I need a 'logic'al answer to a 'logic'al question

[Crashman X]

I'm trying to make custom bosses that act depending on which of (usually) three or more regions Link is in.

<Example - A boss that moves left or right using three types of pits; pits that lead to a move left screen, pits that lead to a move right screen, and pits that lead to a charge-up attack screen>

I've heard the type of solution which causes "Link Flicker", and it doesn't help out if it has to continuously check where you are. Isn't there some way to deal with this, even if it's something that has to be added come the next beta?

[C-Dawg]

Yea, yea, there is a way to do this.

Set up your boss room so that Link doesn't have tremendous freedom of movement- this is important because you WILL be experiancing "Link Flicker" and it's reduced if Link doesn't get shoved as far.

Lets say the boss room consists of a three-by-nine tile platform. The boss is supposed to appear directly north of Link. You're probably going to be screen-animating your boss anyway (I assume) so let's just say that the normal boss animation cycles through the seven screens on the far left of the map. If Link stays in the middle of the platform, the boss keeps appearing in the center of the room and cycling through the same animation.

Start three screens before you have the boss appearing north of link. Call these screens A, B, and C, in chronological order. Put the "Green Squares" on convayer-led side warps on screens B and C, leading to screens where the boss appears on the left and the right, respectively. On screen A, have the left side of the platfom be STAIR warps instead of pit warps, on screen B, have the right side be stair warps.

You can see pretty clearly how this is going to work. Most of the difficulty is just in setting up the screens correctly as the mechanics are pretty simple.

To make the boss "continously check", you need to do this sort of thing on every screen. You can avoid "Link Flicker" to the extent that you plan it very, very carefully- that is, on each screen you know where link is, where he came from, and etc. This might be too complicated for you.

-C

[idontknow]

wooa! i totally don't get what ya mean!? i've tried making a custom boss & i understand the basic concepts of it, but i'm sorry, i have no clue what you're talking about! for one, what are ya referring to w/ the term "link flicker"? is that like when you want to warp continuously btwn screens but cannot because link needs to walk before the pit warps take affect, thus continous "animated screens" won't work? if thats the case, yes i myself am having trouble solving that problem--perhaps further explanation & maybe some screen shots would be nice :)

[C-Dawg]

No. By "Link Flicker" I mean that when you use side warps to create multiple warp destinations on the same screen, the player inevitably sees it as Link suddenly "snapping" to one location- the one at which you set the blue-green square.

idontknow, I don't think you can say you understand the basic concepts of a custom boss until you understand the idea of the side-convayer multiwarp. The best you can do without it are those sort of hacks I had back in Dreams of Yesterday, spruced up with combo warps.

-C

[Crashman X]

I guess if I'm making a 'custom bosses only' quest, I have more than enough for what seems to be an average of 4 DMaps per Boss. :laughing: I thought I saw an old post last week talking about multiwarping, but I couldn't find it again.

Say - while I'm at it - can I have the tile-warp combos somehow activate on the last frame of the boss' move animation? I haven't been able to figure out any way to have the bosses sidewards movement as a tile animation, and have the floor change to the warps after an animation of the same length. (This might not even be feasible in this case anymore, but the other bosses would really benifit from it)

[C-Dawg]

Sure, there's a way. Just ensure that all the boss tiles are on Layer 0 (which is a pain and probably requires alot of pallete fudging) and then animate your boss using mostly combo animation, not tile animation. That is, have the boss cycle through ten combos, each of which has two identical tiles. You can then set up your floor to match this combo cycle exactly.

-C

[jman2050]

Yes the side-warp multiwarp is a very powerful tool. And if you can combine the combo hacks and this technique correctly, you have endless possibilities. Also, if I'm not wrong, isn't it possible to use the full-screen warp to make sure that the boss 'status' doesn't reset everytime you warp (that is, if you're using enemies obscured by the boss on a lyer to simulate it)

Oh, and that boss in my sig required 3 1/2 pages of combo cycling. I can tell you now, the more functional a custom boss, the more work you will have to do. I may have gotten repetitive stress injuries from doing that :p

[idontknow]

i'm still not getting this concept--what is meant by "conveyor-led side warps"? also, where should the stair warps take you and why stair warps, rather than pit warps? perhaps you could give out a demo quest of this, or an already completed or nearly completed quest that features a custom boss so confused people like myself can sort of get the basic mechanics of this

EDIT: also, i know whatcha mean by having screen animation, meaning making the boss animate by quickly having link instantly warp from one screen to another in a series; however, i've tried this before but it doesn't quite work this way (with pit combos anyway) because when link warps from one screen to another, he won't warp again from screen 2 to 3 unless he first walks at least one space (even w/ "linked combos" rule checked) because the program needs to check that link has walked onto a pit combo (i suppose anyway); so, my question is how do you make a series of screens cycle continously, making the boss animation flow smoothly? this is my main concern

[eXodus]

IDK, I made a miniquest on this over the last two nights. I just need to know how to upload the thing without signing up on a file server like Yahoo (I hate them so much).

With some help, this might even be ready today...



P.S.: If you can't tell who I am, look at the avatar.

[idontknow]

actually, i can't figure out who this is, being that you are a newcomer (or are you?:( ) anyways, yes, i think you do need a server such as yahoo--i think geocites is a nice place to go to store files--i mean, its free & easy to use--all you need is to make up a name & profile (i suggest using false information for things like birthday, name, etc.) if there's nothing else you can do, then i'd say go ahead & find a free server & then post a link here to the file stored in your profile

[eXodus]

Even though I despise them, I've got the thing on a Yahoo Geocities directory. The link is here:

http://www.geocities.com/coolest_rm_ever/mwmaze_demo.zip

My suggestion is to try it beat it first, watching the minimap as you go, then read the readme, then open it in ZQuest. Just don't use ZQuest on it first - you might get lost.

