39 replies to this topic

[trudatman]

while some people may prefer short or long quests, most of us just like FUN quests. some action, some challenge, some wow.... focus on what you want in a game and don't worry about if other will like it. no matter what you do, some will love it and others will hate it.

edit (side-topic for Schwa, etc.): I don't think my settings are weird, but have a look:
http://img98.imagesh.../picture2qx.png
it's a little bit longer than the larger font version, somehow (spacing, enlarged row, whatever). do you agree that you have too much information in the signature? why not have the "to do list" link to the details and "recent work" do the same, bringing those that click the quoted words to a blog that describes the project in depth? surely you can see that your posts are always twice the size of the content of the post you are making. at least learn to uncheck the "Enable Signature" button when you have already posted in the thread. please/thanks/sorry.

Edited by trudatman, 30 April 2011 - 11:11 PM.

[Neppy]

Well, I think we can be done about this sig thing. I don't care if it's being qualified as a "Side Topic" it doesn't need to happen in here, since it has nothing to do with the topic... Thanks.

[Moosh]

Okay, so now I'm a little worried about mine. If I spend a couple years making this Quest, finally finish it after that, then it turns out nobody's interested enough to play through the whole thing (such as Anthus), what then?

Here's a good question: How do Quests like Hero of Dreams, Ballad of a Bloodline, and Lost Isle come into play here? We all know those are three good examples of epic-sized games, and they seem to be insanely popular, but what you're indicating would be a contradiction if it were true. So I'm completely befuddled now. Don't know what to think.

Is this a terrorist thread?

(to trudatman) That's bizarre. My sig's text should be half the size of normal text. What web browser are you using (and what OS)? Perhaps you should monkey with some settings, 'cause if my sig is that large on your window, something's not right with your settings.

As for my updates: I used to have an update thread, but I don't have it anymore. For... reasons.

For what it's worth, Schwa, I'd play your quest through to the end and judging by the reception it's gotten, so would a lot of other people.

I honestly do not buy the idea that a large game is not as good as a small one. If a player loses interest in a game because of length, it's entirely the fault of the designer. For what it's worth, I haven't heard anyone say they stopped playing LQftH because it's too long. And on top of that, I feel the later levels were quite lacking. The thing is now that I've said this, I'm bound to get at least 1 PM saying the game bored them half to death. That's just the way things are; people don't have a universal taste in videogames. Somewhere out there is some poor soul who likes Action 52...ok maybe not. The point is just because some people don't like long quests doesn't mean nobody will play one. If it's designed well, it will be recieved well.

[NoeL]

That said, there's this line here that I strongly oppose:

Makes me cry to see this. You think the building part is boring?? Geez loueez, man, it's the playtesting that's boring, the building is the AWESOME part, not the other way around! I don't think I will ever see it from your perspective, and quite honestly my blood curls to think that you actually have this opinion on Quest design.

That's because from your approach the design/build is a single step. I would wager the thing you find most enjoyable about building in ZQuest is designing the screens, am I right? In "my" approach (it's not really my approach, this is industry standard for large projects) all the designing is planned out before the building stage. If someone gave you a book that contained every single screen in the game drawn on it, with all the warps, enemies, items, guys, message strings, etc. in the margin, would you still get a kick out of methodically transferring the paper quest into ZQuest?

What I've done in the past is only design the "maze" ahead of time (i.e. the walkable "pathways" Link can traverse on any given screen) and then get creative and design aesthetically pleasing screens that allow those paths. This means I'm not wasting time designing nitty-gritty details that aren't essential to the core gameplay that I'll later have to transfer in, and also lets me see the screens as-is and can immediately tell what does and doesn't look good. This isn't really boring, it's just tedious, and isn't as fun as planning the mechanics or actually getting a chance to play with what you've made.

Okay, so now I'm a little worried about mine. If I spend a couple years making this Quest, finally finish it after that, then it turns out nobody's interested enough to play through the whole thing (such as Anthus), what then?

Here's a good question: How do Quests like Hero of Dreams, Ballad of a Bloodline, and Lost Isle come into play here? We all know those are three good examples of epic-sized games, and they seem to be insanely popular, but what you're indicating would be a contradiction if it were true. So I'm completely befuddled now. Don't know what to think.

tl:dr - they're fun (mostly).

