24 replies to this topic

[SpacemanDan]

Status: Designing 2nd Sword Dungeon

Quest Stuff!

Oh hey. It's that quest I showed off at the expo. I figured it's about time I popped a thread up in the project discussion area for this thing. I...can't say why I thought that. I just did. >_>

The plan is to have 5 main dungeons as well as plenty of bonus content for the player to tackle, most of this being beatable in any order you desire. There will be all kinds of new enemies to battle and new items to fight them with! Oh, and I plan to throw bullets at you. A lot.

That's the basic gist of what's going on here. So have some screenshots or something.

I should note that there is an overworld. It's just...not done or anything yet. >_>

Demo!

This demo features the first two dungeons. You are free to do the dungeons in either order – they're both beatable either way. There is no overworld segment, but you can get access to a shop in the 'lobby' if you want to call it that. Use RC5 to play the demo. You will find a bunch of extra files with the quest - these are the music files. Please place these in the root folder of Zelda Classic, else you may run into some problems with the music not playing at points.

You can grab your copy here!

I do sincerely hope you enjoy the demo!

Credits!

Play-testers
(This included not only finding bugs, but providing solid feedback on what to change to make things better)

Evan20000
LinktheMaster
Russ
Moosh
Rambly

Thank you all so much! Without your wonderful advice, this quest would not have come nearly as far as it has now.

Graphics

Link tiles & some item sprites – Relic
Plenty of item sprites – NoeL
Dragon sprites – Ripped from Terranigma by Zephyr_Light
Level 1 boss sprites – Ripped from Tales of Destiny by SmithyGCN
Level 2 boss sprites & Fire Bats – Warlord
Explosion graphic (Level 2 Item) – Ripped from Crystalis by HylianFox
Explosion graphic (Bombs) – Ripped from Final Fantasy I (PS1) by Ultimecia
Esplosion graphic (Boss) – Ripped from Ganbare Goemon 3 by SmithyGCN
Level 2 item graphic – Robin/Migokalle
Subscreen frames – Ripped from Pokemon R/S/E by EternalLight
Base tileset – WildBill & Mr.Z
Level 2 miniboss sprites - Ripped from Kirby: Mass Attack by Drshnaps
Level 3 miniboss bullets - rexlaninetales
Level 4 dungeon tiles - Ripped from GoofTroop
Level 4 trees - Jupiter
General graphical assistance - /M/

Music

(Almost) Everything – Taken from Super Adventure Island II (Found on Zophar's Domain)
Lobby – Taken from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (Also found on Zophar's Domain)

Scripts

Ghost.zh & Enemies Included – Saffith
Scripting Help – LinktheMaster, Moosh, Soga, Saffith
Lava/Pit Script & Signpost Script - Joe123

If I forgot anyone, please do let me know and I'll add you in here.

[Nightmeres]

my review. Contains spoilers.

I very much enjoyed the demo.
Pros:
graphics where good(wasn't sure about the upside down lava falls, were they meant to be geysers?
very well done, did not see any graphical errors beside the upside down lava falls but those were probably intentional
nothing over the top but well done. Very interesting and well done, i have nothing to complain about.

music
very much enjoyable and pleasing to listen. very energetic and well chosen.
never played adventure island so i wouldn't know the name of the songs but i liked them.

scripts
I really like the surprise monster and the bosses were well done. gun, and arrow in fire scripts interesting.

difficulty
challenging but not impossible, very well balanced and i enjoyed the block puzzle.

cons:
my only complaints were the vagueness of the shooting the arrow through the fire shooter's fire but figured it out ounce I remembered i that the fire effects the arrows and the vagueness of the the gun recoiling you over the lava but other than that nothing much. gun was a bit slow when powering up but it adds challenge so its a trade off.

overall i liked the game. one question. will this have overworld or story/plot or just dungeon completer? not that lack over overworld or plot/story is bad, i'm just wondering.

looking forward for next demo

[SpacemanDan]

Thank you for taking the time to play and review my quest! I very much appreciate it.

There is going to be an overworld, but I wasn't (and am still not) working on the overworld. There won't be much of a story aside from 'The place from my other quest has stuff going on and you need to go there or something'. It'll make as much sense as I Made A Quest When I Could Have Been Studying did. Which is none. D:

The lava falls being upside down...yeah, those are supposed to be lava geysers. I think I should look into doing something about that, lol.

