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Link and Zelda: Panoply of Calatia

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Link and Zelda: Panoply of Calatia


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#346 C-Dawg

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Posted 01 August 2017 - 11:49 PM

First three dungeons in the "extra quest" in the world of Z2 were basically speedbumps. However, a few gems:

 

The screen-wrap-around functionality of the Hookshot is AMAZING. I am very excited to see how this gets used in more complicated puzzles as the game goes on. It's a brilliant take on the old device and really leads to mind-bending solutions.

 

The second 3 dungeons seem (so far) to be more puzzle-based, which is getting back to what this quest designer is good at. Things are looking up!



#347 isolated726

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Posted 06 August 2017 - 07:27 PM

So I'm stuck and looking for a little help.

I can't get to the stairs in the Yokoi Palace in the second room, I don't know if I'm missing an item or if I did a stupid by going with 2.50.3 RC1

 

Item list if it helps

 

EDIT: NVM I found something

 

EDIT 2: Nope still stuck it looks =/

 

Spoiler

Edited by isolated726, 06 August 2017 - 08:08 PM.


#348 naal

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Posted 06 August 2017 - 08:36 PM

The room one up from start you need the red candle to proceed. The candle can destroy the red or blue ice blocks depending on which character is using it.



#349 isolated726

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Posted 06 August 2017 - 08:42 PM

So I've gotten past that, but I can't walk on the bricks to get to the stairs nor can I jump up, that's what I'm stuck on.



#350 Deedee

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Posted 06 August 2017 - 11:45 PM

So I've gotten past that, but I can't walk on the bricks to get to the stairs nor can I jump up, that's what I'm stuck on.

Yeah, 2.50.3 breaks the brick combos. You may need to switch to 2.50.2.


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#351 isolated726

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Posted 07 August 2017 - 05:15 AM

Yeah, 2.50.3 breaks the brick combos. You may need to switch to 2.50.2.

 

That was it, did the switch and it works perfectly now, Thanks.



#352 Kapow

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Posted 12 August 2017 - 07:10 PM

I found a pretty major bug. On certain screens, the ShovelSecret item and the room item/secret item seem to share the same flag, so that getting one makes the other unattainable. The four cases I found all involve a Secret Seashell and a rupee or secret money, and even without those seashells there are 60 or 61 left, so it's still always possible to get a full inventory. The four locations:

Spoiler


There's another ShovelSecret I'm not sure about, in Marui at 4:69. I could swear the Secret Seashell didn't appear in my last playthrough, but when I used cheats to teleport straight there in a new game, it worked fine, and even clearing out the rest of the dungeon didn't make it stop appearing, so I might be mistaken. It's kind of strange, though, that would make Marui the only dungeon with 2 seashells instead of 1, and removing it would still leave 60 seashells aside from the glitched 4 mentioned above.

There's a more serious bug in Mickey mode, and probably the other special modes (I haven't tried them):

Spoiler


I also found a few bugs I'd consider minor, but worth fixing if possible:

Spoiler


And finally, there's a number of items/shops/etc. that I couldn't find a way to access. I left out the ones that were obviously dummied-out (like Heart Ring 1 being both a room item and special item on the same screen) and the unfinished areas (like the Boss Rush), but these might have a way to access them that I'm not seeing, or they might be bugged:

Spoiler

 


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#353 Mitsukara

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Posted 15 August 2017 - 11:48 AM

Wow! That's really comprehensive bug reporting, so thank you! I think you might be one of the first people to take a look under the hood of this ridiculous contraption by opening it up in ZQuest and looking at the FFC scripts, too, so that's helpful.

 

You would make an excellent betatester, by the way!

I checked out the Mickey Mouse mode problem:

Spoiler

So it's not as fatal a bug as I'd feared, but still really unintuitive and bad and dumb. Another thing I should try to fix if I can get version 1.4 done.

