ZZT 4.0 is a hex edit of ZZT 3.2 created by WiL for widespread use. The executable was released on November 25th, 2004.

Note that the non-NoMsg variant is unstable/buggy - see below.

While there is nothing stopping this ZZT hex edit from running on pre-80386 machines - including Zeta - at face value, it has been compressed with UPX without enabling the –8086 flag; as such, to run it on an 8086/80186/80286-class machine or Zeta, it must be decompressed first with upx -d.

The major changes here:

ZZT's notorious 20k board limit has now been increased to a healthier 32k.
ZZT's equally notorious bottomw-row placement bug has been fixed.
ZZT's annoying water-glink sound effect is now removed.
ZZT is now 39k, smaller than the original executable.

Minor changes include:

Textual changes - also, untitled.zzt, temp.brd, and saved.sav will no longer be the default. Now by >default you must put in a name of your own. This means no more angst over accidentally saving over your >last board, saved game, or ZZT project.

In addition, ZZT 4.0 came with a separate NoMsg variant, additionally changing:

* in-game messages and sound effects (that i have found so far) removed: Except the invisible wall message and sound effect. I coudln't justify removing that one. And the key and door messages.
* No yellow borders.

Some of the documented changes are inaccurate with regards to the in-executable changes.

• The IoTmpBuf allocation calls have been patched to allocate a size of 0xFFFF (65535) rather than 0x4E20 (20000) bytes (offset 0x2387, 0x23E8).
• The flag name SECRET is replaced with EDITED (offset 0x9651).
• The Y < 25 requirement from OopExecute's #PUT handling is replaced with Y < 26, fixing the #PUT bottom row bug (offset 0xC9E1).

• The fake wall message change seems to be an accident - the string length is incremented by one, causing the first byte of ElementFakeTouch's code to be added to the string.

• The following messages have their lengths set to 0:
  • Bomb activated! (offset 0x3E38),
  • A path is cleared through the forest. (offset 0x5D0A),
  • A fake wall - secret passage! (offset 0x5D8B),
  • Your way is blocked by water. (offset 0x5F45),
  • Game over  -  Press ESCAPE (offset 0x6183),
  • Can't shoot in this place! (offset 0x619F).
• The following sounds have their lengths set to 0:
  • Energizer melody (offset 0x43F7 - pickup, 0x625C - running out),
  • Scroll pickup (offset 0x54D0),
  • Key pickup failure (offset 0x5597),
  • Key pickup success (offset 0x55B4),
  • Ammo pickup (offset 0x56BE),
  • Gem pickup (offset 0x5747),
  • Door open success (offset 0x5815),
  • Door open failure (offset 0x5835),
  • Torch pickup (offset 0x5C0F),
  • Torch burnout (offset 0x6255),
  • Running out of time (offset 0x6280).
• The yellow border tile definition is replaced with a white-on-black Empty (offset 0x175FE).
• The misplaced torch pickup message hex edit is undone, removing the Pusher stack underflow crash bug (but not the message!).

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