Zig Zag Ancient Greeks
Contents |
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) |
| ... | |
Comments
It seems like the original software can still be purchased from CJE Micro's. The rights to the range of software from Logotron Ltd. were acquired in 2011 by Rickett Educational Media.
