899 replies to this topic

[MaximumCDawg]

========== UPDATE ==============

 

http://www.solidfile...f/ZodiacUpdate_(6-21-14).qst

 

================================

 

Most of ShadowTiger's suggestions are fixed.  At least, the ones you can see as a player have been.

 

Torch has been totally removed.  It sucked.  It has been replaced with the Antigravity Device, a late game item.

 

Taurus Zodiac Boss now complete.  He has some graphical glitches I can't seem to fix; it's like EWeapons just won't listen when you tell them what tile and CSet to use.  

 

You can now progress up through visiting Dr. Mo in Capricorn.  

 

For reference, I have to code:

9 more flying corridors, some with recycled bosses, some with new ones.

2 more Zodiac bosses.

 

After that, it's just linking plot.  That will get me all the way up to the final sequence of the game.  That'll involve one more corridor, and probably at least two more custom bosses... but they'll be doozies of bosses.

 

At my current rate of progress, I'll be done with a rough draft of this quest by August, I  believe.

[ShadowTiger]

... gods. I can't believe you're drawing all of this as you go, AND you're making fantastic progress, AND you have a wife and kids and a job.
 

Welp, I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day.

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Right. An initial look yields that 37:0E needs sideview gravity, maybe.
So does 1F and 31.
33:2C, 37, 35, 46, and 6C.

Check out screen 1:4F. Press 'w' to check the walkabilities. There's an invisible combo near the entrance to the screen in the upper right that has an awkward walkability.

String #110 has a word cut off between the second and third lines.

Scorpio Screen 30 needs a way to jump back up to Screen 20 on the left side. It's very easy to get there without the High-Jump boots and the Disintegrator beam, and then you're stuck.

Scorpio 78 into 68 could use a platform to stand on so we don't fall back to the 78 when we try to mine through the sand.

Screen 17 in Scorpio definitely also needs another stone to jump on to get back up to the top of the screen.

Scorpio Screen 45 probably should have its right side-warp be "canceled" so the player can't scroll to the right at all. The hidden area in the corner there can have players walking a little too far, and scrolling into a solid area on the next screen.

In Scorpio 46, if you dig out the sand in the left, under the sandfall, it's extremely hard to get out. If not impossible.

When I got the bombs after defeating the boss, and walked back through the boss room to leave, the boss sequence triggered again and I had to fight it.

I think the second phase of the boss is too long, but also boring and predictable. The tail seems to only strike in fours, so all the player is doing is trying to move into the right place to strike the eye when it opens and wriggling left and right slightly to avoid the tail. If the eye wouldn't close so quickly after a strike, it might spice it up a little.


In Scorpio early on, we have a chance to get the Boomerang item from a shop. It doesn't have a spot in the inventory though, but it has all of its sprites set up. Is that for some future expansion?

25:56 - The box needs flag #10.

25:42 cannot be jumped out of without more boot upgrades, but it can be reached without them.


17:7B - When walking on the ground, if you scroll to the right, you'll walk right into a solid combo.

On 25:05, the item was in the left box, but the box on the right was the one that didn't spawn the trap fish. Simple enough fix. Flag #10 would be easier to move than the FFC.

11:1C doesn't have the jump script on. Naturally, this is a major bug.

Major Bug: 17:66's East Side Warp leads to aVirgo corridor exit. ... which for some reason exits in Aries. Odd.

17:39 leads nowhere at the moment, though you likely know that. It must be really easy to miss all these doors after the rest of the map has been made.

Oh, this is probably important. I just defeated the jellyfish boss, playing legitimately. I don't have the dash boots, and I don't even have the disintegrator beam yet. This replaces the sword, yes? Will any Zodiac Weapon be able to destroy sand?

[MaximumCDawg]

Nice, I love the bug report.  Will go correct them now.

 

As for the boss, yes, I'm surprised you were able to reach one of the Zodiac Bosses without at least having the Dash Jets.  It's not a huge deal, I suppose, but you won't get hint as to what you found until later.  And you now have one of the more useful Zodiac Weapons for midgame.  You sort of hopped over the Aquarius Bubble, Scorpio Sting, and Aries Saber in terms of utility.  Not that you won't have to go find and defeat those bosses later, but you just made your life much easier in the short term.

 

And, yes, all Weapons other than the Pulse Hammer break sand, so you're cool.

