1. Old ZC quests from the "heyday" were made in 1.90, 1.92, and 2.10 where the broken enemies and items caused horrible difficulty. I never want to go back to that era even if people did release more quests.
2. There are plenty of abandoned quests from the pre-2.5 days. You just notice the current people abandoning quests and think it's a modern problem because the quests abandoned years ago left your memory. But it's always been like that.
3. You really shouldn't quote ZoriaRPG as if it's his fault ZC hasn't been updated for years. He's working hours a day to fix bugs that have sat unfixed in 2.50.2 for years, add new script types to make scripting less hacky and unintuitive, and he's even admitted to me that he hardly has anything in common with the PureZC members socially, only working on updating ZC because he believes in how good ZC can be. One of the most promising quests right now is being made by a high schooler (TabletPillow) and Zoria is in his 60s. What I mean is he is not working on ZC to get ANY cred in the community or to become a sensation, yet several dozen members have personally updated to his 2.53 bugfix patch of 2.50.2. His job is already almost thankless, so quit trying to make snide remarks as if it's Zoria's fault at all that people stop using ZC.
4. Oh, and by the way, what will actually REPLACE ZC? Zelda Classic is popular because you can quickly make a quest with nothing but prefabs. There is also a forum where people take personal interest in each others' projects. With Unity or Godot you get neither the easy level making or the tight knit community. Unless your game is sell-quality nobody pays attention to you. ZC is perfect as a hobby because you don't need to make your own scripts, graphics, or music. Long story short that's why people use ZC instead of "moving on" to other game engines. It's a place where when you make something messy people still enjoy it instead of complaing about "indie garbage" on Steam Greenlight. And guess what, PAID games get cancelled somewhat often (Silent Hills, 90s Arcade Racer, Shenmue 3 got its Steam release cancelled, games like Halo 3 or Super Paper Mario get moved to the next console, entire consoles like the PS Vita get cancelled...) and are oftentimes disappointing if they do get released. ZC is fully in line with the game industry in being "abandoned" or "low-quality", and it happens to be FREE to boot.
Late fifties, but, close-enough.
That is a lot to take in there. I think I'm rubbing off on you in an unintended manner of my longsighted argument.
For article 4, I'd say that Solarus is a candidate for future consideration. It's a massive codebase, and I'd need Christopho on board with some other people to work on something that is close to the ease of use that ZC offers--then connect it to the current ZC stuff to side-launch old quests in the new software via an invisible layer that runs ZC Player (and ZQ Editor, if desired), in Legacy mode.
Truth be told, Solarus in the next ten years might become part of ZC 3.x or 4.x, so, using our assets now is a good start on bridging these two talent pools.
god if you keep posting takes like this there's gonna be a whole lot of abandonware sitting around on PureZC
not that things aren't trending in that direction already, but hey
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Abandonware is a major component of retro gaming. You can't ring up Interplay and ask permission to copy one of their old games. No-one exists to sell it, nor to permit copying it--although they allowed this of me many times in the mid-late 90s.
When members here leave, stop checking their PMs, and change email addresses, how precisely are people to contact them and ask on their intent for an asset uploaded to a public database for use?
Obviously, you can't use that material commercially without permission, but using it socially, in open-source and/or free games/software, is certainly already implied by the assets being made-available for public use. Anyone using them should certainly record and credit the tileset designers, the original artists, and the hosting source, but I'm completely unaware of 'abandonware' being in any way an objectionable classification.
That word defines exactly what some of these assets are: Software components created and no longer maintained, with no way to contact the copyright holder--should they qualify for unique copyright claim.
I certainly am not stating that people should be required to remain in contact, nor to maintain these creations. There are no obligations required to submit resources on ZC.com, or here.All support is provided gratis at the discretion of the person who submitted the resource, and otherwise by the userbase as a whole.
Even I don't feel an obligation to support on an individual-by-individual basis., everything that I have published or released;nor indeed even things that I routinely maintain. My time, health, and other factors dictate how much I can pour into any support projects. That said, I'll likely be around until I kick the bucket.