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#31 Binx

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Posted 17 June 2017 - 02:16 PM

STEVES REPRESENT

Marik would be so happy. There's a whole army of Steves here for him to turn into mind slaves.


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#32 Radien

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Posted 19 June 2017 - 07:30 PM

http://www.huffingto..._n_7653808.html
 
Apparently there is something in cilantro that some people can sense and react to that other's don't.
Sounds like I'm one of those who can't detect it because I love cilantro.
Just sharing in case you might find the article interesting.

 
Hmm, I see... I had always thought I lacked the “cilantro is delicious” gene, but you say that apparently it's probably that you lack “cilantro is nasty” gene?
 

You could always help fund this.
 
Haha, how fyoochurristic, yay.
 
Yes, good qualifier.
Oh FFSs, tell me about LttP.
 
Oh, please do...

As a matter of fact, not only have I looked at it, but in my quest for accurate source tiles for my dungeon carving project(s), I've actually cataloged nearly every single dungeon tile across its four dungeon types.
 
The 8x8 placements were the first thing I noticed, and are now the first thing I notice when playing the game. Especially with the straight walls clashing when they reach the corners, and how the lower-level bricks rarely align with the main level. In fact, there's only a few places in the entire game where they properly alternate horizontal positioning between lower and upper levels. For the most part, you get a double-stack of two same-width bricks on top of each other. Honestly, the dungeon walls just seem like one giant tile error to me now.
 
The entire game of LttP is one giant tile error to me. If you look at game maps made from screenshots of the original LttP, you'll see plenty of places where not only do the tiles themselves not line up properly, but places where the game designers obviously didn't understand what the graphical designers intended.
 
And even those errors are inconsistent. You'll find locations where one error is prevalent enough to be the norm, and other areas which don't commit that particular error at all. This suggests that either A. the project was divided up between too many people who weren't communicating well with each other, or B. the project was very rushed, or C. both.
 
I strongly suspect (especially after reading a specific old Shigeru Miyamoto interview) that LttP was being developed for the NES, but it was delayed long enough that they were forced to haphazardly retrofit it for the Super Famicom instead.
 
If so, they also rushed the conversion so that LttP could be a release title. It seems that variations on that scenario have become a sort of theme for Zelda titles, to put it mildly.
 
And of course, that leaves you to determine where on an 8x8 grid you're going to place your 16x16 selection box when deciding how to rip a floor tile. After a few bad starts with dungeon floor borders before realizing the grid issue, I believe I've developed an accurate, or at least internally consistent, method of determining proper grid placement for floor tiles. But then, since borders (and rails) can be placed on an 8x8 grid anyway, I decided each floor tile might as well have 4 variations: base, offset +8 vertically, offset +8 horizontally, and offset +8 vertically and horizontally. Fits right in with the 4-column combo index, so why not.
 
I don't know the specific errors you speak of, but I've seen enough LttP to get the idea. It always really irritated me that LttP dungeon walls didn't actually “end” at the base, instead relying on the judicious use of floor tiles to “cap off” the wall tiles where the baseboards would be. :? 

Also of great obnoxication are the palettes. I suppose you noticed that the full set of dungeon walls actually uses nine colors? It's just that they don't show up in all the palettes. Most dungeon palettes duplicate at least one, and more often two or three colors. Only the Dark World's 6th dungeon, Misery Mire, reveals the correct usage of all nine colors. Now, I don't think you really lose much when converting to five colors, though a 6th color for the ceiling detail seems necessary to me for dungeons like the Dark World's L5, L6 and L7. But the lower-level walls that use the 7th, 8th and 9th colors seem to work well enough when reduced to upper-level wall colors.

I do vaguely remember phasing out more than one color from the LttP walls, but if so, it felt so unnecessary that I hardly paid it any kind at all. LttP is full of inefficient uses of colors, containing plenty of nearly identical colors in the same palettes. That's another reason to think it might have initially been for the NES: the designers were suddenly faced with an abundance of color options and weren't sure how to use them.

