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#1 Thunderfist

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Posted 27 October 2019 - 11:17 PM

Hi.

Background:
So. I'm new. As in, my issue is weird to define and I need this slowed down to a For Dummies level because I'm only here to have a game I wanted to play but didn't exist, so I just randomly decided to make it like I did my music album and novella book I wrote. My gf said I needed another hobby, I wanted this game, used to play Zelda fan quests, and suddenly here we are. There's no real step by step guide on every subject related to ZQuest/ Zelda Classic, so I've just been winging it. I understand the first program was Zelda Classic, ZQuest became the editor made available for it, I used a tutorial I found to make a custom quest, read Alphadawg's guide, read every wiki page related to topics I could find, when I Google "ZQuest" and whatever topic, many of them appear on some Armageddon Games site and I think maybe they originally hosted the program or something, clever workarounds within the system limitations seem to have so far near unlimited capabilities, especially when using scripting, which I got working by copying and pasting a notepad document and fooling around until I figured out how to set up a Free Form Combo Script for an Item Bundler with a bonus effect of triggering messages upon item reception, which I figured out a few weeks ago after a year and a half of working on this using shops, figured out a system of icon items that upon collection or use give you a specific tile page's sprite and developed a 22 item system of invisibly received and removed LTM items to grant so far 102 playable characters in an expansive world, but there are still some things I don't understand about this site, system limitations, and core system issues I'm having. My beta is mostly solid now as of yesterday, and I can take my time to really understand my gaps in knowledge. I've fumbled around this site quite a bit, but I'm never really sure I'm writing in the right place or asking the right questions as I don't really feel initiated into this process in a thorough way. Following are my issues, and I apologize for being unable to adequately define them, I've seen programmers telling people to "just" learn writing scripts while casually throwing around terms like "boolean" or whatever. The sum of my experience programming is typing \16\ and \17\ in message strings which I only figured out a couple weeks ago, and typing numbers in boxes to make a turtle move on a large computer monitor when I was 8 years old in 1992.

Issues:

1 When I use Full Screen the window flashes blue with static. NO idea what that's about, if it's a system issue, if I don't know how to use Windows 10 yet, etc.
What can I do?

2 I've seen tile sets exist in SNES quality with like 4 times the pixels or whatever. That's neat, my X-Men look like stick figures. On what page on what site can I find an explanation on how to change that system limitation or learn the skills to do so if under 40 hours of hardcore effort?

3 I've seen importing tile sets is a thing, but the two times I've tried it didn't work with the tutorial(s) I used, not that I have much desire for it. It's only worth it to me so I can try to add more PAGES of graphics tiles and significantly increase the number of playable characters and enemies, since I suspect that related feature should be easily possible and highly desired. Is that a thing (and where can I read up on it), and if not, is it possible somehow so I can add future games to this game (connected in-game by interdimensional warps) instead of making sequel games? I'm trying to plan out 70% of my hobby time for the next 5 years, so ANY help hypothesizing ways of increasing the number of tile pages would be of immense help to me.

4 On a related note, is it possible within the mechanics of this system or scripting to increase the number of available item slots like you would number of message strings or DMaps? I don't like having to use screen messages to change characters just because I ran out of character items to place on the screen.

5 Is it physically possible to port a quest for playability on an Android? I would imagine a Windows emulator could theoretically do it, but I've never found one that works. Shouldn't there be a simple program to convert information between programming languages for different systems directly? Maybe not for all of them in one program, but shouldn't there already be a simple and established method for programming people to just type up a conversion program in a few hours? I mean, pinch zoom and a finger mouse could work fine for editing, but I want to take my X-Men game on the subway or to a beach or waiting room without a laptop. I want to play this game 90% of the time I play any video game for the rest of my life. Point me in the direction I need to go to learn this shit or pay some programmer in the future to have this, and how much would I have to pay to cover a project of that scope from some random programmer?

6 Suggestion: Quick-link buttons between commonly paired areas of the program, i.e. Item Editor can open message strings and vice versa. Best possible implementation I can think of would be a rearrangable double-decker 'tabs' view of the program so you can just pull up the few areas you're working in to the top row of tabs and navigate back and forth with a single click each.

7 I don't understand why other people aren't using this program to make every kind of top-down view or side-scroller possible. Lack of advertising, or is there a better program elsewhere for general game development?

