38 replies to this topic

[CastChaos]

There are some great ideas there!

As for music, I can't really use .wav in 2.10 unless if I recompile sfx.dat and sacrifice the water sound, but I'm already using that for bosses.

The music in the forest area is the "wacky lost woods", the crazy version of the Lost Woods music. As for the dungeon part, there's a very scary music from Castlevania SotN. I guess I can lower one's volume and higher the other. But my parents will jump outta the window when I beta test it.

Thank you for this huge participation.

[Darth Pikachu]

What about a psychological scare, sort of like the Silent Hill series, or like Siren, i.e. Forbidden Siren, on PS2? Those always freaked me out for days, if not weeks.

[CastChaos]

What about a psychological scare, sort of like the Silent Hill series, or like Siren, i.e. Forbidden Siren, on PS2? Those always freaked me out for days, if not weeks.

Some examples...?

I already thought about some remotely similar things... like when there's a room that looks like some monster lurks there and so the player continiously fears while walking through the room, and when he/she almost touched the edge, blockade appears there along with a strong monster with a suitable animation...
Also, is it psychological warfare to teleport the player back to the start just when he/she gone deep into the dungeon?

I just made a room which is so impossible that players will take a whole day to figure it out... after many deaths, they will succeed... as they will think. But then the whole room starts over. 100% frustration. Not even the Lens of Truth helps...

And again, you can't leave this dungeon before beating it and there are no potion shops or anything... horrible. But the plot twists won't be less shocking... Was the whole intro story a lie...?

[octorok]

Have a few tiles that make up the statue, Moloch, and have another sprite of a person walking up to it and placing a baby in the hands of the statue, and animate the baby to burn and cry and flail it's arms, and blood pouring down. It's really what they did in biblical days ... sacrificing babies. Not the people who followed God though, the bad people did it. Here's a pic below to show you:

[Linkus]

On the ambiance SFX part, I'd recommend finding the Secret of Evermore SPC soundtrack. You'll find a lot of ambiance tracks in it. Even more helpful is they pertain to common areas used in ZC.

[jerome]

http://www.zshare.ne...8318547def2742/

How 'bout that in the background but quiet. I say any ambience is freakier than music.

To me that would sound like an awesome boss SFX. I could see it replacing the gleeoks.

Mmm. You should have an area with no music at all. Now that could be disturbing... maybe put a midi very quiet, to the point at which someone would have to turn up the volume really loud, then have something at 255 play, to just freak 'em out...

I played through something like that in a flash type game. It was called "Subliminal Advertising". There's also one that is a "Where's Waldo" that does the same thing. I can't link to it or tell you where because it is a rather inappropriate site. But if you look those two things up, you will probably find them somewhere else.

[Snarwin]

How about this:

Have one of your CSets cycle really slowly, and make it so that only a one or two shades of each color changes at once, and only by small increments--just enough to make things look slightly off.

If you can spare the palette space, you may even be able to make stuff appear and disappear as the CSet cycles, but even without that it'll add to the general air of creepiness.

[CastChaos]

Oh, yes! The forest part could really use CSet cycling... As far as I know this can't go transparent, so objects can't appear and disappear this way, only with animations (or combo cycling with limitations).

However, when I tried to set up CSet cycling, either nothing happened, or the tiles changed between normal colour and black... I can copy a CSet cycling from a palette (Like "Burning" in new DoR), but as I just said, I can't do it right... Anybody can explain it?

And CSet cycling goes only for gradients (shades) or those 3 cyclings that are allowed within a palette are enough for all three CSets (2, 3, 4). Just because I use all these 3 CSets on almost all screens together.

[Mitchfork]

I'm not very knowledgable on CSet Cycling... maybe this can help?
http://zcu.sephiroth...;showarticle=12

[CastChaos]

Thank you, this is great! I learned another mega feature! It will be for great use in the future, too.

[Master Maniac]

i gots a nice one for a boss... or a mini-boss whatever you choose.

have him dragged into hell about halfway into the temple. then, have him fight the "gatekeeper" to get out. the gatekeeper devours other demons to gain power... so have a cutscene of the gatekeeper tearing demons apart piece by piece and crushing them in the palm of his hand before the fight.

[Snarwin]

... As far as I know this can't go transparent, so objects can't appear and disappear this way, only with animations (or combo cycling with limitations).

Yeah, the only way you could really do this is to have repeated colors in one of your CSets.

[Schwa]

Dude. Nightmare dungeon? Simple.

Excessive use of Scrolling Side Warps to move Link to bizarre areas of the dungeon. And I mean, even more than in Level Almost Ten from the original Molka.

I suggest this because, I tend not to get scared by scary things in games, but by the technical aspects of games. The spikes that killed you in one hit on Megaman games? They'd always put parts in Wily Fortress levels that you had to make some SUPER close calls to get through, especially in the X series. Super Mario Lost Levels? The level design ALONE for the later levels (read: w8-3 and 8-4) actually did give me nightmares. So did the Endless Stairs from SM64, Giygas from Earthbound, and Brain Andross (not the fake form) from StarFox 64. There's some ideas to get you going... I think a lot of gamers are like that, though, in that they're not so scared by stereotypical scary (or even freaky) things so much as freaky level design.

Let me tell you one thing that freaks me out. Bugs. One or two bugs I can handle, maybe even a dozen... but not whole swarms or colonies of them. I think one thing that makes bugs so scary is their sheer number and tendancies to "overrun" things. Maybe use something with giant killer ants/scorpions/whatever in your level. (Alright, scorpions aren't really "bugs", but you get the deal...)

It's good to see you've been making progress on your Quest, CC, while I've been gone and stuff. Care to PM me and tell me some of your more recent additions to that Quest of yours? Catch up on old times, at least? You too, Ebola. Just 'cause my name never shows up in the bar at the bottom doesn't mean I don't visit, and nobody's bothered to PM me at all since I went missing.

Well, I hope I helped you... ^_^

[CastChaos]

Hmm... those are also really great ideas, but now I'm finished this dungeon. Not like I couldn't still add things.

Also, Schwa, if that kind of dungeon freaks you out, then don't play my Nightmare dungeon at night. I use side warps very frequently (just like in my Lost Woods), my sister went crazy because of them. Also, there ARE some things that would be bugs in other places... wrong undercombos, miscoloured screamer...

The boss is also ready now. More on it in my QPF.

[Marco]

Well, If you still want some freaky ideas, i guess........ then mabe, make link have to kill zelda, or a child to save the tri-force