53 replies to this topic

[Aevin]

I just assumed that statue worked. Since I couldn't find the arrows before then, I just tanked my way over the spikes. XD

[Ventus]

I assumed it worked to, well at least most people just tanked on though, at least with the new update you shouldn't have to that no more

[Ventus]

I made a support bar for my quest last night, "If" anyone wants to put it in their signature here you go.

 

http://i.imgur.com/rIZLe5y.png

 

 

 

 

 

I'm kinda surprised that this died so quick... Edit: Maybe not :-P

Edited by Benji, 05 June 2014 - 08:27 PM.

[DragonDePlatino]

Don't worry, a little bit of signature CPR and Lamda will be right as rain! I'm gonna go ahead and slap your userbar in my siggy. And trust me, I like to save my signature space for really special quests.

 

I almost fell out of my seat when I saw this in the database. I fired it up and it turns out for a completely new tileset, your usage is incredible competent! I've barely found any tile errors at all and I'm playing through the quest right now. It's a fantastic quest (however simple) and I've been enjoying every moment of it. I've also been working on a list of bugfixes and compliments to smother you with once I'm done.

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 05 June 2014 - 08:02 PM.

[Ventus]

I'm glad that you are enjoying it! And I'll kinda be looking forward to the buglist... *Totally loves bugs j/k* Anyway thanks for putting the user bar in your signature! It'll really help to get the quest more attention!

[umbrello]

I'm in level 2 and I got what I think is the small wallet (I'm not that familiar with some items) and when I come out I'm trapped because I can't push the block I had to push to get to the stairs. 

[Ventus]

Alright, I see I had a wrong block trigger. I fixed that (I'll update the database file), are you permanently stuck there or did you manage to get out of there?

[patgarret]

Completed the quest, but I never found the wand: where is it?

[Ventus]

The wand was in Level 6, its located under a block.

 

Its a little ways before the boss.

[umbrello]

Alright, I see I had a wrong block trigger. I fixed that (I'll update the database file), are you permanently stuck there or did you manage to get out of there?

 

oh I just did F6, lol

[Ventus]

oh I just did F6, lol

Alright good. lol

[DragonDePlatino]

 
Hooray! I kept at it today and managed to finish up Lamda II with a steady pace of 4:16:45 (go ahead, laugh) but absolutely no deaths. Not even any close ones...and that brings me to my loooong list of complaints and bugfixes. I was taking notes as I played Lamda II so everything here is in the order I encountered it. A lot of these are just quick little changes, so nothing unreasonable like "I think you should completely redo so-and-so dungeon". So...first the bad, then the good! And no reading ahead!
 
Also, please note that when I'm naming screen coordinates it's vertical number (0-7), then horizontal number (0-F)...Not sure if that's the right way but it's how I do it here.
 