 

 

On certain screens, the ShovelSecret item and the room item/secret item seem to share the same flag

 

Ah, I was afraid there would be oversights about that. I'll try to get those fixed too. Good thing I put in extra seashell locations, I guess : /

 

In hindsight, this is precisely why most sane people probably use the Screen->D flags to keep track of unique item spawns, instead of setting Screen->State[ST_ITEM] and Screen->State[ST_SPECIALITEM] (or just don't cram multiple things on one screen quite so much). Alas.

 

 

another ShovelSecret I'm not sure about, in Marui at 4:69.

 

As far as I can tell, this one does work correctly. Marui does indeed have two secret seashells even though the others don't;. I think I thought the placement on this one was too obscure (I don't think most players would stop to think of shoveling under the crystals at that particular juncture). In hindsight, it probably should've been a P-Bag or something, but oh well.

 

 

As for the minor bugs...

Spoiler

 

Regarding the ungettable items...

Spoiler

 

For those curious about the prospects of 1.4 becoming extant, I haven't poked at ZC much lately, but I've been noting numerous problems from different LPs (and also that I need to put a more noticeable version number warning up, since this thing REALLY doesn't work right in anything but 2.50.2). I'm also still working on finishing some of the LPs (I can only stand to stare into the abyss of my own clunky game so much).

 

One of the biggest things I'd like to do, but that would involve a bunch of rescripting and restesting, is to essentially rewrite the awful spinner paths (or, failing that, just take a Parallel Remodel-esque hatchet to the 'challenge' of the spinner tracks so that people don't have to fiddle with it so much to get through the spinner rooms), but we'll see what happens.

 

I've also gotten a lot of complaints about the final boss having too much health (especially since he starts throwing a billion complications at you simultaneously by the end). Personally, I don't like it in a game when a final boss goes down easy without a long-winded beating that threatens to sap all my health, but, if I did another version it might be good to add some way to adjust his difficulty (speaking of taking ideas from Parallel Worlds).

 

Likewise, some people seemed to get hung up on how to use the ladder to get into the miniboss room (and up towards the boss area) in Yamauchi palace because they don't realize you're supposed to face upwards to use it to place it where you are, so, a little ladder rewriting (or an extra Impa hint telling you to face up when using it) might be in order. Not to mention some better Tower of Seline hints, and I'm tempted to try to add content to Zelda II Hyrule, and maybe make a real boss rush mode, and to set better default midis (and make them cooperate better with the script-changed music somehow), and...

 

...yeah. I pretty much just haven't dumped more time into this yet, but I'd still really like to fix it up at some point. Moreover, I'd like to make a whole new game and smply learn from my mistakes there, but responsibility demands spending a bit more of my time on things that will rude my odds of IRL doom thus far, so I've barely touched ZC in a few months, sadly. But someday, if I yet live and have the time to spare for it, then I'll do more with ZC.

 

Here's a look into deleted process, on that 'Northwest Calatia' thing I mentioned in one of the above spoiler blocks (regarding the ungetable secrets). These are three different prerelease updates of my scratch notes for when I was planning what items would go where.

 

Early on: (there were going to be 9 crystals in Calatia, one for each of the three 8x8 maps)

86DIbye.png

(the red bottle became the Habanero Pepper; it was going to be Hot Sauce instead. Din's Fire was just Din's Fire, the Horse Call was the Pegasus Boots, the Life Spell was the heart-shaped Life Wand, Zelda was going to get her own version of the vanilla ZC fast-shooting longbow item, and the Lens of Truth was going to be in the quest. At this point, I wasn't intending to use ZII Hyrule, so the Tower of Seline in the Northwest, with the magic key in it, would've been the final dungeon. The boss list talking about 'Urchins' meant 'Unira', I hadn't looked up the proper name for the Clu Clu Land enemies yet when I made these notes.)

 

Later: (By this point I had thought about 12 crystals in Calatia, but I had decided to axe the third 8x8 map due to lacking ideas. I left the notes for it intact anyway.)

