Character Selection and Minish Cap tilesets???

[HorseGonorrh3a]

Hey, just started making my own original quests for ZC quest editor and was just wondering about 2 things; firstly, would character selection at the beginning of my quest, between maybe 3 characters, be possible? and secondly is it possible to make a quest using an entirely minish cap based tileset? (I've read elsewhere that it isn't possible but they were either vague with their reasons or just didnt explain why at all). Would greatly appreciate someone elaborating on these.

[SUCCESSOR]

You can make multiple characters with LTMs.

There was a pure MC tileset being worked on but I haven't payed any attention to it in... too long. I'll look for it.

[HorseGonorrh3a]

that would be fantastic, and sorry for sounding like a complete troglodyte but what is LTMs?

[SUCCESSOR]

that would be fantastic, and sorry for sounding like a complete troglodyte but what is LTMs?

LOL no worries! LTMs are Link Tile Modifiers. Items can change Links sprite like Shields. LTMs can get pretty complicated and frustrating. Let me look for a tutorial.

[SUCCESSOR]

This is an old tutorial so things may be a little different now. It should help you out though.




How to Change Characters in 2.5

A tutorial by jerome.

Table of Contents
Please Respect and Version
Sprite Types- 2 or 3 tile animations
Rules Check
Arranging Your Characters
Changing the Link Tile Modifiers
Character Limits
The Tutorial Demo

Please Respect and Version
These characters that I am including in this tutorial is to help you. These are my characters, with the exception of the female hero, who belongs to CastChaos. They are some characters I am intending on using, so please do not steal these.

This tutorial was done in 2.5 v758.


Sprite Types- 2 or 3 Tile Animations
First things first (because if it wasn't, it'd be later). You first need to decide which style of animation you want your characters to have. Go to your menu bar at the top and select: Quest-> Graphics -> Sprites -> Link. You should see a window that says "Link Sprites". In the lower left hand corner of that window you should see a selection of "Animation Style:". Click on the arrow and you will get your choices.

Here's a picture to help with what I am referring to by 1,2,3 tiles and such for this section:
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7892/zelda002anx1.jpg
The following are your choices and what they mean to you:

Original- The original 2 tile animations. Each direction will have 2 tiles for walking, and 2 for attacking (but in 3 motions for slash). So, for example, your Left walking tiles will animate 1 2 1 2 1 2. Your stab tiles will go straight to your #3 tile. Your slash tiles will go 1 3 3 for attacking. The first and second 3 are moved by ZC, but they are the same tile.
BS-Zelda- This is a 3 tile animation. Each direction will have 3 tiles for walking, and 3 for attacking. Your walking tiles will go 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 3 etc. The stabbing animation use the second walk frame and whatever sprite you input for the stab tiles, and the slashing animation wedges whatever tile you select as you slashing tile in between the two tiles used for stabbing.
Zelda 3- This one is one of the newest ones and has 9 tiles of animation for walking!! The animation goes a follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 3... You'll have to figure out how the attacking tiles work for yourself so you can set up your animations correctly.
Zelda 3 (slow walk)- The same as Zelda 3, but a slower animation for walking.

**For this tutorial, we will be using the Original style of animation since it is easier, and I already have it done. Some of the examples may show for 3 tiles at a time, even though we are only using 2. There's a method to my madness, because I went mad trying to figure it all out.


rulesRules Check
Your next step is to go to your menu bar up top and select: Quest-> Rules. In v758, the rule is on page 4 and listed as "Expanded Link Tile Modifiers". Other versions have it listed as "Full Link Tile Modifiers". Make sure this rule is checked/enabled.


arrangeArranging Your Characters
First thing you want to do is have ALL your sprite tiles ready and organized the way you are comfortable with. Make sure you know which way is Walking/Attacking: Up, Down, Left, and Right; 1 hand hold, 2 hand hold, cast. You will want all your character tiles to remain consistent. It's also best to go ahead and keep the same distance between each set of characters. I used one whole page for each character. It's a bit overkill and a space waster, but it is consistent.