 

EDIT: By the way, while I can handle artwork just fine, I'm not a MIDI artist.  My music and sound effects are the last part of the game that I have not customized.  It'd be great if there were some midi artists who wanted to help out with the music, but I doubt I'll find someone who can do quality work at this scale for free.

 

EDIT2: As for this:

 

 

 

... gods. I can't believe you're drawing all of this as you go, AND you're making fantastic progress, AND you have a wife and kids and a job.

 

 

 

I have no trials at the moment, and summer is a slower time at the office, kids are slightly older, and I'm currently driven to finish what I started.  You put in 2 - 4 hours of solid, productive coding and design every night, progress happens.  This is why I am sad to see how few quests in the database really reflect how powerful Zelda Classic became with 2.5.

 

Thank you, though, I appreciate the compliment.

 

EDIT3 - With some of these bugfixes, I am concerned something more is going on.  For example, how did you reach Pisces without the high-jump boots in the first place?  You can't get past 1:3F in Aquarius to reach it without those.  At least, that's the plan.

Edited by C-Dawg, 22 June 2014 - 04:01 PM.

[ShadowTiger]

EDIT3 - With some of these bugfixes, I am concerned something more is going on. For example, how did you reach Pisces without the high-jump boots in the first place? You can't get past 1:3F in Aquarius to reach it without those. At least, that's the plan.

I had the High Jump Boots. That's the easy part. This is a new save file, and I had them in less than 30 minutes or so of gameplay once you know where they are and how to get to them. It was after I had them that I began to explore around.


11:2E's house is very different than the others. For one, is its string supposed to be what it is? Then when you exit, you're in a corridor.

11:68 -> 11:69. Combo misalignment on left side of the screen.




More coming.



Quick question though. Where do we get Super Bombs? I can't seem to proceed without them. Got the Dash Boots. Gotta get the Ice Wand to get the Grapple Beam. Need a way to get around the jumping puzzle in the liquidy place in the left side of Cancer first. Need double jump boots for that though. I got pretty far without them, but they are finally necessary.

[MaximumCDawg]

No, you don't need Ice Beam for grapple beam.  You need the Stun Beam.  The clues should be telling you to go explore Pisces to find that.

 

Super Missiles are something you dont get until waaaay later.

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 June 2014 - 03:23 PM.

[ShadowTiger]

I just found out about the Stun Beam moments before you posted that. Interesting about the Super Bombs though. The SBomb blocks are everywhere. So very tantalizing.

The Sidearm upgrade room on 51:01 doesn't seem to want to speak up or have items appear. Everything seems to be in order though. I wonder if it's a Dmap setting quirk that's making it not show up.

Gemini Zone:

on 19:6E, if you fall into the spikes in the lower left corner, you get stuck in the corner of the room below due to gravity. Side-warp cancel time.

Also cannot get back up from 6D to 5D on the same map if you don't have a double jump.

The enemy guarding the Grapple Beam (Which I am now in love with) may needs its shield to reverse polarity - Eweapons are blocked while Lweapons pass through to damage it.

Magnetman doesn't die long after his HP bar is depleted. Eventually he goes after a few more hits though.

25:2E - The machine's message doesn't seem to want to function.

27:50 - I bomb the pile of rocks here, and the missile expansion doesn't show up. This is a strange mechanic here.


7E of Cancer needs to be walkable at the bottom to reflect the layer 3 passageway through that screen.
The room in 17:09 might be a bit off. Odd little creature talking about research, holding an item in a box above it.


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27:08 - Check the walkability on-screen. Some weird little thing to the right of the door.



Aries: BottomSide warp from boss battle on 10:7E drops you into the Taurus Corridor for some reason. Oddly specific. The Tile Warp leads us to the Aquarius Zone Start energy refill room.

[MaximumCDawg]

Thanks for the problems, will fix tonight.  I went back and checked Pisces, and sure enough, you can get to the boss without the Dash.  That's not intentional, as it skips the entire first run through Cancer, so I've made the jump impossible without the Dash Jets.

 

So I've decided that working with EWeapons is a totally lost cause.  They never perform correctly.  Either they default to the behavior of the base Eweapon when they are not supposed to, or they just don't function at all.  Instead, I'll start making dummy enemies that I can create and move around with scripts as if they were Eweapons.  Fight the Taurus Zodiac Boss with the Wall Cling and you'll see how useless EWeapons are at the moment.

