35 replies to this topic

[SofaKing]

I messed with it a bit last night.  Did get one of the Nightlys to work, although the screen was smaller than when I run 2.53, even on fullscreen.  

[Moosh]

I messed with it a bit last night.  Did get one of the Nightlys to work, although the screen was smaller than when I run 2.53, even on fullscreen.  

If you open ZLauncher, does setting the default Window Width and Window Height fix it? You can also scale the window at any time either by dragging the edge or selecting ZC->Video Mode.

[SofaKing]

Thanks I will try those things!

[Deedee]

Having finished the quest... I don't think it's good, I'm sorry. The quest is usually really boring at best, and frustrating at worst. Positives include the the Sarrissa cutscene (which, as Valient has said, is rudimentary for 2.10), an actual good usage of the boots in level 5, and both the towns of Maura and Jalee. I think the reason why the Sarrissa cutscene is highlighted despite it's rudimentariness is cause story-driven quests, much less animated cutscenes, feel extremely uncommon for 2.10 quests. The only quests I know that have attempts at a story are Hero of Dreams and To the Top, the latter created years later as a sort of last hurrah for 2.10. Any attempt at a story is going to stand out in a time where people didn't really do stories, even... well, a not great story like this.

I guess lets start with story. The story exposition dumps a lot, using a lot of words to convey very little. The main thing of value in Ganon's introduction is that he will spare link but make him suffer; the rest of the speech is just wasting the players time. You could argue that the rest is establishing character, or that he's hamming it up, but it doesn't work; you're just staring at a generic dungeon screen while a text monologues about how every story needs a villain. I couldn't explain to you what makes a great villain tick; all I know is just that this ain't it. The soul shrine part is neat, and the intro animation for Triaga is neat, but Triaga is yet more expo dumping. If you want to give a lot of information away, make some visuals and show instead of tell the player. Her speech was just a blur of Ganon wants Link to kill himself, Ganon is in the dark realm, only evil people can be in the dark realm, pendant of wishes. One thing I remember in both her first and second appearance is that there'd often be questions tacked on at the end that address very niche things; usually questions covering up plot holes/questions raised. Their positioning in the cutscene feels awkard, and makes me suspect they were added solely as patchwork to address plot holes like "why didn't Zelda wish to go away from Ganon? lets insert the reasoning into the expo dump!". Basically, what I'm getting at is that the quest fails to deliver information in a good way.

The story also feels directionless and lacks cohesion? I mean besides the first 2 dungeons having no plot; the Pendant of Wishes is introduced, used, and dropped within the span of time between level 3 and level 4. The dark world being a place that "good people cannot enter" goes nowhere; you enter it anyways after getting the Master Sword dropped on you despite a huge deal being made about how you can't wish to go to the dark world. You literally get yoinked out of Jalee by Triaga because "you have no further reason to be here" and get teleported to where the plot is. You get told that Ganon only can do evil from the place in the Light World where his palace is, but that didn't stop him from wiping out Hyrule? It doesn't feel like a connected whole. 

This brings me to the pointless "sacrifice" at the end. Sacrifices in media are used narratively as a capstone for character development; they are a choice that show a character is willing to give up everything to protect something. Keyword: choice. There's no choice that Link is making here; we learn with no foreshadowing whatsoever that killing Ganon will cause the two triforce wielder to die after Ganon is killed, and it just happens. It's not a sacrifice, it's a pointless death at the end for no reason with no buildup to it. Even if this were a choice Link were to make, it'd be a bad choice; earlier he is willing to commit suicide after his grandfather dies, and is only stopped because it would fall into Ganon's plan. Link clearly doesn't value his own life, so even if him sacrificing himself was a choice he was able to make it wouldn't be a choice out of character development because he hasn't changed character wise. It's not a sacrifice, it's suicidal idealation. What would have been character development would have been Link learning to value his own life and choosing to live despite facing certain death, even if it means potentially living in a world where the people he used to care about are gone (you could still have the happy ending where everyone comes back to life if you wanted to afterwards as a bonus surprise). All this pointless "sacrifice" does is sour the player at the very end, and also serves as a microcosm of the quest: people tell Link what to do and Link has no agency whatsoever.

