28 replies to this topic

[Moosh]

My god, I think I've fallen in love. This is the BEST THING SINCE SLICED QUESTS!

Moosh likes this.

[LinktheMaster]

Edit - Speaking of which, what would Genre do in this type of thing? Like more story-driven, action, etc.?

Well, I'll admit that the genre was a bit of a placeholder. I haven't thought about whether it will really be in the final version, but some genres I can think of are "Classic", "Modern", and "Scripted", if those make sense. Classic would be traditional Z1-style, Modern would be more 2.50 with some scripting, and scripted would be ones where the entire engine is changed.

But may I ask is it possible to "invite" non-developers to the development section? Such as personal beta testers etc.?

I might consider just having beta testers as a group that can simply see the development section and skip out on the separate section entirely. Depends on what people seem to want. If anyone else has opinions on this, I'd love to hear them.

Though I gotta ask, do you think it would be possible for people to adjust their rating? Like say, a guy initially rates a quest 1/5, saying: "I'm not all that impressed by this quest so far, but I'll keep playing. Maybe it picks up?" Then he comments on his earlier review saying "Well, huh. It does pick up. After the sub-par beginning, what comes after is pretty good!" and wants to bump it to a 3/5. You see where I'm getting at?

People would be able to edit their ratings, yes.

Just read the post again, and see it has...but what about being able to link them to a Developer's Exchange thread?

I'm honestly not sure if this would be necessary for most people. If people want this, then they can simply add it in to their description.

So will this entire database get rid of the entire Quest Project Discussion? I'm sort of foggy what's going on with that.

At first, at least, QPD will remain open. People may want to use it as they switch to the new system. After that, it all depends on how many people utilize it versus the new system. If no one uses the QPD forum, then it'll be archived. If some people use it, then it'll be left open. I'm hoping everyone will switch to the new system since if everything works out how I hope, then there's really nothing that the forums can do that the new system can't.

Anyway, I'm glad everyone's liking the concept. I was a bit worried people would be worried about the change. Trust me that I'll do my best to make this system as fluid as possible.

[CastChaos]

Though I gotta ask, do you think it would be possible for people to adjust their rating? Like say, a guy initially rates a quest 1/5, saying: "I'm not all that impressed by this quest so far, but I'll keep playing. Maybe it picks up?" Then he comments on his earlier review saying "Well, huh. It does pick up. After the sub-par beginning, what comes after is pretty good!" and wants to bump it to a 3/5. You see where I'm getting at?

Official support for rating a quest before reaching 51% at gameplay type quests, 80% at story type quests and 99% at the fully story type quest? Horrible.
Makes me remember when there was a quest with 12 full mandatory dungeons with exponential story and gameplay increasing and one rated saying "I beat the first two dungeons, I can now rate this quest"...


Anyway, it looks all good, makes communication easy and smooth, development information can be channeled all great.
Concern 1: would there be some control at ratings, like if one could disable ratings/comments fully, other only allowing non-rating comments, etc.
Convern 2: it would be great if it let the forums completely unchanged, in case it is revealed that the original way of things have something that this new system doesn't, so both being needed. Like, when things are handled on a forum, one can have a development thread and a help thread separately, so after the quest is released, the development thread still gets updates sometimes, with things like "I played my quest again, I like the dungeons in this order:" or "listen, I made up this dungeon and area like this: *insert 30000 characters*". But seems like at this new system a submission is either "in development" or "finished" so the developer and help asking comments would be jumbled in the quest page.

[Theryan]

So will this entire database get rid of the entire Quest Project Discussion? I'm sort of foggy what's going on with that.

I'm guessing QPD would still be used for help threads and general screenshots that aren't for any specific quest.

[Gleeok]

Looking good guys. Great job!

I also support the idea for [tags] or some other extended description categories for quests/tiles. (tileset used, difficulty, length, year, zc version, rating, most comments, etc..) ..depending on how easy it is to add seperate feilds for these I guess. With the way it is now it's like looking through a haystack.

[Ricky of Kokiri]

Well, I'll admit that the genre was a bit of a placeholder. I haven't thought about whether it will really be in the final version, but some genres I can think of are "Classic", "Modern", and "Scripted", if those make sense. Classic would be traditional Z1-style, Modern would be more 2.50 with some scripting, and scripted would be ones where the entire engine is changed.

Classic and Modern?

