King Aquamentus
02-27-2008, 06:06 PM
(As a reminder from the last thread, This is designed for 2.10, 1.9, and 1.92.)
Before you can start making quests starring Samus Aran fighting Ridley on the moon, you need to create a very basic quest in the LoZ tileset. A tileset is a graphical collection of tiles that usually differ in style and complexity. LoZ is not particularly beautiful, but is certainly the easiest to use. It is also the default when you tell Zquest that you want to make a new quest.
You'll notice that there aren't any menus available to switch to another tileset. If you want to use another tileset and make a pretty quest, I'll tell you how later. Right now, just focus on making a simple, no-frills quest.
Creating your world in Zquest means learning the heirarchy of location, as I like to call it. From greatest to smallest:
Map-Dmap-Screen-Combo
-Map: A map is a wide block of screens, sixteen screens across and eight screens up and down. you can view a small version of sorts at the bottom left of Zquest. to toggle between the maps, use the comma (,) and period (.) keys.
It is possible to use more maps as desired, simply by going to quest-maps-map count and selecting the number you want. For this however, we shouldn't need more than two. If you need to adjust the map count to 2, go ahead and do this.
-Dmap: It is entirely possible to have two different kinds of areas on the same map. You can even put a dungeon on the same map as your overworld, if you have the room for it. (The original Zelda, here on out referred to as First and Second quests respectively, bunches together several dungeons in a frame of only two maps.). To do this, you must assign a Dmap.
A Dmap is an area defined only by what map it is on and where it is entered. In the original Zelda, when Link steps into Level-1, the game knows that he is leaving the Dmap known as the overworld and entering one known as Level-1. The only way the game knows to change the Dmap, however, is when you tell it to do so at an entrance or exit, here on out referred to as a warp.. In theory, if you could bomb through the furthest wall to the left in Level-1, you could enter a room on the right side of Level-5, but it would still be Turquoise-colored and labeled Level-1, because technically, you're still in Level-1!
We'll cover Dmaps more thoroughly later, but know that music is controlled via what Dmap you are on. Again, wait until another quest before you start trying boss music. Additionally, Dmaps are at the mercy of Maps themselves, and cannot extend past one whole map. If you need to make a larger overworld, you will need another Map and Dmap to occupy it.
Screens: A screen is an area of playing field that you see at once. For example, when you start First Quest, you are in an area surrounded with hills and a cave to the northwest, with exits to the North, East, and West. This scene is probably familiar to you, it is also what we call a screen. Walking to the edge of a screen takes you to the screen you are headed towards (or in Zquest's case, hitting the appropriate arrow key.)
Screens are not a subsection of Dmaps alone, but rather both Maps and Dmaps. Recall if you will that the overworld in First Quest (and most users' quests) is all one big Dmap. In fact, Dmaps are hardly attached to screens at all, except by warping. Dmaps cannot be applied to specific screens, only to gateways which define the screen you are about to enter.
Combos: Combos are 16x16-pixel sprites, or "Tiles", that have attributes attached to them, usually whether or not Link can walk across them and whether or not they have special features, like turning into a living armos, or even taking Link to another screen (and at the same time changing the Dmap, if you desire)
For this quest, we shouldn't need to make any of these, as everything you need is provided. We'll go over making your own combos at a later date. You will however be using these quite often.
Look on the far right in Zquest and you will see a handful, including a tree, a rock, some stuff for hills, etc. selecting one is as simple as clicking on it. Then you simply click on the playing field screen to put it where your mouse is. Easy, right?
...I think we're ready to begin.
First we need to establish a screen. take the screen cursor (on the bottom left minimap) to somewhere in the middle of said map. (use the arrow keys.) Done? good. Now, to stake the place out, select the solid tan ground combo and fill the play field with it (quick hotkey: hold ctrl when you click to fill.)
Let's add some trees and hills using their appropriate combos. (There are two square mountain combos; one is walkable, as for secret passages, and the other is not. Be sure you have the one that isn't walkable). Again, you can ctrl click once you've established an outline to fill in the rest.
