If there's one thing I've been hell bent on with the development of this quest, it's the fact that it's become more and more of a spiritual successor to the Oracle games. So much time lately has been spent refining ideas I first put into this quest anywhere between six months to a year ago, with the vision of making it the least Zelda Classic GB Zelda quest, since, I dunno, PoRC and Crucible Crest? I guess?
This includes reworking dungeons, overworld areas, even items, to better fit the idea of what I want Three Crests to be. The above gif is a cutscene I scripted earlier tonight courtesy of reference material from Crucible Crest (thanks Mitch!). A lot of the past month has just been reworking things as a result. The new, reworked Rotted Stump mini-dungeon is done, even though it's not named Rotted Stump anymore.
Additionally, I've spent a considerable amount of time over the last month reworking every palette I'm using in EZGBZ to accommodate a particular colour scheme.
If you've spent any amount of time wanting to rip the Oracle GB assets into ZC from the Spriters Resource, you'll have noticed there's two different versions included with most spritesheets:
- True colours, which EZGBZ itself uses. This is the default, and is what most emulators like VisualBoyAdvance use. There's also:
- LCD colours, which is a default setting used by the BGB emulator. The colours in this are less saturated, more washed out perhaps. I don't know how to put it, I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to palettes and terms like ramping.
But what does this mean overall? Well, compare these screenshots (excuse the odd tiles here and there, they're FFCs that can't be seen in-game):
The differences in the screenshots are wild, for me personally anyway. By swapping over to the LCD colours everything feels a lot more comfortable to the eye. It's been a slightly painstaking task to do it all by hand. For the palettes I'm using in Three Crests so far, I've done about 19 with another 15 left to do. It's a bit annoying to do it the way I am currently but it's very much worth it.
I'll look into releasing these palettes properly, along with the rest of the Oracle palettes, when Three Crests is eventually finished. For now, it's about working on what palettes I need for the quest itself.
No new demo for a while yet, but I want to get a beta out to testers in the coming months - after I finish Level 1's bosses.
Finally, if you're looking for more regular updates, I've shifted new content over to the PoRC/CC/TC development server on Discord! The server itself is private, so if you're looking to get in purely for Three Crests updates, shoot me a message either here or on Discord and I'll send an invite link your way!