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[Kite]

The Legend of Zelda: Fairy Dream
By LinktheMaster and Nick

Introduction:

This is the story of a fairy named Steve that is half-heartedly out to rid the world of evil monsters. Clichés, corny jokes, fourth walls, and learning the concept of shutting up are only some of the obstacles he will have to face on his completely selfless quest of forcing a mute child to do all his work for him. (Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.) But when an ancient evil resurfaces, Steve finds his resolve tested as he is dragged into a situation far more serious than he expected.

Updates:

All updates are currently postponed while Nick and LinktheMaster work on other projects.

Latest Update
August 21, 2012 - Update 9: New Subscreen, Aquamentus, and General Status

Updates Archive:
January 08, 2012 - Update 1: Cutscenes and Amaran Village
January 22, 2012 - Update 2: Optional Cave, Shutters, and Some Puzzles
February 5, 2012 - Update 3: Scripted Enemies
February 19, 2012 - Update 4: Save System, Options Screen, and a Cutscene
March 19, 2012 - Update 5: Quests, Shops, and More
April 3, 2012 - Update 6: Minigames
April 9, 2012 - Update 7: Trailer 2
April 22, 2012 - Update 8: The Demo and the Future

Screenshots:





Trailer 2:


http://www.youtube.c...h?v=oXGAKLHZ48Y (if the embed doesn't work)

Trailer 1:


http://www.youtube.c...h?v=rDmR1KaIm6U

Quest Info:

One day, LinktheMaster and Nick decided to try combining their efforts in the hopes of being motivated to make a quest that has a chance of being finished, given Nick's horrible track record of one completed quest out of a good 10-15 serious quest creation attempts ("The Nick's") and LinktheMaster having some of his own. Most of this motivation came from the boom of group projects that began around 2007-2008, including the successful release of Lost Isle.

Yes... Fairy Dream was started in 2008 and it is just now getting to a point for its efforts to be shown off. Of course, part of the delay was due to LTM and Nick being graphics perfectionists despite having a very low talent for drawing custom tiles. The quest was originally using a variation of PUXDOR which looked rather pretty, but it also played around with our weakness to the point of clogging development. Thus, in late 2010, after coming up with the idea earlier in the year but being too busy to do it, they had a sudden burst of motivation and began converting the quest to the Gameboy tileset. Thus, Fairy Dream was renewed.

...

Anyway, you people are not here to read a developer blog (or are you?), so let's get to the important information about this quest.

This quest is heavier on the text than a typical quest due to the fact that it focuses on the plot quite a bit. While it starts as somewhat of an affectionate parody, it will still be taking its main plot seriously. So if you are here for a quick hack and slash quest, this probably isn't the quest for you. But don't fear this too much. We hope to break up typical monotonous quest plot text with fully scripted cutscenes that have such innovative features as fluid character movement, being able to tell who is speaking, sounds, and whatever else we wish to be extremely picky about.

Speaking of scripts, this quest is extremely script heavy. While it won't be featuring jawdropping gameplay changes, we will still create a variety of scripting in the game. Our goal is to integrate the scripting in a manner that feels natural and helps enhance the existing gameplay and narrative. Expect to see things such as a custom dialog box system, custom puzzle types, gameboy style ledge dropping, gameboy style dungeon shutters, modified and perhaps brand new items, minigames, custom bosses, and whatever else we decide to script.

The final quest will feature four expansive dungeons with numerous minidungeons, several sidequests, and multiple difficulty settings.

Userbar:

Here's a userbar for anyone who wants to put it in their signatures.

CODE

[url=http://www.purezc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53193][img]http://celestialrealm.net/fairy/userbar.png[/img][/url]

Demo:

Fairy Dream Demo 1 was released on April 15th, 2012. This includes all the way through the Forest Palace and includes 3-5 hours of gameplay.

