10 replies to this topic

[Mani Kanina]

It's with great excitement that I present the various entries that were submitted to this quest contest. Frankly, I'd rather let the entries speak for themselves since they'll likely spark more joy than any long winded speech.

First up we got: Lana Again by Pj the human!
Download Quest: Download
Download Music: Download

Next there is: Novel Ruins Gaiden: The Selene Mountain by Chef Lizzy / Kifstopher!
Download Quest & Music: Download

And of course, to no one's surprise: ProjectMoon by Deedee & Moosh!
Download Quest: Download
Download Music: Download

Last but not least: Farming by Jambu!
Download Quest: Download

Note: Some of these download links are to Discord embeds. I'd encourage the author's in question to upload their quests to the database later for something more permanent. If any of the downloads are broken then let me know and I'll try to hook you up.

With names like these it almost feels like people were trying to play to the judges tastes, hurmmm. Oh well! The most important part is that the community gets more cool quests to play. If any of the quest authors got any feedback on the tileset then please send it to me somewhere, be it Discord or on the forums. I'd also like to give a big thank you to everyone who got involved with making anything or otherwise contributing to this event. It's the events that keep this community going, I feel anyway.

Feel free to talk about all the entries in this thread, though do try to spoiler any screenshots as well as any text that may or may not be considered spoilers.

As for the results, that depends on our two judges. (Myself and Deedee). It will likely at least take a couple of weeks given that I tend to be kept pretty busy by my job these days.

Edited by Mani Kanina, 26 August 2024 - 05:00 PM.

[Moosh]

Word of warning to anyone playing ours, there's a misflagged generic script at the end of the quest. Back up your save before beating the last boss or else you'll softlock your save on the end credits. Apologies about that.

[Deedee]

Feel free to help each-other out when playing our entry; that's part of the appeal!

[Jambu]

Note my quest is legit unfinished and starts on the wrong dmap... you have been warned...

[Pjthehuman]

Yeah. I forgot to set the dmap you start on for mine as well.

[Moosh]

Now that I've finished all the other entries, just posting some brief thoughts on each:

 

Lana Again: This one had some pretty serious bugs and some wonky difficulty balance throughout. I generally like the concept of tower quests but this one seemed lacking in places. I think the big thing is that when you do a whole quest in monochrome, it needs something else to sell the visuals and the dungeon screens here just were not very memorable with many feeling big and empty. Just not using the same rectangular shape for every room would've been a step in the right direction. I did like the music choices throughout and the newbie bosses at the end of each floor proved a decent challenge. Given some additional polish and time in this oven this could've been solid.

 

Novel Ruins Gaiden: This quest just oozes charm and personality. I'm a fan of Lizzy's flavor dialogue from Novel Ruins and there's a bunch more of it to see here. I also really liked the more standard structure here compared to Novel Ruins which was "novel" but had me much more stumped at times. I got stumped by a puzzle and forgot to beat that one, but I can confidently say all the puzzles here were thoroughly Moosh-proof. It was nice having tangible goals right out the gate and an open environment to explore. It's quite a sizeable quest too, for something made for a contest. There's some content I still haven't seen because I'm bad at doing completionism, but I'd love to go back sometime and check that out too. Easily my favorite of the contest.

 

Farming: I might need some explanation on this one. From what I gather it was a very last minute entry, was made as a joke, and also started on the wrong dmap. When attempting to warp to the right one, however, I just see an empty field to dig holes in. Also an aquamentus for some reason. Are there additional mechanics here that let me plant crops of some sort and watch them grow? Cuz if this really is all that's there, it's hardly better than the wrong dmap experience.

[Deedee]

Found a pretty serious bug with our entry which made an optional area unbeatable if you did something pretty easy to do. Since the results are going to be determined by judging and Mani has already run into the bug and since half the entries are unplayable without a patch, I don't see a reason to not post a hotfix.

https://www.mediafir...ctMoon.qst/file

Music download (since the discord links are broken): https://www.mediafir...nMusic.zip/file

Should also fix getting softlocked in the credits and fix a few tile errors and some ammo placement.

We've had one person run into an issue where weapons would just randomly break (such as up-facing swords being shot out of turrets); the person who ran into this was using 2.55.4, which is weird cause we built it in 2.55.4 and didn't notice the issue, but if anyone else runs into this issue we'd love for more info on it (such as whether you're using 2.55.5 when running into it, your config options, etc). We suspect it's a ZC bug just because of the surreal nature of how it happened. The cause of the bug has been fixed, please use the 2.55.6 prerelease (found here) or later to avoid weapons breaking. Let either us or the ZC Devs know if you run into any issues playing on this version. If you don't wish to update; frequently closing and reopening the ZC Player should avoid it (a surefire sign of it is some weapons using the upwards sword sprite when they shouldn't be).

[rabbitking]

Discord download links are not working anymore, and two of the entries start at the wrong D-map.

So at the moment there's only one contest entry that can be played properly.

[Deedee]

Edited my post above to have the music link. So at least our entry and Novel Ruins Gaiden should be playable.

[Mani Kanina]

Note that Discord links, if you post them back onto discord (any chat window) and press them from there, they will work. It's an odd quirk due to them not wanting you to host shit externally on them.

[Kifstopher]

Heya folks! Novel Ruins Gaiden has a softlock bug in its contest download due to a quest rule. If you're affected by this, you can use cheat level 4 with the default code ("4") to use walk through walls to escape.

 

Here's a hotfix version for the bug: Download