19 replies to this topic

[Nightmare]

It will be posted as soon as Pure updates it.

I can't re-iterate: KEEP IT RESPECTFUL! I am not happy when people whine about "the screens are not full and boring" about a classic quest when there weren't many to begin with. Unless you're Dimentio, you have no right to complain about this, especially when this has been around for 16 years and I'm not going to listen. If you post things like this, I am going to delete them on sight if possible (this includes the old ones).

You have a right to not like it and disagree, but keep it civil. If you're under the age of say 18 and don't understand how classic games work, then don't comment. This might not be for you if you like flashy graphics and stuff, this is a hardcore NES experience-style quest.

-James

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[SyrianBallaS]

What I think that would remove the need of "flashy" graphics in these types of quests would be a pixel filter.

Not sure about Z1, but Z3 looks like it belongs on the PlayStation with HQ4xS.

 

Yeah everyone, don't talk garbage. We don't need useless criticisms here.

Edited by SyrianBallaS, 11 May 2015 - 11:13 PM.

[cavthena]

I'll give this a play when I get home and post or pm my impressions. However from what I'm reading here I'm not sure if you want any feed back at all but your still going to get it!

[Nightmare]

I'll give this a play when I get home and post or pm my impressions. However from what I'm reading here I'm not sure if you want any feed back at all but your still going to get it!

 

No, I don't mind feedback, what I do mind is people throwing garbage all around that's not contributing and trying to bury everything in sight when it might be that way by design.  If you think it's going to be hurtful, best bet might be to PM it.

 

There a lot of people (especially older) who enjoy these type of quests and some of the garbage yesterday was out of line.

 

-James

[Shane]

I'm sorry, but the comment you are trying to have a stab at was in no way uncivil and inexperienced, and I know the poster you are directing this to isn't going to feel too happy about this thread. I'm going to be as calm and collected as possible regardless, so don't see this as an attack and attack me for politely disagreeing with your design philosophy. It isn't immune to criticism after all, you know. Criticism is not garbage and not wasteful regardless if you disagree with it, don't find it helpful or whatever negative perspective you see it in. And I for one don't believe there needs to be this criteria for criticism. 

 

 

You don't have to be over 18 or be familiar with NES games to know that this is lazy and could benefit having an actual dungeon palette. Now don't get any thoughts I'm not insulting you or your work, but you have to admit not even trying to give this screen a unique palette is not good advertisement and could benefit a more proper palette. Even NES games have a sense of good design. The poster's request was more than reasonable. I don't like the attitude and atmosphere of this thread is all. You can disagree with opinions, but don't call them garbage because you disagree with them. Hate me all you want, but I'm trying to be fairly reasonable here.

 

Your projects are functional and simple, but there is always room for improvement. Especially when your front page description implies you want your quest to get with the times. I don't get what you mean by "getting with the times" otherwise if you want to keep your quest back in the 80s or something.

 

That said, I don't mind if you do or don't take any form of criticism in your work. But your quest isn't immune to any form of criticism. I am glad you are expanding your works the way you want to, and I hope your project a successful end.

Edited by Shane, 13 May 2015 - 03:42 AM.

[Nightmare]

Could the screen benefit from a palette update?  Yes.  Is it going to get it?  No, stop asking.

 

This is why:

 

ZC 1.0 (when I started developing it) and the NES had a restriction to how many palettes you could use per quest.  You're asking me to change something that was originally designed in an NES style.  This is very indicative of the programmers vs. artists battle I have hinted to before and the age difference again.  You just don't seem to understand "this wasn't possible on the NES."  Also, I kinda wanted to have an Overworld palette dungeon to begin with.

 

Outside of DLC and expansions, I'm trying to keep this as accurate to the NES as I possibly can.still.  I know this is very hard for you and most peoiple around 18 to understand, that these machines just couldn't do it due to technical limitations.  The N64 was released in 1996.  The year is 2015, so that system is 19 years old.  To be fair you weren't alive in a world where not even the SNES was well-known and probably can't comprehend this.  It's not your fault, you can't help what you can't comprehend.

 

Once again, be sure to ask about a design before making comments.  There might be *ahem* reasons for it.

 

-James

[Haylee]

How is using the overworld palette in a dungeon abiding by NES limitations again?

[Shane]

"this wasn't possible on the NES."

 

If your quest is trying to get with the times, why are you holding it back over a few silly limitations? I respect that you are going for NES limitations. My project is going for GB limitations, but I don't let this hinder the experience and break the limits if it's for the better. It's ZC after all. I'm not understanding how asking for just a little more effort and care is the same as asking you to draw or paint art. It just isn't. And you seem to pull the classic "I want my games to be fun"-card. Well how about this proposition: why not both?

 

Again, I'm confused as to how giving criticism you disagree with is disrespectful and uncivil. I find it more disrespectful that you used my age as a cheap argument to discredit my attempt to lend you a hand and give some harmless advice.

Edited by Shane, 13 May 2015 - 07:59 AM.

[SyrianBallaS]

@Shane

I agree with you, but this is Nightmare's quest and he has criteria that he wants to meet. There's little stuff that I think that should be in all quests, 8 way movement, slash and spin attack automatically available, etc.

Try not to think about it too much, I think the moral of the story is not to force ideas onto this quest.

 

The age thing is more of a mindset than actual age.

Edited by SyrianBallaS, 13 May 2015 - 08:07 AM.

[Shane]

Again, I'm not trying to force my opinions. As I said: I don't mind if he does or does not take any form of criticism into consideration. But I feel as if he's censoring opinions he just doesn't agree with. They are harmless and pose not threat, so I don't see why we need to slap standards for well... other people's standards.