Download Fairy Dream Demo 1 (Requires at least 2.50 RC3)

This is the latest version of the demo for anyone that missed the ZC Expo.

[Sheik]

This looks great. And having read your reviews I'm sure that you guys actually care for us poor players and thus I have high expectations for this. It's looking wonderful so far, very well done stuff. Especially the dungeon looks nice.
Is that wand item capable of turning stone to life? If that's the case I see many nice uses for it with the GB tiles, neat idea!

I love how people are making good GB styled quests lately!

[Jared]

Wow...I thought this was a fake quest! Turns out it's not! All the scripts look amazing so far...a lot different than we normally see. Looking forward to more soon!

[Tree]

Looks awesome! Screen design is nice and simple, and the new scripts look amazing! It looks like an actual GB game instead of a Zelda 1 game with fancy graphics. It's not easy to pull that off. Good job sir. I will be looking forward to playing the demo!

[Kite]

Thanks for the comments in the thread and in chat so far.

This looks great. And having read your reviews I'm sure that you guys actually care for us poor players and thus I have high expectations for this. It's looking wonderful so far, very well done stuff. Especially the dungeon looks nice.
Is that wand item capable of turning stone to life? If that's the case I see many nice uses for it with the GB tiles, neat idea!

I love how people are making good GB styled quests lately!

Yes. One thing we are definitely focusing on is making it playable. While the story is important to us, we really want the gameplay to be something someone actually wants to play.

The wand is a bit more complicated than that. More details will be revealed about it later, but turning that statue into a living helmasaur (the enemy that appeared) is only a small part of the many uses it will have.

Wow...I thought this was a fake quest! Turns out it's not! All the scripts look amazing so far...a lot different than we normally see. Looking forward to more soon!

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have submitted the title screen to that April Fools SotW. But yes, this is a real quest.

Looks awesome! Screen design is nice and simple, and the new scripts look amazing! It looks like an actual GB game instead of a Zelda 1 game with fancy graphics. It's not easy to pull that off. Good job sir. I will be looking forward to playing the demo!

LinktheMaster and I have been trying to do a mixture of both the Gameboy style and 3D Zelda game concepts. Our hope is that it will feel and play like Gameboy Zelda, but it will also have a unique blend to it reminiscent of the latter games in the series.

[Supindahood]

This looks very good! I love the scripts and dungeons.

[Adem]

This looks absolutely fantastic...I'm already itching to play the demo. While I get excited about other projects fairly easily, this is quite possibly the first quest to get me as this excited. I'm sort of speechless.

I am without speech.

[Dawnlight]

Amazing! This is what I was waiting for when looking for the definitive 2.5 quest. The presentation value is off the charts. Not only that, but the gameplay looks extremely promising. Where's your support bar?

[LinktheMaster]

Update 1: Cutscenes and Amaran Village

Welcome to the first update for Fairy Dream. This is the first of what will hopefully be bi-weekly updates (probably every other Sunday). For the first few weeks, since we’ve already gotten pretty far in the quest, what we’re going to do is focus on areas, scripts, and concepts that we’ve already started up.

Cutscenes and Discussions:

As Nick stated before, Fairy Dream is heavily story based. At least, a lot more so than most quests. So, for the first update, I wanted to talk about our cutscenes to try to shed some light on them as well as remove some potential worries about them.

Length
First of all, we will do our best to prevent things from getting too crazy. This isn’t a JRPG. Because of that, we have a personal rule that most normal cutscenes should not span longer than 3 minutes. There may be a few exceptions here and there (like the opening), but for the most part this will always be held to. However, for those not caring about plot at all, we’ll be doing our best to implement a way to skip cutscenes (probably similar to Twilight Princess’s method of hitting start twice). However, we won’t be doing this for cutscenes that actually tell you what to do. Also, we’ll typically allow people to save after longer cutscenes so that if something happens, they won’t have to redo the cutscenes.

These are part of the intro, which will probably be one of the longest cutscenes in the quest.

