Multiple Quest Making Questions

[Spike]

I have 3 questions.

#1- Is it possible to have a floor that falls in a room with a treasure chest?

#2- How would you make the tiles fall, like the ones in the pure tileset? As in actually falling on the screen so link would have to make it quickly across a platform before he falls.

and finally...

#3- How do you make a big chest that uses a key, boss key, or no key?

Edit: Another one
#4- How can you make a crystal that makes blocks go up or down be able to be hit more than once so you'd have to go back to it at some time in the level and hit it so he can get through to somewhere else once he gets the key for a door?

Thanks

[Ganonator]

my comments will be unbolded.


Originally posted by Spike
#1- Is it possible to have a floor that falls in a room with a treasure chest?

I don't quite understand where you are going with this, but if you are trying to make one like the chest room in LttP level 4, Yes you can.

#2- How would you make the tiles fall, like the ones in the pure tileset? As in actually falling on the screen so link would have to make it quickly across a platform before he falls.

Combo cycling. The first tile would be the normal floor, the second would be the falling tile, and the third would be the pit to below. You'd have to set up the number of tiles you want for each room as individual starting combos, otherwise they all will fall at exactly the same time.

#3- How do you make a big chest that uses a key, boss key, or no key?

for use with a key, or boss key, have the 4 tiles for the big chest set up like this

X X <- underneith these are A and B, which are walkable
O O on the bottom halves only.

where the X's are on layer 3, and are either lock block 2s or BLB2's depending on the key type.
The O's are the bottom of the chest, on layer 0 or 1, and are Lock block or BLBs. These 4 original tiles should be unwalkable.

when setting them up in the combo editor, it will look like this
X # X #
0 C 0 D

the #s are blank tiles, that are "see through", like if you were getting rid of something on the higher layers. They are fully walkable. C + D are the bottom of the chest and fully walkable.

Put the item you want IN the chest. You don't need enemies -> item checked for this to work, and if you do, you'll have to kill all of the enemies in the room for the item to show up.

If you want one to open when there is no key involved, that is also possible. set it up the same, but the combos don't have anything special to go with them (i.e. they are not lock blocks or similar)

use a trigger - temp combo for the bottom 2 tiles, and make them walkable on the bottom 1/2s. use secret combos on layer 0 or 1 for the bottom half (depending on where you put them earlier) and for the top 2 tiles, make sure you are on that layer 3 as well. When all done correctly, when you step up to the chest, it will open, and the top will be off.

Edit: Another one
#4- How can you make a crystal that makes blocks go up or down be able to be hit more than once so you'd have to go back to it at some time in the level and hit it so he can get through to somewhere else once he gets the key for a door?

Yes it is possible. Make 2 identical dungeons, and every room that has a crystal switch has a warp to the identical dungeon using pit warps. put the strike flag on crystal switch, and flag 16 on the rest of the walkable floor. When done correctly, you hit the switch, warp to the other dungeon, and from there you can go back and forth.

Thanks

Good luck with that.

[C-Dawg]

EDIT- Ganonator beat me to it. But my reply is much more specific :)

1. This question doesnt make any sense. You're being about as specific as mystery soup.

2. You mean a floor that collapses? You use Combo Animation. There are innumberable ways to do this; this example isn't a quality version, but it will give you the general idea.

Make one combo that represents the chunk of floor while Link can walk on it, and make it walkable. Make it animate over a series of tiles so that it starts to fall. Make a second combo that represents the chunk of floor while it is falling far enough that you want link to fall with it. Make this a pit combo. Make sure the first and second combos have THE SAME NUMBER OF ANIMATION FRAMES AND THE SAME ANIMATION SPEED. Then make a third representing the cell (meaning: the square on the screen) after the tile has fallen, and make this a pit combo as well.

Go to the combo editor and select your first combo. Click in the "next" box and fill it with the second combo. Repeat to link the second combo to the first.

Place the first combo on the screen, or have it appear via secrets normally. It won't animate completely in Zquest- dont worry, it'll work in ZClassic.

Honestly, I'm amazed I dont see more questions about combo animation... it's such an amazingly rich subject...

3. You got two options with the big chests. First, you can use the old boss flag trigger method. Have one room somewhere where link recovers a Kill all Enemies item that looks like a Big Key. Place a Trigger enemy on this screen and set the "Dungeon Boss" flag. On another screen with the same level number as the one you just made, draw a big chest. Set the enemy to be "trigger", and set the "Dungeon Boss", "Enemies->Secret" and "Enemies->Item" flags. Choose your room item and plunk it in the middle of the chest. Set secret combos to depict the open chest. Viola. (For the uninnitiatied... when all enemies on a screen with Dungeon Boss set are killed, all enemies on ALL screens for that level which also have Dungeon Boss set are killed.)

The second way is to use Lockblock combos. Just draw the chest using lockblocks that open when link touches it. Not sure about making the item appear- does anyone know if Lockblocks trigger "Armos->Item" flags when they pop open?

4. Multiple Dmaps. Make two copies of the level, one with blocks up and one with blocks down. Place locked doors and items VERY CAREFULLY so the player can't see anything screwy. The switch will trigger Link warping between the two somehow using Instawarps so the player is none the wiser.

Do check out Dreams of Yesterday and Project Z. They're old and horribly antiquated now, but they demonstrate alot of these ideas at work.

