Beyond the Quest - Why Do We Design?

[DragonDePlatino]

It was many months ago I discovered this amazing program called "Zelda Classic", whilest searching for game making programs. At first, I was a bit wary, but after seeing many screenshots of fantastic non-NES-styled games, I was hooked. I immediately tried many different quests at random, and soon stuck to Hero of Dreams, which amazed me with it's professionalism (aside from it's custom graphics department) and length. Soon, I took up making my own quest, and after about a week of farting around with the Zelda Quest, I quit because it was SO FREAKIN' COMPLICATED to me at the time.

About a week ago, I was cleaning up my programs folder and I found my old Zelda Classic folder. By this time I was incredibly well-practiced at sprite design and I decided to use my previous knowledge of ZC to try and make another quest, "Ziggurat of Elitze", and things went great! I came up with my own enemies, items, and planned out a majority of the game. I set to it, and for about a week I worked hard at fleshing out my first dungeon with custom graphics, tiered secrets and the works. I donated much time and hard effort into it, and I was quite proud of what I did (and still am).

But enough dawdling, let's cut to the chase...Whilest searching for help on making my custom cutscenes, I happened apon a custom game called The Legend of Zelda: Fairy Dream.

http://armageddongames.net/showthread.php?94576-Fairy-Dream&highlight=fairy+dream

To put it simply, I was blown away. This game had such amazing custom graphics, smooth animation, fantastic cutscenes...with the amount of scripts it used, it didn't even look like it was made in Zelda Classic!!! I was disheartened...my quest could never be nowhere near that good! But...even Fairy Dream is not that amazing. Like all other quests, it tries hard to strive to be like the official Zelda series.

Facing these and other questions, I began to rethink my motives...Should I continue to play Zelda Classic? Should I leave and move on to the other kinds of art I love to make? (And yes, I find quest designing an ART, mind you.) I mean, I find fun in music composition, sprite design and story-writing. There's tons of ways I can artistically express myself, and I'm wondering...is Zelda Classic worth the time and effort?

Keep in mind, I'm not discouraging anyone from Zelda Classic. I think it is the single most amazing Zelda fan project I've ever seen! It's just...I believe that if you love what you do, you should really know your motivations for doing it...So I ask you five questions about you, your quest, and what keeps you going...





Why do you choose to artistically define yourself with Zelda Classic? There are far many other mediums, all allowing a much greater scope of creativity, why did you choose Zelda Classic over all others?

How do you feel about the amount of effort you put into your quests? Zelda is a copyrighted series, so thusly you cannot sell your efforts. Is making quests (as hard has a job, at that!) worth the effort?

No matter what amount of scripts you use, it's Zelda, plain and simple. How do you feel about putting time and effort into art, to only have it strongly resemble others?

But what about making quests just for fun? Despite the stresses that come with making quests, can the fun of making quests outweight all other benefits enough to make Zelda Classic worthwhile?

Despite all of these shortcomings, why do you think Zelda Classic has kept the strong, friendly community for all these years? What keeps these people going?

[Gleeok]

I went ahead and moved this to the ZC forums for you. It should get more attention there I think. ;)

[LinktheMaster]

First off, I'd like to welcome you to the Zelda Classic community. :) It seems you've been lurking for a while, but I noticed you just joined.

Anyway, on to the questions!

Why do you choose to artistically define yourself with Zelda Classic? There are far many other mediums, all allowing a much greater scope of creativity, why did you choose Zelda Classic over all others?

Well, originally, I have to go back to when I first joined the Zelda Classic community back in 2003. When I found Zelda Classic, I wasn't actually looking for a game creator. At that point, I wasn't thinking about game making at all. But I stumbled upon it, played some quests, and later decided to make my own. Why? Because I'm a fan of the Zelda series, of course! Zelda is without a doubt one of my favorite video game series. It was then, and it still is today. So that's not to say I'm making a Zelda game because I'm constrained into the limitations of Zelda Classic. I'm making a Zelda game because I want to make a Zelda game.

Of course, there are other options. There's Open Zelda, Game Maker, and other things you could make Zelda games for. But I find ZC to be one of the easiest programs to use. Sure, it's got those quirks and hurtles you have to overcome when you first start with it, but once you learn the basics, it's really easy. If you're wanting to make a Zelda 1-style game, you can easily hammer one out in just a few weeks.

How do you feel about the amount of effort you put into your quests? Zelda is a copyrighted series, so thusly you cannot sell your efforts. Is making quests (as hard has a job, at that!) worth the effort?

