Hey, guys. You might've noticed me poke my head in the last few months and leave some words here and there. I've been really wanting to make a custom quest, but whatever it is that it takes to get to know ZQuest, I just don't have it. I don't want to give up, because I have a lot of ideas for this quest. It's actually a bit too ambitious for one person, anyway. So I've decided to open up this thread to discuss some of the ideas I'm having and then leave the floor open for feedback. I would love to make this project a collaboration and work with a few people to get this off the ground.
Here we go!
1. An Open World, sort of.
Ocarina of Time is almost famous for how Hyrule Field branched out to other areas that had one, maybe two different ways to get in, and then you were in that area. Everything was pretty segmented off to give a sense of progression, and it worked for that game. While Breath of the Wild, and the original Zelda have more of an open-world feel, they seem to lose a little bit of that "defined areas" thing, that I think works pretty well for Zelda.
So I've come up with a compromise. Yes, there will be defined areas--each area (Faron Woods, Lake Hylia, Zora's River, Hyrule Field, Death Mountain, Gerudo Desert, etc) dedicated to a single 8x8 BS Overworld. Of course there can be overlaps, some of the areas I have in mind don't need 8x8 screens, like, Hyrule Castle. These different areas would fit together like puzzle pieces, then specifically designed to take advantage of literally as many scrolling warps as we can put in, and build our world with that in mind. The more these individual areas feel like one large interconnected world, the easier it will be to reward players for using their spatial reasoning to explore and find every item.
Want to swim all the way from Zora's Domain to Lake Hylia? Do it.
And that's not including that there's a network of caves running throughout Hyrule, with their own special set of challenges. Some of these caves may even have secret ways directly into the main dungeons.
2. Linear Non-Linearity
Of course, there still has to be a sense of progression. You can't just choose to be OP. Exploration will be somewhat limited by the items you have at your disposal, as it usually is in Zelda and even Metroid games. The dungeons work in a Tier system, designed to give you levels of non-linearity in a linear way. Say, your goal is to get the Master Sword. That's great, the Legendary Blade of Evil's Bane. You get there and find you need 3 Pendants of Virtue before the sword believes you're worthy of possessing it. You can get those 3 Pendants, passing the trials of Power, Wisdom, and Courage, in any order you'd like, but of course, you have to get them all to get the Sword. Why do you need the Master Sword? Well, it helps to defeat Ganon, but really, it's because the Goddesses have placed these magic barriers inside of the Triforce dungeons... you need the Master Sword to explore those dungeons.
Tier 1: Basic
Pendant of Wisdom, Pendant of Power, Pendant of Courage--in any order you'd like.
Tier 2:
Earth, Fire, Water, Wind--in any order you'd like.
Tier 3:
Shadow, Light--in any order you'd like.
Tier 4:
Ganon's Tower...come on.
Yeah, that's ten dungeons. It's insane. Not even mentioning that I also want to make a Savage Labyrinth / Cave of Ordeals... and have the Temple of Time be a large dungeon you can optionally complete as you go through the game. Part of it should be required, but not all.
3. Power, Wisdom, and Courage
Oh yeah, and the three virtues will play a much bigger role in this game. I would like to equate each of these with a gameplay element. The easiest example of this is that if you're in a dungeon that holds a Triforce of Power, or a Pendant of Power, you're going to be fighting a lot of enemies and not doing a whole lot of puzzles. If you're in a dungeon that holds a Triforce or Pendant of Wisdom, expect a lot of puzzles, but not so much combat. I want there to be a real strategy to how you approach these dungeons and which order you take them on in.
I was even thinking about having Link start in a dream-state where he has to find the Great Fairy and she tells him to choose a virtue by which to live, and depending on what you choose, you may start off with a L1 Sword, a Power Glove, or a Lantern, or something. Of course, if I do that, I'll literally have to scale everything's health up so that the sword you start off with is effectively a Level 0.5 sword. Of course, I don't want players missing out just because they didn't choose Power as their virtue. I'm not really sure how to make that choice matter, but I think it's the illusion of the choice that's important.
4. Items and Upgrades
Bomb Bag and Quiver Upgrades will stack. After the "Bombs" item is received, you can use Bombs to find Bomb Bags. Each bag gets you 15, for a total of 90 Bombs and Arrows. You'll always find the first one in a dungeon, like you would any Zelda item. But similar to Metroid, you'll use that item to find it's ammo upgrades. Bomb Upgrades are hidden in caves, while Arrow upgrades are hidden around the overworld. Gotta use Bombs to get Bomb Bag upgrades and you have to use Arrows to get Quiver upgrades.
Still have no idea how to make this work with Magic Containers, but that would be awesome too.
5. Script Support
Okay, I really don't know much about scripts either, but I'm already dead set on including a few of Moosh's, GBCliffs, NPCs, and Bottles. Those were specific features I wanted. I'm really excited about the item bundles, and I don't know how to use the pick-up script at all.
6. Awesome Music
I'm a musician, and I'm really excited about some of the music ideas for this game--I just don't know how to describe them. I'm wanting to make arrangements of the Zelda 1 Underworld theme in different styles reminiscent of the characteristic tunes from Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, for the dungeons. You know, like a mash-up. Trust me, it sounds better in my head than I could ever put it down here. Just imagine the Zelda 1 Dungeon Theme, just that it sounds like this.
Here's a link to what I've made so far. It's literally pitiful.
https://drive.google...UWdVSmZncjJxUUU
Okay, it's not much to go on, but I've got more ideas. I just thought this might be a good start, and if anyone's interested in helping me, I could really use it. I want to finish this game for my little girl, and my wife is all excited to see me get into a project again. It's just that I'm getting really discouraged by my experiences with ZQuest. I ask for a lot of help, and I'm really happy you guys do help when you can, but I don't even understand the help most of the time. I just know what I want to do. Is anyone interested in working with me on this game?
Drawing?
Edited by Reflectionist, 09 February 2017 - 06:33 AM.