What can we expect from 2.5?

[Count SymphoniC]

I used to use 2.1 back in the day. I'm not really up to speed as to the capabilities of 2.5, I'm aware of the shardstorm change logs, but that sure is a lot of reading to do.

One of the major complaints I had with 2.1, was dialogue features were limited to the NES Zelda style, which frankly isn't much, and the prime reason why I stopped using Zelda Classic, it made setting up a story not worth it. So now I'm curious if 2.5 is capable of matching dialogue features of... let's say A Link to the Past, or the Gameboy Color/Advance Zeldas? Being able to have several non playable characters on a screen, and engage in a quick conversation is a worthy feature.

I was also curious if you can change fonts. That'd certainly be a great feature.

Also of similar importance and on the same lines that I'm sure everyone has noticed in official Zelda games... is within Dialogue, Nintendo highlights key hints in dialogue usually in red. For eg... "If you head west of here, you'll find such and such temple." (Nintendo uses these red highlights to provide the player hints in the quest and story.) This is a subtle but unarguably powerful feature, and could most certainly contribute to users making quality quests.

So have the 2.5 devs added these features yet? I'm not trying any betas, I'll wait until the RC is released (I don't want to spoil myself). But I sure look forward to it, nice work devs.

[King Aquamentus]

Using tags similar to those on a forum or HTML, text can be colored differently in a string, yes. Unfortunately I don't know what those tags are. They are there, though, be certain of it.

However, You can most definitely change fonts. We have NES Zelda, BS-Zelda style, Link's Awakening Style, Alttp small and large styles... etc. We even have Goron, Zora, and Hylian-character fonts!

As for multiple strings on a screen... The ability to go up to someone and talk to them is still limited to the technique of copypasting a screen and instawarping to the copy (with the string on it.)

...however!

You can now tile warp to up to four different locations from the same screen (compared to only one in 2.10 and below.) So you could have a screen where you can at least talk to four different NPC's (using the above trick of the trade)

[Count SymphoniC]

Thank you for your reply.

I wonder if a Zelda 3-esque string engine would ever be in the works. I'm sure that the trick you mentioned does the job, isn't it limited in functionality? I suppose it would interfere most with how many doors you can have on screen. But hey thank you for sharing the technique.

I found the information on changing the color of the string to highlight hints... http://www.shardstorm.com/ZCwiki/String_Editor

[King Aquamentus]

don't confuse side warps with tile warps. You now have the ability to travel to up to eight screens from a single screen: four different side warps (one for each direction), and four different tile warps (controlled by combos "Stairs A, Stairs B, Stairs C, and Stairs D.")

A Zelda-3 string engine would have to be something that can be swapped out for Zelda-1 style on the fly, as all versions of ZC must primarily still be able to recreate Zelda 1 to an exact degree. However, someone has probably scripted the Zelda-3 style dialogue already. (actually I'm almost positive of it.) You'll need to learn how to use scripting (and user-made scripts) first, which can be a doozy...

[Count SymphoniC]

Again, thank you for your reply. Yeah, it's been 6 years since I've used ZC, so it's no surprise I got them confused. Ok, well it seems like a lot has changed, in a very good way.

Now, I've always understood that ZC was based off the Zelda 1 engine, so your reply to what I said was definitely expected. But wouldn't it be possible to provide the option of choosing between the Zelda NES string engine and SNES/GBC/GBA Zelda string engines within the editor once implemented? Of course I don't see why not and I may even be shortsighted here as I don't neccessarily have a very thorough understanding of the ZC/ZQuest engine itself, but I've caught onto the detail that the engine dictating Link's movement can be swapped between Zelda NES - Zelda 3 style movement.

I wish I was still into programming. I would jump right into this project and help develop engine "modules". To give the quest maker the ability to choose Zelda engines to suit his/her needs for the style of the game. It seems as if the programmers chose to add on to the original Zelda engine, rather than write new engines and add them as selectable options, but really as organized as that would be, I think it would take much longer to do it that way.

I'm really not complaining, I enjoy having conversations and speculating with people like you.

