Z (computer game) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Z is a 1996 real-time strategy

Real-time strategy

Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

computer game

Personal computer game

A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...

by The Bitmap Brothers. It is about two armies

Army

An army An army An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...

of robot

Robot

A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

s (red and blue) battling to conquer different planet

Planet

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

s.

A sequel

Sequel

A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...

, Z: Steel Soldiers

Z: Steel Soldiers

Z: Steel Soldiers is a real-time strategy game released by the Bitmap Brothers on 15 June, 2001 for the Windows platform. It is the sequel of their earlier game Z, and follows the same futuristic military science fiction storyline and battlefield gameplay...

, was published in 2001.

A version for the iPad was published by KavCom in 2011.

Worlds

Combat takes place on several planet

Planet

s, with 4 missions on each. When one is successfully captured, a space ship transports the robot army to another. Worlds are divided into the following types:

Desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...

: A dry, open and scarcely vegetated environment, in which units have little trouble moving around freely. The player encounters rivers and islands as they progress through the battles on this planet. Some territories are controlled by flags on islands.

Volcanic: A much more hostile environment with intense heat and constant eruptions. Lava flows are an impassable barrier.

Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

: A frozen world of snow and ice
Ice
Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

spanned by glacial rock formations. One level has a wall of ice blocking the way to the fortresses. Penguins densely populate the icy terrain.

Jungle
Jungle
A Jungle is an area of land in the tropics overgrown with dense vegetation.The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala which referred to uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to "dry land", it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its...

: A verdant world of menacing swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...

s and impenetrable chasms. Crocodile
Crocodile
A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...

s in the swamps lash out at robots hanging around the mud.

City
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

: A decaying industrial
Industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis...

complex where danger lurks around every corner. Construction cranes will often be needed to repair any bridges that take damage. Sewer
Sanitary sewer
A sanitary sewer is a separate underground carriage system specifically for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to treatment or disposal. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater...

monsters ambush robots moving across polluted
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...

water.

Versions

There are 2 versions for PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

use, one for MS-DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

named Z and another one for Windows 95

Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...

named Z 95 & Expansion (that give Zeditor and Extension pack with additional challenging levels from 20 to 31. Each of these level are parallel; so 21 is the same kind as level 1 but with a bigger map and all Units available). The former used to require DOSBox

DOSBox

DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....

(an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

MS-DOS

emulator

Emulator

In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...

for various operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s) to run on a modern Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

system.

Ports for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn

Sega Saturn

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...

were released in 1997 and 1998 only in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Both were handled by Krisalis Software and published by GT Interactive. An iOS version is currently under development by KavCom Games.

A workaround for Z 95s incompatibility with Windows XP

Windows XP

which allows Z95 to run on a Windows XP system without any form of emulation was posted on the ZZone forums. The workaround, named "Z Expansion XP", involves disabling some protected instructions in the Z 95 executable and contains a custom installer since the original Z 95 installer refuses to run under Windows XP. In the concerning forum thread the Z Expansion XP workaround is also reported to work under Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

. The concerning forum thread on the ZZone forums can be found here: Z95 for Windows XP without emulation

Difference between Z and Z 95

There are few differences between the Z DOS version and the Z 95 version. Most of all Z 95 was made much more compatible with Windows 95 which was becoming more and more popular. Also some more levels were added to the so-called Expansion Kit. The Z DOS version has an interface for loading the game as its first step. In Z 95 the interface is still there but modified and is just a normal interface using APIs of Windows 95 without the eyecandy buttons. Z Dos version is much slower, which affects the game play, whereas the Z 95 version improves the speed and lets the game feel like a real time strategy field. Also, a few unit statistics were changed to improve the game's balance.

Review

Z was highly rated by various computers gaming magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s. For instance, it was awarded 92% by the PC Zone

PC Zone

PC Zone was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as PC Leisure, PC Format and PC Plus had covered games but only as part of a wider remit. PC Zone was founded in 1993.The magazine was published...

magazine, when it described Z as "a brilliant strategy game that is so hard Like all Bitmap Bros' games, there are loads of little touches that will amuse you, from the incompetent piss-head droids in the cut-scenes, flying you from level to level and crashing on the people flagging them in, to the voice which says, when you're struggling, 'You are so crap'. And you probably are. "Z"

The old article is still available online: archived review by PC Zone

ZZone

The game has been kept alive with the help of an unofficial fan website called ZZone at http://zzone.lewe.com/. This has helped spawn many efforts such as the Windows XP launcher for Z95 support past Windows 95. It has also brewed a lot of hacking efforts to dig out a lot of the original graphic and sound assets from the game as well as editors for tweaking game stats such as unit speeds etc.

The Zod Engine (Remake)

The Zod Engine is an actively developed open source remake of the game. Its main focus is to provide a cross platform friendly source base which is multiplayer oriented. Considering that the original is easily available the developers of the Zod Engine decided not to focus their efforts on the single player aspect but instead to make single player merely an option of multiplayer. The Zod Engine currently entails almost all of the original features and gameplay of the original game and is in a Beta stage. It is derived out of the efforts of the hackers at the ZZone website and is available at http://zod.sourceforge.net/

The Zod Engine has had an article written about it by the magazine Linux Format June 2011 - Here

External links

Zed section on the Official The Bitmap Brothers website

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.