Zig Zag Ancient Greeks

Overview

Zig Zag Ancient Greeks was an educational game originally published by Longman Logotron and BBC Worldwide in 1996 for RISC OS systems. The object of the game was to complete a number of tasks related to life in an Ancient Greek town. The player's character wanders around an open area, entering locations where the tasks are situated.

Since there were many tasks to perform, the game provided an option to save progress to a file and load it again later. This page describes the format, based on the original notes for it.

Notes

The format used in The Greeks.

Requirements

The files saved by the Greeks will have to contain information about the general setup of the program, the player, the environment, progress made, and the status of each location. An identifier, to specifically link the file to this program is also required.

Solution

The format is laid down as follows:

Header (unspecified length)
0	Word containing "ZZG"
4	General setup details such as volume, help, and save path. Possibly include country information for students using the program with another language.
Game information
0	Number of tasks completed
Environment information
0	Player position (x coordinate)
4	(y coordinate)
8	Player direction (2 byte string)
12	Player animation frame
16	Number of static objects
Location information
0	Completed flag (0, 1 or 2)
4	Status
8	Number of objects
Objects
0	Object number (0-MAX_OBJ)
4	x coordinate
8	y coordinate
12	width
16	height
20	existence flag
24	falling flag
28	sprite name
...
Location specific information
0	Length of information (including this word)
...