Julian Cochran · 1992

D-Zone

Official site

The original Destruction Zone - the shareware hit of 1992, re-programmed by its creator in 2004 and now playable in your browser. Many later games borrowed the name. This is the original.

Play free Play with friends anywhere About the game
Why it was a hit in the 1990s
01 · Friends at one keyboard

Up to four players, one keyboard.

Each player has their own keys on the same keyboard, so one computer was enough for a whole group of friends - crouched around it together, laughing at every sudden turn of fortune. Hardly any game let you do that, and it made D-Zone unique. It was simply incredible fun.

It still is. And when you are not at the same keyboard, play over the network instead - with D-Zone Networked your friends join from their own computer, tablet or phone, wherever they are. Play with friends anywhere →

02 · A game of intelligence

It looks like an arcade game. It is really a game of intelligence.

Beneath the action is an economy. Every shot is bought, so every miss is money thrown away. The winners keep their misses to a minimum, choose weapons with a high damage/price ratio, and save the powerful, expensive weapons for specific, targeted kills - never spraying them across the arena.

It takes patience and self-control - holding back while your weapon energy recharges, and choosing every target with care, not only to destroy a rival but to take away the kill they were about to make.

How the economy works, with every weapon's damage/price ratio ↓

Three ways to play

Free to play, with friends near or far. Pay only for more missions.

D-Zone

Free
  • The whole game, against the robots
  • Up to four players around one keyboard, as in 1992Up to four players around one computer's keyboard, as in 1992 - on a phone or tablet, one player with on-screen controls
  • Every weapon, every tank and upgrade
  • Missions 1-3 and their medals
  • In your browser on any computer, tablet or phone, or downloaded for Mac and Windows
  • Plays offline too - choose Install in the game's menu
Play free

D-Zone Missions

USD 9.99 · once
  • Three more directives - Savior, Legend and Under your wing
  • Each with its medal for the Medal Hall
  • Yours to keep, in any browser, with your licence code
Coming soon
NEW

D-Zone Networked

Free while it's new
  • Your own arena, networked - send the link, or let friends scan its code
  • Friends join from anywhere, free - nothing to install, on a computer, tablet or phone
  • Several of you can share one computer's keyboard while friends join at their own screens
  • Up to six pilots; robots fly the empty seats
Play with friends

Every weapon and tank is free in every version. Nothing you can buy makes winning easier.

D-Zone Networked · free while it's new

The Zone, with your friends - wherever they are.

In 1992 one copy of D-Zone was enough for everyone to play, crouched around a single keyboard with incredible fun. D-Zone Networked keeps that promise across distance, and keeps the shared keyboard too - three of you at one computer can play two friends at theirs. One of you hosts, and everyone you invite plays free. Host an arena, send the link or show its code, and your friends join in seconds, from a computer, tablet or phone. Empty seats are flown by robots, so a match starts the moment you're ready.

Free while it's new. Later, hosting comes with the full edition - a single purchase - and the friends you invite always play free. In the game, choose Networked.

The game

Best with friends, squashed around one keyboard.

D-Zone Nights. In the 1990s, D-Zone Nights were a highlight among gamers, and a big part of why the game became so popular. A group of friends would choose a house for the night and crowd around one keyboard - the same single keyboard, because D-Zone gives each of up to four players their own keys on it - laughing through games that lasted for hours as each fought for dominance over the others. That is here today, free, on any computer - and with D-Zone Networked, friends at other screens can join the same match.

Or you against the robots. Up to five robot pilots fill the empty seats, in an arena of water and crystal. Every round you earn credits; between rounds you spend them in the Destruction Zone Shop on weapons, tanks and upgrades. Six robots, six temperaments, and games as long as you like, from three rounds to 195.

The original, by its creator. D-Zone began in 1992 as a shareware game designed and programmed by the mathematician and composer Julian Cochran, and it became hugely popular. In 2004, while conceiving Xalaria, Cochran re-programmed D-Zone; that is the current version, brought here to today's computers.

Five hundred letters, answered by post. In the days before the internet, more than five hundred fans wrote to Julian Cochran by hand. He answered them himself, walking to the post office to send the game back on disks - and with it went an extra program, talk.exe, which he had devised in 1988 as a precursor to modern LLMs. With no great library of text to learn from, it learned from the conversation itself, every word said so far helping it predict the next - so anyone could talk to it, in any language.

Deeper than it looks. Every round earns credits, and every three rounds the Destruction Zone Shop opens. Spend now on a tank upgrade and better weapons, or save for the purchases that win the long game. Games run from 3 to 195 rounds, with saves between rounds.