How?
All cutscenes will be done via scripting. What does this allow us to do? First of all, this will allow us to do easy animation and emotes. We’ll be doing our best to make cutscenes as interesting and detailed as possible, even adding sound effects and special graphics to enhance the effect. Also using scripting, we’re able to have character names and sprites pop up during cutscenes so you can tell who is doing the talking.

As shown here, characters will move around during cutscenes, and colors will be used to highlight things in text.

Characters
Throughout the quest, there will probably be a cast of roughly 5 characters who will routinely pop up. Some of these characters will be changing slightly throughout the quest, and we’re hoping to make them all different and interesting.

Signs and NPCs are scattered throughout the quest to give out important information. Sometimes what NPCs say will change throughout the quest.

Other Cutscene Screenshots

Amaran Village:

Due to some suggestions, today I worked on the initial village, Amaran, to add in some detail, so I thought I would post a few screenshots and info from there. Amaran is a small village south of Hyrule from which Link is from. It’s a very small, quiet village that Steve ventures to in order to find some poor sap Link to help out in his adventure to get rid of the evils of the world that seem to be picking on him. Unfortunately, not all may be quiet and well with Amaran, as there may be some evils approaching it. But there will be more on that some other time. Here’s some screenshots.

Next Update:

Unfortunately I can’t guarantee that all updates will be this hefty (or fortunately I guess for some people ), but we’ll try to come up with updates as soon as possible. So with that being said, I want to announce that our next update will be two weeks away, Sunday January 22nd. We’ll see you then, and thank you everyone for your words of advice and support!

[Schwa]

The video trailer made me squeal in delight four times, I counted. My God. Brilliant. All of it. My favorite things had to be the Boomerang and the Aquamentus-EX.

I'll put it to you this way, for great justice: "This piece is what all true warriors strive for". Hahahaha~

Beautiful work you two! I've got my eye on this one and I'll be eagerly following updates.

[Radien]

Named "Steve?" OMG IM A FARRY

For very stupid reasons, I feel like this quest was made for me to play. (Or will be made. Whatever.) You two have done a lot of good stuff, and I look forward to hearing more about this one. Hope you take this project to completion. I also have more confidence in your sense of humor, and it sounds like that's going to be important in making this quest.

[Moosh]

Everything I've ever accomplished got blown out of the water in a single video...

Edited by Pokemonmaster64, 09 January 2012 - 03:18 PM.

[Schwa]

Everything I've ever accomplished got blown out of the water in a single video...

Whaaaaat. Don't ever freaking say that. For one thing, there's no doubt for me that you could script everything you see in the video (as in you're capable of it), and for another thing, since when did ZQuest become such a blood sport to you?

More importantly. You see I have words of praise for the work that's been done on this quest so far, right? Now think about this: do my words of praise for this quest, automatically undo any of the words of praise I've had of your past works? They do not. So, seriously, get your mind out of the gutter. I can't stand to see my friends think like this.

[Sheik]

As far as sounds are concerned, what direction are you guys taking? Will the MIDIs and sound effects be taken from the GB Zeldas / other GB games or will you go with "modern" MIDIs on sound effects?

[Moosh]

Whaaaaat. Don't ever freaking say that. For one thing, there's no doubt for me that you could script everything you see in the video (as in you're capable of it), and for another thing, since when did ZQuest become such a blood sport to you?

More importantly. You see I have words of praise for the work that's been done on this quest so far, right? Now think about this: do my words of praise for this quest, automatically undo any of the words of praise I've had of your past works? They do not. So, seriously, get your mind out of the gutter. I can't stand to see my friends think like this.

I wasn't referring to the scripting as much as the presentation. Most of the scripts are fairly simplistic by the looks of it, but the way they're presented really builds a feeling of epicness. Also I was kinda using a hyperbole. I know my stuff still has merit, I just wanted to show how impressed I am by this quest.