-C

[Spike]

Hmmm......... Thanks.
About question 1 I meant if it was possible to have that floor in the same room as a treasure chest that has an item in it. It seems it's possible from your description and now I have another question. God I'm chalk full of them this week... :p
Ok, with the crystal thing I most likely guess it is not possible to have it in the same room as a chest. That sucks, oh well, I gues sI need to think of another way to torture link as he tries and gets the boss key after he has to restart the level to get it.

Oh, and how would you set up the tiles that fall a little while after link enters the room? They fall one by one around and link has to get to a chest quick and (if it were possible) hit a switch to get rid of a block in the way to exit the room undamaged.

Anyway, Ganonator and C-Dawg, your help is most helpful, thank you.

[C-Dawg]

You asked how to make the tiles fall a "little while" after link enters the room.

My answer requires a bit of digression. When you make a cell (a series of combos that animate) you need to keep something in mind. Each combo in the cell is animating from the moment Link steps onto the screen, regardless of whether it's currently used or not. So every combo you plan on using in a cell needs to have the same animation speed and the same number of animation frames or it will look odd. (I used to think that you could just match AI- that is, Animation Time multiplied by Animation Frames... but this doesnt work. I dont know why.)

For this reason, if you want the tile to wait a bit before dropping... you need to make more combos. Let's assume your "dropping" combo takes 6 frames of tile animation and animates at a speed of 8. You should only use combos that match the frame number and animation speed exactly in this cell. If you want the tile to fall later, just stick in more duplicates of safe floor combos into the chain BEFORE it hits the falling combo.

You can quickly see how to make a floor tile that falls faster this way, too. Set up maybe twenty combos that animated through each other and end at falling and pit combos. Then just place combos on the screen closer or farther from the end of the sequence to make them fall faster.

-C

[Spike]

Erm, not exactally what I meant, but a good bit information for me to keep in mind.

But this time I'll be as specific as I can be...

Ok, when you are setting up a room, mine looks like this.

o=tile I want to fall one by one
x=crystal switch
c=chest
b=crystal block
p=pit

ooooocppo
opppooxpo
opppopppo
opppbpppo
ooooooooo


How can I make the tiles fall one by one or does that happen automatically? and which one will go first? I want it to start from the right side where it goes to a dead end and around. Is there any flags or warps involved? Sorry about having this question 3 times...

[C-Dawg]

Let me recast your question in a more precise way. First off, you're missing some information: namely, what that crystal block you've put in there is supposed to do. So I'll ignore it.

1) Setup

Other than that, I've already given you all the tools to make this happen. Consider that you make twenty combos, the first eighteen of which are all copies of each other and are the floor tiles. They are all linked by combo animation to eachother in a big line, ending with the last two that show the floor tile falling.

2) Falling at Different Rates (by themselves)

To make them all fall at different rates, just place different combos from the sequence on the screen. For example, for the first tile you want to fall, place the combo only two or three combos away from the falling animtion in the combo animated chain of twenty you set up. Then place the combos in ascending order, further up the chain. You see what will happen, right? The combos you placed further down the chain will complete the combo animation first; so they'll fall first.

Bottom line- you're in control of when they fall.

3) Controlling the Combo Animation

If you dont want them to fall immediately, you can set the combos in your chain to appear as secret combos. This can be useful for some really annoying but pleasing effects... a little creativity reveals this. You could set a trigger-temp on the floor so the tiles don't start to fall till Link steps on it. You could set the undercombo as a combo-animated falling tile and then make the floor slash combos to discourage Link from using his sword. Or the floor could be made up of pound combos that dont start to animate until link gives them a good whack. Etc, etc, etc.

I re-iterate- Combo animation has AMAZING potential. Newbies, take heed. First get your mind around warps, layers, and boss flags, and all that... but then BECOME MASTERS OF COMBO ANIMATION. The potential is (so far) virtually untapped by the usual suspects of quest design, so if you wanna wow someone... use it.

As long as I'm on the topic, some more ideas for Combo Animation:

1. Imbue Link's sword. Make all the walkable tiles slash combos, and make the undercombo of the screen a copy of the regular floor; only have this copy combo animate to show some sort of magical splash, then have it animate back to the original slashable floor. What will this look like? With slash on, it will look like there are splashes of (electrcity, bubbles, whatever) coming out of Link's sword as he slashes it.

2. Alternating blocks. A simple idea, but also untapped. Simply have two sets of blocks in the room that move up and down by themselves, impeding Link's progress while up. Could make for interesting puzzles when joined with push blocks...

-C

[TheGeepster]

I seem to recall you having worked in Oz before C-dawg. Or was it Middle Earth? Thanks for the ideas. You Da Wizard!

[C-Dawg]

Alot of people are having these ideas. People just arn't sharing because they want to be the first to "impress" people. But it's my philosophy that that just isn't how the community grows. :P

-C

[TheGeepster]

Well, I'm currently not accepting any quests on my hard drive without a darn good reason, due to DWF's massive quest and a project to get vital stats on all enemies (including the boss stat that makes some bosses and others not.) I do like that philosophy though.

[Spike]

Good, good. I believe you're right C-Dawg, about how that's not how this community grows, but hey, if they want to be selfish bastards, let them. We'll all find out sooner or later. :wink: Anyway, I finally understand (after half an hour of contemplation of course) and I'll try and use combo animation as much as possible, it's a great addition to Zquest! Let alone it provides a lot for just one feature. Thank you for your enlightenment.

-Spike