The Destruction Zone. Near the centre of the galaxy lies an enormous dark station. When challengers switch on its lights, the Dark Zone becomes the Destruction Zone, the most famous war game in the galaxy. Triangular hover-tanks glowing with radioactive fuel teleport into the arena and open fire.

Over forty items in the shop, including the Rotra and Opec tanks, missiles from single shots to Octo Breakers, beam and power lasers, Spark Fiends, Swirlers, Nuke Blasters, glow shields, ECM hackers and teleports. Six robot opponents, each with its own personality, from Prototype to Destroyer.

Music by the game's creator. All of the music, including Zaratha on the title screen, was composed by the programmer, Julian Cochran.

History of Xalaria and D-ZoneFrom D‑Zone in 1992 and D‑Zone II in 2004 to Xalaria, mostly in Julian Cochran's own words.
The economics

Not a game of firing at random. A game of economics.

Every hit pays, every miss costs. Each point of damage you do to another tank earns you 6.6 credits, so destroying a tank outright brings in 660. But every weapon is bought a hundred shots at a time, and every shot that misses is something you paid for and threw away. Accurate players keep their money; careless ones spend it on the floor of the arena.

The damage/price ratio. This is the whole point of the D-Zone economy. A cheap weapon that hits is often worth more than an expensive one that misses, and the best players hunt for the weapons that do the most damage for each credit spent, then learn to land them. The tables below give that ratio for every weapon in the shop.

Powerful weapons, for targeted kills. An Octo Breaker, a Nuke Blaster or a Death Bomb can destroy a fully shielded tank, but each shot costs a great deal. Fired at random they ruin you. The best players hold them back for a planned kill - a damaged leader cornered, a pursuer close behind, a tank about to cross a bomb - and fight the rest of the round with the weapons that pay.

Patience and self-control. Every weapon draws on your tank's weapon energy, and firing until it runs dry leaves you defenceless while it recharges. The best players hold back, wait for the shot that will land, and choose their targets with care. Sometimes the shot that matters most is not against your strongest rival but against the tank your rival is about to destroy - finish it first, and the kill, its points and its credits are yours instead of theirs.

Spend where it multiplies. A hit does less damage to a well-armoured tank, so the poorly armoured ones pay best. A tank about to be destroyed is worth only what is left of its shields, so finish it with something inexpensive. Fuel upgrades raise the damage of every weapon you own without raising its price, improving every ratio at once, and the Shopping Card takes a quarter off everything for the rest of the game.

Tanks

Five tanks, each a different bargain.

Weapon fuel quality multiplies the damage of every shot; armour divides the damage you take. Upgrades add a quarter at a time, and are lost when you change tank.

The Destruction Zone Shop

Every weapon, port by port.

Each tank carries six weapon ports, and a new weapon replaces whatever was in its port. Prices are for a hundred shots.

Breaking weapons. Breakers, Blasters and Bombs launch a warhead that bursts into fragments when fired again. Their damage is the full burst - what it does if every fragment strikes. A direct hit by the warhead itself, before it breaks, does exactly half, the figure shown beneath.

Damage is the most one shot can do, before the target's armour and your own fuel quality. Every item is in every version of D-Zone.

Spending to win

Examples of purchases that win long games.

  1. The Shopping Card. A quarter off everything in the shop for the rest of the game - every purchase after it costs less.
  2. Fuel upgrades. They raise the damage of every weapon you own without raising its price, so every damage/price ratio improves at once.
  3. Tank upgrades. A better tank burns better weapon fuel, so every shot does more damage for the same price - an even higher damage/price ratio on every hit.
  4. Breaking weapons, broken at the right moment. Break an Octo Breaker just before it reaches the enemy, so all its fragments strike for the maximum damage. A direct hit by the warhead alone does only half.
  5. Super-powerful weapons, for a reason. Use them to destroy a tank quickly when it matters - above all to take a kill your most important rival was about to make.
  6. Patience in the early game. Fight with the cheapest weapons, even the Single Missile or the Tri Breaker, and make sure of zero misses wherever you can. The credits you save are what buys everything above.
Opponents

Six robots, six temperaments.

Each robot shops for itself and fights in its own way; the stronger ones also hit harder than their fuel would suggest.

Medal Hall

The pilots who won.

Six missions, each harder than the last. Every pilot named here fought through every round and came out on top. Our congratulations, and our respect.

Medals are uploaded from the game by the pilots who won them - Missions 1-3 from every version, Missions 4-6 from D-Zone Missions.

Forum · since 2004

What players have written.

Notes from players since D-Zone II appeared in 2004. Add your own - sign in with Google, and only your name is shown.