 

But, lo, we have carryover problems.  Again.  Corridors Virgo 1 (which you can access), Libra 1 (you can acces), Libra 2, Taurus 1, and Taurus 2 (which you cannot) are all working fine except that they're ignoring the carryover flag.  This is driving me totally bananas!  I thought the Screen->TriggerSecrets(); combined with a double layer of triggers that in turn trigger the stair combos would fix this problem once and for all.  Whoops!  Nope.  Such a huge pain in the keister.  The biggest problem is that if I have to keep making workarounds to get the darn thing to work for each screen, a new version of ZClassic might arrive and blow up some but not all of the fixes.  Why can't there be just a SINGLE method that works for every screen?

 

EDIT: You say a message doesn't function.  Did you try to get the message after breaking the computer?  Once you bust the CPU, all computers are offline until you get the Scanner, allowing you to operate them yourself.

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 June 2014 - 09:57 AM.

[ShadowTiger]

Thanks for the problems, will fix tonight.  I went back and checked Pisces, and sure enough, you can get to the boss without the Dash.  That's not intentional, as it skips the entire first run through Cancer, so I've made the jump impossible without the Dash Jets.
 
EDIT: You say a message doesn't function.  Did you try to get the message after breaking the computer?  Once you bust the CPU, all computers are offline until you get the Scanner, allowing you to operate them yourself.

Ah, that explains it. In the spirit of heading off people sending bug reports to you, it might be interesting if there were spark particles or a fuzzy or completely blank monitor, or even better, a message that says the computer cannot be read due to the CPU being down. I know the protagonist doesn't speak, but think of all the bug reports you might get. People aren't that observant 100% of the time.

[MaximumCDawg]

That's fair.  The commander explains all of this to you if you talk to him en route to the computer, but I guess it's possible to miss that entirely.

[ShadowTiger]

Yes; the player may not know the extent to which the CPU was important. All those message rooms appear to be self-contained monitors with no reason to have been left behind yet not turned off to save power.

[MaximumCDawg]

UPDATE -----------

 

http://www.solidfile...d/ZodiacUpdate_(6-23-14).qst

 

--------------------------

 

With the exception of the bosses whose life doesn't precisely match the health bar (Magnetman redux?), I fixed the issues Shadowtiger identified.

 

All Taurus Corridors are functioning now, although the carryover function is not working.  Because.. reasons?  Seriously, someone take a look at tell me what the hell.

 

Everyone who faces the Grapple Beam guardian enjoys how she's a big marshmellow.  Well, love is over.  Try her again and see if you still enjoy this boss.

[MaximumCDawg]

Another update.  More behind the scenes stuff, work around the edges.  A few new corridors done, some old graphics updated, some new bosses inserted.  Nothing flashy.  

 

http://www.solidfile...a/ZodiacUpdate_(6-26-14).qst

[ShadowTiger]

Right, thanks. Oh, are you using 2.5 or 2.5.2 for this?

[MaximumCDawg]

2.5, I think.  I just used whatever is public on the main download page for Zelda Classic.

 

By the way, I didn't make progress this weekend because I was out of town.  Updates will resume later this week

 

EDIT: Slow progress because I'm drawing up new bosses.  Animating the larger characters is really time-consuming.  What I do is I export a tile page from Zelda Classic in the CSet I want to use.  Then, I use MSPaint to zoom in and draw the boss, pixel by pixel, being careful only to use colors I've sampled with the eye dropper from the exported tile page.  That way, I can import the picture back into Zelda Classic in the same CSet and I don't need to recolor.

 

The problem is that MSPaint is not exactly the world's easiest software in which to create animation frames.  To see how the character animates, I have to put it into Zelda Classic, get the script running or plop down some combos and swap between screens, and only then do I get to see what it looks like. Things would move faster if I could check animation in my graphics program.

 

Anyone know of a program that could accomplish this?  Something that would let me shuffle between bitmap animation frames, and save those bitmaps, all while not messing with the color scheme?

Edited by C-Dawg, 02 July 2014 - 12:25 PM.

[MaximumCDawg]

----------- UPDATE -------------

 

http://www.solidfile...2/ZodiacUpdate_(7-3-14).qst

 

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The only really big new thing is that the Leo Laser and the accompanying Zodiac Boss are now complete.  This boss is the "cleanest" so far code-wise, and I think this is a good template for all future bosses.  After the rough draft is done, I will probably rejigger some earlier bosses to fit this general format.