As for the cons, I've been trying to mess around to see the best way of showing that the arrows have that property without actually saying anything, which is why there's a mini-boss fight directly outside of the room you get it. I'll definitely look into it though.

The second dungeon's item does have the line 'A fully charged shot will blow you away' which was supposed to be the indication. Perhaps I'll make it red or something so it stands out and doesn't seem like it was just added in for the sake of being a lame joke or something, lol. (It ultimately was added for being a lame joke though)

Again, thank you for taking the time to write up a review of this. All the feedback helps.

--

So onto the development side of things, I started working on the new enemies for the third dungeon. Most are pretty simple enemies, so I don't think this'll take terribly long. I'm thinking the puzzles will take me longer to get going, but I guess we'll have to see.

I also still have to go back and fix a small bug with the dungeon item, since I derped around with it and it's kinda buggy. It's nothing like The Pit's item, but I think it'll be handy given the type of quest I'm shooting to make. Get it? Because I'm making a bullet-hell quest?

...My god that was bad. I'm sorry.

[Nightmeres]

that's interesting, quests don't have to have elaborate story lines to good, people should just appreciate quests for what they are, I mean the original legend of Zelda for the Nes had no story besides "girl got captured by this stupid pig and you need to go rescue her"
it had really good game play, good luck on the rest of your quest. bullet heck? that should be challenging. hope its not impossible but who knows. Anyway i'll continue to look forward to this. its ok if make jokes that nobody gets as long as you get them. It makes life a little easier to have fun making jokes. good luck

[Evan20000]

This quest is certainly shaping up to be amazing. Be sure not to fix that misalignment on the overworld! I like clipping into the cliffs!

[SpacemanDan]

Woah man! I've got some stuff to show and progress to tell of! O:

So for the past few weeks, I've been slowly inching my way to finishing the third dungeon of this thing. While it's still not entirely done, I've got majority of the scripting I needed to do...done.

So what kind of things can you expect out of this dungeon? I guess I'll start with the item of the dungeon.

Introducing...The Slime Wand!


...

Okay, so it's not as out there as the Magic Gun. However, I'd like to think it'll be a useful addition to your arsenal! When used, it'll spawn...



...this. When using it, the most noticeable feature it has is the ability to reflect most enemy projectiles. It has other uses in the dungeon it's found in, but that is its primary function - to keep you safe from bullets when you hide behind it. It can only sustain so many hits before being destroyed though, so be careful.

Now, the enemies of the dungeon don't shoot many projectiles, but there is one that will make having this thing very handy.



This thing. It isn't nice. In fact, it's very...not nice. It's a ball of slime that, when it hits Link causes...



...this to happen. Yuck. While Link is splattered with goo on his upper body, he won't be able to use any of his items. You can still move, but your ability to fight back is basically zilch. While not entirely horrible on its own, there is one enemy that could make your life difficult if I were to pair it with this thing.



This little sentient slime wanders around the screen, dropping piles of goo in its wake. If Link walks into it by mistake, he will find his legs stuck to the ground until the goo dissipates. Paired with the projectile above...This could be very detrimental to the player. Luckily, this combination won't be present in this dungeon, but...I can't say the same for the extra dungeons.

Other enemies will include -


The rupee slime. It's nothing special - it just eats Link and steals his money like the greedy jerk it is. I'm unsure if I'm going to keep this guy in the dungeon though. We'll see.


The Pit's boss!? Not at all, actually. In fact, this one's also not terribly special. It's just a giant Zol the splits into regular Zols, which spilt into Gels.


The twin amoeba. This one is courtesy of Saffith, so I take zero credit for it. Basically, there are two slime enemies than wander around. One has a core inside, which is the central part of the enemy. It hops between the two slimes to avoid Link, but if it is defeated, the slimes will also go down. The slimes themselves can shoot fireballs, so they're still a threat.


The lunging goo! This guy will stay put for a bit, then launch itself at Link. There's not much to them, but can be a bit of trouble if you're trying to accomplish something else. Since they basically lock right onto you, you'll probably want to get rid of them first.


A...typical Zol? Actually, yeah. It's nothing special until you attack it. Then the weird block is released from its gooey prison.


This thing. But what's it do? Nothing. The only thing it'll do is encase itself in slime again so it can move again after so long. Surely there's a purpose to this 'enemy'...?

And last, but not least...


What is this bizarre thing? It's the mini-boss of this dungeon. I don't want to give away much on its function, but it...isn't easy. Balancing needs to be done still, but overall it's pretty much done.