Go ahead and make a cave entrance somewhere in the mountain using the black combo named "cave-walk down" or "cave" (press Page Up and Page Down until you come to the combo info table to see the name) and put it somewhere it can be easily accessed.
C-dawg suggests completing screens in their entirety before moving on to another, so we'll do just that.Once you have what looks like a legitimate screen, hit pageup or pagedown on your keyboard until you see a table with a rupee, stairs, and a green card or flag on it. click on the green object and your cursor will change to a square. You're going to tell the game where you want Link to start this whole mess at, so put it somewhere on the center of the screen. find the blue square and do like what you did with the green, but this tells the game where Link should show up if he leaves that cave. Put it directly under the cave tile and Link will appear to walk out like on the NES.
Before we go any further, let's define our Dmaps. Go to Quest-Dmaps, and select #0. Make sure Mapis set to 1, Type is set to Overworld, Midiis set to overworld, Level is set to 0, color is set to Overworld, Cont. here is checked, and Continue is set to the same screen number as your screen from before. in case you didn't know, we're making a Dmap for the overworld, so label your Dmap "Overworld".
Now, about that cave... We need to give Link a sword, but we need to do it in style. We could just take the rupee icon and set it on that screen you made, then just set Data-Item to Sword 1 (wooden), but that's lazy. Let's make an old man give it to him in the cave!!
A standard cave is a sort of pocket Dmap. There is no music, and leaving it will take you back to the Dmap you came from, right on the blue square you put down. take your map cursor all the way to the bottom left of the map, and you may see what looks like a few black and brownish red caves. If these aren't here, press + and - on the right of your keyboard to change to the orange palette for hills and trees, and start drawing up a cave like in Zelda 1. (don't worry about putting down any entrance squares or anything, those are hard-coded into caves.) screens 80 and 81 are special screens used for caves. Remember their screen numbers. Seen them/made them? Good. Don't bother with anything dynamic as long as there are combos down that form a cave of some sort. Go back up to your outside screen and we can rent out that cave for this screen you made.
A cave needs a person, a message, a purpose, and extra apparatus dependant on that purpose.
Person This is the sprite that will show up in the middle of the screen. You can use the old man, old woman, merchant, or even Zelda herself, but you do need to use a person or this won't work. Let's pick the Old Man (Abei) for old time's sake. Go into Data-Guy and select abei.
Message They need to say something to Link, otherwise it'll just be awkward. Go to Quest-Strings, select a new string, and type something up for him to say to Link. Keep in mind that it'll look in game exactly how it looks when you type it up, so space and line as necessary till it looks pretty. When you're done, go to Data-Message String and select your new message string for him to use.
Purpose Purposes can range from giving Link money to selling him stuff to just giving him items. Go to Data-Room Type and select "Special Item", because abei's gonna give Link something.
purpose apparatus The grayed out "Catch All" field in the Data tab will change to something else depending on what you said for "Room Type". If it is secret money, Then you'll say how much Link gets here. If it is a Store, it'll ask you what kind of store (you'll create shop types later.) Since we said "special item", we'll use this to tell it what item specifically the old man will give Link. Find the wooden sword, and select it. Don't use Data-Item to designate the sword, only use the "Special Item" option that appears when you set room type to "Special Item".
(As a reminder, do not set these things on the cave screen, but on your outside screen. As long as you come from that outside screen, its data will be temporarily applied to the cave. You don't need to do anything to the cave screen but make sure it has rock and ground tiles. )
...you should now have your first screen. A safe zone, devoid of enemies, and with your first sword located in a cave. Save your work, name it something you can remember, then go try it out in Zelda Classic. You should start in the middle of the outside screen you made. Walk into the black cave tile and you should be taken to the cave screen, only this time there will be an old man there who will give you a sword and say something. When you walk out of it, Link should come up from the cave, or just appear where you put the blue square.
Congratulations on your first screen! If you take a step off the screen (assuming you did give it some sort of exit onto the rest of a future overworld), it will be all gray: don't worry, we haven't made this yet, but we will next time.
