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Design Mistakes/Regrets!


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#1 TheLegend_njf

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Posted 26 February 2020 - 02:39 PM

Nobody's perfect!

This topic is one of those discussion topics for educational purposes. It'll help others avoid mistakes we might have caught ourselves making in the past or even today. I'll start with one I just recently brought up to Moosh about a mistake I've been making in my most recent quests and I'm trying to lean away from. This wont include all my poor design habits from the past personally because there's too many issues to count.

 

I feel one of my biggest mistakes/regrets in my more modern work now is my tendency to make dungeons almost too item/diverse. I've often favored letting my dungeons allow Link to use their entire equipment list in almost every dungeon, which leads to dungeon design that requires you to always be constantly switching up your items. This preference made me ignore just how much of an issue this is. I tried to correct this issue in the past by providing a way where you can see what items you'll be selecting almost like a rotation wheel for L and R which does help slightly, but not enough to handle with the issue of how much this quest expects you to always change your items. It didn't occur to me until lately that my very principle was the mistake. 

 

I've realized this after noticing some Mario games handle mechanics by introducing a mechanic, then slowly pushing you into the mechanic by repeated rooms of the similar mechanic. I never really seen a random meshmash of variety like how I approach things and realized my approach to this is terribly flawed. This could have been handled better by having a chain of rooms with similar gimmicks rather than constantly randomizing level gimmicks for variety. This would then require players to switch their items far much less, and thus does not impact the flow of the dungeon. 

 

My design philosophy takes dungeon flow very seriously, however, this one mistake heavily compromises good dungeon flow. It's funny how I prioritize something, but also compromise that very same thing by another design preference.  

 

Fortunately for me, I'm noticing this in mid development and I may be able to look over all my dungeons and try to fix this issue as much as possible by moving some aspects to dungeons around or by simply removing some challenges entirely. There are ways for me to improve this situation for my current quests, but I feel with new quests I can certainly take this into consideration and fix the pacing issues in future dungeons by looking for as many ways as possible to expect players to use items less. Heck, even bunching rooms close together based on the item subscreen position will also help in accessing items better than it's currently handled. 

 

So moral of the story people, take a much better care of understanding exactly how ZC limitations are impacting your quest. Something as simple as a subscreen can ruin the entire pacing of your dungeon if people gotta constantly be looking for the items they want just to get around. 



#2 TheRock

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Posted 26 February 2020 - 04:50 PM

My biggest mistake is not being happy with the design. Like the place doesn't do anything.

I made a dungeon that just had a bunch of stairs that you go up and down. It was confusing but had no flow to it. One thing I don't like doing is making the same dungeon again.

Tips: Make your dungeon yours! Like the gimmick, the way you use the gimmick, and the layout of the dungeon is.



#3 Saffith

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Posted 26 February 2020 - 07:17 PM

Disappointing dungeon items. Twice I've made the power bracelet a dungeon item in level 1 and barely done anything with it. You only get a couple of chances to use it, and it doesn't do anything clever or interesting. It just lets you push a few more blocks than you could before. They don't all have to be great, but you don't want dungeon items to be things you immediately just forget about.


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#4 TheLegend_njf

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Posted 26 February 2020 - 07:31 PM

Tips: Make your dungeon yours! 

I know the feeling, I feel I've even put emotional investment into my dungeons if that sounds any bit weird at all. 



#5 Evan20000

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Posted 27 February 2020 - 08:37 AM

Echoing on Saffith's sentiments. A lot of my dungeons tend to often be focused on the layout and mechanics of the dungeon with the interaction of the dungeon item being somewhat minimal aside from opening a few more veins of the dungeon to explore. Coupled with the dungeon items tending to be vanilla ("Oh, I got the bow... Okay then...") it tends to place the brunt of how useful the item is perceived on how effective it is against enemies. I'm not sure this is entirely a bad thing, but it means I'll never get to create the sense of mystery of "What triggers that?!?!" that more creative setups can provide.


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#6 Titanium Justice

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Posted 27 February 2020 - 12:53 PM

I feel like with Darkside 66 I could've added more variation with puzzles. There are a lot of them that involve either flipping a switch to open up an area or solving block puzzles.
And like what most of everyone else has been saying, I feel like some of the items could have been put to better use. There are some that you end up using only a handful of occassions. Many of the equipment items near the end are just there for the sake of filling up the subscreen. The master key, for example, is given as the last key just to fill that slot, but by then there is only one door that it can be used on.

Edited by Titanium Justice, 27 February 2020 - 12:54 PM.


#7 Jamian

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Posted 27 February 2020 - 01:26 PM

In my early quests, I had a design (non)philosophy of trying things and allowing them to stay no matter what, even if they didn't work very well. This period helped me become familiar with ZQuest, but resulted in wildly uneven material. From Promised Lands onwards, I took quest design more seriously and started reworking/replacing areas until I felt they were good enough. So my advice is, thoroughly playtest your quest and don't be afraid to rework it.



#8 NoeL

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Posted 27 February 2020 - 10:15 PM

Disappointing dungeon items. Twice I've made the power bracelet a dungeon item in level 1 and barely done anything with it. You only get a couple of chances to use it, and it doesn't do anything clever or interesting. It just lets you push a few more blocks than you could before. They don't all have to be great, but you don't want dungeon items to be things you immediately just forget about.