I do like the idea of grouping the quests based on style, but I think "Classic" is too broad a term, at least the way it's described here. It would seem to put, let's say,1st Quest, Hero of Dreams and Ballad of a Bloodline all in the same category, and I personally don't think that's really fitting. Assuming we even use this method of categorizing, maybe we could have Classic for Z1-style quests, "Classic DX" (or choose a better name) for Z3/Z4-style quests made within the limitations of 1.92 and 2.10, and then Modern and Scripted as already described.

Edited by Ricky of Kokiri, 28 May 2012 - 01:48 PM.

[Koh]

Oh I forgot to mention! There should be an additional dialog box that shows what tileset the quest used, like on zeldaclassic.com. This way, for people interested in looking for Gameboy quests, for example, they can weed out the others.

[LinktheMaster]

Oh I forgot to mention! There should be an additional dialog box that shows what tileset the quest used, like on zeldaclassic.com. This way, for people interested in looking for Gameboy quests, for example, they can weed out the others.

For this goal, I'd rather stick with something like genre/style. A quest can have the Pure tileset and be a Gameboy-style quest.

[Old-Skool]

Thinking way further ahead than PureZC's own database, I would like you to consider the following. This will not be something we can do now or, soon either really. But I would like you to just think about/imagine the following. Just think about it. Not a request. Just thinking. Got all that? Not gonna get any youtube-style response where someone didn't read this through all the way ok here goes.

Something for both the Site engineers and the ZC devs to put in their minds:

Someday in the distant future, ZQuest could allow questmakers to produce "smartquests", quests that carry an extra bit of hidden information to allow a main database (like say, PureZC or ZC.com) to instantly recognize many important traits of that quest, such as what version the file was saved in, the quest name, heck new fields could let you type out the story, description, credits and cheats right there in Zquest! The database could pick up on all this when the quest is uploaded, and instantly apply this data to the proper fields.

This wouldn't lock you out from entering anything in the submission fields: you could still edit or enter new information right there when you submit it, but you'll now have the option to take care of that before you even submit the quest.

Needless to say, quests would probably have to be submitted directly as .qst files, and I'm not so sure that people would want to have to download additional files like a quest readme seperately, so this might be a minor issue with it unless the database can search all this out in a folder, compressed or otherwise.

Edited by King Aquamentus, 29 May 2012 - 08:52 AM.

[peteandwally]

One thought from a lowly newbie:

I used to be a big part of Soulseek, an old file-sharing program after napster died, and back then electronic music was still shunned as horrible. So we nerdy 'musicians' banded together to work on projects much like purezc users work on quest projects. One of our greatest and most fun successes was the soulseek second. Anyone would make a second of sound and pass it off to the next user to make another second. It was chaos for over ten minutes by the end, but a hell of a lot of fun.

So, could we have a purezc '1 tile page' compilation? We could pass a common .qst file around and take turns adding ripped or custom tiles and passing it back in some limited time frame, say 1 day. Then, whoever has dibs on the message boards gets to work on it next. After, it finally dies out, we'd sort it and release it as a tileset?

eh? EH? what do you think guys?

btw, I like the newer formats LTM

[Mero]

What about allowing for more then one author in the author box. Obviously for Collabs.

[Old-Skool]

After some reading around, it looks like most other database managers are not particularly fond of quests that carry extra files with them in a .zip, like readmes and images and whatnot. Thus, if it is something we can phase out, the whole "smartquest" idea may be a tad more of a reality. Questmakers would still be able to submit extra material, but as something linked to from a different filehost.

[Nathaniel]

Readmes don't contain much file space, but I think the one main problem is that the file is usually readme.txt, or something like that. For those who like to keep all their quests in one folder (I keep all quests of the same version together), rather than separate ones each, would have to rename them each time, or they must decide to overwrite the readme of one quest with another. I did propose to Nick and LTM the idea of having a separate readme download (much like the upload options for package and screenshots), for those who wish to provide them. This would assure that each readme file name would be unique. I haven't heard their thoughts on it yet. Plus, if someone doesn't want to download it, then they don't have to. While a description would replace the need for a readme in most cases, some ultimately would prefer to provide them, especially if they have a large amount of information they wish to provide, while not having to make a very long description.

[SubconsciousEye]

After reading the first post, I felt like I was gonna kill myself for the awesomeness of the new database