Before you can start making quests starring Samus Aran fighting Ridley on the moon, you need to create a very basic quest in the LoZ tileset. A tileset is a graphical collection of tiles that usually differ in style and complexity. LoZ is not particularly beautiful, but is certainly the easiest to use. It is also the default when you tell Zquest that you want to make a new quest.
You'll notice that there aren't any menus available to switch to another tileset. If you want to use another tileset and make a pretty quest, I'll tell you how later. Right now, just focus on making a simple, no-frills quest.
Creating your world in Zquest means learning the heirarchy of location, as I like to call it. From greatest to smallest:
Map-Dmap-Screen-Combo
-Map: A map is a wide block of screens, sixteen screens across and eight screens up and down. you can view a small version of sorts at the bottom left of Zquest. to toggle between the maps, use the comma (,) and period (.) keys.
It is possible to use more maps as desired, simply by going to quest-maps-map count and selecting the number you want. For this however, we shouldn't need more than two. If you need to adjust the map count to 2, go ahead and do this.
-Dmap: It is entirely possible to have two different kinds of areas on the same map. You can even put a dungeon on the same map as your overworld, if you have the room for it. (The original Zelda, here on out referred to as First and Second quests respectively, bunches together several dungeons in a frame of only two maps.). To do this, you must assign a Dmap.
A Dmap is an area defined only by what map it is on and where it is entered. In the original Zelda, when Link steps into Level-1, the game knows that he is leaving the Dmap known as the overworld and entering one known as Level-1. The only way the game knows to change the Dmap, however, is when you tell it to do so at an entrance or exit, here on out referred to as a warp.. In theory, if you could bomb through the furthest wall to the left in Level-1, you could enter a room on the right side of Level-5, but it would still be Turquoise-colored and labeled Level-1, because technically, you're still in Level-1!
We'll cover Dmaps more thoroughly later, but know that music is controlled via what Dmap you are on. Again, wait until another quest before you start trying boss music. Additionally, Dmaps are at the mercy of Maps themselves, and cannot extend past one whole map. If you need to make a larger overworld, you will need another Map and Dmap to occupy it.
Screens: A screen is an area of playing field that you see at once. For example, when you start First Quest, you are in an area surrounded with hills and a cave to the northwest, with exits to the North, East, and West. This scene is probably familiar to you, it is also what we call a screen. Walking to the edge of a screen takes you to the screen you are headed towards (or in Zquest's case, hitting the appropriate arrow key.)
Screens are not a subsection of Dmaps alone, but rather both Maps and Dmaps. Recall if you will that the overworld in First Quest (and most users' quests) is all one big Dmap. In fact, Dmaps are hardly attached to screens at all, except by warping. Dmaps cannot be applied to specific screens, only to gateways which define the screen you are about to enter.
Combos: Combos are 16x16-pixel sprites, or "Tiles", that have attributes attached to them, usually whether or not Link can walk across them and whether or not they have special features, like turning into a living armos, or even taking Link to another screen (and at the same time changing the Dmap, if you desire)
For this quest, we shouldn't need to make any of these, as everything you need is provided. We'll go over making your own combos at a later date. You will however be using these quite often.
Look on the far right in Zquest and you will see a handful, including a tree, a rock, some stuff for hills, etc. selecting one is as simple as clicking on it. Then you simply click on the playing field screen to put it where your mouse is. Easy, right?
...I think we're ready to begin.
First we need to establish a screen. take the screen cursor (on the bottom left minimap) to somewhere in the middle of said map. (use the arrow keys.) Done? good. Now, to stake the place out, select the solid tan ground combo and fill the play field with it (quick hotkey: hold ctrl when you click to fill.)
Let's add some trees and hills using their appropriate combos. (There are two square mountain combos; one is walkable, as for secret passages, and the other is not. Be sure you have the one that isn't walkable). Again, you can ctrl click once you've established an outline to fill in the rest.
