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View Full Version : I've been using ZC for a while, but...



DragonCommander
04-04-2002, 01:01 PM
...I still don't fully understand combo pages.
In fact, I don't get them at all.
I need a helpful, easy-to-understand description of their function and use.
Anyone?

plith
04-04-2002, 06:11 PM
My lengthy response:

Q: What does a combo do?

A: It's the placeable part of ZQuest. What I mean is that tiles themselves are in fact only a facet of combos. A single combo stores the following data:

The tile used
The walk flags (the pink parts that decide where Link can and can't walk)
The secondary CSet used for the combo (If the tile is intended to use two different color sets, the CSet2 feature allows it to have both. You don't really have to understand this part.)
The type of combo (Can it be pushed? Is it a floor button? Is it water? A dock? A cave?)
The frames and speed of animation (1.92 only)

Basically, a combo is just an object placed in ZQuest. Tiles are the graphics, combos are the solid portion that defines just what this graphic is.

Q: What's a combo page?

A: It's nothing more than a group of 256 combos. You can have no more than that on one combo page (currently, that might change soon). You have one combo page per screen, but you can change the combo page used by screen (unlike palettes, which can only differ between DMaps). You select the combo (remember that combo=object, which includes simple ground) from the right side menu, which you can scroll through one of three ways:

- Hold SHIFT and use the UP and DOWN arrow keys.
- Use the small blue boxes at the bottom to the left of the combo list.
- Enable Mouse Scroll in the options window (under the Misc. menu).

Q: How do I edit a combo?

A: There are two ways to go about doing this. 1) Right click in the combo list to bring it up, or 2) go to Quest->Combos, select the combo you wish to edit, and either press E on the keyboard or click the Edit button. Either way, you get a dialog with a LOT OF STUFF ON IT. Here's as follows:

You see three squares at the top portion. Click on the leftmost one to select the tile the combo shall use. The middle square is for editing the walk flags. You can define whether or not Link can walk on that combo in four separate portions of the combo (basically, you can define for each individual portion of the combo whether Link can walk on that part). Ignore the third square, that's a bit more advanced and most often unnecessary. Also ignore the part that says CSet2 unless you know what you're doing with it.

The rest of that stuff ought to be self-explanatory.
On a side note, you'll notice that going to Quest->Combos shows the list in a rather screwed up fashion. What I mean is, each row is placed NEXT TO the previous one. To fix this, just press SPACEBAR.

Anyways, I gotta go, but I think that should be rather helpful to anyone who wants to know about combos.