It's a good item for separating the player from more advanced areas of the map (I've also used is as a level 1 item) - maybe that's why people stick it in there? But I agree, it's a pretty boring item... when it's used boringly. :P You could spice it up by making heavy block triggers more context-sensitive or something like that, like throwing big switches in a dungeon machine (gives a bit more pizazz and mystery).

 

The bracelet is still fun on the overworld for this reason: you know there's a secret hiding here, but what could it be?



#9 DarkFlameWolf

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Posted 04 March 2020 - 04:13 PM

Been so long since I touched ZC or even played any of my quests, I've quite forgotten. I know I'll never be completed satisfied with my works, I find them stale and probably uninteresting these days. However, I do wish I could have upped my game on dungeon design compared to my overworld design, which seemed to be my strong point.



#10 TheLegend_njf

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Posted 05 March 2020 - 07:44 AM

Been so long since I touched ZC or even played any of my quests, I've quite forgotten. I know I'll never be completed satisfied with my works, I find them stale and probably uninteresting these days. However, I do wish I could have upped my game on dungeon design compared to my overworld design, which seemed to be my strong point.

Your overworld design has inspired my overworld design philosophy and I've won at least 2 Map of the Years for it. Also, some people have asked me what my overworld design philosophy approach is, and I tell them what I've learned from analyzing your style. Demonlink is a good example, and he's become a master of overworld design and has won many Screenshot of the Weeks ever since. I'd say you left a good legacy in ideal overworld design that many of us should aspire to. 

 

That said, I had to turn to other quests like Isle of Rebirth, Forbidden City, and various Moosh quests for inspiration on dungeon design (leading to the same effect where people have asked me my philosophy to dungeon design).

 

Dungeons require a completely different mindset and approach than overworlds, and more often than not, if you're skilled in overworld design, and try to carry over those skills to dungeon design, you'll get dungeons that look pretty, but are also pretty "stale" as you've said. 


In my early quests, I had a design (non)philosophy of trying things and allowing them to stay no matter what, even if they didn't work very well. This period helped me become familiar with ZQuest, but resulted in wildly uneven material. From Promised Lands onwards, I took quest design more seriously and started reworking/replacing areas until I felt they were good enough. So my advice is, thoroughly playtest your quest and don't be afraid to rework it.

I'll admit, I have a little bit of this issue myself even now, but I try to compensate for unpopular mechanics with good execution. 


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#11 Shane

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Posted 05 March 2020 - 09:44 AM

My only regret is not finishing quests, regardless of how bad they were. I'm very insecure and unconfident with my designs, I'm learning slowly to find a fine balance between putting in care and not caring about my projects.

 

I guess for Sanctuary Tree, my biggest mistake was winging it fast. The first version was spontaneous, meaning I didn't have nearly enough creative ideas as I do with the version I'm working on now. It uses the first version and will feel and flow a lot more better. This isn't exactly a mistake, as I feel this is more a blessing in disguise as this has given me a foundation to work and improve on, but I consider it a general mistake for any quest making of mine, too. Am I making sense? Probably not. :P


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#12 Peteo

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Posted 05 March 2020 - 10:41 AM

Been so long since I touched ZC or even played any of my quests, I've quite forgotten. I know I'll never be completed satisfied with my works, I find them stale and probably uninteresting these days. However, I do wish I could have upped my game on dungeon design compared to my overworld design, which seemed to be my strong point.

 

Your overworlds are definitely the best there are in the ZC realm. I'm having hard time trying to top them in my quest and at least I have all the new neat ZC tricks at my disposal.

 

Which brings me to my regret number one: I've never done a good, big overworld. Ages had a decent one for a 1st quest I guess, MMDWR DC has a really crappy one, and Lost Isle's OW was made by Wolfie as most of you know. I'm trying to fix that now with a massive and beautiful OW, we'll see how that goes... And another design flaw I try to fix is not to overwhelm the player at the beginning of the quest. I tend to make my quests and dungeons hard and confusing from the get go. I'll never do an easy quest that holds your hand, but I could tone down the difficulty a bit.


Edited by Peteo, 05 March 2020 - 10:43 AM.

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#13 DarkFlameSheep

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Posted 05 March 2020 - 10:58 PM

I enjoyed exploring MMDWR's modern world so much, also it has excellent gameplay.


Edited by Stray Sheep, 06 March 2020 - 08:45 AM.

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#14 bigjoe

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Posted 06 March 2020 - 06:31 PM

In 5th.qst I wanted every level to be nearly as big as Level 9 in the first quest. I figured that if Nintendo had kept going for 5 quests they would have done something similar. However, I made the mistake of creating far too linear paths through the dungeons. As a result, the levels were annoyingly long and sort of resembled mouse mazes. I would probably have taken a different approach given my current design tastes.



#15 Tabletpillow

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Posted 06 March 2020 - 09:35 PM

My biggest design mistake is the script for every single one of my quests.

Including the one I'm making right now.

They're all always cringeworthy to me, I guess that's what happens whenever I try to make a deep plot.




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