Spoiler

• Screen 69 has the wrong tile for bombed cave.
• You should probably change the item room palette to "Passageway".
• In some dungeons boss keys are invisible? I was kind of confused when I accidentally picked up the Level 2 key by standing where it spawned. I checked my items and it didn't look like I had it...
• Some of the baby digdoggers are pure black? Probably a mistake on my part.
• Screen 4F is a bit bland...am I missing something? Some scenery or a cave or something would be nice.
• Switching items with L and R is terribly broken. I oftentimes found I could get to an item by switching one way but not the other. Other times, I couldn't switch to an item at all and I'd have to manually pause and choose it.
• Darknut rooms were too easy! You can just press F1, stand in the doorway and spam the slash button. Making a one-way door or laying down some no-enemy flags near the doors would help. And if players absolutely need to run and heal, you could set up a tile warp to the previous room.
• Flipped sword slashes! Auuugh! I set up my Link specifically so that would never be necessary. :I
• Tile error in the lower right of screen 77.
• Way too many keys...I always had an excess of like six of them. And adding on the fact you could buy them, choosing which doors to unlock never really felt like a big decision, ruining some of the exploration for me. I ended up buying one key (early on, just in case) so I think I could have just barely made it through the entire quest without the magical key.
• In Level 4 in the room with all the 5 zoras, I could not line myself up and activate the upper dock for the life of me. If you placed a solid block to the left of the 2nd topmost dock (in the water) the player would have something to push against to line themselves up properly.
• Hmm...Zoras for the southern ocean area screens would have been a nice touch. OH GOD I JUST VISITED THE WESTERN ONES. NEVER MIND. (But don't change those, they're fine XD)
• Some wonky cliff tile bits in screen 31.
• The cave tile of screen 02 is the wrong palette.
• It's possible to get the blue ring waaaay too early, making the rest of the quest a breeze and completely negating the usefulness of potions. Try raising the blue ring price to 500 rupees. That way, the average player will be able to get the blur ring once they've finished about half the dungeons. Either that, or make the blue ring slightly less powerful. Or replace it with a heart ring.
• You can cheat Level 7's wizzrobe puzzle by standing in the upper right and having a wizzrobe bounce a beam upwards off the upper-right mirror. And you can easily cheat the spike-block puzzle with the blue ring...convert those spikes to tile warps!
• ...Where is Level 7's map? I ended up with a dungeon shaped like the bottom of a semicircle, but I couldn't help but think I was missing something...
• The magical sword makes things waaay too easy. Either slightly nerf it, or toughen up late-game enemies. Some good ways to do the latter would be to put patra and it's stronger varients in more dungeons. Specifically, Level 9's oval patra should replace Level 7's gleeok and Level 9's patra should be stronger. Another solution would be to put the white sword where the magical sword currently is and a sword scroll where the white sword is. 
• ...Uuuuugh...and to top it all off, just after I wrote that, I found the Master Sword...The Master Sword is completely unnecessary, harder enemies or not.
• The random bomb upgrade in the last dungeon felt kind of tacked-on. After I got the Lens of Truth, I never really ran that low on bombs. Nevertheless, I think you could fix a lot of your filler screens by adding well-hidden (think Zelda 1) bomb upgrade caves. I know I'm contradicting myself here by saying "more bombs", but if you end up fixing the darknuts and giving the player a weaker sword, more bombs would help balance that out. I always use bombs whenever possible when I fight darknuts and I always still manage to have enough for bomb secrets.
• The four-block puzzle in Level 9 is broken? I can push just one of the blocks and the doors will open.
• I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but the Lost Woods-maze screens make for horrible puzzles. Even if you're just sitting there trying all the possible combinations with trial-and-error, it only takes like 20 seconds to solve these. I always found the solutions AFTER I went through these puzzles, and I never needed them in the first place. Replace those screens with better puzzles!
• The Zelda room was completely black. And Ganon? .....Ugh. What a letdown.

 
Wow, that's a lot, isn't it? But I think if you address pretty much all those issues, you'll have the perfect quest in your hands! Something that almost nobody can complain about. And if you decide to completely blow me off and fix nothing at all, you'll still have a very polished quest on your hands. Oh, and about that...here's everything good I had to say about Lamda II! I know this list is a lot shorter than the gripe list, but these are mostly overall compliments rather than nitpicks. And I'm a bit of a pessimist. ^^;

