton of backtracking and it is frequently unclear what area you just unlocked by accomplishing whatever goal you just accomplished. Once I was in a new area, I could find my way through and beat the boss easily enough, but if the boss didn't actually give me anything except a dead end and maybe turning me into a skeleton then the sense of "okay, now what?" necessitated a walkthrough on several occasions.
Still, as an MZX pack-in it's... well, to be honest, a little daunting. Coming from ZZT to MZX, Caverns already does some fairly complicated special effects and programming tricks that kind of make me afraid to try to break into it. I mean, this looks hard already, and this is coming from someone with ZZT experience looking at a language that reviews call easy to learn and is specifically designed to be a smooth ZZT-but-better transition. And that's for Caverns, which is, again, the Town of MegaZeux. If this is anything like ZZT, well, eventually the ZZT community hit a point where games that looked like Town weren't even allowed on Z2 anymore; the entire community had advanced so much that "your game must at least use STK I mean come on" was kind of a benchmark. If this is Baby's First MZX game, what do real MZX games look like nowadays?
(Answer: Like this or this, apparently. Holy fuck this was a bad idea.)