4964 replies to this topic

[KingPridenia]

I generally save too often myself, like almost every time that I get a couple screens done. I blame Daggerfall for getting me in the mentality of saving every 2-3 minutes.

 

Anyway, did a little AQII recording for my New Years video and tonight while I'm away partying, I plan to make at least one new dungeon with a gimmick I've been dying to use for a while. Won't spoil it obviously, but it should be neat and good for comedy value. Not as awesome as Pessimistic Pizza, but still neat for those that get the reference.

[kurt91]

You know what the biggest problem with implementing an EXP system is? I tend to leave all the normal enemies for last, so that running through the game for testing purposes is really quick, and I can get to and test problem areas repeatedly without having to spend too much time. Of course, that means that testing screens with bosses on them gets insanely difficult, very quickly. I'm now having to add things to the demo specifically so I can level grind quickly and get back to testing.

 

I'd like to see you take on a BS Patra with only 1 Heart, and a maximum of 9 Arrows. On the bright side, my Critical Mode idea is looking to be more and more fun as I go, and it'll be really easy to set up. Just make it so inputting the password turns off the EXP counter.

 

EDIT: I've been play-testing this with the additional enemies put in, and I'm actually having a lot of fun just play-testing this! I can't wait for the demo so I can get some feedback on how it's working and see people's reactions when they're seeing this for the first time instead of me for the hundredth!

 

On another note, I could have sworn I hadn't left this many bugs and errors in the game when I was making it. Most of my blocks and walls were still walk-through, and on a few screens, somehow every single cliffside had been replaced with bombable walls! I don't even know how that happened, but I've still got them fixed. (Wait, I accidentally found that I had multiple cliff walls, so I replaced one with the bombable one. I must have been using the wrong wall by mistake before switching them out.)

Edited by kurt91, 01 January 2014 - 06:01 AM.

[KingPridenia]

Found out my member title is now Doyen(ne), which I actually had to look up to find out what it meant.

 

Anyway, in relevant news:

 

Spoiler

In Zelda Classic, you push blocks.

In Soviet Russia, block push YOU!

 

^Yeah, I'm just full of bad ideas. I blame insomnia for the contents of the spoiler. To make matters worse, that's just ONE bad idea. Plenty more where that came from.

[Avaro]

I'd like to see you take on a BS Patra with only 1 Heart, and a maximum of 9 Arrows. On the bright side, my Critical Mode idea is looking to be more and more fun as I go, and it'll be really easy to set up. Just make it so inputting the password turns off the EXP counter.

By "turns off the EXP counter", do you mean that there is no more visual display of the current experience points or will leveling up be stopped altogether?
 

Anyway, in relevant news:

Spoiler

In Zelda Classic, you push blocks.
In Soviet Russia, block push YOU!

^Yeah, I'm just full of bad ideas. I blame insomnia for the contents of the spoiler. To make matters worse, that's just ONE bad idea. Plenty more where that came from.

Lol that is awesome! Love it.

[kurt91]

By "turns off the EXP counter", do you mean that there is no more visual display of the current experience points or will leveling up be stopped altogether?

No leveling up whatsoever. (Why would just turning off the display make it more difficult?) The current version of the quest has an incomplete EXP system, where you can only increase your HP. (partially to prevent over-leveling in the demo, partially due to time and personal laziness. ) The final version will allow you to increase your attack power and defense as well. My "Critical Mode" idea is based off of Kingdom Hearts, where the Japanese version of the game had a special setting to play through the entire thing at LV 1. You got a handful of passive abilities, and enough of an attack boost to be able to deal damage to all the bosses, (and I believe you started the game with double health) but you didn't gain any experience points at all.

 

It wouldn't be that difficult to implement, really. I think all I would need to do is a line of code to check for a specific name in the quest slot, and then tuck my entire EXP script into an "if" statement. The more elaborate version I have in mind, though, would also restrict something else that I'm going to keep secret until the actual demo. (considering the EXP system was supposed to be a secret, I'm really bad at keeping them...)

Edited by kurt91, 01 January 2014 - 09:51 PM.

[Eddy]

Anyway, in relevant news:

 

Spoiler

In Zelda Classic, you push blocks.

In Soviet Russia, block push YOU!

In Soviet Russia, pictures like me.

Shoot me now. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this will work. Looks interesting.

 

Also, I got Level 2 started on my own quest, planning for an ice-themed dungeon.

[KingPridenia]

Yeah, I ended up changing the block enemies to the next darkest block on the default tileset so you can tell them apart. They're basically just buffed up Ropes when it comes down to it. My other gimmicks are staying secret though.

 

On another note, I changed one of my dungeons from NES Zelda music to the theme it had in the quest it came from since it wasn't a to the letter NES style dungeon. That and Russian Reversal are the only two of those that will break that rule with Russian Reversal being completely new and going off a new gimmick that I only recently came up with. The 5th and 6th ones will use the NES Dungeon music since they're recycled from Adam3rd.qst, my abandoned version of the 3rd quest, dungeons only.