When you've figured it all out, I'd like to see how much you've learned (plus it would help others learn if someone who used it made a demo of their own).

Try to make a stair maze similar to a normal maze path - four stairways on each screen, where one takes you to the next part and the others take you back to the start.

BTW: IDK, all I meant was that I'm Crashman X - the one who started this thread. My story is here (http://www.armageddongames.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76236) .

[Freedom]

That link wouldn't work, here another try.

http://www.geocities.com/coolest_rm_ever/mwmaze_demo.zip

[ShadowTiger]

Sure, there's a way. Just ensure that all the boss tiles are on Layer 0 (which is a pain and probably requires alot of pallete fudging) This really isn't all that hard to do. :) I made a custom boss for Mr. Z and layed it out and everything. I made one of the Csets (Cset 3, I think.) on the Dmap palatte a copy of the red Cset, 8, and made the transparent color the same color as the floor, (generally. It was a "dirt" type floor, from the Pure set.) I then proceeded to map out the boss on that dirt type floor. I was able to place the boss on layer 0 with no problems. ;) I recommend you try it. It could be very cool, and saves you some mondo layering space. Imagine having your entire boss on layer 0. I know Mr. Z will sleep well tonight. :p

[idontknow]

oh my god! i never realized this until now, if its even true, but anway, does link warp via the side warp when he is standing on one of the outer combos--a combo that is on the edge of the screen, or when he walks off the screen? it seems like the first, because in the cave maze demo, i figured that the warps bring you to an identical screen, except one is a pit which makes link land on a stair combos, thus he somehow warps again imediately, and the other is a stair combo which makes link land on the outer combo but this also makes him warp imediately, even though he doesn't need to walk off the screen--wierd

[eXodus]

No, this is one of those uses where conveyers aren't buggy as hell. When Link walks off the side where there isn't a side warp, he just needs to cross the line by one pixel for the wait a second -> play walk anim -> scroll screen to the side sequence of events to occur. A side warp ignores this sequence and plays the selected transition as if it were a tile warp, but only under the same crossed-the-border condition. If Link lands on a conveyer to begin with, he's automatically pushed a couple of pixels before he can even move. See where the instant, can't-be-avoided side warp comes from now? Oh, wait - when I first learnt this trick last year, I couldn't see how other people were able to hold the direction away from the side and effectively pause the action when I couldn't. Was that fixed in 1.90, or is that pseudo-bug still in there?

[eXodus]

Here's a much trickier one. I want all my bosses to take one damage from swords / sword-beams at some point in their behaviour, but I also want them all to act differently (even if it is just more damage) to a specific "weakness". How would I go about having them both be an option at the same time?

An example would help, wouldn't it? The boss can be hit either with the sword or bombs. If you hit it with the sword, it sinks into the ground, takes 1 damage, and spawns 9 enemies in each of the 9 spaces it occupies. If you bomb it - it takes 3 damage and skips the whole enemy spawn thing.

[CJC]

Umm... I think I know how you can do this... (Bear with me, as I haven't really made a real custom boss before.) Set the combo that is the boss's weakness (It's head or tongue or something.) as a slash combo, and then place a bomb flag there as well. When you slash it's weakness, the slash combo will become a trigger combo that makes the floor turn into a conveyor down (Speedy conveyor like BOA if possible.) (Shockwave from the boss hitting the ground). A sidewarp would bring you to a screen of Link running back into the room and the enemies appearing. As for the bomb, it's going to be a LOT harder because it's a flag. I guess you could set the floor right under the weakpoint as a bomb flag, and then place a pitwarp there that takes Link to the next phase of the boss. I really don't know if that would work, so ask someone esle for a second opinion.

[eXodus]

How about a trigger enemy in the center? Or would it getting killed by the bomb override the bomb flag's effects? You're already getting dragged towards it, so it shouldn't be too hard to hit with (especially if a conveyer that actually moved bombs were in the game - that was the general assumption this boss was first designed around). And exactly what did you mean by "fast conveyers? *looks around room, checking to see if anyone realises that he knew what it meant, but just couldn't find them*

One more thing - I am asking now for someone to tell me if trigger enemies just trigger the secret flags and therefore wouldn't help any. I don't get as much time to experiment with ZQuest, thanks to school work.

[ShadowTiger]

How about a trigger enemy in the center? Or would it getting killed by the bomb override the bomb flag's effects? Well, for one thing, you can't kill a trigger enemy. They're utterly invincible as well as invisible. I recommend a "fire" enemy. ;)

And Trigger enemies do the same thing as regular enemies triggering secrets, except the POINT of them is, that you can't kill them with your sword. You would HAVE to use a "kill all enemies" item found in the room, (Often fashioned into the shape of a key of some sort. ;) ) or use an event triggered elsewhere. THAT is the point of the Trigger enemy.

Again, if you want to trigger an event with your sword, I would recommend a fire enemy.

[eXodus]

Well THAT was a big misunderstanding! But I thought fire could be killed by anything. You can kill them with a wooden boomerang for crying out loud! How could they not be affected by bombs? Granted, I've never tried it. There's something about being knocked back out of the Zelda room by my bomb blast that's really unsettling...

From what I've seen, a boss which will block its weakness without something else being done to it first might be somewhat possible, but a boss with two different damage effects probably can't be done effectively. For this sword/bomb boss, I thought of cycling between two screens with the two weapon triggers, but realised not only that you can't have a pit and a conveyer in the same place (without some currently non-existant pit flag), but that even with full screen warp, neither attack will be guaranteed to connect on the right screen. Does FSW even take player attacks with it?