22 comments · scroll for more
Julian Cochran Author in reply to Jonathan Webster

Dear Jonathan, your message is exceedingly pleasant to read! Thank you! I still have the 500 hand written letters that I received between 1992 and about 1996, so I could look them up to find if you sent one, but only when holidaying in Australia – I am in Monaco now. How astonishing that you both played D-Zone and studied piano performance, but I have found that D-Zone players often had various things in common with me – the desire to play such a game might require a lot of taste overlap with the wish to programme such a game (I hand-designed the 3D perspective rendering engine, the gameplay still 2D but the camera zooming in and out). I recommend playing D-Zone II over D-Zone I, as I completely re-wrote the game in 2004, and greatly improved the AI and graphics. Whilst I have been composing as the main pursuit, I did complete another very original game just this year (2021) titled Xalaria. I have been on and off it since 2002, but only completed now. It is rather text oriented, as I only have finite time and wanted to concentrate on it having great depth. The public release will be later, but I’ll add a link here for now also whilst it is in testing: Desktop: http://www.digitalscores.com/xalaria/mobile.html?l Mobile: http://www.digitalscores.com/xalaria/mobile.html Best regards, Julian.

Jonathan Webster

I played the original D-Zone endlessly with friends growing up in the 90s. It had almost completely faded from my memory until I asked Reddit to help me identify it the other day. The crucial detail was its Australian origin, which I thought I might have made up, but I now realize stuck in my mind all these years only because of the message that was “there to annoy” me. I may well have been one of the many to send a letter to Adelaide to get rid of it.

Anyway, my parents possibly recognized how much time I could end up wasting on games and never let me own any consoles, instead steering me toward piano, which I ended up studying in college. Learning that Mr. Cochran has given us so much wonderful repertoire and didn’t get sucked into the gaming industry makes me very happy – almost as happy as finding an emulator that runs D-Zone did.

Kurtis Kurtis

Just wanted to say, great game back in the day. I remember when I was young, around 9, and my dad and I downloaded the demo of this game off of a BBS from the Dayton, Ohio region… I remember saving up money for months to be able to buy a copy of it but I ended up getting some game called “Jetpack” instead. Your game definately was hours and hours of fun. Great job.

keith stackhouse

I would like to say that me and my friends had a great time playing D-zone against each other growing up. It is a great game! I would like to know if/when d-zone 2 is coming out, or if it is already out, do you know where I can get it at? Thanks for your time.

Andrew Airmet

I played D-Zone a long time ago. I remember registering and receiving the programs on a disk. They were the two other extra programs that stayed fun the longer you used them. The roots one was a bit hard, and the solar system one was a bit strong in the physics for me. I really enjoyed D-Zone but it’s been awhile since I’ve tried to play it. It was a LOT of fun.

Bill Torsky

Uh, is this a joke? Why does this game require so much juice to run? I exceed all the requirements but it still runs slower than molasses. I can hardly play the thing. The first one was awesome but I am not digging this new slow-mo version. I am curious as to what could be causing the massive bog down, and by curious I mean it’s the lighting.

Hendell Firehammer

I first played D-Zone in 93 and 94 as a friend of mine was distributing the free version that played out an add for where to send money to get the full version, one, slow, character, at a time each time you booted it up. Mind you this was on a 8086 computer in my Computer programing class, an amazing game from any era, well done game play, and hopefully duplicated entertainment as I too am downloading D-zone two as I type this. It is good to see that it not only still exist in a findable way but has an upgrade.

Hendell Firehammer Old school gamer

George Ujvary

Hi Julian,

Love the game. I remember hours playing with you at your house when we were kids after you wrote it. It seems so weird that so many other people shared the same experiences.

And that stupid message. ‘This message is here to annoy you!’. I remember you laughing about that as a kid as well.

A really good trip down memory Lane.

Well done.

See you soon.

George Ujvary

Julian Cochran Author

After playing D-Zone for five hours with my friend last night I decided to continue with some upgrades. I’ll soon prepare D-Zone version 2.2 for public release with the following upgrades:

1. Red dots introduced (they were in the original version) so that when you cannot fire the currently selected weapon a red glow appears in the middle of the tank.

2. If you try to fire when out of weapon energy there is a special sound effect with emotional impression of trying to fire when you cannot. Combined with 1 this gives a solid feeling that pressing fire lots of times isn’t how the game is played.

3. Music now playing as mp3 and new music included for the title page (my Prelude No. 4, a recent composition).

4. The entire zone is brighter – there was simply not enough light in the game in the first release.

5. Robots don’t fire in the first four seconds – unless you fire yourself in which case they start as soon as you fire. Adds to suspense.

6. Game-play slightly faster.

7. A circular barrier has been added around the entire D-Zone playing field.

robert zoccoli

Blast it, you weren’t kissing about the system reqs huh? oh well gotta upgrade my comp, been putting it off too long

Peter van Hardenberg

D-Zone on LINUX. I would very much like a copy, because how else will I get my electro-buds on?

