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Zelda Classic vs Lunar Magic


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Poll: Zelda Classic vs Lunar Magic

Do you use or have you ever used Lunar Magic?

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Wich editor is more user-friendly in your opinion?

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#46 Shane

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 08:52 AM

Um... I still say ZC is more userfriendly. ZC shouldn't teach you Zelda inside out. After all Zelda Classic. You have to play Zelda in order to understand a lot of it. But whatever floats your boat I guess.


Edited by Shane, 26 July 2013 - 08:53 AM.

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#47 Avaro

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 09:08 AM

But not vertically.  You can only move left and right, and jump up small enough cliffs.  You can't climb up...you can only go down.  So a platform game that's not just left and right is out of the question as a newbie o.o.  But one who sees the Sideview Gravity checkbox isn't going to know that.  What if they haven't played a Zelda game that had a Roc's Item?  How are they going to know what that is?  Google yes, but that's stepping outside of the program...

 

Koh, when editing the Rocs feather item, there is a small ? button that explains what the item does, just like there is for any other item class. No need to use google or trial and error.


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#48 Din

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 12:04 PM

I wouldn't hesitate in calling Lunar Magic the tougher editor to learn, but the two are very different from one another.

 

Zelda Classic is a freeware game that, as somebody pointed out earlier, is filled with various guesses and inferences as to how the mechanics work, and when you go into the editor, you don't have to work with a ROM.

 

Lunar Magic is, of course, a bit more complicated because you're going in and directly editing the very foundation that makes a game work.  With Lunar Magic comes ROM limits that have to be represented in some way in the engine.  Unlike Zelda Classic's boundaries, which are more-or-less just in place to be in place, a Super Mario World ROM only has room for so much.  I'll bet that if Zelda Classic worked with an actual ROM, as opposed to being a freeware game, the program wouldn't be capable of what many have made with it (enchanced graphics aside) and would be far more complicated to use.

 

Having messed around with both, I wouldn't hesitate to call Zelda Classic the easier to use editor, but that's to be expected.  ROM Hacking does require a bit more thought than using software that can be built around being friendly to the user without having to deal with ROM complications.  Funny thing though, if you use it enough, it'll eventually become intuitive enough that you might even make the opposite decision because, unlike the majority of people on a Zelda Classic forum, you've actually grown accustomed to Lunar Magic's rules and freedoms.  I'd imagine if you asked this same thing on SMW Central.net, you'd get a lot of responses either in favor of Lunar Magic or "What's a Zelda Classic?"


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#49 Haylee

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 12:12 PM

I HAVE COME TO A CONCLUSION.

 

After some experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that the SMBX editor is more user friendly than Game Maker, Lunar Magic, ZQuest, OR RPG Maker.

 

I will give my explanation later, but for now! *Writes rough draft. :3*



#50 Avaro

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 12:30 PM

I HAVE COME TO A CONCLUSION.

 

After some experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that the SMBX editor is more user friendly than Game Maker, Lunar Magic, ZQuest, OR RPG Maker.

 

I will give my explanation later, but for now! *Writes rough draft. :3*

 

Wow, that makes me interested in that smbx.. Is it freeware? Maybe I'll look into it sometime.



#51 Koh

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 12:49 PM

I've never heard of SMBX much less used it, so that's why RPG Maker is at the top of my list.  I mean, game making couldn't be any simpler than this (RPG Maker 2003):

 

RPGM1_zps5f6c1816.pngRPGM2_zps71c51716.pngRPGM3_zps7a28d47f.png

 

 

 

Like I said, there's a button for literally everything a newbie would need to do here.  Nothing is incomplete, or trial and error guesswork.


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#52 Haylee

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 01:45 PM

Wow, that makes me interested in that smbx.. Is it freeware? Maybe I'll look into it sometime.

Yep, it's freeware(But if I'm right, it's a little hard to find nowadays, but it's there.)

 

Basically, it's kinda like Zelda Classic, but for Mario games.

 

 

EDIT: That little article thing I said I was going to do is gonna have to wait a while, since I'm busy with ZQuest and whatnot. >.>


Edited by Goriya, 26 July 2013 - 01:47 PM.


#53 Din

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Posted 26 July 2013 - 03:56 PM

After some experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that the SMBX editor is more user friendly than Game Maker, Lunar Magic, ZQuest, OR RPG Maker.

 

This having been the only program with which I've released something to the world, I agree one-hundred-and-eight percent.