8 Is there a 3-D version of ZQuest or something similar anywhere?

9 Is it possible to mimic a 3D environment using ZQuest? I imagine left and right keys warping between DMaps to rotate your body left or right and forward and reverse working normally could

10 Is there something like ZQuest I can use to make an X-Men version of Final Fantasy Tactics? I don't even know that terms to Google for that. My question better phrased, is it possible to use ZQuest to create a Final Fantasy Tactics game complete with turn orders and enemy potion use during battles? If possible, I'd like to have 2 games, this being the other. My two favorite styles, favorite subjects, custom music, custom everything.

Thanks for hearing me out, sorry if this isn't the right place for this.

Edited by Thunderfist, 27 October 2019 - 11:24 PM.


#2 David

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Posted 27 October 2019 - 11:59 PM

For ZQuest related help questions, the proper subforum for them is the ZQuest Editor Help forums. I have moved this topic there. :)



#3 P-Tux7

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Posted 28 October 2019 - 07:08 PM

Answering the ones I know how to...

 

2. Nah, they don't have 4 times the pixels. They have 4 times the colors (using 15 per CSet, or 8-bit mode to have even more), but the tiles are still the same size. As for how you'd draw that, you'd need the skill of "pixel art" - that is, drawing figures that fit the 16x16 dimensions and learning how to shade them for your objects (players, enemies, items) and how to draw environments that you can use as tiles. The graphics programs I use are Paint.NET and Grafx2. The most "urban" tileset I know of for you to use as a base is Peteo's Mega Man tileset, but be warned it's organized rather badly.

 

3. The alpha versions of ZC 2.55 have over 800 tile pages. Plenty of room

 

5. No, and besides, how would you even PLAY it on a phone? You have the arrow keys, A/B, and the pause menu.

 

7. Yeah, programs like Game Maker, Unity, and Godot are better for general game development. People mostly use ZC to make games that stick closely to the general 2D Zelda type. You can even tell that since they're called "quests" and not "games" that most people don't really want to think of ZC as a full-fledged game making tool.

 

8. Not for ZQuest, and I'd like to warn you that while the above programs can do 3D, it is exponentially harder than 2D games.


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#4 NoeL

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Posted 29 October 2019 - 12:10 AM

4. I don't understand what you're asking here.

 

9. It's possible to make raycast "3D" (like Wolfenstein or Doom) in ZC, but you'd need to know how to program that yourself. A guy here called blue_knight dabbled in that a few years ago before he disappeared. I did some art for it: https://www.devianta...-Deep-377004421

 

10. It's also possible to make a tactics game, but again it would require a fully scripted engine so it's not really worth the hassle. You'd be much better off using something like Game Maker.


Edited by NoeL, 29 October 2019 - 12:11 AM.

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#5 Anthus

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Posted 31 October 2019 - 10:30 PM

Welcome to PZC :)

 

I'll try to answer the other questions to the best of my ability.

 

1. Tbh, ZC and full screen don't always get along. This thread might help you in the right direction. I always use windowed mode, so I don't know much about it.

 

4. If you mean increase the amount of items in game, yes. You can add items to a subscreen via the subscreen editor. If you mean increase the cap on number of items in the editor, then no, that's a hard limit.

 

I don't like having to use screen messages to change characters just because I ran out of character items to place on the screen.

 

Could you possibly share a screenshot of what you are talking about? Are you using string control codes or something to give items that change the player's graphics? Sorry I'm just not sure what you mean here lol.

 

5. No. At least, not easily. Give this thread a skim, as it covers the more technical side of things. It's a few years old, but it pretty much still stands.

 

EDIT: 9. ZC can technically do some form of 3D, but it is A) hard to do, and B) kinda of limited in the grand scheme. But it still looks really cool for what it is.

Spoiler

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#6 Thunderfist

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Posted 15 November 2019 - 07:00 PM

4 Exactly

 

Thanks, everyone.



#7 Timelord

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Posted 16 November 2019 - 05:11 PM

Regarding (3): Do you mean that you want to insert an arbitrary amount of tiles from one tileset, into another? If so, I very recently added this, along with entirely new formats for external tile and combo packages, both to 2.55.0, and to 2.53.1.

 

You can now inject tiles or combos into an existing quest file, at selected starting points, with a flag to prevent overwriting existing data in your file.

 

ZC is, and always will be a 2D game engine. The two raycasters made using ZScript/ZASM were no more than tech demos, (that we use internally for performance testing once in a while).

 

The sheer amount of instructional data required to perform all of those draws, and the unoptimised nature of the draws (remember, they are Allegro 2D draws, falsely creating an illusion of 3D space), would ultimately bog down a fully 3D game to th point where it ran at a lower framerate than OoT on the N64.

 

I'd equate it to trying to run Doom on a 386SX-16 with 2MB of RAM.


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