ztrack: A primitive 3D racing game

This one comes by way of the Thomas Baruchel’s Games on the Linux console blog, which is doing a much better job of indexing and displaying tty-based games than mine is. 🙄

ztrack, for the uninitiated:

As it stands, ztrack is a very simple and very primitive racing game, drawn in 3D primarily with base ascii characters.

Colors are good, action is linear but quick to grasp. The animation is clean, if somewhat staggered. Pro tip: Watch your mirrors.

Controls are a little obscure, with O and P as left-and-right keys, an accelerator and brake at Q and A, as well as a cruise control at the spacebar.

I found that if I impulsively one of the arrow keys to turn, the program crashed.

No matter. It’s easy enough to follow and someone obviously put a lot of effort into the graphic portion.

Keep an eye on Thomas’s blog, by the way. Thomas takes the time to try and fix games that don’t work quite right, whereas yours truly, by virtue of relative programming ignorance, has to cast them aside. 😦