Z3r0 C00L

Your portal to the interactive fiction netherworld

What is this place?

Z3r0 C00L (006001) is a platform that allows you to render and play IF (interactive fiction) games written in GameTXT language and hosted (virtually) everywhere.

Each game gets its own URL based on the URL of target resource. The only requirement to the target resource is the support of cross-origin requests from our (006001.xyz) domain. As of now, GitHub Gist is a tested and recommended choice for such a resource. Just use raw (plain text) view URLs from it.

Ok, how to play my game here?

First, make sure your IF game is in the GameTXT format (see below). Then host it on a CORS-enabled resource (like Gist) and enter its URL below:

Your link should appear here:

Next just visit it, test it out and share to your friends!

How do I write games in GameTXT?

It's pretty simple. Each game in GameTXT is... well... a game.txt file written in plaintext. Just write your story, divide it into locations and then mark your locations with some metadata. All directives are listed below.

Global directives

TITLE: [name] — denotes the title of the game. Should be the first line in the file.
AUTHOR: [name] — denotes the author of the game.
START: [name] — defines starting location of the game.

Per-location directives

LOCATION: [name] — defines the start of a location of the given name.
SET: [var1] [var2] … — sets some facts (boolean variables) when visiting the location.
UNSET: [var1] [var2] … — unsets some facts (boolean variables) when visiting the location.
REQUIRED: [var1] [var2] … — does not allow to visit the location (hiding all links to it) unless all listed facts are set.
Links to locations are defined in the form [[location name]] or [[location name|Visible text]]. In the first form, the location name itself is visible.

Example game fragment that uses all directives

TITLE: Drunk Hacker
AUTHOR: plugnburn
START: intro room

LOCATION: intro room

Sunday 3:00 AM. A hacker wakes up due to some terrible screeching around him...
and sees himself lying on a cold greenish floor instead of his bed.

- ...Where am I? I must have drunk too much beer at that party...
  I don't recognize this place at all!

A speaker somewhere came alive, with a nasty digitized voice that continued screeching:

- You shall regret what you have done!

- ...Who are you?

- I am The Virus you have recently created.
  Now you are trapped in my virtual realm. There is no way you can get out of here!

- This... this is impossible! I control you, you can't control me!

- So try to find me, drunken dumbass!
  HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA...

[[intro2|Get up]]


LOCATION: intro2
SET: novirus

All of a sudden, the screeching stopped, and you are left alone.
You have to walk through the grid of the cyber-world and find where The Virus
is hidden to fight it and return to the real world.

Good luck! You are the Drunk Hacker!

[[room1|Begin the adventure]]


LOCATION: room1

This room seems safe. But who knows what's next...

[[room2|East]] [[room3|South]] [[finish|Exit the maze]]


LOCATION: room2
SET: exitkey

You've found some key. Hmm, it might come in handy...

[[room1|West]] [[finish|Exit the maze]]


LOCATION: room3
SET: virusdefeat
UNSET: novirus
REQUIRED: novirus

- Here you are, bastard! **screeech**
  Now tell me how to get outta there!

- You'll never get out of my maze even though you've beaten me!
  Hack the key or you are doomed!

- We'll see...

[[room1|North]] [[finish|Exit the maze]]


LOCATION: finish
REQUIRED: exitkey virusdefeat

Congratulations!
    
You have defeated The Virus and returned to the real world.

See the snippet in action

Can I use arbitrary HTML in my games?

Of course you can, you can even override default styles of this page, as well as introduce some music and embedded videos. Just try not to lose the simplicity of the basic interactive fiction idea while doing all that advanced stuff.