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View Full Version : questmaking for beginners: Graphical basics



King Aquamentus
03-06-2008, 11:32 PM
Now that you've created a simple LoZ quest, no doubt you either wanna quit this god-forsaken monstrosity of a program or you wanna make another, better one with nice or altered graphics. Everyone with the first party, get outta my thread. Go, shoo. Everyone else can stay for pizza and bowling! (and tilesets and graphics, but nobody cares about that.)

What is a Tileset? More importantly, how is it used in Zquest?


A Tileset, conceptually, is a graphical type you use for a quest. The most common include that last tileset you used under my tutelage, the LoZ tileset, as well as Pure tileset (a mixture of various elements, new tiles, and some Alttp elements), BS ( Super Famicom's Broadcast Sattleview Zelda engine), New first (a combination of BS, Alttp, and Link's Awakening/Oracle graphics), and orion's Alttp tileset. There are many others, some incorporating other series, Videogame, Television, and more, but these are probably the most common.

In more technical terms, a tileset is a sort of empty quest file with no password. All the familiar graphics you know are gone and replaced with different stuff Combos need to be rememorized, palettes are new, etc. There are usually no Dmaps and often few screens in it to demonstrate what can be made with the new tiles. It's essentially a development kit. Here's your new parts, make something with them.

finding a tileset is easy if you visit Purezc.com. But what if you just want to pull in tiles themselves?

Zquest can rip tiles from images for you, though quite conditionally. For one, Zquest really likes .gif images. as such, that's the purezc standard for tile submissions. Secondly, you may need to fiddle around quite a bit to get them.
Also, quite often, loose tiles have their own palettes which also must be ripped seperate from the tiles.

but MORE importantly, what if you want to make tiles yourself? or what if you don't see what you want in loose tiles/tilesets?


New tiles are very easy to create, and only require a base knowledge of graphics and palettes. Let's go into Quest-Tiles. You'll see a sheet with all sorts of stuff from LoZ on it, including all of Link's tiles. As you can see, he has quite a lot of tiles, so changing his appearance isn't quite as easy as changing that of an item or an enemy. Also, everything is in the same three colors, so some of the stuff does not look right at all. In fact, it looks kinda funky. Link with blue sleeves? WTF?

...hit the + and - keys on the far right of the keyboard to cycle through different palettes. You'll see certain tiles under their correct appearance as you cycle through csets. A Cset is a subsection of a palette. It is one of the available color schemes a palette can contain. for the overworld palette, there is one cset for green mountains and trees, and another for brown. there's a few other choices that mostly look odd (though that includes the spooky white and gray look LoZ used), but eh.

Right now, you're looking at "main" palette. By default, you're looking in it when you open quest-tiles. This is a good way to make quick fixes in "red-blue" stuff like rupees and certain enemies, but very level-specific things should be done with Zquest looking at screens in that palette. For a quick reference;

Cset 0: status bar colors part 1. These colors are used for the minimap, item frames, stat bar text, and the bomb icon. It is also used in First/Second quest for the creepy looking cemetary, making hills and trees white, with gray ground.

Cset 1: status bar colors part 2. a very warm look surrounds these, and it almost looks like the right color for fire and old men. There's a pinkish tint to the lightest color though. This gets used on the status bar for the key icon, the rupee icon, the text "-LIFE-", and of course the hearts. It CAN be used as a screen and combos color just like Cset 0, though First/Second doesn't use it for such.

Cset 2: Level display A. depending what palette Zquest's screen viewer has entered, this will change. If you're looking at the default overworld though, this will be the green trees and hills Cset. dungeons tend to use this one for their monochrome color arrangement and list it as "Cset 0" in their respective palettes.

Cset 3: Level display B. If you're looking at the default overworld, this will be the brown trees and hills Cset. Dungeons tend to use this for their secondary color, which like the overworld resembles Cset 2 in all but one color. However, in First/Second, dungeons use Cset 3 for dark rooms and water or lava and list it as "Cset 1" in their respective palettes.

Cset 4: Level display C. on overworlds, the default tileset has added this as a white variation of the above csets. In LoZ dungeons, it is unused and appears completely black.

Cset 5: yellow/gold. another added Cset for use with items and enemies and stuffs. This is not effected by screen palette. It's mostly just an extra, intended for use with Golden arrows, or keys if you want. those might look good in it. Keys normally use Cset 8 though.

Cset 6: Link. nuff said. Link, wooden sword, boomerang, arrows, magic shield, etc also are in this, as they are the same colors as him. needless to say, also not effected by screen palette.

