Zigzag

A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular.

From the point of view of symmetry, a regular zigzag can be generated from a simple motif like a line segment by repeated application of a glide reflection.

The origin of the word is unclear. Its first printed appearance was in French books in the late 17th century.

Examples of zigzags

Lightning and other electrical hazards are often depicted with a zigzag design, with long downward strokes and short backward ones.

The trace of a triangle wave or a sawtooth wave is a zigzag.

Pinking shears are designed to cut cloth or paper with a zigzag edge, to lessen fraying.

A carpenter's folding ruler is a zigzag.

Zigzags are a basic decorative pattern used on pottery, and are often seen in the cuts which separate pieces of ravioli pasta.

In sewing, a zigzag stitch is a machine stitch in a zigzag pattern.

Zig zag (railway)

A railway zig zag, also called a switchback, is a method of climbing steep gradients with minimal need for tunnels and heavy earthworks. For a short distance (corresponding to the middle leg of the letter "Z"), the direction of travel is reversed, before the original direction is resumed.

A location on railways constructed by using a zig-zag alignment at which trains have to reverse direction in order to continue is a reversing station.

Advantages

Zig zags tend to be cheaper to construct because the grades required are discontinuous. Civil engineers can generally find a series of shorter segments going back and forth up the side of a hill more easily and with less grading than they can a continuous grade which has to contend with the larger scale geography of the hills to be surmounted.

Disadvantages

Zig zags suffer from a number of limitations:

Zigzag (disambiguation)

Zigzag, ZigZag, zig zag, zig-zag, zig zak or zig-zak is a jagged, regular pattern. It may also refer to:

Animals

Architecture

Computer science

Electrical engineering

Zig

Zig may refer to:

People

In fiction

See also

Zig (Talmud)

In the Babylonian Talmud, Zig is a giant rooster which stands with its foot on the earth and touches heaven with its head. Legend has it that when it spreads its wings it causes a total eclipse of the sun.

According to Jewish commentaries, this myth is meant to express a mystical idea.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "^{article name needed}". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne. 

Zero Wing

Zero Wing (ゼロウィング, Zero Wingu) is a 1989 side-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Toaplan and published by Taito. The player is a lone hero who will save the universe from an evil force.

It enjoyed a degree of success in arcades and was subsequently ported to the Mega Drive by Toaplan on May 31, 1991, in Japan, and by Sega during the following year in Europe, followed by a Japan-only release by Naxat Soft on September 18, 1992, for the PC Engine's CD-ROM².

The European version of the Mega Drive port was the source for "All your base are belong to us", an Internet meme which plays off of the poorly translated English in the game's introduction.

Gameplay

As with other scrolling shooters, the aim of the game is to shoot all enemies that appear on screen and avoid getting obliterated by enemy fire, crashing into enemies or into foreground scenery. There are mid-level and end-of-level boss enemies that stay with the player until they are defeated. The game features eight levels.

ZZT

ZZT is an ANSI character-based video game, created in 1991 by Tim Sweeney of Potomac Computer Systems which became Epic MegaGames in 1992. It remains a popular MS-DOS game creation system. ZZT itself is not an acronym for anything; its title was chosen so it would always appear at the bottom of newsgroup listings. It was later jokingly mentioned by Sweeney as being short for Zoo of Zero Tolerance, which has mistakenly become a popular belief.

Although visually outdated at the time of its release, ZZT became fairly popular because of its integration of an object-oriented scripting language known as ZZT-OOP. The language allowed community involvement that extended beyond simply creating level terrain with the built-in editor.

Originally ZZT was shareware, with only one of the four level-sets or "worlds" released without payment. The level released with the shareware copy is called "Town of ZZT". The shareware versions also included "Demo of ZZT", which displayed the basic features of ZZT worlds, and "Tour of ZZT", which allowed the player to view select rooms (some playable) of the four worlds. Three different versions of shareware ZZT were released, with three corresponding registered versions. With about 30,000 registrations worldwide, ZZT was successful enough to finance the production of Jill of the Jungle. As the game became obsolete it became freeware, however, with all four worlds of the registered version released for free. The worlds are: "Town of ZZT", "Caves of ZZT", "Dungeons of ZZT", and "City of ZZT".