[SyrianBallaS]

There were some dumbass posts in a previous thread and I've been a similar situation at work.

[Moosh]

You just don't seem to understand "this wasn't possible on the NES."

Actually, all arguments aside, I'd like to hear an explanation of how this works. I've been trying to be a little more faithful to the NES style if I can help it when working with Classic lately. I didn't know anything about the NES having a limited amount of palettes total, just number of palettes onscreen and number of colors per palette. If that was a thing it's probably a limitation I'd choose to ignore, but I'd like to hear about it anyways. If you wanna have an overworld palette dungeon that's your decision.

[Nightmare]

Actually, all arguments aside, I'd like to hear an explanation of how this works. I've been trying to be a little more faithful to the NES style if I can help it when working with Classic lately. I didn't know anything about the NES having a limited amount of palettes total, just number of palettes onscreen and number of colors per palette. If that was a thing it's probably a limitation I'd choose to ignore, but I'd like to hear about it anyways. If you wanna have an overworld palette dungeon that's your decision.

 

@Nexas, @Moosh

 

EDIT:  Here's a tech article, looks more detailed than I can write:  http://nesdev.com/NESTechFAQ.htm

 

When the NES was released (and to some degree Windows 3.1 as well), it was an 8-bit system.  Due to this limitation, there were a limited amount of colors available not only due to not only what the GPU of the NES could handle, but also due to the actual number of bytes the CPU could handle.  When you talk about current systems (currrent computers, and game systems from the N64 on), most computer programs these days work on 64 or 128 bit (8 or 16 byte) systems.  The NES ran on an 8 bit (1 byte) system.  There was a limited amount of memory the NES could handle, including colors on screen (which Zelda Classic somewhat emulates).  That's why colors was limited.  This was heavily lifted by the SNES and especially by the N64 and PlayStation.

 

Also, this is a very huge difference, but space was a huge problem with the NES as well.  We REALLY take this for granted today considering that the usual HD space is 2 TB, the max SD card size is 128 GB, and the max Blu-Ray size is 50 GB.  The maximum NES cartridge size was I think 512 KB (or a half of a megabyte, not even a Gigabyte!), and most later NES cartridge sizes were 256 KB!  This is really hard for everyone to comprehend because it's been so obsoleted (and quite frankly, in this version this got thrown out the window as well, and most devs HATE this honestly and there was no way with new .MIDs and DLC contest this is going to stay under 256 K), but New Quest 2013 and before and the 5th Quest contest were judged to some degree on how accurate the quests were to actual NES cartridge size.  If a quest is to be considered true NES style, this has to be taken into account.  This is why I name most of my 9-level quests with mini-dungeons "Dungeon Rompers" instead of NES-style, because a lot of the new features don't actually follow the true limitations of the NES.

 

I hope this provides some insight on some of my design choices.  You are free to agree or disagree as you wish, but please, be respectful.

 

That's not to say there aren't tricks you can use to get around it, especially with 4 CSets where you can build 4 different enemy colors into it with sprites.  This is certainly a loophole I abused with Demo SP to no end to keep it looking classic style yet create numerous amounts of enemy colors.

 

-James

Edited by Nightmare, 13 May 2015 - 12:05 PM.

[Haylee]

Honestly, I think you can afford to break the occasional rule or 2 for polish sake. Just look at a game like Shovel Knight, the game could potentially run on the NES, had they not chosen a few instances of polish, like an upgraded background scroll. It wasn't needed, but it enhanced the game feel.

 

I think this factor can be applied to quests that try to be like the NES as well, especially when working with dungeon palettes. If there's anything I dislike, it's eyesoring color choices, which can be applied to Overworld colors being used in dungeons.

 

That's just my personal opinion, though.

[Nightmare]

Honestly, I think you can afford to break the occasional rule or 2 for polish sake. Just look at a game like Shovel Knight, the game could potentially run on the NES, had they not chosen a few instances of polish, like an upgraded background scroll. It wasn't needed, but it enhanced the game feel.

 

I think this factor can be applied to quests that try to be like the NES as well, especially when working with dungeon palettes. If there's anything I dislike, it's eyesoring color choices, which can be applied to Overworld colors being used in dungeons.

 

That's just my personal opinion, though.

 

Well, also, part of it is the fact that as a ZC original developer (and only having to Palette 00F I think available, and obviously far less combo pages due to size limitations, which was abandoned in 2.10), it was one of the few options available for mini-dungeons, and the fact I think an Overworld color dungeon is interesting and cool (yes, I do have some weird tastes in graphics, other people have said it, nothing new).  I guess that's just the old NES-style developer in me.  Once again, feel free to disagree.

 

EDIT:  My old computer with ZC original crashed, so if someone else with old versions still (@Chris Miller, @Gleeok) can confirm please let me know.

 

But just some file size information from previous versions of New Quest (once again, lost 1999 due to my HD crashing), but here is some of the information:

 

New Quest 2004 (Level 11 expansion):  295 KB  (could fit on an NES with some trouble)

New Quest 2013 (2.50 Upgrade, Custom Enemies):  350 KB (could fit too, but would take a max size cart, in other words, mucho dinero)

New Quest DLC:  533 KB (wouldn't make it, I'd arguably have to cut some of the music out, and future DLC would "technically" be impossible)

My 5th Quest Candidate:  315 KB (would also fit the max size NES cart if Zelda had a re-release)

 

-James

Edited by Nightmare, 13 May 2015 - 12:34 PM.