Now Old-Skool I have a question for you. Are these scripts portable? Can you write a script, save it, and upload it for others to use? If so, where are these available?

[King Aquamentus]

Yes! Very much so. In fact, to create a script, one need only type it up in notepad or some other txt-extension editor, and save it with a ".z" at the end. (this saves it as a file Zquest can understand and utilize.)

This very board has an old database full of user-made scripts, however most of them were scripted for older betas and may no longer work. I would instead suggest you visit purezc.com and look for the scripting forum.

Scripts are not a resource found in an official version yet, and PureZC does not have a dedicated database for them. So again, you will need to visit the forums (and if I recall it would do to create an account. I strongly urge you create an account here and especially there.)

[Count SymphoniC]

Incredible.

Ahhh Pure ZC, the good old days. This brings back memories. Well thank you Old-Skool for your quality assistance. As a moderator of lan.st (console development/hacking forums), I can say that some moderators out there (even administrators!) get caught up in the power of it all. Instead of being responsible, maintaining clean forums, and helping forum users, they like to get into arguments, ban anyone for just about anything, and just treat forum users poorly... I personally look down on these irresponsible people, and so do many others out there.

So I just want to highlight that within this thread alone, I've noticed that you've been most helpful and are very easy to get along with. Forums around the world need moderators like you because running a forum is a team effort. If one link of the chain fails... the entire chain fails. I've been to a forum where one of the administrators demonstrated poor leadership and had a sour attitude towards everyone that was probably extremely detrimental to accomplishing anything that the forum claimed it stood for. I never went back, and there were many other users trying to get in that after reading posts and threads where these administrators were treating other users poorly, these other users never wanted to come back either. Think of the lost potential!!! These are people that could've contributed to programming and music even for that forum! I've never seen a forum throw away so much potential like that. Anyways, I urge you and your team to keep up what you're doing because strong leadership around here will certainly attract a loyal following, and this may definitely lead to more productivity with the entire Zelda Classic project, along with the entire forum running more efficiently.

We'll probably have further discussion in the future. Thanks again for helping me.

[King Aquamentus]

You've met Breaker, haven't you? He actually hasn't been around for quite awhile...
and no, I mostly just ban adbots, which are somehow getting through our new member filters.

I look forward to seeing what new members (or returning members) create as far as quests go. Sometimes they produce some real gems.

[Count SymphoniC]

If I were an administrator, I would "randomize" the new member filters, if possible. A challenge question is a good idea, but if it's always the same challenge question that a new member would need to answer then a programmer can set up their adbot to answer that question correctly every time. A list of randomly selected questions with their respectives answers which all legitimate new members should know the answer to is something worth trying.

Perhaps a captcha would work well? The problem with that is that anti-captcha's are out too. I would set up a more difficult to interpret captcha, if it's difficult enough for us people to interpret it, what makes you think a computer would be able to do it? It's like voice recognition software. In my experience voice recognition has almost always been so imperfect that it just isn't worth using. Anti-captchas are no different, if you confuse them enough, they can't get through as easily.

Of course these options would probably lower the volume of incoming adbots, but not every "member" is an adbot. Some people get paid to register on forums and spam their useless garbage on forums. All they have to do is copy and paste the same message across different forums, and unfortunately it won't hurt their feelings if you ban them. There's not as much as you can do about this, except, if you set up challenge questions that are more Zelda specific, not every paid spammer will be able to answer them.

Of course I'm not an administrator, and the only experience I have in using vBulletin outside of being a regular forum member is using the vBulletin moderator control panel. Not only that but implementing these options can be troublesome for users. All things taken into consideration, it's best to balance all of these, and have us moderators take care of the rest. I'm sure if you had any good ideas for keeping these forums clean your administrator would listen.

Anyways Breaker. I assume Breaker is a member of these forums? If so then no, I never met him. I never joined these or PureZC's forums back in those days. I'm guessing he's a mod or admin?

