14 replies to this topic

[Aevin]

It's been awhile since my last update, and it was at a low point in motivation. So, I'm happy to report I've been making a lot of progress lately, and having a blast working on the overworld. I've been carving out mountains, planting some trees, and adding some depth to the ocean! And I'd like to reward your patience with some screenshots of a new area:


Located at the base of the mountains, the badlands face some very steep cliffs in the north. While the west features evergreen trees, the east gives way to more of a desert climate.

The trees seen here are modified from an NES game called Crystalis, shortened and colored to work for Zelda Classic.

One of my main goals in designing areas for HM2 is to make each of them give a unique impression. A lot of this, I try to accomplish through color. I tend to heavily modify the palettes of each area, resulting in the pink trees, gray mountains, red ground and more. Sometimes the colors may seem a little much, but for me, creating a colorful landscape that's nice to look at and fun to explore is more important than realism. In the future, I'll probably "marble" the grass here with a different color, just like I've done in the "village" area.

As things stand, about 7 out of 8 overworld areas are carved out. One still needs some work to make it look less square and more like a real place, while another is waiting to be built. I don't expect this work to take much time, after which I'll switch my focus to caves and dungeons.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear any thoughts.

[Moosh]

The color choices here are unusual, but they all work very well. It's refreshing to see an area like this that isn't made up entirely of dark grayish browns.

[anikom15]

Yummy.

[Evan20000]

This reminds me of an ancient SotW Moosh submitted in DoR where he got Radien's stamp of approval.


In all seriousness, this is going to definitely be a fun project to watch development. I'm looking forward to seeing how you handle dungeons.

[Aevin]

I just realized I've liked the past 10 or so of Evan's posts. I'm not a stalker, I swear.

 

Anyway ...  Thanks for your thoughts, guys.

[Evan20000]

As long as you don't pop out of the bushes at me when I'm on my way home, we're fine!
 

Moosh may or may not have a 3000 mile restraining order confining him to Maine for such actions.

[Demonlink]

After analyzing carefully your shots, I think they look quite nice and wonderful for the type of atmosphere you're trying to go with! :O As for the badlands, I like the atmosphere, but I don't think the name fits well with it, but alas, that's a personal thing. I like your progress so far my friend, keep up the awesome work! Definitely gonna play this on release!

[nicklegends]

I like how you're experimenting with the palettes. The extreme colors might take me some time to get used to. But you usually have a good design intuition about you, so I'm optimistic about how they'll look in action.

[Aevin]

As for the badlands, I like the atmosphere, but I don't think the name fits well with it, but alas, that's a personal thing.

I'd say these two screens are about the least badlands-y of the badlands. With that said, the name here might change, and in the end everything will have proper names instead of just general ones.

[Shane]

Personally, I'm not a fan of the palette (the night time palette does not scream badlands to me) but the red, grey and green work well in spite of it and the screen design and concept are nice regardless. I'm really looking forward to it. Hero's Memory is one of my two favorite quests, I can't wait for it's sequel. Take all the time you need though, I'm (and hopefully all of PureZC are) patient.

[LinktheMaster]

Looking good to me. I definitely need to go play Hero's Memory at some point since I've heard such good things about it.  I'll admit that I am a bit unsure about the palette, but I'll reserve my full opinions until I see more screenshots of it.

 

Might I inquire about what the item you have equipped does?

[Aevin]

Might I inquire about what the item you have equipped does?

It's a tornado rod, inspired by the one in A Link Between Worlds. It shoots a ring of whirlwinds that stuns most enemies and damages or destroys weaker enemies.

[Legen Dary]

Beautiful.

[Eddy]

That looks awesome! Those colours look really interesting and unusual and that adds a pretty cool vibe to the area.

 

Also, I'm glad you picked up on the quest again and made a lot of progress.

 

And question: how much in % do you think you're done with the quest? Just a bit of curiosity

[Aevin]

I'd rather not give a percentage, but I do think the work will go faster from here.  I think dungeons are easier to focus on as individual units, so it doesn't take as long to put them together as an interconnected overworld with tons of secrets and such.