Reconstruction of Super ZZT

About

Super ZZT is the October 1991 sequel to Tim Sweeney's ZZT, adding new built-in elements and a larger, scrolling playfield to the original's grid-based adventure/puzzle format. The Reconstruction of Super ZZT is a reverse-engineered recreation of the source code for Super ZZT 2.0, the last official release, since the original source was lost. Almost all of the code is byte-accurate to the original; the one exception is TheDraw's Crunched Screen Image decompression routine, cleanly reimplemented (in UNCRLIB.PAS) to keep the whole project MIT-licensed, though the original routine can be swapped back in for a byte-exact build.

Getting started

Building requires a DOS environment (e.g. DOSBox) and Turbo Pascal 5.5, using the included BUILD.BAT script. The built-in world editor can be activated with the "/E" command-line switch and then opened by pressing E; third-party editors like ZAP or ZEdit2 also support Super ZZT worlds, but the popular KevEdit does not.

Licensing & legal

• The bundled LZEXE compressor used for building was confirmed in May 2025 to also have MIT-licensed source code.