AR0DTHP.png

 

Closer to release, after getting some betatester feedback:

LpJDYsl.png
As you can see, there's some differences that made it pretty far in the game. I'm not sure why I left a note for 'Peril' in the southwest when I'd long since put the Peril Beam scroll in-game in the southeast (and had no intention of using Peril Rings since I'd already used them for the level-up system and guardian acorns), but that just shows how disorganized my notes were.

 

At one point during testing, Dimentio spontaneously designed a would-be Northwest Calatia area, but due to complications in how he set it up and due to finishing it being more than I wanted to chew, and due more generally to the fact that I'd designed the quest solo otherwise and wasn't sure about how best to work with his contributions, I didn't wind up using his map. But it was pretty cool-looking and I hope he puts it to use in some other way at some point, since as I've said before, this quest is open source and people can use stuff from it as they like (if they can figure out how to do so).


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#354 Deedee

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Posted 15 August 2017 - 08:41 PM

At one point during testing, Dimentio spontaneously designed a would-be Northwest Calatia area, but due to complications in how he set it up and due to finishing it being more than I wanted to chew, and due more generally to the fact that I'd designed the quest solo otherwise and wasn't sure about how best to work with his contributions, I didn't wind up using his map. But it was pretty cool-looking and I hope he puts it to use in some other way at some point, since as I've said before, this quest is open source and people can use stuff from it as they like (if they can figure out how to do so).

Oh, right, almost forgot I made it.

Spoiler


I think I also started making one of the dungeons for it, too.

Spoiler


However, I kinda suck at dungeon design, and it was probably a good idea that Mitsukara decided not to include it. (I was making it with the intent that you could come back and complete a standard topdown dungeon after ever 2 hyrule dungeons, in case you didn't like the topdown style and so Calatia wouldn't become useless after only half the quest. Basically bonus dungeons, and completing all 4 would gain access to a bonus final level. Literally the only point of the whole thing was for more items).

The only reason I made the dungeons/overworld was because I wasn't a huge fan of the hyrule dungeons, probably due to the quest being switched over to a leveling system right before I attempted them and my level not being adjusted properly making me have a difficult time. However, this was before I played the final dungeon, and after playing that, I agreed with Mitsukara's decision not to include the northwest stuff. The final dungeon was a really strong finish to the quest.


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#355 Anthus

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Posted 15 August 2017 - 09:43 PM

So when is Beta64 going to make a video about this quest? :P


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#356 OkamiTakahashi

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Posted 20 August 2017 - 01:03 PM

I'd been away from Zelda Classic for a while and was itching to try something new; and I have to say, this game's blown me away. The gameplay's nothing like anything I've tried before in a Zelda game, fanmade or official, and it's given me a bit of a challenge. I much prefer the top down Zelda 1 style but it's nice to see how the Zelda II style has been used for certain segments, albeit altered to not feel like a terrible platformer like Zelda II was. I've played at least one remake of Zelda II in top-down style, but your Zelda II-like sprites for those segments of the game- wow! You could totally make a top-down Zelda II like that, keeping that style of the sprites. I did try to download the tilesets/loose titles from the ZC site but it seems those links are mostly broken save for the support pack.

 

I'm not terribly far into the game, but it's quickly risen to the top of my favorites list, beating out The Nine Villages. I absolutely love this. Well done!

 

P.S. The use of non-Zelda music was a fun little addition; most of the tracks do suit the series, some not so much, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised. At some point I'll have to try out the other modes. (GRAND DAD?!)


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#357 Mitsukara

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Posted 20 August 2017 - 05:03 PM

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I put a lot of thought into it, even if it's still got a lot of oversights and unresolved bugs; I think I bit off so much in terms of convoluted possibilities that it makes it a lot harder to tie up all those loose ends. The hazards of clumsy mad science, basically.

 

Grand Dad mode is a bit of a janky afterthought/joke mode, so don't expect TOO much from it... there's barely any mention of Fred, and that Yoshi tongue is an abomination of lazy zscript.

