idontknow
12-23-2005, 01:11 PM
Here's a little checklist for things to do to make your quest-building faster and more efficient:
[ ] Flood an entire screen with identical floor/ground tiles, (such as grass, basic dungeon floor tile, etc.) to use for the entire map/dmap.
[ ] Then, on the same screen, set all the secret combos that you anticipate using for an entire dmap. Like for my dungeons, i find myself using the same secret combos for flags 16-31, and for things like bomb, arrows, and b'rang flags. You can set these for one screen and then not have to set them again. This eliminates time needed to repeatedly scroll through long lists of combos for selecting secret combos.
[ ] Copy this screen and then select paste all to all. This way, you can set the basic layour for all screens by making one screen! If you really want to, you could also set enemies to this initial screen first, prior to copy & pasting.
[ ] On each dmap, AFTER copy & pasting and what not, go to a screen and then set the autolayer on, being careful to set autolayers to the appropriate maps. This is particularly good for overworlds. I usually have the overworld on map1, then i use maps 2-7 for layers 1-6 respectively. Then on map 8 i have 2 dungeon dmaps & then use maps 9 & 10 for the 1st & 3rd autolayers for these dungeons (because i really use only these layers the most, for things like floor borders & overhead objects)
[ ] Make combo alliases for large common objects such as trees, posts, houses/buildings, bridges, waterfalls, rivers, dungeon doors, etc. These will come in handy, especially if you use many buildings that are like 8x8 combos in size.
*This is only after the current beta goes public, which features combo alliasing as a new, useful tool!
[ ] Dungeon-Carving & Relational mode: Although somewhat tedious to set up, it is useful to draw tiles for these two modes. In order to see what tiles to use and how to set this up, you can look at dark nation's example 'relational.qst' I suggest taking a snapshot of it when it is opened in zquest, then load your quest and then you can click 'etc.->view picture' to refer to this. To use relational & dungeon-carving mode, you can press "O" to scroll through the different editing modes. This saves time in the long run, because upon clicking once on the screen, an entire dungeon room is drawn, and dragging the curses changes/formats the room by changing the combo on the spot as you draw, without you have to constantly pick out different combos.
*Also in the current beta
[ ] Checking secrets/combo cycling: You can use the "X" button to toggle "Preview Mode". This allows you to watch combos cycle, freeze animation and see a combo animate frame by frame, and preview secret combos on the screen, as if they were triggered.
*Also in the current Beta
[ ] If you are working consistantly on the same quest everytime you open up zquest, you can check the option 'reload last' in the 'etc.->options' menu so that you won't have to manually open up the same quest, saving you some time.
[ ] Flood an entire screen with identical floor/ground tiles, (such as grass, basic dungeon floor tile, etc.) to use for the entire map/dmap.
[ ] Then, on the same screen, set all the secret combos that you anticipate using for an entire dmap. Like for my dungeons, i find myself using the same secret combos for flags 16-31, and for things like bomb, arrows, and b'rang flags. You can set these for one screen and then not have to set them again. This eliminates time needed to repeatedly scroll through long lists of combos for selecting secret combos.
[ ] Copy this screen and then select paste all to all. This way, you can set the basic layour for all screens by making one screen! If you really want to, you could also set enemies to this initial screen first, prior to copy & pasting.
[ ] On each dmap, AFTER copy & pasting and what not, go to a screen and then set the autolayer on, being careful to set autolayers to the appropriate maps. This is particularly good for overworlds. I usually have the overworld on map1, then i use maps 2-7 for layers 1-6 respectively. Then on map 8 i have 2 dungeon dmaps & then use maps 9 & 10 for the 1st & 3rd autolayers for these dungeons (because i really use only these layers the most, for things like floor borders & overhead objects)
[ ] Make combo alliases for large common objects such as trees, posts, houses/buildings, bridges, waterfalls, rivers, dungeon doors, etc. These will come in handy, especially if you use many buildings that are like 8x8 combos in size.
*This is only after the current beta goes public, which features combo alliasing as a new, useful tool!
[ ] Dungeon-Carving & Relational mode: Although somewhat tedious to set up, it is useful to draw tiles for these two modes. In order to see what tiles to use and how to set this up, you can look at dark nation's example 'relational.qst' I suggest taking a snapshot of it when it is opened in zquest, then load your quest and then you can click 'etc.->view picture' to refer to this. To use relational & dungeon-carving mode, you can press "O" to scroll through the different editing modes. This saves time in the long run, because upon clicking once on the screen, an entire dungeon room is drawn, and dragging the curses changes/formats the room by changing the combo on the spot as you draw, without you have to constantly pick out different combos.
*Also in the current beta
[ ] Checking secrets/combo cycling: You can use the "X" button to toggle "Preview Mode". This allows you to watch combos cycle, freeze animation and see a combo animate frame by frame, and preview secret combos on the screen, as if they were triggered.
*Also in the current Beta
[ ] If you are working consistantly on the same quest everytime you open up zquest, you can check the option 'reload last' in the 'etc.->options' menu so that you won't have to manually open up the same quest, saving you some time.