Cset 7: Blue. Blue enemies, blue items, blue stuff. it comes from here.

Cset 8: Red. Red enemies, red items, red stuff. Old men, fire, etc. from here.

Cset 9: Another level-specific palette, usually used for enemies. It makes some keese the dark color of the level they are in, yet it also makes black moblins black and zoras teal on the overworld. If you used either of these two enemies in dungeons, they would probably appear in the same monochrome color scheme as the dungeon itself, and would therefore look like they turned to stone.

Cset 10: Emerald. Yet another extra cset, this was probably made to accomodate ZC's inclusion of magic decanters and magic meters, though neither use it by default.

Cset 11: Purple. This is a pretty sexy purple, and certain types of rupees might look really good in it.

Csets 12 and beyond aren't really used.

(In Zquest, to view any screen in a different palette, hit F4 and select the level palette you want from the drop-down menu. THIS WILL NOT EFFECT THE SCREEN'S APPEARANCE IN ZELDA CLASSIC. YOU MUST SPECIFY A DMAP'S PALETTE IN QUEST-DMAPS FOR IT TO APPEAR IN THAT PALETTE IN ZC.)

Remember that some csets of the main palette will change depending on what dmap you are on. They may appear to have overworld colors in Zquest, but may look totally different in Zelda Classic.






To make a new tile, highlight a blank piece (be careful! you could be clicking on a cave tile!) and click on "edit". A new box with show the tile in super size, with the colors of the current Cset. You can only use the colors of a single cset, and you should make sure your choice is going to be available in the game when you want it to be. (especially if you have Csets 2,3, and 9 that you're working with). You can add more colors to a cset (up to 16 total) by hitting edit from the tile editor, looking up "main" (or levels if needed), and locating your cset.

(betas beyond 2.10 feature an option to choose from the entire palette for a tile, rather than a single cset. This is called "8-bit mode" (ask developers about the name, not me). Most questmakers do not use it much, and you should talk to a developer about it before ever deciding to use it.

clicking edit from the resulting palette viewer will take you to color editing. You'll have a box with gridlines on it for saturation, hue, and value. move it around with the mouse to see what colors it will change to. Now, to add a color, highlight an unused color block from the line below the box, color the big box with the color you want, then cllck "insert".

good-graphics quests make use of all (or a lot) of these colors.


let's pretend you got some nice tiles that you want to put in Zquest. First of all, its best to make sure these were intended for/made with Zquest. You can usually rip from chipsets and spritesheets in gif format, but its much simpler if the tiles were actually made in the same thing they are coming back to.

Let's start by ripping the colors for those tiles. Assuming you've unzipped the downloaded file, go to quest-graphics-palettes, and choose either main or level, depending on how the tiles you want are used. (environment tiles should obviously go to level.)

from the chosen palette, pick the cset you want to replace with the colors of your tiles. Yes, you will have to lose one of your existing Csets. Green yellow and purple of the main palette are good fodder for this. highlight one, then click "grab". You'll be allowed to browse image files on your computer. Find the image you want to rip from and open it up. You can view it, along with what the cset(s) looks like. If it is only one Cset shown, you're in luck! click on it. If not, find the one that most closely resembles what you want. If you rip from a ZC screenshot, this should break down just like a look at the main palette.

That cset should now look like the one you ripped. Do the same to make a new tile by going into tiles, picking a blank tile, clicking "grab" from there, and opening an image file. From here, you can hit s to change how the selection snaps. make it snap as little as possible so you don't have to externally adjust the image. You can also hold shift to make your selection box much bigger. This is great for ripping large images or entire animations.

Once ripped, view the tiles under their appropriate csets. They should look like you wanted them to. depending on what you ripped from, you might need to do some minor cleaning up in the cset or the tile.


Before we go, there are two more palette sheets dedicated to certain sprites. These effect Link and the bosses. Yes, yes, we saw a cset for Link in the main palette, but that is mostly for viewing how he looks in tiles.

Recall if you will that Link's clothes changed colors when he obtained the red and blue rings. Neither of those color choices appeared in the main palette because all three (green, blue-white, and red clothes Link) are considered cset 6 on the main palette. If you change Link's cset on the main palette, you should do so here as well.

Apply changes to his red and blue ring clothes as necessary. Also, if you want to change the colors of any bosses, do so, but keep in mind that boss colors are very difficult to view in Zquest unless you temporarily paste them over to one of the main palette's csets to take a looksee.