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

digitalmzx.com

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

#11

Post by noderat »

PetahNZ wrote: post #8
throwaway53678 wrote: post #6

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 s…

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.

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

#12

Post by taveras »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #2

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!

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

#13

Post by throwaway53678 »

Minor49er wrote: post #9

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 commun…

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.

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

#14

Post by mntmoss »

Minor49er wrote: post #9

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 commun…

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.

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

#15

Post by waltbosz »

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.

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

#16

Post by Minor49er »

throwaway53678 wrote: post #13
Minor49er wrote: post #9

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 commun…

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

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

#17

Post by Minor49er »

waltbosz wrote: post #15

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…

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