6 replies to this topic

[Taco Chopper]

Turns out it's been four months since I've posted one of these, whoops.

I'll start with the less exciting news: that being how progress has stagnated, for better or worse. I've had a lot of stuff going on IRL - working two jobs, personal things, etc - that affected the time and energy I had to give to ZC. Coupled with the fact that I'm up to some of the more intricate parts of development - boss scripting for one - it's probably no surprise the development's been slower since March. There was meant to be a 2.5 demo released as part of the Expo; this didn't happen because of what I've previously mentioned.

On the other hand though, there's still exciting news I can and want to share!
 

    

First off, Ether's come on board as a co-developer in regards to all things story, world-building and character design, along with her spritesmanship. The concept of the Crests - what they are, where they've come from - are all things we've been working to address, as well as establishing a stronger plot. Three Crests wasn't particularly story-intensive prior to Ether and I starting the story teardown, so modifying various elements to better suit the new story has been straightforward enough. There's still plenty of work to be done, but the important thing is that the story is a lot more focused than it was before!

Oh, and the Crests have been redesigned as well - by Ether's hands, of course.

Other incremental updates include:

• All of the LCD colour palettes (remember the last update?) that Three Crests uses are in ZC now. I just really love these colour schemes, and they feel so much easier on the eye.
• Retrofitting a bunch of scripts Moosh released to the public domain recently
• Debugging, balancing for the Expo demo that never eventuated. Also a few minor tweaks to areas to accommodate new scripts I've implemented into the quest
• Deedee was kind enough to give me access to a stack of scripts she developed years ago for Hyrule Fantasy - some of these are finding their way into Three Crests as bosses
• New intro sequence!
• A lot of interior designing - most of the caves in the game are finished now!
• NPC scripting and the like. The trading quest is about halfway done.

At this point I'd be leaving it here, but I think after such an extended break in public updates I want to hear from you guys! If you have any comments or questions, feel free to fire away down below.

[Matthew]

Two Q's:

 

1) Your maximization of screen space usage is honestly very nice to see. It's inspired me to break some bad habits regarding wasting space at the edge of screens. What inspired you to start using screen space better? When are you willing to trade walkable space for screen presentation?

 

2) Where do you see yourself on the development path relative to the start and to the end?

 

The project looked good to begin with, but has been on an exponentially-increasing curve of quality over the past few months. I'm excited to see what comes next :-)

[Taco Chopper]

1) Your maximization of screen space usage is honestly very nice to see. It's inspired me to break some bad habits regarding wasting space at the edge of screens. What inspired you to start using screen space better? When are you willing to trade walkable space for screen presentation?

I think it comes from wanting to break that habit myself. My old quests from 2007-11 didn't consider walkable space or screen presentation, and to a degree neither did some of the earlier versions of areas in the quest. The one restriction I placed upon myself at the start of Three Crests - prior to scripts, prior to a plot, prior to me even thinking it was going to be a quest beyond me making an overworld for fun - was to restrict myself to the one overworld map. Tiny in a sense, but that restriction's something that made me consider things like maximising screen space, as well as thinking of screen functionality beyond that screen itself. I tend to think in the bigger picture when designing areas, and whether the broader flow will make sense with the rest of that section. I've had to redesign multiple screens at once to accommodate particular ideas!

I think part of it too comes from having the Oracle games as both influence and reference points; the interior screens tend to be very empty in terms of presentation for the most part, but it's also a kind of minimalist approach where you don't need to be cramming ten different ideas into one screen as well. My return to ZC was through playing the PoRC and Crucible Crest demos in 2021 after a ten year absence, so it's not really any surprise I took a lot of inspiration from the way those quests handled their screen designs as well. This also includes enemy placement, which is something I think gets overlooked easily - it's situational to need more than 5-6 enemies on a screen at any time. Any more than that and the quest starts becoming a hack and slash for the worse.
 
I also think having scripts in the public domain like Moosh's cliffs script, or pitfalls being native in 2.5+ (compared to being FFCs back in the day) adds another level of what you can do with screen design as well - both exterior and interior. If it was a more traditional ZC quest, the expectation would be that scaling a mountain, dungeon platform etc would result in having to backtrack hard - being able to consider levels of platforming, as well as one way paths. It's just another way to add an extra layer of detail that combines both walkable space and screen presentation. I can't stress enough how much I try to avoid linear paths. If I don't want to backtrack, why should I make other players do so?
 

2) Where do you see yourself on the development path relative to the start and to the end?

This is a tricky one. I do have a rough road map that I've relatively stuck to since the start of 2022, but here's an edited version of a to-do list from March:

• Level 1 mini-boss, boss
• Level 2 mini-boss, remainder of dungeon (about 50-60%)
• Level 3 mini-boss, boss, dungeon (about 95%, there's a gimmick I need to script and incorporate too)
• Level 4 
• 4 more minidungeons for a total of 11 mini-dungeons.
• Trading sequence (it's over halfway done)
• general NPC dialogue
• cutscenes - endings, credits sequence, etc
• caves for a few areas on the map that I haven't touched yet

The big holdup with the dungeons is generally around scripting bosses. I don't really want to be using Newbie Boss for them like I have for the mini-dungeon ones - I want them to be more elaborate, more like "classic" GB Zelda boss fights. 
The to-do list also hasn't considered Ether and I rewriting the story, cutscenes from the old story, me deciding to sledgehammer a bunch of early game dungeons and build them again, and bringing every palette I needed across for the "LCD colour" version was strenous, but worthwhile.

 

So the short answer is that it's probably about 60-65% there. There's still a large chunk of work to do, but I think it'll come together quick enough if/when I figure out where I'm headed with the boss designs.

[Twilight Knight]

This all looks and sounds amazing!

 

Will there still be a 2nd demo release? I still want to play the first demo (I'm very slow, sorry)

[Taco Chopper]

Will there still be a 2nd demo release? I still want to play the first demo (I'm very slow, sorry)

 Demo 2.2 came out late last year!

Now, if you asked if there was going to be a third demo... then I'm not sure. I always thought there was going to be just two demos - one showcasing the core gameplay loop, and one demonstrating a full scale dungeon - but Demos 2.0 - 2.2 came out last year after I overhauled the quest to use the CC/PoRC engine (among a whole other bunch of revisions). There might still be an opportunity to release that third demo, but I'm wondering how much is too much prior to the full release, you know?

[Twilight Knight]

 Demo 2.2 came out late last year!

Now, if you asked if there was going to be a third demo... then I'm not sure. I always thought there was going to be just two demos - one showcasing the core gameplay loop, and one demonstrating a full scale dungeon - but Demos 2.0 - 2.2 came out last year after I overhauled the quest to use the CC/PoRC engine (among a whole other bunch of revisions). There might still be an opportunity to release that third demo, but I'm wondering how much is too much prior to the full release, you know?

 

Ah, I misread
You mentioned a "2.5 demo" for the expo in your post, so an update to the 2nd demo, aha

I should be playing your 2.2 demo then!

 

I agree with you it may not be good to showcase too much of your quest before the full quest release. An update to the 2nd demo would be good to see though, as you mentioned there have been many impactful changes to the existing game.

Edited by Twilight Knight, 25 July 2023 - 12:36 PM.

[Taco Chopper]

Demo 2.5 was going to be most of the overworld + the rest of the reworked early game dungeons. Lack of time mainly contributed to it not being released, but also I wasn't overly sure I wanted to put half of the quest out into the world as it was - I think the demos released at the end of last year are suitable enough as it is.

Particularly because a lot of other elements are being reworked as well - particularly the plot. I wasn't overly keen on releasing a demo with a half-reworked vision hahaha