Perils of questing, pt. 1

[Ganonator]

I've noticed that with the best effort EVER to get a quest off, it is very hard to actually do it. Here is my first part in some amount of sequence for Perils in questing... here goes

Graphics are a pain in the ass. While making things look nice, its hard to make things look like you want them to. This may be time consuming, but well worth the effort. Its a problem, however, because I'm only 1/2 done with me overworld, and i'm TIRED of making it look good.

Puzzles separate the good quests from the best quests, and I'm speaking about micropuzzles (those within one room) vs. macropuzzles (multi-room). It may be easy to make one room with some tricky push blocks, or triggers, etc, but to really encorporate pit warps tied into puzzles, and stairs.. omg.. why can't we all just get along? no wait.. its a peril I really hate

Sequence of events tend to destroy openness, and in the recent produced Zelda games, thats all there is anymore. (For instance, MM's every little detail was a sequence, down to each specific mask..) In ZQ, making events is on the impossible side, but I've seen it done magnificently. Ugg.. such a bitch sometimes.

Expansion betas are the devil. Plain and simple. I would like to just have v1.84 forever, because it didn't have all of the bells and whistles and obsolescense that new quests have. I've heard that I can't play some b152 quests in b180 because of compatibility, etc, and after moving J:R into b180, my undercomboes have dissapeared. This makes questing very difficult. Bug fixing is only number two however. Its the prospect that there are new features being added that everyone doesn't have the ability to utilize.

that's all for now boys and girls...

[Happyman]

My thoughts are unbolded


Originally posted by Ganonator
I've noticed that with the best effort EVER to get a quest off, it is very hard to actually do it. Here is my first part in some amount of sequence for Perils in questing... here goes

Graphics are a pain in the ass. While making things look nice, its hard to make things look like you want them to. This may be time consuming, but well worth the effort. Its a problem, however, because I'm only 1/2 done with me overworld, and i'm TIRED of making it look good.

If you have this problem, I suggest using a gfx pack like Pure, so that you have to make almost no custom tiles.

Puzzles separate the good quests from the best quests, and I'm speaking about micropuzzles (those within one room) vs. macropuzzles (multi-room). It may be easy to make one room with some tricky push blocks, or triggers, etc, but to really encorporate pit warps tied into puzzles, and stairs.. omg.. why can't we all just get along? no wait.. its a peril I really hate

Puzzles are probably my favorite part of a quest. Based on personal experience, micropuzzles are near impossible to make difficult. Macro puzzles, however, are an entirely different story. BTW, please clarify the end of that paragraph... :confuse2:

Sequence of events tend to destroy openness, and in the recent produced Zelda games, thats all there is anymore. (For instance, MM's every little detail was a sequence, down to each specific mask..) In ZQ, making events is on the impossible side, but I've seen it done magnificently. Ugg.. such a bitch sometimes.

Not everyone uses tricks to create an involved story, or to create custom bosses. Every played WB's quests? He's never tried any of them, but his quests are excellent. Of course, there are ways to make a simply story. For instance, start by making short scenes after triforce warps.

Expansion betas are the devil. Plain and simple. I would like to just have v1.84 forever, because it didn't have all of the bells and whistles and obsolescense that new quests have. I've heard that I can't play some b152 quests in b180 because of compatibility, etc, and after moving J:R into b180, my undercomboes have dissapeared. This makes questing very difficult. Bug fixing is only number two however. Its the prospect that there are new features being added that everyone doesn't have the ability to utilize.

Build 152 had that compatibility problem. Translucency did some wierd stuff in 152 conversions to 163 or 180. But no one told you had to use the betas. Whoever uses a beta takes this risk, but of course, who wants all the tempting new features in the betas? I know I sure do. I sort of agree with your final sentence, but I don't find it to be much of a harassment.

that's all for now boys and girls... There, that's my comments.

[C-Dawg]

Silence your complaints and mold the engine to your will like a hand shapes clay.

-C

[Jigglysaint]

Wise words, c=dawg, wise words.

[Teilyr]

The engine isn't the problem. It's the "community." The bar is too high for those that cannot innovate anything flashy, and don't have an established quest completion rate.

