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[Tips&Tricks / 2.10+] Simple Custom Bosses in 2.10 or Above


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#1 LostInHyru1e

LostInHyru1e

    Can you take me as far as PureZC?

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Posted 15 August 2008 - 07:49 PM

Simple Custom Bosses in 2.10

A "Tips and Tricks" Tutorial by LostInHyrule.

Contents:
  1. Introduction
  2. Clarifications
  3. Main Article- Ghost King
  4. Variations and Extras
  5. Miscellaineous Notes
A. Introduction

If you came here trying to figure out how to make C-Dawg style Mega-Ultra-Custom Bosses, you came to the wrong place. You are not going to learn how to make Dragonlich here, sorry people. But this tutorial will get you started in the track to making custom bosses. It gives you the basics of making custom bosses in 2.10 or above, without using scripting. The type of custom boss you will see in this tutorial is very simple, but it will give any quest an added kick if you do it right. A major plus for this type of custom boss is that it isn't immensely time-consuming.

B. Clarifications:
  1. This is the one thing that tripped me up most when I first started learning about custom bosses: Zquest does not register the boss as an enemy. It is only a bunch of combos and flags made to act like an enemy. Therefore, you cannot use simple flags like Enemy>Item to make an item appear once a boss is destroyed, and you cannot give your boss "health" in the traditional sense.
  2. Before you can start working on a custom boss, you will need tiles. You can draw these yourself, rip them from various places off the internet, or use pre-existing enemy tiles from the tileset you're using- your choice. You will probably want to animate them to give the boss a "life-like" look. Therefore, you may need a great amount of tiles to create your animation. Although it's possible to give your boss no animation at all, this can make the boss seem very unprofessional.
  3. The boss will need its own DMap if it is to function properly, so create one of those. You might want to use the DMap Intro to have the boss say something to the player, use the DMap Title to say the bosses name, and most importantly, change the palette or music of the boss.
C. Main Article- Ghost King:

Let's skip right to the chase and introduce our most important tool in simple custom bosses: Secret-Triggered Direct Warps. For the duration of this tutorial, I will assume that you(the reader) know how secret triggers and secret flags 16-32 work. If you don't know how, Koopa has written an excellent tutorial on it here. If you want the boss to have more than one bit of health, you will need to create multiple screens for the boss to be on. Draw the first screen normally, with your boss in its spot. For this tutorial, I will be using the Ghost King from Eternal Winter as an example for this tutorial.

IPB Image

Next, you must decide what will damage the boss. It could be a sword, arrows, wand magic... anything you'd like.(As long as it has a corresponding flag.) In this example, the boss is currently invulnerable - you must burn the gravestones in the corner of the room to destroy it. So, I set the Red Candle flag on the gravestone that is going to burn, and set flag 16s on all walkable tiles in the room. I make the Red Candle's secret combo a cracked gravestone, and I make Secret Flag 16 a direct, walkable warp that looks identical to the floor tile. The flags will look like this:

IPB Image

I then set the tile warp to "Insta-Warp" and warp it to the screen to the right of the one I'm currently on. (e.g. if I'm currently on 00, I set the warp to 01.) When done correctly, this should place the player on the same spot on screen 01 as s/he was on while on 00 as soon as they use the Candle on the gravestone with the flag "4.". However, it should be done so fast that the player does not even understand that s/he is warping.

Next screen we have to make is 01. It is an exact copy of screen 00 except for one thing, the bottom left gravestone tile has been replaced with a cracked one to signify that it is burnt. I then re-arrange the flags so that the bottom-right gravestone is the one that needs to burn, set 16s to warp you one more screen to the right, and alter the bottom-right gravestone to be cracked on that screen, and repeated this procedure for all 4 gravestones. Once they are all cracked and your boss is vulnerable, you might want to make that evident. I change the Ghost King's CSet to 8 (making him red) to signify that he is vulnerable.

Now, we must decide what weapon we should make him vulnerable to. I chose Sword Slash, and so I put two sword-slash flags on the boss and flag 16s on the floor, so that it will warp Link again once the Ghost King is slashed. In this example, the gravestones and ghost are then restored and the ghost turns back to his original color. You must burn the four gravestones again and then slash the ghost again. Once you slash him the final time, you are warped to a room with a Heart Container that has a right-facing side-warp that brings you to the Triforce room, which is back on the DMap with the rest of the dungeon.

D. Variations and Extras:

You may want to make your boss vulnerable the entire time. If this is the case, you may want to set up your boss in an entirely different way. If I had wanted the King Ghost to be vulnerable the entire battle, I could do something entirely different. I could place a Gibdo underneath the ghost, and place the ghost on layer 5 or 6. This way, the Gibdo would take damage when it looked like you were hitting the ghost. You will still need secret flags: flag 16s on all the floor tiles to warp you to the pre-Triforce screen. However, you set the screen flag Enemies=Secret and then when the Gibdo is destroyed, you are insta-warped. But since the Gibdo is covered by a layer, the player does not know that the Gibdo is underneath; s/he thinks that the Ghost is taking damage.

A boss is not a boss if it does not attack you. You can make your boss Statue Combos and make the statues shoot fire, and you can make your boss tiles damage combos to give your boss an attack. You can also make your boss "Summon" enemies between warps that fit the theme(place enemies on a screen you get warped to), or check the "Falling Rocks" screen flag to make it appear as though the boss is knocking down rocks (you will probably want an animation for this).

There are many additional possibilities for what you can do with a custom boss. You can warp the player many additional times to give the boss more "life." You can use combo-cycling to make your boss appear to be moving. And you can use any flags to make your boss vulnerable to any weapon. Be creative! Be original! And get started on your custom bosses. Believe me, they are not as hard to make as you probably think, and they will help out your quest in a huge way.

E. Miscellaneous Notes:
  1. Please, do not copy the Ghost King Custom Boss for your quest, or rip the tiles out of the screenshots. They are exclusively for Eternal Winter and are only here to illustrate to you how to create Custom Bosses.
  2. If you use Bombs to Trigger the Warps, you may run into a problem. I figured this out while working on Façade for Eternal Winter. The Bomb flashes screw up the CSet if you instant-warp the player. I think there is a quest rule in 2.10 that allows you to not make the CSet flash when bombing, so check this.
  3. Try to make sure the tiles you're using match the graphic style of the rest of your quest. For example, The Ghost King would look pretty ridiculous in Pure. Likewise, GB's Giant Ghost would look pretty weird in Classic.
  4. EZGBZ by Akkabus has tiles for just about every Zelda boss in LADX/OoA/OoS. They are great resources for Custom Bosses in GB, or if you recolor them, for Pure or DoR as well.

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