To echo PM, whether a game is successful or not really depends on the designers' ability to hold the interest of the player. I know there were a lot of people that gave up on Lost Isle when they couldn't find the first dungeon, and many hated the ridiculous difficulty level (though overall the quest got positive reviews, and I enjoyed what little I played of it personally). What made that quest popular was mainly the "big name" developers (both had critically acclaimed quests out there already), the publicity, the professional presentation, and MOST of all, the awesome map that came bundled with the quest. I can't really speak for the others, since Shoelace's sense of humour annoyed me and I never played BoaB

I still think Revenge 2 by PrinceMSC is the best Zelda quest ever. It's dated now, but at the time there was nothing like it, and it worked solely because of that. It was, for all intents and purposes, a relatively stock Quest - it played just how Quests of that era played (though notably better than most, and it was back before the generic Zelda formula got stale). What made it different was:

• Used custom (edited) graphics
• Animated overworld tiles (made with items instead of combos, since 1.90 didn't support animated combos)
• "Freeform" dungeons (almost all the other quests were still using the Z1 square rooms)
• Exceptional overworld and level design

All these things we take for granted were rare or non-existent before that quest (Exate, aka PolygonX8 made some great Metroid quests for 1.90, but I can't remember if they were before or after Revenge 2). No one made a custom tileset (certainly none as pretty), or non-square dungeon rooms. You had your choice of Classic, BS, or Newfirst - Pure wasn't even around yet. PrinceMSC went outside the box, and it payed off big time. Revenge 1 was a great quest too in terms of level design, but the barely edited BS tileset made it feel like more of the same (though it was the first time I'd seen multi-level terrain in BS).

By 1.90 standards, Revenge 2 was an epic. The tileset utilised every slot available (all five pages), and I'm pretty sure every available screen was used (there were only five maps back then too). It was a testament to what could be done within the limitations of ZC. The best thing about those limitations was that the action was compacted. If you needed to back track it was rarely more than a few screens, and it was never far to the next dungeon. It was all over in a few hours (I think my first run was about 5 hours), but it was a few hours of FUN. No long-winded cutscenes, no shopkeepers giving you five strings of text, just a straightforward adventure game with no bulls***.

Anyway, that's enough praise for that quest. The point I was aiming at is that you need to be innovative. Old-timers like me are a bit biased because quests that seem new and fun for newbies are just more of the same for us, so my specific criticisms aren't going to be agreed with by everyone (e.g. don't follow the Zelda formula), but developers really should take a good hard look at what's already out there and try NOT to imitate those quests.

It's a sign of unimaginative marketing where people say "this is what's selling, so we're gunna copy that". Sure it'll have moderate market success by riding on the coat-tails of a superior product, so from a BUSINESS perspective it makes sense to do that, but how often do you hear reviews for a clone of a game/movie/etc. that are BETTER than the original? You're not selling your quest so there's no reason to copy someone else. Advertising your quest by saying "It's like Lost Isle" will get people to play it, but if it's just a Lost Isle knock-off people will soon forget it. If you were to make something completely original and say "It's like Lost Isle" you'd have the benefits of getting Lost Isle fans interested, and while they'll probably turn around and say "this is nothing like Lost Isle!" they'll hopefully (if you've done it right) add "but it's still awesome!". Cheap, but can be an effective launch tactic if the product is good.

But like I said, you're going to find that more people will be interested in something new (until nostalgia kicks in and retro quests will be the rage again). It's not enough to just make another Zelda clone, even if it's significantly longer than average (longer DOES NOT EQUAL better, especially if the quest sucks. What's better, a longer or shorter torture? Exactly. Also, width is more important ). Yes that was a penis joke, but substitute width for creativity and it holds true.

Wow your audience with innovation! Don't bore them with length!
If people crave more, you can always make a bigger, better sequel (ala Portal).

I honestly do not buy the idea that a large game is not as good as a small one.

That's not what I said. A large game is a more risky endeavor for a quest maker and thus shouldn't be attempted without a lot of prior consideration (and I highly recommend starting small if you're a software/game design n00b as the majority here are), and a large game with nothing new to offer is not as good as a small one that offers something new. If you have a huge game that's predictable, uninspired, cliche, etc. everyone will get bored with it long before they finish it, and the ones that DO finish it will have nothing more than a mediocre impression left on them.

I think it's a much MUCH better idea to start small and innovative, that way if your new idea isn't well received you haven't wasted your time with an epic that no one wants to play, and if it's well received you can always make more. Big and boring is just that, and big and innovative is very high risk and best left for sequels when you know there's an audience out there.

[Moosh]

Wow your audience with innovation! Don't bore them with length!

It's nice how you made this nice and big and easy to notice, because this is exactly the problem with making a long game. You need to keep being creative and original throughout the whole quest or it gets boring.