[Aevin]

It would be awesome if you could make the blocks armos enemies so when you attempt to push them they come alive. But there's not really a way to do that while keeping the normal armos in place, at least not without scripting.

[KingPridenia]

It would be awesome if you could make the blocks armos enemies so when you attempt to push them they come alive. But there's not really a way to do that while keeping the normal armos in place, at least not without scripting.

 

Well in Adam's Quest I, I did have blocks that turn into Armos just by making the block an Armos combo, although it would be an Armos, not a block. Couldn't you just replace the Armos with a block too? I'd try that myself, but I already have a few Armos in my quest, so yeah. That and I seemed to have broken mine such that they only appear at one speed, the slower one since I edited their stats to make them weaker and changed their defenses around.

[Aevin]

You could, but the trouble is that you can only have one type of armos statue in any quest. You could make block armos, but then you couldn't make statue armos. ZC selects the armos that spawns by going down the list of enemies and selecting the first one with "spawned by armos combo type" checked, so you could only have one. I'm just whining over the fact there's not a way to make lots of different looking armos in a quest.

[KingPridenia]

Ah okay, I see what you're saying now. All I did was make the blocks basically Rope 3s with the whole "Block push YOU" being the knockback you receive from damage, which is like 2 1/2 tiles or something? Now I'm wondering if it's possible to combine aspects of Vires with an enemy that has a halt rate and shoots at you. I am generally using purely what I know and making liberal use of the enemy editor.

 

EDIT: I noticed some people here frown upon screens with empty corners and I have a question for them. Does that mean every single screen has to be like that, even if the quest's looks would be compromised by it being "forced", much like trying to force an AABBCCDD rhyming scheme in a poem when it clearly doesn't work right? In light of that, I've gone back and tried to fill in most of the corners in my first overworld section since from talking to friends I've come to accept my overworlds are boring.

Edited by RedmageAdam, 02 January 2014 - 11:29 PM.

[Aevin]

WOOOOO! Today, I finished a midi that I've been working on for much longer than I'd care to admit. Like ... since I started working on my new quest about eight months ago. There, I admitted it.

 

If I've done a good job, absolutely no one will understand why it's given me so much trouble. i hope everybody doesn't end up hating it ...

 

Adam: I actually didn't know that "no open corners" was considered a rule/guideline in screen design for awhile. I just noticed that in all the official Zelda games, this almost never happens. Corners are almost always framed in with trees, rocks, cliffs, water, etc. I look at a screen and go, "I can go north, east or west," because going at a diagonal is rarely an option. Oddly, open corners are more common in Link's Awakening and the Oracle games, but there's not a single one in all of Zelda 1. It's not about being boring, it's about the impression of the player looking for directions they can go and not feeling like there's this big open space for them to wander up into in one corner. The only places I ever allow open corners in my quests is in water, because it would be silly to have big rocks and things floating in the middle of every lake, and underwater areas, because they mirror the water above them. As far as a quest's "looks" being compromised ... you get used to designing screens around it, and I actually find that it results in more well balanced aesthetics overall. Think of it as the frame of a painting or picture, complementing what's inside.

Edited by Aevin, 03 January 2014 - 12:13 AM.

[KingPridenia]

Ah okay Aevin, that's a pretty convincing and good argument for filling in the corners. I never thought of it being "framed" before. After that, I've gone back and decided to make some improvements to my overworld as detailed in the following picture. Left side is the old version with the right being a WIP of my improved overworld. I will leave some areas opened in the corners, but not every. Perhaps my comparison of overworld screens to trying to copy a rhyming scheme in a poem wasn't the best analogy.

 

Anyway, WIP update of overworld:

http://www.mediafire...IOverworld1.png

 

The right 4 tile edge got cut off somehow . Anyway, in addition to making the overworld a bit more lively, I also attempted to make a better transition between forest and desert/beach.

Edited by RedmageAdam, 03 January 2014 - 12:23 AM.

[Aevin]

I definitely consider the second an improvement. You're submitting to the expo, right? It's hard for me to envision how all that will look in game, but I'll try and take a look at your demo when the time comes.

[KingPridenia]

I definitely consider the second an improvement. You're submitting to the expo, right? It's hard for me to envision how all that will look in game, but I'll try and take a look at your demo when the time comes.

 

The Expo has the old version. I guess at the time I didn't care as much about overworld design until I started to realize talking to a friend on Skype and a PM from someone that tried an older version of it that my overworld was very bland. I wouldn't know how to go about submitting the updated and improved version of the quest for the Expo. That and I'm worried I wouldn't have enough time to fix the rest of overworld 1 and the other three before the deadline on the 8th. Also I did make a couple balance changes to the quest since submission of the quest for the Expo to make the game IMO a bit more enjoyable, such as reducing some Door Repair fees and a couple enemy changes. Do you think it would be worth my while to spend all day tomorrow fixing up the overworld maps and finding out how I can re-submit my demo's download link to my Expo thread?