 

I think the fanciest modes are Error Mode (albeit kind of unplayable in it's madness) and Averted Ambush mode (which lets you play the game in an even more broken order, and fight the final boss of Calatia after the usual final boss in Hyrule, instead of before, so that he gets an upgrade). Those are the most content-y.

 

Mickey Mouse mode changes a whole bunch of graphics and little cutscene behaviors, but it doesn't change gameplay (though it can be overlapped with Averted Ambush mode)- although apparently you kinda need to position your partner a little bit below certain switches to count as 'on' them in Mickey Mode, due to hitbox weirdness and an oversight on my part.

 

If you'd like to use the graphics, you can actually grab or export them directly from the .qst file- it's not passworded. It's not very well organized, so using that stuff might not be convenient enough to want to use as-is, but you're certainly welcome to do so! : )

 

Like I've mentioned a few times (I want to make sure everyone knows), I basically allow anyone to use content from this quest (graphics, scripts, ideas, etc) for their own projects any way they like. It's open source, and I think it's silly to worry about 'ripping off' ideas (especially when my thing is chock full of other people's ideas to begin with, drawing inspiration from Zelda, Castlevania SotN & Portrait of Ruin, The Lost Vikings, Legacy of the Wizard, and more). A ton of creative works are secretly made out of ideas from other creative works, even way back in the day with Shakespeare and stuff like that (and I'm no Shakespeare).

 

I actually watched an LP of The Nine Villages by MeleeWizard quite some time ago. That quest goes pretty far back in the day, before scripting existed (I remember being 11 years old when I heard about ZC, in the year 2000, shortly before ZQuest was released by Phantom Menace; but I lost touch with the ZC community from about 2005 to 2015). I always liked the feel of the BS Zelda tileset, and there were a ton of overworld areas in Nine Villages, plus some interesting little non-script minigame type things made with timed warps if I recall correctly. And years before I got anything made, that quest also took some ideas from the Valiant Comics, with things like the Magical Shortcut area, since I think they were using the Hyrule map from those comics.


Edited by Mitsukara, 20 August 2017 - 05:11 PM.


#358 OkamiTakahashi

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Posted 21 August 2017 - 09:11 AM

Thanks for the info on the different modes and the sprites. Though to be honest, I have absolutely no idea how to event get sprites from a qst file. I'm clueless when it comes to anything other than actually playing qst files. And I would love to make my own some time qst sometime, but it's all Greek to me. I've no clue how to really do anything with ZQuest tbh. But thanks again for allowing for use of your sprites. I'll keep it in mind in case I ever figure out how to do anything with Zquest or for whenever Runiya (formerly Legend Maker and Zelda Maker) gets a public release much later on.

 

 I think learning how to use this program might be good for me; I'm an amateur graphic designer who's wanted to make games for a long time, and this could prove helpful in some way. I've been wanting to do my own take on Zelda II for some time, and I think the way you've got things set up with Panoply of Calatia is clever, switching between top down and side scrolling, is clever, though I'm not sure if I'd want to make my dungeons top down, side scrolling or a mix of both. I haven't really been able to come up with a way to reimagine the Palaces in top down view. I've also got ideas for an original title or two floating around, but just ideas, nothing solid- one being a proper-ish remake of the Zelda LCD games (the Game & Watch title had its own story even!), the other being an original idea I've had since high school- and the whole team play aspect of PoC has really got me thinking now.

 

Edit: Thought I screwed up on the Sand Palace but it was just an oversight on my part. Oops.


Edited by OkamiTakahashi, 21 August 2017 - 02:30 PM.


#359 Gleeok

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Posted 04 September 2017 - 02:12 AM

I don't have too much to add right now, but I just wanted to say that this quest is amazing so far! Very creative. :)

#360 Mitsukara

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Posted 04 September 2017 - 05:20 AM

Wow, that means a lot coming from you! Thanks for your role in creating ZScript, which is what made it possible for me to throw this thing together. ^^


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