Reinvent yourself, or your quest shall be ignored.

That's the general message I see coming from the majority of posts around here.

[Ganonator]

the real catch is, I really/ want to finish a beautiful quest, but my intrinsic motivation is falling... If I take about the problems, I feel better, and attempt to finish something i started, which seems to the the number 1 problem nowdays with everybody's quests.

[ShadowTiger]

Me, I don't really care about finishing a quest.

*waits for the gasp to quiet down.*

Alright then; I would rather see my quest look and play really good, than be able to see Ganon in a crudely drawn room with a terrible skull drawn out of some random tile in the middle of the floor. If you can create your own graphics easily, you've got half your struggle quieted right there. If you know your way around ZQuest, that's the other half. And judging by your quest Link's Odyssey, Ganonator, I can see why you started this thread. Just practice drawing out graphics, like the edges of water tiles, and you should be fine. As long as no one really notices any graphics inconsistencies, any quest can be decent. Even mine. :rolleyes:

[Ganonator]

LO was my first quest ever produced about 9 months ago.. I have been thinking about J:R for over 4 months, and finally got questing on it a month ago. Its leaps and bounds ahead of any of my past work. As for tiles, I'm using the Pure set, which does has its problems (there are quite a few little missing tiles, such as mountain corners and distant tree tiles) but I have only added about a page to fill these up. Everything in J:R uses the newest features - customizable maps, newest items - because they are available. I'm just losing my excitement for making this work. I'm running out of good ideas. I'll have to post Perils II for you to understand all of that.

[Teilyr]

Originally posted by Ganonator
As for tiles, I'm using the Pure set, which does has its problems (there are quite a few little missing tiles, such as mountain corners and distant tree tiles) but I have only added about a page to fill these up. Hmmm..

http://www.purezc.com/Tilesets/s6s3.gif

I see mountain corners, and tree tiles that look like distant.

Are we thinking of different things?

[DarkFlameWolf]

LOL
and yes, I did spam Teilyr! ^_^
Yes the PureZC tileset is missing things, I haven't seen or heard of the new release of the set yet.

[JayeM]

It's not necessary to use all the bells and whistles to make an excellent quest. There's nothing wrong with creating a new quest with nothing not in 1.90, or even 1.84. As a matter of fact it's better to do that than to use the new features badly, or to clutter up your quest with gimmicks just to show that you know how to use them. Some of the new features inspire, some don't...I don't use the ones that don't. Just because you have 64 crayons in your box doesn't mean you have to use them all in every picture you color.

[Ganonator]

and that's true. I really don't like using inf-push blocks because EVERYBODY uses them. Its cool to have them, but only in dire situations (or tricks to block left-right traps.. its all good)

as for Teilyr, its missing the bottom left tiles for water and grass... that's what I meant... little things. (and the doors for the castle and others are just wrong)

[Teilyr]

Then fix them, you lazy bum. :laughing: I converted Revenge 2 grass for the slashable/wadeable grass, and just rotated the water tiles to fix them for TCoL, before I trashed it.

Perhaps I should release the set, since I'm not going to use it....

Anyway, it's pretty simple, You just have to import stuff from other sets. The new version of the Pure set (which will come out just before ZC Version 10.4) will have all of the loopholes covered.

As for the castle doors.. Play LTTP. The door that Raichu used on the castle tiles is the same one that Agahnim seals off until Link gets the master sword.

So nyeh. :tongue:

[Raichu86]

What suprises me is how many people don't seem to be appreciating how expandable I designed the set to be. There's tons of empty tiles right below the overworld tiles, plenty of empty combos below the overworld combos. The same goes for houses, caves, and all of the dungeon sets. If the set doesn't have what you want, you should just add it yourself, because it is easy to stay organized. Replacing tiles you don't like is even easier.

The next version of the set will have bug fixes, more tiles, and the Beta 182 combos set up. It should be out by New Years.

[Ganonator]

I'll have to truly consider a switch then.. that means more downtime, and a release somewhere around ZC 4.62b511.. :D You also said that it was fully compatible with Orion's set.. I'm still having problems with the color.. Maybe i'm a lazy bum, maybe I'm not...