Spoiler

• Very competent usage of Koten! Everything looks just like something from the NES, but you mixed up tile usage in dungeons quite a bit which kept things from being monotonous. You also did your best to mix your palettes in dungeons and for that, I commend you!
• This was great for the first Koten quest, but the gameplay stood well enough on it's own to never make the tileset feel like a gimmick (I'm looking at YOU Golvellius!). From what I know of, you did the tileset swap late in development but everything still manages to FIT Koten in the way I dreamed it would. I really think Lamda II will set the bar for future Koten-based quests! I'll definitely be showing it to anyone who wants to know how to use Koten.
• Very nice choices of music. All songs I've heard a million times, but very fitting and atmospheric. Level 6 could possibly be my fave NES-style dungeon ever. It's music, palette and screen design really made me stop and admire it. Everything about it was just perfect.
• Awesome atmosphere! I loved the contrast between wandering the Caves(?) and emerging to find myself waaaay out in the middle of the ocean. Great sense of adventure.
• I loved the openness of the quest. I practically ran through 5 dungeons before finding Level 1. But despite that, it never felt cheap, like the game was punishing me for a wrong dungeon order. The only problem I had with the openness, though, was that going back to Level 1 felt pointless because I already had the magic boomerang and long bow. A tip to all quest designers reading this: if you're going to make an open-ended quest, don't put early upgrades in the easier dungeons!
• Great overworld! It's pretty flat like the original Legend of Zelda, but the different areas and overall atmosphere was great. It had a few too many "filler" screens without any caves or burnable bushes but overall it's pretty well done and free of any game-stopping bugs.
• Everything was well hidden, but not TOO well hidden. With careful combing, I managed to nab all the heart pieces. The little OCD part of me squee'd.
• Money was managed excellently. I bought things cheap whenever I could, never used the arrows (except for Gohma), found all the rupee secrets I could, never lost money gambling and I used the Lens Of Truth very conservatively. Despite this, I only managed to max out 999 rupees halfway through the final dungeon. I would suggest adding more upgrades to shops, but considering how stingy I am with rupees compared to most players and how slowly I took the quest, I think the money usage is just perfect for the average player. Not grindy but not without it's money sinks. A Goldilocks quest!
• The room in Level 9 with the four statues and wallmasters was simple but clever! I didn't know how to "solve" the room or that there were wallmasters to kill, so it took me a minute to stand near a wall and figure it out.

And last but not least, here were the final items I had. Keep in mind, I visited all the overworld screens in the game and uncovered all(?) the secrets I could remember. The only items I think I might have missed were some of Level 7's (no dungeon map) and a good bit of Level 9's (since I didn't explore it all). Anything else I missed might be a little bit too obscure of a find for players, especially because of how thorough I am with searching for secrets (4 hours!!!) Spoiler'd for those who don't want to see this quest's item list:

Spoiler

So all in all, I walked away from Lamda II feeling good. The final Ganon fight was anticlimactic as hell but I felt good about beating Lamda II. I felt good about getting all the HCPs. I felt good listening to the great music. But most of all, I felt FANTASTIC seeing the months of effort I put into Koten be realized in such an epic first quest! It's no Hero of Dreams, but Lamda II is a very solid NES-style quest which stretches the possibilities of NES-style dungeons to their limits. An almost-perfect reimagining of how great an NES Zelda could be, it's a cut above the rest of the NES-style quests despite it's short length. And aside from being WAY too easy for an NES-style quest, no big complaints here! Benji, more quests like this, more more more!
 
FEED ME PLEASE!

[Eddy]

So I've beaten the quest too and it seems I've missed out the Lens of Truth. Oh well, I still managed to complete the quest.

 

I don't write much, so here are some good points:

- Amazing overworld design

- Fairly balanced

- Interesting ideas for some areas

- Level 7 was my favourite

 

Yeah, see? I don't talk much But, all in all, the quest was really amazing and gave it a 5. Great job!

[Ventus]

STUFF  snipped out for size

I'm glad that you enjoyed the quest, That what I set out for this time. I was aiming to have a fun experience that when someone beat the game it left them feeling good about it

I'll totally take a look into some of the issues you have listed off, it'll take me some time but I'll see what I can do. 

And thanks for all the praise! I'm glad that I made such good use out of Koten (Koten will probable be my default set from now on) 

 

 

So I've beaten the quest too and it seems I've missed out the Lens of Truth. Oh well, I still managed to complete the quest.

 

I don't write much, so here are some good points:

- Amazing overworld design

- Fairly balanced

- Interesting ideas for some areas

- Level 7 was my favourite

 

Yeah, see? I don't talk much But, all in all, the quest was really amazing and gave it a 5. Great job!

The lens was in level 7 in a room with invisible floors. I'm glad that you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing!

[Eddy]

The lens was in level 7 in a room with invisible floors. I'm glad that you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing!

Oh, I had a feeling it was in that dungeon lol. Well, looks like I skipped it out. Oh well, it was still manageable anyway lol.