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What do you look for in quests?


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#16 Shane

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Posted 19 April 2017 - 07:28 AM

Never use the default level palette in EZGBZ. I don't even know why it's there, but it's really ugly...

I actually checked a while ago to see if this was a palette from the Gameboy Zeldas or if it was custom and it turns out it's a sidescroller palette (07A - Level 5 Side) so yeah, it's not intended to be an overworld palette which makes it sort of worse, personally for me at least. :P



#17 Avaro

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Posted 19 April 2017 - 09:59 AM

The MIDI bug has blown out my ears with blaring piano one too many times.

 

Apparently it only happens when using an enhanced soundfont. Not sure if you knew about this.

 

Anyway, I'm a little conflicted about my quest. I'll be using midi only for it, but I see the issue here.


Edited by Avataro, 19 April 2017 - 10:00 AM.


#18 Adem

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Posted 19 April 2017 - 10:26 AM

I'm with nicklegends here. The quality of the quest matters to me much more than the size. Sometimes quest projects evolve into these monstrous tasks that are anything but achievable, and that's why so many wind up either cancelled or messy. I'd rather play a polished quest that has a small overworld and only a couple of dungeons, than play something that's clearly spread itself way too thin.

 

Speaking of the overworld, and I suppose I'm speaking slightly against the grain a bit here, but that's probably the most important aspect of a quest for me. I love to explore and see the worlds that Zquest users create. The dungeons to me are a vehicle for further exploration, as they allow players to unlock more areas and travel to new places with new items or goals. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be massive, but simply that it needs to be interesting and polished.


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#19 cavthena

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Posted 19 April 2017 - 10:35 AM

I'm with nicklegends here. The quality of the quest matters to me much more than the size. Sometimes quest projects evolve into these monstrous tasks that are anything but achievable, and that's why so many wind up either cancelled or messy. I'd rather play a polished quest that has a small overworld and only a couple of dungeons, than play something that's clearly spread itself way too thin.

Speaking of the overworld, and I suppose I'm speaking slightly against the grain a bit here, but that's probably the most important aspect of a quest for me. I love to explore and see the worlds that Zquest users create. The dungeons to me are a vehicle for further exploration, as they allow players to unlock more areas and travel to new places with new items or goals. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be massive, but simply that it needs to be interesting and polished.


I don't think it's the size of a quest that ends up being its downfall. The problem is people try and create such quests in only a few weeks or months when it takes years to build these kinds of quests. The other major effect is an obvious lack of support. You need a team to build top quality, something I feel the community lacks in some cases. Trust me I've been tryin go get a team together for months.
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#20 Binx

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Posted 22 April 2017 - 02:58 PM

For me, it comes down to three things: music, difficulty, and story, in that order. Great music is, in my opinion, one of the most important features in any game. I like the difficulty to be challenging enough to be fun, but not so difficult that it becomes overly frustrating. A good story can make up for all kinds of visual design flaws, and it doesn't have to be super detailed. I think the stories in LoZ and Z2 were perfectly serviceable. It told you what was going on, then turned you loose, but you still got a sense that you were on a quest with defined goals, not just wandering aimlessly.


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#21 Lüt

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Posted 22 April 2017 - 04:23 PM

About that, it doesn't really matter where the music comes from, it matters how it sounds. Some modern pop songs could work well with medieval-styled fantasy, who knows?

Oh, well yeah, the point was more about the appropriateness of a music than its source. I mean, if an arcade action game suddenly has a dark or mysterious moment better suited to a fantasy setting, that's great. I just said what I did under the assumption that a game's music lived up to its title/setting/etc. and that, say, a cybernetic techno-thriller set in 2286 would have futuristic electro-styled music to match.

Again, I refer back to Zelda II. The game gets a lot of flack for being difficult, but I don't really see why that is thought to be a bad thing.

Maybe it's just because Zelda 2 was one of the first games I played, and I was still in the phase where those first games were setting the standard for all that was to come later, but I never found Zelda 2 all that hard.

 

Apart from that massive final palace, where the 3-lives start was nearly as bad as Z1's 3-heart start, the primary issues I had with Z2's difficulty were more like unplanned nuisances than planned encounters - getting knocked into lava by those stupid flying horse-heads coming off the side of the screen while jumping, wonky physics relating to upward/downward thrust, or other things like that.

