We're including these notes with the author's files for a simple
reason- this game was not conceived as a training tool. Therefore,
consider these instructions as part of learning to get into and to
better understand the oop concepts.  JLaulicht

STARTING THE ZZT GAME

I did not find it transparently obvious how to start the ZZT games and
the documentation is sparse, as it is with many shareware efforts.
Here's a little help to get you started so that you can get to both the
game and the tutorial quickly.  You will need to become familiar with
the game to be able to make easy use of the tutorial.

1 )  ZZT brings up the program. Enter clears the Introductory screen
and brings up a menu. There will be a peculiar message saying "DOS
Error"; ignore it , who knows what it means. (When you are in doubt
about what to do , try the Enter key.)

2) The first time only, Choose P=Play; then H=Help for useful
information. When finished reading, Enter key.  Then Q=Quit..

3) Now Choose W= World. The first time, opt for the Demo for an
interactive demonstration and guide to game design..  This gives you
the best instructs  for playing the game (the Hint and Read.me files
are useful supplements.) Again you will have to qiit to get back to
the menu and Choose W again.

4) Now choose Town (highlight and Enter); then P for Play and off you
go.

5) When you are ready to try the tutorial,  quit the game.  Then
choose  E for Board Editor. You will be asked for a room title (a room
is one part of a ZZT game); give it a name and Enter key; then choose
H for the tutorial.  Alternatively, start from the command line with
ZZT, and choose the Board Editor as soon as it appears in the menu.

NOTES ON THE TUTORIAL

You will have to bring up the tutorial to make sense of the following
notes.

1)You should start with the ZZT tutorial.   The use of messages
is a key element in OOP programming and is  a  primary difference
between OOP and conventional language tools like Basic.

2) Next it is probably best  to go to the ZZT OOP Programming
Language.

3)  The Board Editor is effectively the drawing program for
a ZZT effort.  It enables you to create objects, give them properties,
change properties, choose colors etc.

4) You will encounter a missing section if you try to jump to help
called "Board Information Menu" . Instead you will be tossed out of
help and have to renter.  I will try to obtain the missing
information for you if you ask for it.

5) Once you use the Hypertext ability to jump, you will find that you
cannot return to your starting point. This is somwhat disconcerting
and I will inquire whether there is a way around this--I doubt it.
The solution is simple.  Hit Enter key to exit Help;  hit H once or
twice to re-enter.  When you call on the ZZT  Reference Manual it will
be somewhat slower coming up than othewr sections because it is
longer. Wait a bit  and do not make my mistake of thinking there is a
problem.

One further note. Once you understand this tutorial , you would have
new learning to do if you wanted to use another OOP tool like Actor or
Toolbook or a language like Visual Basic to do a similar program. You
would, however, already understand many of the principles and concepts
and more than a minimal understanding if the methods used in OOP
programming.