C’mon…

Drew Davis

DZone is back! W00t! Time to pwn!

Sansara Giovanni

What’s up?

I must tell you, I’ve been waiting in deep silence, listening, and trembling for the last 6 months.

I AM (not was) a great D-Zone fan. I even have an old computer for playing such games as Arkanoid, Centurion and D-Zone…

But it’s beggining to fail. I have more & more computer crashes and my new AMD XP@1800 is running under windows2000

What can I say… terror, anxiety, pain…

Are you still working in D-Zone? Am I biting my nails unnecesarily?…

Anyway, cm’on… some of US are STILL waiting for you!!!

Sansara.
losened_self AT hotmail.com

Merc

Hello Julian

a quick email from Perth: I *love* dzone, I *love* the fact that I can finally run it now on my fast computer, and I Would *love* to see dzone 2 on my computer 🙂

As soon as you release Dzone 2.0, I will register, no matter what the price would be – that’s a promise!

When do you think you’ll release it? 🙂

Thank you and bye!!!

Merc.
mobily@mobily.com

Baldwin Yen

Dear Julian,
Just spent the last year in Iraq, was going through mail at my parents’ house when I came upon the letter from you. Opened the letter, and the first thing I saw was who it’s from, and the first thought that struck me was, “Hey, it’s the Australian guy who’s the author of D-Zone!” It being a cherished memory, I ran upstairs and got the original reply letter I received from you, which I had kept in a desk in my old room. Talk about nostalgia. In anycase, it’s great to know that you’re continuing to work on D-Zone, and I’m downloading D-Zone 2 even as I type. Thanks for the great games and the great memories. Bobby Yen

Darren Chan

Thanx for the letter Julian.. will chk out D-Zone II.. it’s been a looooong time mate!!

DC.

robert zoccoli

Dear Julian,

I thank you for your letter, it was probably the single best piece of mail i have recieved this year. me and my friend loved D-zone and hated the fact that even on it’s slowest setting it ran to fast on my comp. i think i will greatly enjoy this as me and him have spent many hours on the first one. thank you again for letting me know and i’m glad my letter encuraged you to complete this game.

Sincerely,
Robert Zoccoli

p.s. i wonder if you reused your master registration code? couse that was the one you gave to me in 1998 possibly due to loss of the others.

robert zoccoli

Blast it, you weren’t kissing about the system reqs huh? oh well gotta upgrade my comp, been putting it off too long

Robert Zoccoli

robert zoccoli

p.s. i wonder if you reused your master registration code? couse that was the one you gave to me in 1998 possibly due to loss of the others.

robert zoccoli

bah, ment to type kidding. man i’m bad :).

Rob Macnee

I played the original for countless, countless hours with friends and family, and have many fond memories associated with playing it, but I never registered. Now I think is my chance to rectify that, now that I have a job and money of my own (I played D-Zone mostly back when I was 12-14). You may remember I emailed you a few years ago asking for the original source code, when I was curious about game programming. Now I’m glad I didn’t get it, because D-Zone 2 is out, and I can get my fix from that. To tell you the truth, the wave of nostalgia that accompanied the shareware message for DZ2 was overwhelming.

Anyway, thanks for sticking with it, I’m sure my reaction and story is a lot like that of many others. D-Zone will always mean a lot to me, and corny as that sounds, it’s true.

Sincerely,
Rob Macnee

Sancho Lerena

I’ll waiting for Linux version…. XP is too hard for me 😉

Download

The original, to keep on your computer

D-Zone 2.3 for Mac and Windows - the free version, against the robots or with up to four players at one keyboard, with Missions 1-3.

macOS D-Zone-Free-2.3-mac.dmg · 67 MB macOS 12 or later, Apple silicon (M1 or later) Download free for Mac Windows D-Zone-Free-2.3-Windows-Setup.exe · 55 MB Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit Download free for Windows

Opening on a Mac

  1. Open the downloaded disk image and drag D‑Zone into Applications (the free edition is called D‑Zone Free).
  2. The first time, macOS may say it cannot verify the developer. Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway next to D‑Zone.
  3. From then on it opens normally.

Free edition SHA-256 3aeb055554f05feca4abfc9554c32080e37e7bab5a8e82ad3b56b926222a738c

Installing on Windows

  1. Run the setup file. D-Zone installs for your user, with Desktop and Start menu shortcuts.
  2. If Windows SmartScreen appears, choose More info, then Run anyway.
  3. Uninstall at any time from Settings, then Apps.

Free edition SHA-256 41cd16ecf1fa3689bf8812fda46a920459bc746c8ba820f82d8d973428a0f24d