#zyll — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #zyll, aggregated by home.social.
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RE: https://mindly.social/@setsly/115980097828326819
Arguably my most labor-intensive Mastodon post—approximately 1400 words and a computer game map—took me about thirty hours to produce, above and beyond my usual prep time for writing stuff here. I'm not including time spent purely #gaming, doing some outside research, or editing my words; but I am including time spent making the map, which involved a lot of extra gameplay for testing and verification after I beat the game.
See, it's one of those #AdventureGames where point-to-point movement is not always "reciprocal." I mean, if you take one step north, then one step south, there's no guarantee you'll come back to where you started. Therefore, the only way to ensure a perfect map is to move a step in every direction from every point, and note the result of each step. Sometimes while being attacked by, like, a swarm of demon rats or other foes (which chase you around, of course).
And in case that isn't crazy enough, secret passages are a standard element in the game. In fact, one of its canned menu options is "Search"—which might let you find the secret passages; or not, if the luck computation doesn't favor you. Hence, it's occasionally unclear which directions are possible to travel in, from a given spot. This represents another huge challenge for a map-maker. Oh, and did I mention the need to possess reliable light sources?
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I expect this post to have no value for anybody who sees it when it first appears, yet it may have unique value for somebody who finds it in the future...
For reasons I pieced together here before, I had barely played any video game since 1993's Doom, except for casual games (though I maintain basic awareness by viewing clips of many later games).
However, while still not surpassing the release year of 1993, I recently decided to change this situation by fully playing my first non-casual game in over thirty years: #Zyll, a text adventure from 1984.
I eventually beat Zyll—it was superb—and then searched online for any other folks who have their own perspectives or tips on it. But there aren't a lot out there. Just half a dozen identifiable, committed players in the world, over the decades, I think.
Furthermore, the Zyll game maps, which several players created and have shared online, are pretty bad. Vague. Incomplete. Ugly; built up from ASCII characters and crude line segments. Outright wrong in some ways, too.
So I took it upon myself to draw maybe the first-ever reliable and appealing map for Zyll. See the included image. But I'll spare you a detailed explanation or legend since you're likely unfamiliar with the game anyway. Besides, almost all of my map would be self-explanatory during play.