 

Super Mario Bros. X is essentially, yes, a Mario editor to the Mario series as Zelda Classic is to Zelda, but it's even a bit simpler to use than that.  It's basically a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to plop individual tiles, background objects, enemies, etc., onto a screen.  It's very simple and easy to use, but it comes with a number of baffling decisions as well.  While the game offers many NPCs and items from Mario games to choose from, it also has, bizarrely enough, items and features that aren't from the Mario games.  There are simple Metroid and Zelda enemies available, and you can even play as an AoL-style Link, but here's the thing - some of the basics of the Mario games remain missing.  If you want a Starman, for instance, you're out of luck.  Similarly, because the engine was never really properly finished, there are a few bugs to work around.  Occasionally, if a mushroom touches lava, the engine will crash.  If you try to come out of a pipe with a piranha plant in it, the engine will crash.  If you don't use music with the proper bitrate, the engine will crash.  Thankfully crashes are reasonably rare, but they are annoying when they do occur and you mash your head on the keyboard wondering what went wrong.  It also has quite a few limitations.  There is no engine-specific scripting system, and the best you can do with it is swap out graphics and very primitive NPC behaviors (such as if this enemy turns on a ledge).

 

Despite that, I've grown used to it.  I've collaborated on a project for the past couple of years with a few other people on some forums I go to, we just released our third (well, second-and-a-half, it's complicated) "episode" with it, and we've had our ups and downs with the editor.  It's perfect for making group projects, because levels are made in their nice, neat own little files, and making a game out of them simply means putting them all in one folder and having a world map link to them.  Despite its frustrations and limitations, it has a very small learning curve, and you can make some pretty neat stuff with it.


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#54 Tabletpillow

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Posted 27 July 2013 - 12:04 AM

The maker of SMBX, Redigt was planing to have SMBX v1.4. But Nintendo Lawsuits told him to shut down the the link and stop making updates. (Luckily, there happens to be one link that Nintendo hasn't found yet.) Becuase it seems to be too popular. (That or the fact that the editor made them jealous because the editor was 100 times much better than their lousy so called " Mario vs. Donkey Kong editor")   If there were never anymore updates in SMBX. You only have Nintendo Lawsuits to blame.



#55 Orithan

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Posted 27 July 2013 - 04:15 PM

So you haven't heard that Redigit faked the C&D to try and get the Mario fandom off his back so he could work solely on Terraria.

#56 Din

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Posted 27 July 2013 - 05:38 PM

So you haven't heard that Redigit faked the C&D to try and get the Mario fandom off his back so he could work solely on Terraria.

 

Pretty much, yeah.  A creator stating, "Oh noes!  Nintendo is tragically shutting me down!" is usually code for, "I don't want to work on this anymore".  Nintendo doesn't typically care too much about fangames, and even if they did, wouldn't the more logical choice be to hunt down something such as Lunar Magic, which actually edits and manipulates an official Super Mario World ROM, as opposed to hunting down a homemade visual basic fangame made by some dude with too much time on his hands?  There are numerous other fangames that have received far more widespread coverage with more active communities (such as Lunar Magic and Zelda Classic), and none of those have been targeted.  Plus, Redigit's story of receiving a phone call from lawyers... you can't administer a cease-and-desist through a phone.  It must be through written form, such as a letter.

 

Redigit wanted to be able to make money off of his own game without having a huge wad of meat hanging around his neck.  If he was to switch gears between an independent project and something that was technically illegal, things could very easily become problematic.  So, he made up the story about the cease-and-desist to wash his hands of the project and get to work on Terraria free of lawyer bait.


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#57 Tabletpillow

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Posted 28 July 2013 - 01:49 AM

I've never heard of SMBX much less used it, so that's why RPG Maker is at the top of my list.  I mean, game making couldn't be any simpler than this (RPG Maker 2003):

 

RPGM1_zps5f6c1816.pngRPGM2_zps71c51716.pngRPGM3_zps7a28d47f.png

 

 

 

Like I said, there's a button for literally everything a newbie would need to do here.  Nothing is incomplete, or trial and error guesswork.

I want to try out RPG maker. But it cost money. And that's the thing I don't have. :(



#58 Koh

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Posted 28 July 2013 - 11:32 AM

2003 is free as far as I know.  I think XP is now too.  XP improves upon 2003 in various ways, but it goes back to the first person battle system if I'm not mistaken.  It was also the first to introduce scripting, so if you know what you're doing in THAT regard, you could make your own sideview battle system.




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