I think so, but I think so because I enjoy making quests. And making quests isn't for everyone. That much is obvious. But I make quests because I enjoy it, and I want other people to enjoy it. I have a job that pays well enough, so I have no desire to try to make other people pay for anything I create. If I were wanting to make a game to sell, sure, I'd use something outside of Zelda Classic (for obvious reasons), but that's just not what I'm interested in right now.

No matter what amount of scripts you use, it's Zelda, plain and simple. How do you feel about putting time and effort into art, to only have it strongly resemble others?

Well, first of all, that's not necessarily true. With scripting, it's definitely possible to make quests that aren't Zelda-1 esque. We've had some people create entirely custom engines in Zelda Classic using scripts. We've even had some people make some quests that barely feel like Zelda without the use of scripts. Unfortunately, a lot of these don't get finished, but it is possible with the right amount of effort. Fairy Dream is still Zelda, but that's partially because we wanted it to be.

But even then, I don't mind if what I make is similar to others.

But what about making quests just for fun? Despite the stresses that come with making quests, can the fun of making quests outweight all other benefits enough to make Zelda Classic worthwhile?

I don't mind if what I make is similar to what others make because I do make quests for fun. I truly enjoy it. I enjoy the community. I enjoy when people enjoy what I make. There's not a lot of things (in my opinion) that are quite as nice as finishing something you've spent tons of hours on for people to enjoy. It's just really nice and rewarding.

Despite all of these shortcomings, why do you think Zelda Classic has kept the strong, friendly community for all these years? What keeps these people going?

I think it's been kept strong because people are wanting to make Zelda games, and Zelda Classic is a good engine for that. :P

----

So, I think the main thing you have to think about is what you want to do. Do you enjoy Zelda? Do you want to make a Zelda game? If so, Zelda Classic is a great thing to use for that. Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges, but it's still a wonderful tool if that's what you want to do. It's fairly powerful (especially with scripting), and can get a lot done. So, I think it all just depends on your expectations and what you want to do. Hopefully that explains things a bit!

Also, on a side note, I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed Fairy Dream. However, I really hope it doesn't put you off and make you not want to work on your quest anymore. That was most certainly not the intention of Nick and myself. Personally, I try to stick with just making what I want without comparing myself to others. There's tons of people who are better at tile editing than me. I'd really love to have completely custom graphics for everything I work on, but I just don't have the skills (or the time to learn) to do that. As the saying goes, no matter how good you are, there's always someone better than you. Watching this was certainly humbling for me. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uojW--JZSsA) But, not every quest has to be scripted to be good. You don't have to spend years on a quest for it to be fun. After all, what matters most is if a quest is fun or not, and that can be accomplished with even just the most basic tools that Zelda Classic has to offer. :)

Hopefully this explains things a bit! Zelda Classic may or may not be for you. And that's fine. It's expected. Not everyone is going to want to make Zelda games. I'd just sit and think about what it is that you want to do, and then you can think about if ZC is the right tool to do that. :)

[DragonDePlatino]

Wow. Must be a pretty good community if designers as good as you respond so quickly after only being mentioned. O.o

Hmm...I've always been curious if there was a Zelda 3 maker, and I guess that game fills that niche...But honestly, I still find ZC much more amazing. Open Zelda might LOOK like ALttP, but it doesn't look like it plays similarly at all. :/ Oh, and it's interesting hearing how someone like you got into Zelda Classic. Apparantly, pretty much everyone gets into the program similarly, but it's the people that stick around who get to participate in amazing things. :D

Anyways, I got back into Zelda Classic because of the graphical aspect of it...It might be a thing of nostalgia, but videogames as an art form really appeal to me, and ZC is no exception. Around the time I got back into ZC, I had made a sprite sheet deinterpretating all of the sprites of the original LoZ (http://dragondeplatino.deviantart.com/art/LoZ-Official-Art-Tileset-357300035). And later, I found the amazing monster designs of JaqTheBlue (http://jaqdeblue.deviantart.com/art/Concept-Art-13-298151507), which similarly, I had to sprite. I also had lots of really cool ideas for how to make these monsters in the enemy editor, so I guess that was really the pushing point for me to start making my quest.

Ah...but I was getting ahead of myself. As I designed my quest I realized I was doing lots of things that mirrored ideas from my personal projects, such as the main character being an anti-hero or the entire game being side-scrolling. Also, I really focused hard on the graphical perspective, and not so much on gameplay...So, today I decided I'd drop my quest for now and focus more on my personal projects such as tilesets and sprites for my own games...but I also got an idea!

...

Need any spriters? :D