About the new classic

[AmazingAmpharos]

I was looking over the new classic, and I must say that it's mostly good. I especially like all the items having default tiles now. Well, I'm really not sure how easy/hard it is to fix, but I did notice a few problems and a few potential improvements.

There are some NES combos missing. The non-animated waterfall and the overworld staircase are nowhere to be found. There may be others, but those are the two I noticed. IMO all NES combos should be in the default classic.

Some other useful combos from the old classic are gone as well. I'm really wondering why shallow water got the axe; it's pretty nifty. There are also some very useful new combo types that still don't have combos. The lack of a treasure chest really surprised me as did the lack of dive warp combos.

Out of curiousity, why are the NES dungeon combos for things like the wall (the ones you almost never use) above things like the staircase and the other useful floor combos? It would seem to be an improvement to move the third block of combos above the second one in terms of ease of use. The third block there also has the less useful combos near the top so I'm actually beginning to think that you tried to concentrate the more important combos at the extremes instead of near the middle, but I'm not sure if that's the most convenient way to do it (as in wondering what other people think about that).

The cave seems a lighter shade of brown on screens 80 and 81. Why?

Whoa at the palette names in general! Um, which palettes are which? Are NES 1-9 in the same place (and are screens 82 onward on map 1 supposed to be NES level 1 because if so they seem brighter)? I can't understand these new names at all, and I'm wondering why you dropped the simpler gray/red type of naming. Maybe I'm not tech savvy enough, but those new names are just plain intimidating.

I really don't want this post to be mostly negative so I should repeat that I mostly like it, especially the new item graphics. I also really like the cave A-D being incorporated like that and am actually kinda curious why stairs didn't get the same treatment. I don't know how easy or hard it is to change, and I'm curious if we could submit suggested improvements to try to get classic as good as it possibly can be before 2.5. This is a great first step, but I'm not so sure that it should be the last step.

[Freedom]

I can see you never put a tileset together. ;)
It's pretty easy to miss this and forget that, as well as screwing other things up.
You should just make a list of the repairs that need to be made and post it, so it can be fixed.

I spent months on the Advenure tileset, and still found all kinds of problems when I actually started building with it, things like walk ability on combos, combos forgotten altogether, not adding overhead to their type, etc.
It's easy to do.

[bigjoe]

You should just make a list of the repairs that need to be made and post it, so it can be fixed.
If repairs need be made before the release of 2.5, they will be. ;)

The colors WERE a bit off, but I had forgotten about it. I'll try to put some repairs together for the problems mentioned.

[_L_]

Maybe it could do with some Spinning Tile tiles, perchance?

[DarkDragon]

Making repairs is easy: make the changes in ZQuest (by creating a new empty quest, then saving it as something like blank.qst), then post a bug thread with a link to the new quest, and dev will stick it into qst.dat.

[AmazingAmpharos]

I suppose there's no need for a new thread to continue discussing the same thing.

What else does the new classic need? I'm trying to think of further improvements that could be made before release as I'm in the mood to work with it again. Here are two issues I've thought up.

Merging the various bosses' Pal Csets into one Pal Cset would fix the palette issues that occur when multiple different color bosses are on the same screen. Notable, I was going to merge colors 0, 1, 2, 3, and 14, all of which only have 3 colors a piece. That's Aquamentus, Gleeok, Digdogger, Ganon, and Gleeok 2, among other enemies. Sadly, one Pal Cset is just not big enough to also fit in Patra BS. The downside is that this change would take a lot of time in the editor recoloring tiles and editing palettes (including making duplicate versions of the shared tiles between Gleeok and Gleeok 2), and it would potentially complicate documentation efforts. I think it's overall worth it; I just figured I'd ask before I started working on it.

Also, I notice that rupees in the new classic animate in a way which they did not in NES Zelda. Do we want to leave them like this or change their default settings back to NES consistent ones? I really prefer simple flashing rupees versus those spinning things, but I figured I'd ask before doing anything.

[DarkDragon]

Sure, merging the boss CSets sounds like a good idea, as long as, as you say, the enemies and tiles are correctly changed as well.

The rupees are really just a matter of taste, so I'm not going to say anything one way or the other. Maybe make a poll and see which kind of animation people want?