I may be totally down on LttP, but it was mostly about its efficiency. The actual pixel art, particularly the landscapes, looked great despite being much lower color than they could have been.


As you can probably tell, I've been thinking of how to set up a "true-color" import for all LttP dungeon tiles, and I'm not sure if there's any way to avoid making everything into 8-bit tiles. I mean, I can think of ways around it, but explaining to any old loose-tile-downloader how to apply a CSet 2 of 1 to the flame/metal halves of the wall torch tiles seems too much hassle.

Not too surprising since this is a problem you've discovered that your sound like you're itching to solve, much like I did with a fair amount of New BS. :)

It's very possible that you could use the “CSet2” function to help combine two CSets for the user without them having to constantly switch between two. The Cset2 function supports sectioning combos into quadrants of 8x8 pixels, and since 8x8 pixel sections are prevalent in LttP, that could work very nicely.

8-bit mode is an easy workaround for you, but CSet2 might be more educational for users.


If nothing else, I could probably input them myself for anybody wanting the "true" LttP dungeon experience in their tileset.

Heck, I've even got the 48x48 watersplash animations from when Link stands under the walk-through waterfalls in Dark World's L2 ready to go, in case anybody wants to script that feature.

You could, but... if something is really difficult and time-consuming to use, you shouldn't assume someone will want to do it. Considering you'd have to do something difficult and time-consuming to make it possible, you might want to hold off until someone requests it.

Note how the LttP set had been ripped from frequently over time, but almost no one ever completed a quest in it. Once an easier-to-use version of many tiles appeared in Pure, nobody looked back.


Thanks!
 
The thing about those modes though, is that they actually work on an 8x8-grid basis. That is to say, the reason a lot of relational/carving sets have duplicate tiles is because many standard 16x16 tiles don't smoothly break down into 8x8 pieces, so a simplified adaptation of the mode for larger tiles results in many duplicates.

Ah yes. Not all of the sets of carving/relational-ready combos I created were completely compatible with an 8x8 pixel grid. Both modes can work with 16x16-only tiles if you simply put a generic tile/combo in the places which rely on 8x8 pixel quadrants.

That way, if the user tries to draw things in a way that doesn't work, they'll see the generic tile, showing that the tiles aren't compatible with corners that sharp.


I mean, I'm sure you already know this, but still, case in point:

Don't give me too much credit. I certainly don't know everything, even here. ;)
 
I made a post in the daily ZC accomplishments thread showing a screenshot of LttP dungeon carving in DoR palette, in which you can see three of the four complete modes in the combo columns. It just so happens that the LttP tiles break down perfectly into 8x8 pieces, so they can take full advantage of the fine detailing that the mode provides. But when you're simplifying the mode with 16x16 tiles, then yeah you'll have to flood fill and "replace all" more than a few times. (Though, technically, you won't have any flood fill issues if you actually draw across every single tile that's meant to be the floor.)
 
Also, if you're interested in what I meant about additional relational modes for grounds, I made this post in the same thread showing a very brief preview of a few relational packs that will be available for all different style backgrounds, and often layers as well. (Check the last spoiler tag to see.)

Sweet! I'm sure that'll be very useful to some people. :)
 
Honestly, at this point, I almost want to do my own revision of DoR:H. But as I'm sure you're well aware, that would be a full-time job even if I did take two or three months away from the world, so unless somebody wants to officially employ me for that time... not gonna happen  :P

Oh, I dunno... It's just a matter of planning what you want to do and chipping away at it. DoR's tileset was a lot of work but I managed to put in pretty much everything I had wanted to at the time. I'd recommend setting a goal. Mine, at the time, was to make it a Christmas present to PureZC, hence the “Merry Christmas!” demo screen.

Yep, that's why I never change an OS until it's been out for over a year and has at least one service pack, if not two.

Sounds good. :) But on top of that, developing for it has to take into account how many people are actually using the new OS, as well.


You may have noticed I created an AMA thread in ZC Discussion in case anyone wants to ask me stuff directly, presumably about DoR/New BS tiles and palettes and the tilesets.