 

But even Z1 had a load of things like that - cheap shots by enemies to the point that the shield is one of the most useless items in the games, darknuts turning into you the very frame they're about to get stabbed, or getting knocked into a ham sandwich.

 

And as for general encounters, it's hard to think of a Z2 enemy that causes more trouble than the blue wizzrobes do in Z1.

But as far as difficulty goes, I am completely with consistency on that front. Even if the game is really easy, it can still be a good game if it has something engaging about it.

I don't mind spikes, as long as you're provided some options to prepare for or adapt to them.

 

I mean, there's a such thing as taking things exponentially off the chart, yeah.

 

But a lot of games will give you an upgrade and throw harder enemies at you simultaneously. All that does is retain the same gameplay balance under a new look, and make me wonder why even bother? Either let me enjoy my upgrades for a while, or jump the difficulty up and send me running for those upgrades. (I usually prefer the difficulty jump.)

More Puzzling Dungeons: It's a common trend to have dungeons that are just a gauntlet of enemies. It's also common to have a gauntlet of enemies with an occasional block puzzle/ice block puzzle/lights out puzzle/hamiltonian path sprinkled in between. Neither of these make for fun dungeons. I want to see some more dungeons that are themselves puzzles, interconnected and thought provoking.

I think the biggest issue is lack of puzzle variety in general with ZC. It was always more of an obscurity game than a puzzle game, but that doesn't mean some good puzzles can't be implemented with minimal effort.

 

Anybody who wants to see a good NES-based puzzle game with Z1-style layouts needs to play The Adventures Of Lolo series. The goal for each room is the same - collect all the heart packages to open the treasure chest with the crystal that clears the room and reveals the exit. But the way you do it is so continually varied that I find the games to almost perfectly walk the line between familiar and fresh.

 

Perhaps the most noteworthy element of the games are how all the enemies play into the puzzle. There's never an enemy that's merely a threat to your life. Though you can be killed, each enemy has its own gimmick that requires its own treatment as part of the larger puzzle. Some enemies freeze when you align with their horizontal axis but charge when you align with their vertical axis, other enemies permanently fall asleep when you touch them, certain enemies can't cross certain grounds, still other enemies will line-of-sight insta-kill you and you have to plan your obstacle arrangements around them, some enemies only come to life once you've collected all the heart packages... the games are really an excellent example of not only how to build great puzzles in Z1 style, but how to build every kind of enemy into the overall puzzle.

 

My first thought is to recommend the 3rd one, since it adds overworlds, training rooms, themes, characters, some semblance of story progression, and looks all-around better, compared to the first 2 which are basically just a series of puzzle rooms. But at the same time, you won't appreciate all that 3 adds if you don't at least play some of 1 first.

 

Still, the bottom line is - play these, and you'll never go back to block puzzles again.

Tileset Bugs: If you're using a tileset with broken defaults, such as Classic or Firebird, don't just leave it. Don't leave the numbers on the Classic heart meter.

I do agree on numbers looking sloppy, but I guess I don't expect first-timers to understand that it's "broken," since there's generally an assumption that provided sets are functional, especially the one that comes with the game. Plus most people just want to design maps, not futzpuckle around with the subscreens.

 

But, since the topic's brought up, I suppose I might as well share these here:

 

classic-fullhearts-01.png  classic-fullmagic-01.png

 

I made these when I revamped that first quest of mine. They account for HP/MP in eighths. The icons don't offer enough pixels for sixteenths. The extra gray icon acts as a placeholder for a container that hasn't been picked up yet, though you'll have to add an extra color swatch of 12, 12, 12 to CSets 0 and 1 if you want to use those. Or just erase them entirely, whatever.

 

But for anybody who hates numbers and wants icons, feel free to grab those and overwrite the icons on the bottom of page 100 of the default classic tileset.



#22 Matthew Bluefox

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Posted 22 April 2017 - 05:22 PM

I prefer the classic tileset to play (and create) and I also like a good soundtrack (NSF or MID preferred) that matches the environment Link is in. I like new item and enemy creations that haven't been used before.




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