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ZC Tutorial: Questions and Topics


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#1 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 02:54 PM

So, I'm planning to do a tutorial of ZC at some point. But, before I try making anything I want to get some questions and topics to cover from the community.

This is a topic for that.
I'm planning to do a more general tutorial with topics and a more specific tutorial with Q&A videos.


What questions do you have about what can be done in ZC?
What topics should be covered in general tutorial?

For now, this is related to 2.50 and 2.53, but 2.55 is definitely something I'd like to do in the future.


Topics
  • Tile Editing
  • Combo Editing
  • Screen Design
  • Import/Compiling Scripts
  • Combing Global Scripts
  • Item Editing
  • Enemy Editing
  • Subscreen Editing
  • Viewing Palette vs. DMap Palette
  • Maps vs. DMaps
  • DMap Types
  • Continues
  • Palette Editing & CSets
  • KP+ and KP-

Questions
  • ?

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#2 ShadowTiger

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 03:40 PM

Many of the questions I can imagine a newcomer having involves breaking down old concepts to form new understandings.

 

For example, in ZQuest, if you press F4 to pick a screen's palette, you don't know that that's not a "What you see is what you get" for actual gameplay.  It looks like you can change that screen's colors, just like how when you put down some combos, it looks like you put that combo down.

 

Similarly, people need to know the differences between the Dmap types and how they behave.  They also need to know that the way people pick how a place looks is through the Dmap editor and not hitting F4.

 

They need to know how Continues work, and how to build a game around them.  The whole continue points vs restarting schtick is such a kerfuffle. 

 

They need to know what happens when they change colors in a palette editor.  They need to be introduced to the differences between the big list of Csets that exist.  Like, it seems so arbitrary that Csets 0 and 1 have a different application than Csets 2 through 4, but Cset 9 also changes.    A long, long, long time ago, I wrote a tutorial that dealt with that very issue.  You'll need screenshots of a "before" and an "after" when editing a single color as to how it affects things.

 

You'll also need to explain that the pixels of a tile are basically just "color-holders" because changing Csets can make the tile seem entirely different.

 

For that same reason, when a newbie goes into ZQuest and hits KP+ and KP- to make the combo page go all psychedelic, they'll need to know why that happens.  Luckily the content two paragraphs ago deals with that, but we have to think of it from a newbie's perspective.


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#3 Binx

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 04:56 PM

Door Combo Sets, Combo Aliases, Relational Mode, and Dungeon Carving Mode are, in my opinion, the most difficult and annoying aspects of using ZQuest (I've been using ZC since about the time 1.90 was released, and I STILL don't understand how the last three work), so I'd say those should be major points to be covered. Tile editing (in ZQuest, along with good external programs to use for tile editing that don't screw up the palette *glares at certain spriters*) would also be a good thing to cover. Subscreens are pretty solidly covered by my tutorial, but if you want to fold it into your larger, more general one, that might be a good idea, so people don't have to go searching for separate tutorials.



#4 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 07:08 PM

Some good ideas. I don't know to do all of those things myself. But, I'm sure I could teach myself how to do it. I didn't even realize you could make psychedelic palettes like that.

#5 Lüt

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 10:22 PM

Lots of good topics here.

 

Probably the #1 point each topic should cover is hidden keyboard functions related to it. For example, in tile editing, you'd have to point out that "o" is a keyboard shortcut for "overlay," which allows you to paste a copied tile on top of another tile in a way that the transparency of the copied tile preserves the data of the tile being pasted onto, which is not a right-click menu option so nobody would think to look for a keyboard shortcut for an "overlay" command in the first place.

 

I've been wanting to do explanations of aliases and relational/carving mode for a long time, but an internet full of lazy devs would have me believe desktop screen recording only existed after Windows 7, so I have no way to make videos. I mean, I guess there's always unregistered hypercam 3, but... point is, they're incredibly useful design modes, and while relational/carving might be easy enough to explain in a forum post with a lot of images, navigating the alias editor would be like 20x easier to simply show with a video. Door combo editor also has ways the main combo list can be set up for optimal automation instead of picking every single tile manually.

 

And I guess a tutorial on "KP+ and KP-" would be useful, since I've never heard of that key combo before. I tried pressing all 3, but K just brings up the combo editor before P or + can be pressed, so I'm not sure what this is meant to get at.


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#6 sutibu

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Posted 30 July 2019 - 12:14 AM

If you’re gonna do a tutorial I recommend checking out Alphadawg’s ZC tutorial if you haven’t already. It’s wayyy outdated (it was for 1.90 I believe) but the format was very clear and easy to understand. I remember back in the day my little brother printed out all the topics and put it into a binder and he used to read it a lot. That’s how he learned ZC.

I did a search for Alphadawg’s tutorial and it’s still out there. Looking it over again it’s a little simple. I found it on this website: http://zcguides.cele...84-190_tutorial
The site itself has a good 2.50 tutorial which you might want to look over. I’ve always been meaning to learn ZC so I can’t give any specific examples for what I’d like to learn but a clear and straightforward format for anyone coming into ZC would be my best suggestion.

Good luck with the project :)

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#7 Binx

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Posted 30 July 2019 - 12:42 AM

And I guess a tutorial on "KP+ and KP-" would be useful, since I've never heard of that key combo before. I tried pressing all 3, but K just brings up the combo editor before P or + can be pressed, so I'm not sure what this is meant to get at.

Oh, good. I'm not the only one.

#8 Avaro

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Posted 30 July 2019 - 06:02 AM

Numpad + and - probably?? I'd say maps vs dmaps is a priority topic, not something for later, as those are how you set up the game world.



#9 Saffith

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Posted 30 July 2019 - 02:06 PM

Yeah, KP means the numeric keypad. So that just falls under CSets in general, I think.
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#10 Binx

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Posted 30 July 2019 - 02:19 PM

Ohhh. (K)ey(p)ad. Makes sense. Just thought of another kinda obscure thing that a lot of people (myself included) don't really understand: tiered secrets, and other methods of having multiple triggers onscreen without all of them being activated when you hit one of them.




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