Go ahead and make a cave entrance somewhere in the mountain using the black combo named "cave-walk down" or "cave" (press Page Up and Page Down until you come to the combo info table to see the name) and put it somewhere it can be easily accessed.
C-dawg suggests completing screens in their entirety before moving on to another, so we'll do just that.Once you have what looks like a legitimate screen, hit pageup or pagedown on your keyboard until you see a table with a rupee, stairs, and a green card or flag on it. click on the green object and your cursor will change to a square. You're going to tell the game where you want Link to start this whole mess at, so put it somewhere on the center of the screen. find the blue square and do like what you did with the green, but this tells the game where Link should show up if he leaves that cave. Put it directly under the cave tile and Link will appear to walk out like on the NES.
Before we go any further, let's define our Dmaps. Go to Quest-Dmaps, and select #0. Make sure Mapis set to 1, Type is set to Overworld, Midiis set to overworld, Level is set to 0, color is set to Overworld, Cont. here is checked, and Continue is set to the same screen number as your screen from before. in case you didn't know, we're making a Dmap for the overworld, so label your Dmap "Overworld".
Now, about that cave... We need to give Link a sword, but we need to do it in style. We could just take the rupee icon and set it on that screen you made, then just set Data-Item to Sword 1 (wooden), but that's lazy. Let's make an old man give it to him in the cave!!
A standard cave is a sort of pocket Dmap. There is no music, and leaving it will take you back to the Dmap you came from, right on the blue square you put down. take your map cursor all the way to the bottom left of the map, and you may see what looks like a few black and brownish red caves. If these aren't here, press + and - on the right of your keyboard to change to the orange palette for hills and trees, and start drawing up a cave like in Zelda 1. (don't worry about putting down any entrance squares or anything, those are hard-coded into caves.) screens 80 and 81 are special screens used for caves. Remember their screen numbers. Seen them/made them? Good. Don't bother with anything dynamic as long as there are combos down that form a cave of some sort. Go back up to your outside screen and we can rent out that cave for this screen you made.
A cave needs a person, a message, a purpose, and extra apparatus dependant on that purpose.
Person This is the sprite that will show up in the middle of the screen. You can use the old man, old woman, merchant, or even Zelda herself, but you do need to use a person or this won't work. Let's pick the Old Man (Abei) for old time's sake. Go into Data-Guy and select abei.
Message They need to say something to Link, otherwise it'll just be awkward. Go to Quest-Strings, select a new string, and type something up for him to say to Link. Keep in mind that it'll look in game exactly how it looks when you type it up, so space and line as necessary till it looks pretty. When you're done, go to Data-Message String and select your new message string for him to use.
Purpose Purposes can range from giving Link money to selling him stuff to just giving him items. Go to Data-Room Type and select "Special Item", because abei's gonna give Link something.
purpose apparatus The grayed out "Catch All" field in the Data tab will change to something else depending on what you said for "Room Type". If it is secret money, Then you'll say how much Link gets here. If it is a Store, it'll ask you what kind of store (you'll create shop types later.) Since we said "special item", we'll use this to tell it what item specifically the old man will give Link. Find the wooden sword, and select it. Don't use Data-Item to designate the sword, only use the "Special Item" option that appears when you set room type to "Special Item".
(As a reminder, do not set these things on the cave screen, but on your outside screen. As long as you come from that outside screen, its data will be temporarily applied to the cave. You don't need to do anything to the cave screen but make sure it has rock and ground tiles. )
...you should now have your first screen. A safe zone, devoid of enemies, and with your first sword located in a cave. Save your work, name it something you can remember, then go try it out in Zelda Classic. You should start in the middle of the outside screen you made. Walk into the black cave tile and you should be taken to the cave screen, only this time there will be an old man there who will give you a sword and say something. When you walk out of it, Link should come up from the cave, or just appear where you put the blue square.
Congratulations on your first screen! If you take a step off the screen (assuming you did give it some sort of exit onto the rest of a future overworld), it will be all gray: don't worry, we haven't made this yet, but we will next time.