Yeah, I really would like to make a good quest. I have experience in composing music for years, not only that, but I've been doing a careful study as to how Koji Kondo composes Zelda music. The music in Zelda games has always been greatness, and I think a lot of quest makers here could benefit from more original Zelda style music (some arranged and some new), rather than borrowing the compositions we already know. I'm also very picky about storyline and the feel of the experience, and I sure would like to make at least one Zelda game that has the quality and caliber of one of the older ones, just a fresh experience. I'm thinking about doing a new GameBoy style Zelda, Link's Awakening sure does inspire me in many ways.

Have you made any quests yet?

[King Aquamentus]

one of the quests I made is actually a rendition of Link's Awakening. NES style. It's not without some serious bugs, but the quest can be edited by anyone, so it's not too big a deal. Other than that, most of my stuff is all modifications of 1st quest tiles. I'm more the type who has a lot of projects on the table that never get off the ground.

Trust me, ZC now can make your ideas come true, and if you can compose as you say you do, then holy hell do we need you.

EDIT: oh, hey, this was just posted today or yesterday on PureZC, and it answers your original question better than I ever could. Again, you may need an account to view threads.

http://www.purezc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=52712&hl=

[Count SymphoniC]

That's exactly what I'm talking about, you provide meaningful information. You help out more than just banning adbots. Thank you for the 'Link' haha.

I swear I've played your NES style Link's Awakening, wow that was you? I remember browsing through random quests some time ago and the NES Link's Awakening you did really stood out to me, instant download. Instead of making it look more modern, you made it look more retro. That's creative to me.

It's fairly easy for me to compose Zelda style music. I'm actually used to composing some really intricate stuff. My native genre is a unique blend of Jazz, Classical, Metal, and Electronica. Everyone says it sounds like a movie soundtrack, or sometimes like Beethoven... but Koji Kondo is a major influence in my repertoire, along with the likes of Final Fantasy's Nobuo Uematsu. But once you understand Koji's style of composing and how he structures his music and you understand music theory it's very doable to compose and arrange Zelda music. Doing dungeoun music is usually the easiest. Older Zelda games tend to rely on simpler patterns, the more modern Zeldas however do have some simple patterns, but there's also a lot of atmospheric stuff going on to draw the listener into the experience. It depends on the era of the Zelda game really. But generally if it's older, it's simpler, if it's more recent, it's composed in a similar style, there's just more instruments doing more things.

By the way, I know that ZClassic uses NES chiptunes! Is there a way we can use Gameboy chiptunes? I should be able to find the neccessary tools to compose GB chiptunes if I don't already have them. But if not, can't we use .mp3's or .wav's for the soundtrack? I can render the Gameboy'ized music into an .mp3 or whatever after I'm done composing.

[King Aquamentus]

Yeah, think so. It can use multiple "console specific" file formats like NSF and SFC, but it can also use MP3s if the chiptune is just saved as one of those. So, yeah probably

[King Aquamentus]

I wish I was still into programming. I would jump right into this project and help develop engine "modules". To give the quest maker the ability to choose Zelda engines to suit his/her needs for the style of the game. It seems as if the programmers chose to add on to the original Zelda engine, rather than write new engines and add them as selectable options, but really as organized as that would be, I think it would take much longer to do it that way.


cheap tera gold (http://www.tera4sale.com/)
WOW Gold (http://www.storeingame.com/)
Buy Tera Gold (http://www.myterastock.com/Tera.Gold)


Hi. Don't post links like that anymore. In fact if you have anything else lying around like that anywhere on this forum remove it now.

[Michaelk88]

Also of similar importance and on the same lines that I'm sure everyone has noticed in official Zelda games... is within Dialogue, Nintendo highlights key hints in dialogue usually in red. For eg... "If you head west of here, you'll find such and such temple." (Nintendo uses these red highlights to provide the player hints in the quest and story.) This is a subtle but unarguably powerful feature, and could most certainly contribute to users making quality quests.

You can make it the same way they do it with mods on bukkit enabled Minecraft SMP servers where you can color the text on a sign.

[King Aquamentus]

I already informed him of this.