#33 Cukeman

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Posted 19 June 2017 - 07:53 PM

Talking about Zelda 3 on NES in interesting, later games like Super Mario Bros. 3 started using free-scrolling levels (diagonal scrolling, not just horizontal or vertical). Dunno if this applies, but I always wondered why LttP wasn't all free-scrolling (there are some places where you have to wait-scroll in the middle of otherwise free-scrolling areas), but maybe they weren't yet able to load other areas in at the same time.

#34 Radien

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Posted 25 June 2017 - 05:48 AM

Talking about Zelda 3 on NES in interesting, later games like Super Mario Bros. 3 started using free-scrolling levels (diagonal scrolling, not just horizontal or vertical). Dunno if this applies, but I always wondered why LttP wasn't all free-scrolling (there are some places where you have to wait-scroll in the middle of otherwise free-scrolling areas), but maybe they weren't yet able to load other areas in at the same time.


Oh, yeah, that's a good question! At first I thought it was a stylistic thing, trying to bring back a little bit of the feel of the original Zelda, but now I kinda suspect it was mostly about enemies. I'm not sure whether loading enemies was ever a concern, but perhaps they were trying to keep from having too many enemies on the screen at once, partially to reduce the load on the processor and partially to keep the player from getting overwhelmed.

After all, Link to the Past has a number of enemies who will doggedly pursue Link all around the screen, especially enemy soldiers and flying enemies. Maintaining the edge scrolling gave the player a place to seek refuge from enemies, which is kind of in line with the idea that he's being pursued by the castle soldiers. :)

Yeah, there's a lot I don't like about Link to the Past regarding its dungeon design and gameplay flow, but I really appreciate the system they created and how it set some solid Zelda concepts in stone.
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#35 Anthus

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Posted 27 June 2017 - 09:58 AM

ALttP's map errors aren't seen as much in game cause of how the screens are designed to scroll. Like, you'll never transition to Death Mountain from the waterfall area. So those adjacent screens have no reason to line up perfectly. I agree though, it does look weird to look at an entire map (which I've done a lot of) and see those misaligns, but you'd never see them in game. I think most of the other stuff looks good. My biggest complaint with AlttP has always been Link. Like.. why does he look.. like that? Why does he need nine frames? Is it to mask his awkward animation?

#36 Beefster

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Posted 28 June 2017 - 10:43 PM

I feel a certain sense of nostalgia attached to this forum. I don't make quests anymore as I sort of lost interest in making fangames, but I don't regret much of my interactions on the forum. I was a little vindictive of a few people here and there, but that was because I was naive.

 

I don't regular the forum anymore, but I do still pop in from time to time. I actually felt like popping in today because I just mentioned 744 to my de-facto girlfriend (we're not official yet and we're deliberately avoiding the label and romance for a while) and was curious how everything was going.

 

I also pretty much stopped using Facebook except sharing random Youtube videos since I tended to waste a lot of time there. It was fun seeing you there, but it was a little hard for me since Facebook is pretty political and you're sort of on the opposite end of the political compass. I enjoyed you a lot better as a forum goer to be honest. Not to say you're a bad person or anything; you're just not the kind of person I can talk politics with.

 

EDIT: Hey. I hate cilantro too. Tastes like metal.


Edited by Beefster, 28 June 2017 - 10:46 PM.

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#37 Reflectionist

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Posted 20 July 2017 - 03:11 PM

Oh, hey, Radien! Heh. Didn't see this thread til today. Weird.

#38 Adem

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Posted 28 July 2017 - 08:55 PM

Hey there, Radien! Honestly, it doesn't feel like it's been that long since I'm pretty sure I like at least one of your Facebook posts a week? Hahaha. But it's fantastic to see you back around the forums again! :) Glad you're doing well.


Edited by Adem, 28 July 2017 - 08:56 PM.


#39 SpikeReynolds

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Posted 29 July 2017 - 05:48 PM

Welcome back man! Life does seem to find a way to keep us away from here, doesn't it? 




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