36 replies to this topic

[pixcalibur]

Part 10 - These 2 levels are quite a doozy to go through, even more so if you don't have a cross.  Enemy burden starts going up, so it's not helpful if you can't see them

[Lüt]

MegaManhandla with a single blue bomb? 

 

I have a 95% rate of only ever blowing 3 off a regular Manhandla.

[Matthew Bluefox]

I did that many times as well, butt you need a bit of luck with his movement, definitely.

 

HeroOfFire, a shy question to you: How exactly did you make the summoner wizzrobe (light grey-violet style) that spawns invisible fireball shooters? I tried to make one as well, butt mine will always summon 2 or even 3 shooters at once and that's even for me a bit too much spam, even if there's just a single summoner around. Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

~ Matthew Bluefox

[pixcalibur]

Part 11 - Normally, you'd need to piece together clues from the end game levels to find this, or you could have found this by pure chance.  Need flippers or feather+hover boots.  

 

However way you find this, not a bad idea to scout this new place out for more goodies.  Does take a while to fully explore the place in its entirety

[HeroOfFire]

Wow, you sure finished BS Zelda quickly. And now... you're playing a NES demake of my 2.10 quest? Wow, I had no idea Zelda Classic could load a new quest within a quest!

 

Joke aside, that is literally what the distant overworld and its dungeon set are. Of course, the demake means it only has a single overworld and all the dungeons use only a single map, but those who played the quest may notice some similarities.

 

Randomizer BS has multiple tiers of secrets. You have the main BS part of the quest with two thirds of the main items, the hidden overworld and its dungeon set for the remaining third, several small bonus dungeons with a single item each, and three super secret dungeons that are well hidden, kinda gimmicky, and have 2 items each.

 

Sadly the hidden overworld leads to the difficulty flaw. The last few dungeons are the BS part are not balanced well for the reduced item count of that part of the quest, and as a certain playthrough showed, many useful items may get shuffled into the hidden world you have no idea about (and this doesn't even go into the normal final boss being near impossible without Red Ring or Gold Ring). Looking back, the BS part of the game should have had enemy difficulty scale to a lower limit, and have the dungeons in the hidden world start a little harder. If you player Randomizer Outlands, you can tell I learned from my mistakes and the two parts are better balanced.

 

As for Matthew's Question, I think traprobes still spawn a random number of fireball shooters. At least the fireball shooters only do 1/2 amage, otherwise they would be a big issue. I also think they have lower HP in later randomizers than BS.

 

And before you ask, yes, I did consider your idea for a Randomizer for Zelda Maxi. I played an earlier version to see how it played normally. You did create a lot of dungeons and have the idea for a difficulty curve. But there are a few issues that may conflict with an item randomizer.

 

First, the quest is very linear in design, even more than BS or Outlands. You constantly needed items to enter the next numbered levels. I seem to recall needing the bow and arrows for level 2s, and needed the candle in a Level 2 for later levels, etc.

 

Second, enemies scale in difficulty even more than in BS. By the time you get a Sword or Ring upgrade, enemies tend to jump greatly in power and HP, making those upgrades feel required just to keep going at the same pace. Pixcalibur had a similar experience with Level 6 in the official 4th quest, where even the Magic Sword couldn't kill enemies quickly and doing Levels 7 and 8 early was preferred to finishing Level 6 first. If sword and ring upgrades can be placed randomly, players could end up underpowered for even the lower levels.

 

Third, some items are not useful to get at the start of the quest. Nearly everything requires magic, and arrow, bomb, and magic pickups are rare. Again, randomized items means you could go a long time without Magic Expansions or Quivers or Bomb Bags. From watching parts of a playthrough, it looks like it takes until the 3rd Candle before it is multi use per screen. And I'm not sure if the Wand can be used in Melee. Basically, the only good starting item is the Sword.

 

A Randomizer is possible, but it would either be very limited or make the quest harder than it already is. I do plan to discuss how I made these randomizers in the near future if you are interested, and we can discuss how to rebalance your quest to make a Randomizer for it more fun and interesting.

[Matthew Bluefox]

Thanks for your detailed answer!

 

I would be willing to rebalance items that require magic to not use magic anymore for a better randomizer effect (mainly whistle, wand and candles - which I catually halved magic usage in an internal build for the next and final update on my quest series). I do understand that the current item placement and linearity makes it hard to make a good randomizer. Also I don't have even close as many items to get as you do. It would help me a lot if I had one of your quests as a template to view in ZQuest, so I could see how you did stuff there and I could adapt to your mastery (yes, you are a master of doing these kinds of quests). If you got Skype, that would be ideal to communicate sometimes about the future of this possible project.

 

Also I would smoothen the difficulty curve of the dungeons similar to yours (so the two standard quest dungeons would have an easier curve and the three extra - or four if LL gets finished soon enough - would have a slightly steeper curve, similar to your idea of 1 to 10 difficulty levels, which I just read about.

 

The second candle could almost always be used multiple times, and in the next internal build I mentioned above, all three (four in LL) candles will be multiple use and require half of their current magic. The wand in LL will also get a lot more base damage (master sword) to make it worth being used, because it's available very late in the game right now. My traprobes also summon projectile shooters with 1/2 heart base damage, butt the screen gets spammed so quickly if you don't kill the traprobe immediately. So I decided to never put more than one in a room with other enemies except for the endgame dungeons (9-4 and Cube) when you're supposed to have the master sword which kills them in one go (14 HP in my case).

 

So, now that I see that you'd be willing to give this a try, I'll copy the Maxi quest and create a version that is a lot more suitable for a randomizer with a lot less required items especially in the beginning.

Edited by Matthew Bluefox, 22 February 2016 - 04:16 PM.

[pixcalibur]

Part 12 - More Distant Overworld exploration.  One bonus dungeon in particular I go into given the item you get in there that will be helpful for the level 9's

[pixcalibur]

Part 13 - Starting the level 9's.  Time to see what this little chakram can do.  Let's just say the sword can take a bit of a break

[pixcalibur]

Part 14 - Finishing off the level 9's.  Given what I get in these couple of levels, I can go pick up a little something extra that will make the next parts go faster

[pixcalibur]

Part 15 - Going back into some more relaxed territory and levels, picking up more random items.  Yeah, this little spreader sword is fun to play with

[pixcalibur]

Part 16 - Time to cause more carnage with this sword.  Most of these levels are pretty short and simple, which is a nice break from the minus levels

[Lüt]

I love how, even in the dark rooms, you tear through the block puzzles without missing a beat.

 

Play this quest much?

[KingPridenia]

I love how, even in the dark rooms, you tear through the block puzzles without missing a beat.

 

Play this quest much?

 

Pix has a near photographic memory. He also blew through Randomizer Modern like that. I don't know how he does it, but he's amazing.

[pixcalibur]

Given these Randomizer quests tend to have high replay value given I don't use presets, it's fun to take a run once in a while.

 

And yeah, not sure when it started happening, but after enough runs, I kind of mentally generate the room design in a dark room.  Almost scary in a way I have the block layouts in the rooms plotted out already to the point that I know which block to push to open stairs

 

Not just these quests either that I can work through dark rooms.  Take Bluefox's Zelda Deluxe quests.  Same thing there, as I go through dark rooms pretty much unimpeded.  That and I usually am not able to light rooms up in the first place given I don't have the correct candle at the time

[pixcalibur]

Part 17 - A bit over due for a ring upgrade, but can still get some mileage out of it for the endgame.  Red ring was holding well to this point.  Getting close to finishing the basic elemental level group