Lets talk about gameplay. Low hanging fruit first: those winding sreens that exist to maximize the amount of time you walk on the screen are bad and add nothing to the experience. You need to respect the players time when they play your game. The arbitrary triggers are also not great; the curtains that you sometimes boomerang and sometimes sword have no consistency, the ice walls that you fire arrow don't look any different from the other ice walls and you never have a reason to expect them to exist, and I have no clue what the hell is up with that random fire boomerang trigger in Ganon's Tower. Consistent trigger logic is incredibly important; people love consistent trigger logic, Umbral Cloud, a quest previously showcased on Quest Club, was praised by one of the people in the thread for having consistent trigger logic because feeling rewarded for remembering "hey this is a bomb rock" feels great, and you even scratched this at one point with Jael Woods, where you can stumble onto the white rocks that are fire bomerangable in a hidden side path, and when you get the fire boomerang and immediately learn that it's used for the white rocks, you have the opportunity to go back there and use it (and it's like 2 screens away so it isn't that hard to backtrack there!). This is one of those Zelda itches that you're scratching, this is one of those things that makes people tick, you've already shown why consistent triggers are good!

This quest also has a backtracking problem at times when it comes to dying or getting sent back to the start; Mt Hyrule starts you all the way back at the beginning if you die, and it doesn't really feel like real difficulty so much as wasting your time after wearing you down, and level 3 has a gimmick that sends you back to the start that is also annoying; those two are the most egregious examples but I feel like there were others that didn't stick as strongly with me.

I actually want to talk about a series of rooms in level 3 that stood out to me as being close yet off the mark. At the very beginning you are locked to 2 rooms and you have to find a walkthrough wall to get a key. When you do find the walkthrough wall, there's a small walkway coming from the south that has no purpose other than to view this key where the only way to obtain it is through the walkthrough wall, but this walkway that reveals the walkthrough wall is behind a locked door, which means you have to have already found the walkthrough wall in order to get the hint about the walkthrough wall. The room beyond the locked door also has a segment where you have to walk through a long winding path to press a switch to lower some blocks, and you have to repeat this every single time you get sent back to the start beause the switch isn't permanent. This little 2x2 of rooms could very easily be solved by removing the locked door, and changing the switch to a locked block that opens some copycats; you get the game design hint showing you about walkthrough walls, and you don't have to repeat the tedious room when you respawn or get sent back.

Protip: play your game again and again, and if there's parts that bore or frustrate you as the creator, they're going to bore or frustrate players even more, so change them; don't make the mistake of assuming "this works on a technical level, so it's fine"; if you have to cheat your way through your own game that's supposed to be fun, maybe consider why it is you're doing it.

It was mentioned in this thread that you believed the quest wasn't hard enough because Haylee had barely any deaths; I don't think Haylee's above-average skill shouldn't be used as evidence that "the quest needs to be harder". Hard and easy aren't the things that matter; hard doesn't make a game inherently less boring, and easy doesn't inherently make a game less frustrating. You need creativity and execution to figure out "what would players find fun here?", and that's hard.

Lastly, I ran into a softlock in Ganon's Tower and I'm surprised it wasn't even caught. There's a permajinx bubble very close to the stairs up to the second floor, and if you go up those stairs while permajinxed you're stuck up there; there are no cure jinxes on the second floor of the tower, and you need the sword to open a chest to get a key. Technically, you can save and quit to cure, but most people wouldn't know that; I'm a ZC Dev and I didn't know that until someone told me afterwards I could have done it instead of cheating out.

[Valientlink]

Look, I already established that this thing isn't good lol. I made it in like 3 months, pulling all nighters, just going with the flow of whatever my 16 year old brain was thinking in the Summer of 2010. But I still feel that criticisms can be given in a better way. Both you and Russ, particularly Russ, roasted this thing so bad I stopped working on the almost finished sequel. It's like, who cares about a 2.10 style quest anymore...

 

Seriously, if you have critiques then just try to be congenial. You acknowledged that Haylee thought it wasn't that hard in the same message that I was talking about how seriously bad my mental health is, and yet you still come across so condescending. If you aren't trying to be, that's just how it seems to me, just a regular messed up guy. Sorry if we don't see eye to eye on this but I just really don't like you guys' tone. It's like you're just using your dev or admin position to come across very rude. That was certainly the case back at AGN, but not ZCF which was like one big happy family of zquest lovers, (RIP Elise). Like, I'm seriously messed up, how could you read that and still talk like this, was it not clear that I'm extremely vulnerable? Hell, that's practically the basis for the sequel... Why it's so dark and messed up, why characters struggle with their identities.

[Moosh]

It's been two months, dude...