And that's what I've been up to. I still need to do up the puzzles properly and make the boss, but other than that, this one's nearly done! Afterwhich I'm probably going to do an extra dungeon or two. I've got one entirely down on paper and another nearly down on paper, so I may as well get to those first. :3

[Jared]

Dan, this is amazing beyond words. I am so excited to play it. You have no idea! This dungeon's so creative, and has awesome enemies. :3

[SpacemanDan]

Gah, sorry for the late response. D: Thank you though! I appreciate the compliments.

So after a few months of putting it off and slowly working on it, World of Goo is done...Sorta. There's a lot of smaller details I have to go back and iron out, as well as some bugs. But it's mostly done.

Here's a bit of a sneak peak on what's changed since I last talked about it.


The dungeon item got a bit of a makeover as well as a new function. If anyone remembers, I made a script that I dubbed the Twin Sentry a loooong while back. The idea was that it would face the same direction as Link and shoot projectiles when prompted. Well, I kinda took that and recycled it into this item. It's also no longer a wand, but a turret. Still has the fun of reflecting bullets.


The boss is...a ninja. He can be a bit of a jerk, but I'd like to think he's not too bad if you're prepared. He's the type to hop around a lot and generally make standing in one spot difficult. Moving around will be key. I don't want to go into too much detail though. :3


And a preview of one of the puzzles. What could be going on here?

But with World of Goo nearly done, I'm starting to figure out what I'll work on next. I'm thinking I'll probably work on a few bonus dungeons (I have two planned out on paper) and then go back to the main game. There's only 2 more dungeons on the main game, but plenty of bonus material I still want to do.

Anyhow, stay tuned for future updates!

[SpacemanDan]

Been making progress on the 4th dungeon, now being called the Ninja Castle. The name is a reference to the game Legend of the Mystical Ninja on the SNES, where there's an area that goes by Castle of Ninjas. Oh, and I'm using the same music. (Link if you're curious.)

Anyway, what should you expect from the dungeon? As you may expect, it's a very Japanese themed dungeon. The main theme of the dungeon is watching your step and being careful, as opposed to rushing through. The ninjas inhabiting the previously abandoned building have littered traps and tricks to end your journey early, so care will need to be taken on each screen.

Here are some screen shots.


There's a little more to this than meets the eye.


A few outdoor segments will be in the dungeon.


There's definitely a trap in this room you need to watch for.

I don't have the enemies themselves done, nor the item of the dungeon so I won't talk about that now. But suffice to say, I think they'll be...interesting.

The dungeon itself is still in its very early stages, but I do have the core of how the dungeon flows down. It's mostly making the rooms look decent and adding the actual content to the dungeon. (Like enemies and puzzles.)

Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope to have a bit more of an update in the near future. :3

[Moosh]

This is relevant to my interests. This is seriously looking amazing, Dan! Not sure I like those trees, though. Any reason you're not just using the default PTUX cherry trees?

[Tree]

Ooo, love the Japanese styled dungeon already! I'm looking forward to the full release

I'm still waiting for overworld shots. Come on Dan. Be a man. Give us some overworld shots

I kid I kid. Quest looks great so far!

[SpacemanDan]

Thanks!

On the overworld - I'm honestly just thinking they're not good shots, lol. The overworld is 'done' in the sense that you can walk around. But on the other hand, I don't think it's very good. X3

On the cherry tree - There's a cherry tree in PTUX? O_o I'm going to have to take another look, lol

[SpacemanDan]

I just finished the detailing for the Ninja Castle. I'd like to go back and add a bit more stuff as well as draw a few new tiles, but in all, I'm happy with it. Well, happy enough that I can move on with the meat and potatoes of the dungeon. So at this point, it's about scripting the stuff that needs to be scripted. (A few enemies, the item, boss, traps, that kind of thing. )

Hopefully I can come back with a more proper update soon. It'll all depend how efficient I am at getting to it. XD

[Schwa]

I'm shivering with how excited I am at the looks of this quest.

Even though I never play demos, I might have to make one exception just because I am so blown away by everything I see here.

You're a guy who knows your ZQuest. Top-tier stuff. Love it. Love it to death and back. Keep on moving forward and I will support the living daylights out of this quest.

[kurt91]

Did you come up with the wall tiles for your ninja level yourself, or are they ripped? I've been looking for something to use for wall tiles for a dungeon that takes place inside of a tree, and I can't draw wood worth crap. Would you mind if I used your wall tiles (minus doorways and decoration) for a starting point?