That's not what I said.

Yeah, I wasn't actually aiming that statement at you. I was more talking about Schwa's implication that people might not play his game because of its length which is ridiculous considering how obviously good Project RCS is just from what Schwa has shown us.

[NoeL]

Yeah, I wasn't actually aiming that statement at you. I was more talking about Schwa's implication that people might not play his game because of its length which is ridiculous considering how obviously good Project RCS is just from what Schwa has shown us.

My mistake. Apologies.

[Schwa]

Okay, apologies if my reply sucks, I was in the middle of reading your post NoeL and a huge spider suddenly appeared on my keyboard. All my limbs are still shaking and I think I forgot half of what your post said, but I'll try to make a decent reply here

Well basically I see everything you're saying, and I feel better now, because I'm pretty convinced what I'm doing is "innovation"; several people here have told me I've proved them wrong so far about the definitions of "possible in Zelda Classic", namely with what I did to the Sword, but my same confidence is also my fear because it's a double-edged sword (no pun intended). The feature in the video here could possibly be TOO innovative and make the control scheme as frustrating as playing Myst, and that's I guess what I'm trying to avoid. In your example, it'd be applying Lost Isle's level-design difficulty with my game's gameplay/engine difficulty. So when you say "keep it simple", to me it reminds me that I need to take these things into consideration.

I overthink everything. I keep forgetting the issues I'm afraid of are what Beta Testers are there to solve. But what if they can't/don't solve them? It's so much pressure, and none of it is warranted; I do it to myself.

Anyway I can't make coherent sentences or thoughts because of that spider fright, so I'mma cut this short. Your thread helped me, NoeL, I didn't want you to think it bugged me, 'cause it didn't.

Edit: I keep looking around my bedroom and workspace warily, thinking I'll see one at every turn now

Edited by Schwa, 04 May 2011 - 03:16 AM.

[DarkFlameWolf]

I completely agree with everything NoeL said here. True, I usually go gung-ho for those 'epic' quests and try to make things big and long , some prime examples are Lost Isle, Hidden Duality, Isle of the Winds, etc. But if you really look at my quests, the majority of them are actually quite short: Origin (it only seems big with 3 quests, but each individual one is rather short), Fragments of Power, Ganon's Claim, Fallen One, Wolfstyle DX. Most of my quests are in reality, short, stock quests. That is why I managed to produce so many, so fast. I kept things simple, small and manageable. Hidden Duality, Isle of the Winds and Lost Isle all needed far more prep work, time and effort before those got off the ground. If I make any future quests, it would more than likely be a mix between the two, not something truly epic, but not entirely small either. That way I can keep up my reputation but not fail in misery of dropping a quest because it was too ambitious. (so no Lost Isle 2 from me, sorry folks! It just takes too damn long!)

Edited by DarkFlameWolf, 08 May 2011 - 12:55 PM.

[)-( Marchland Malady )-(]

Yes, it is wise to start with a relatively simple quest as your first one. You see, by making just one quest, even if it is short, you have crossed a mental threshold. By doing this, you become more confident and can make bigger and better quests more easily. When a person starts life, it is as a small infant. When we get older, we get bigger and have more complex thoughts. A quest designer's career should be like this. After all, when you play a Zelda Classic quest, you would not want to take on level eight as your first dungeon. You would be very likely to fail. So why do a long, difficult quest as your first project?

Of course, you should do your absolute best with even your first quest. It would also be a good idea to be at least somewhat original. I feel there are way too many Zelda fan games already. If you have trouble with being imaginative, try making quests based on other games (as long as the owners of them won't be offended in any way.) But with your first quest, you should try to keep things simple and relatively easy. Think what you can do with less rather than more. If you try to make a huge quest as your first project, you will probably lose interest and give up. Doing so will be very discouraging and thus make it harder to build and complete future quests.

Be warned, emotions are not just sensory tools. They can and do have an effect on you, so don't pretend they aren't real. I made that mistake in recent years and am still paying for it. Do not be ignorant of the laws of cause and effect. They are quite powerful, and I learned that the hard way. That is a good reason why your first quest must be easy to make. Just remember to make the creation process fun by all means. If it is going to be a chore, don't bother. Emotions do have power.

[Yapollo]

I completely concur.

The "quests" I am making have no connection to the Zelda franchise we all know and love. With the ability to design subscreens, enemies and items, there is so much possibility besides another "link saves the princess story" (Not to say that those aren't still fun too).