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NEW Tricks of the Trade


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#1 Rambly

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Posted 05 April 2025 - 02:22 AM

This is a thread where you can share any tricks you've found for the ZQuest Editor: Neat uses for base features like combo triggers, obscure editor features, ways to save time, etc. Given that 2.55 allows for more ways to do things without scripting, there's bound to be a lot of cool things people have discovered. This thread serves as a centralized place for those things.

 

If you want to, you can read the older thread here. It's worth noting that most of the tricks in that thread are for older versions of ZC, though - mostly 1.90 and 2.10, but there's some 2.50 stuff there, too. (You can still post tricks for older versions here too, if you wish, but be sure to specify.)


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#2 Cobgoblin

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Posted 05 April 2025 - 10:43 AM

Combo many tiles en-masse

While in the Tile Page View (Press T), highlight a bunch of tiles you want to turn into combos and press M. You'll get the opportunity to set some combo properties for all of them including solidity and animations at this point. Even if all of the combos you made don't share identical properties, this is a good time to get most of the way there.

 

Advanced Combo Property Copy-Paste

Use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V while in the Combo Page View to copy and paste only specific properties from one combo to another such as solidity, type, scripts and more.

 

Use Favorite Combos as Bookmarks

Use favorite combos to not only mark your commonly-used combos, but also quickly get to the page containing similar combos through right-clicking on the combo and selecting Scroll to Combo. Phosphor's Pure Tileset Update Supreme contains a good demonstration of this.

 

Test Frequently

Use Ctrl+T to open a ZC player on the current screen.

 

Learn both the Compact and Expanded View

The compact and expanded modes are both useful in their own right, I think you're shooting yourself in the foot if you lock yourself only to one.  Compact is good for focusing on the small details on the current screen especially if you already have most of the tiles down that you can just right-click-scroll-to-combo for quick navigation, and expanded view is great if your screen involves combos from many pages.

 

Set up an asset import folder

If you import art and music a lot like me, set up a designated import folder inside your ZC directory and pin it to your file explorer's quick access.

 

For collaborative quests, use version numbers

If multiple people are working on your quest, use version numbers in your quest filename to reduce mistakes as the quest changes hands over time. The most straightforward ways are simple incremented numbers e.g. questname-0000.qst and dated e.g. questname-yy-mm-dd.qst or a combination of both.


Edited by Cobgoblin, 06 April 2025 - 12:59 AM.

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#3 ElvenPsychoRanger

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Posted 04 May 2026 - 03:48 PM

I personally love the potential of using direct warps TO identically appearing screens!
-->By either: well placed warp tiles, and/or set timed warps.
This resetting enemies, and secrets, and strings, and such other unexpected fun stuff...
Helps with story-telling and action


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