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View Full Version : New quest 90% done and tested... but ... question.



pLeitorian
03-19-2004, 12:36 PM
I've had work suspended for some time on a 10-level custom quest that I've been doing (with the more popular set of tiles than BS-Zelda). I've completed and debugged most of the overworld, the first 6 levels, most of the 7th and the 8th is playable but possibly buggy. I think it generally looks great, there are a couple of major areas I'm disappointed in - you can play them, they look visually fine, etc., but I just don't think the concept was well-executed (mainly because of ZC limitations, for example, not being able to have 3 stair warp rooms in a dungeon).

I wanted to release this months ago, but life and work and school simply eat up too much time, as this was by FAR my most ambitious and complicated quest... I used more things in this one than I ever have before, and as many of them are new, they've been quite time-consuming to work the kinks out of. Plus, I just switched to XP, while I was doing my earlier work in Win98... I can "toggle" in my BIOS to that drive, but it's offline, so I don't use it much. I also need to find my XP/Windows version copies of ZQuest and ZC, because I think the DOS versions don't work.

Bottom line: based on my above ramblings, what does everyone think I should do?

(1) Just release it now, because I've done nothing in 5 months.
(2) Fix the L7 & L8 bugs, slap on an ending battle (I'll probably do this part no matter what, I have __great__ music for the climax!) and release that, probably in mid-April.
(3) Slog away at it even though I haven't done anything in a long time and by the time I'm done there will probably be a new ZC version [if they're even developing it anymore; I have no idea what the story is]. This would probably come out in the summer sometime. The risk is that when I finish school and change jobs I'll have even less time for this than I do now.
(4) Release it now as a test beta, get some feedback, see if it's worth continuing (Longest Journey, Unofficial Nth, and Adventures of Link are my previous 3 quests, which got mostly positive feedback, some negative, mostly people who did not like classic or BS tilesets ... also, if you've ever played those you know that when I say I bug-test like crazy... I mean it! They all work almost flawlessly in the appropriate ZC version for each with just minor graphical goofs here and there.)
(5) Get some help. Please note: I am very hesitant to let anyone else have access to my quests, as they could easily take credit and release them as their own. If I had other people do something it might be to submit a small "level 9" ending and I'd choose the best one and integrate it myself and they'd get credit for that.
(6) Other, suggestions welcome! __________________

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

ms_zelda_lady
03-19-2004, 07:28 PM
Why don't you release it now with what you've already done as a test beta and let everyone send you feedback. I'm willing to bet that all the work you've already will be great and everyone will want you to finish it.
ms_zelda_lady

annnot
03-19-2004, 11:14 PM
*****ditto*****

Sephiroth
03-20-2004, 01:15 AM
***Ditto (Just please don't use geocities to host it) ***

pLeitorian
03-20-2004, 02:58 AM
Snort, all my stuff is on GeoCities; while that site does stink, it's also the easiest way to have everything in a permanent, free area. I've had 10 other webpages over the years and my GeoCities one is the only one that lasted.

I think everyone's made some sense, why not let everyone ELSE find the bugs in L7 and L8? So, I think I like everyone's advice, and hopefully I can do a 'beta' release over break (in April).

Sephiroth
03-20-2004, 10:33 AM
Oh.. okay. I guess I'll just wait unless you wanna e-mail it to me then. :)