Example:
Attacking Tiles
UUU DDD LLL RRR
Next character Attacking Tiles
UUU DDD LLL RRR

If you don't arrange them properly and consistently, it will get you undesired results.


changeChanging the Link Tile Modifiers
Now that we've arranged our characters, lets move onto the Link Tile Modifiers. In this tutorial we will be using Shields to change our characters. Through the wonderfulness of the Item Editor that the developers were so kind to give us, you can do this with any other custom item you make/get. But using shields will be easier to explain since we all know that Link changes when he gets/loses shields.

Link Tile Modifiers (LTMs from here on out) tell ZC to look X# of spaces to the right (positive #) of a particular tile, or to the left (negative #) of a particular tile. So a Down facing Small Shield Link gets replaced by a Down facing Magic Shield Link. Now lets look at these two pictures from earlier:
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7892/zelda002anx1.jpg

Under "No Shield" Link on the left, the tile 2 down from the Upper Left hand corner looks like link is facing Left. In the picture on the right "Small Shield" picture we see the Girl is facing Left in the exact same spot. The tile difference between the 2 pages on the exact same spot is 260 tiles.

So what we are going to do is go under your menu at the top and select: Quest-> Items.
Now select the Small Shield.

Select the GFX tab at the top of the new window. There's an area to the right of "Link Tile Modification". In that little window area we are going to put the difference between our Left facing "Link" and our Left facing "Girl". As we figured earlier, that number is 260. Now click OK and you are done with that section.

You can do this for each shield as well. But remember one thing, your LTMs will ALWAYS start with where you selected your quest starting Link. So with my example of 1 character per page, your LTMs would be setup as follows:

No shield: starting point
Small Shield: 260
Magic Shield: 520
Mirror Shield: 780

This would get you 4 different characters! Now if you would still want to use the annoying LikeLikes in your quest, you will have to go to your Items list and edit your Magic Shield under the "Pickup" tab and Deselect the "Can Be Eaten By Enemies" rule under that item. This would be so you don't get eaten as Bob the Hero and turn back into Sally the Streetwalker. Might be kind of odd and hard to explain to the kids. Now you could leave that rule enabled and make it so that you have different suits you can find and lose, then your characters between Small and Magic shields can interchange until you get the Mirror Shield.

Now say you only want 3 characters and you are starting your character out with the small shield. Then your LTMs would be:

No shield: starting point
Small Shield: 0
Magic Shield: 260
Mirror Shield: 520

You see how the Small Shield's LTM is 0. Well that just means your character starts at the same starting point as no shield. So when you setup your character movements under Quest-> Graphics -> Sprites -> Link, you just select your tiles for the Small Shield instead and starting equipment starts you with a Small Shield. This is usually defaulted to Small Shield tiles since most quests don't use Shieldless Link yet.


charCharacter Limits
With using Shields as what changes your characters you are limited to 4 characters. However, through the use of Custom Items, you pretty much have an endless capability, so long as you want to set every one of them up.


demoThe Tutorial Demo
Finally here is an example of changing characters through LTMs using Shields as the catalyst. Once again, please do not steal anything from this demo. The background is ALL Radien's from what he put in the DoR 2.0 starting screens. The female character is a recolored version of Myra from CastChaos' BoB. The Lion and TinMan are all mine.

click to download sample quest. (http://h1.ripway.com/jeromem418/zWoOZv3.qst)

[Zim]

Although using Link Tile Modifiers is an option for creating various characters, there are other methods of doing so as well.
In my quest there is a feature of using a Twilight Princess style Wolf form that can lunge at the enemies, and this is done so by using Link->Invisible=true; and then using a DrawTile of 2x2 height and width for the animation of the wolf. (Right now it's still Ganon Pig actually, but that's just because I still haven't gotten around to getting or drawing decent graphics for that part of the game yet.) There is also a Character change for a Zelda portion of the game, where Zelda runs faster, uses different spells, and other things which are a surprise. This is also all done by toggling Link->Invisible=true/false; via scripting.