Nightmare's Quest Development

[Nightmare]

Removing quests from PureZC over personal matters.

[Jaydeadone]

Are you saying people were ripping you off?? or were they poopin on you?

[Nightmare]

Ripping off wasn't the issue. Basically some people was shitting on and trolling one of my projects and the admins were supporting the people that did it, leaving the doors open to a High School Musical-style bandwagon event, and I didn't personally have the tools to deal with it.

Looking for another home at the moment. This is just a temporary placeholder thread.

-James

[Jaydeadone]

There are others that have small communities and databases of quests. I have seen them in my searches...but non that compare to the magnitude of Pure.
If I run across them again Ill remember to copy their links and shoot them over to you.

J~

[Nightmare]

OK, thank you.

Anyway, here are the links for my upcoming projects and their status:

Demo SP - Beta 1: see later post

James Quest 2 (redone) - Demo:: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90050799/wizardr.zip

And please, keep it civil. It's OK if you criticize and offer counterpoints, but be respectful, don't troll or post garbage please.

-James

[Shane]

There was no trolling intended, just a misunderstanding. It was intended to be constructive criticism.

That said, as I said beforehand, good luck with your project.

[Shane]

Well, good luck with your projects and all. I have nothing else left to say.

[Nightmare]

Going to repost some things from the Pure thread (some explanations and stuff): I am going to double post with a second comment, but I want to repost the basises of some of my arguments that aren't retaliations:

Post 1:


When the NES was released (and to some degree Windows 3.1 as well), it was an 8-bit system. Due to this limitation, there were a limited amount of colors available not only due to not only what the GPU of the NES could handle, but also due to the actual number of bytes the CPU could handle. When you talk about current systems (currrent computers, and game systems from the N64 on), most computer programs these days work on 64 or 128 bit (8 or 16 byte) systems. The NES ran on an 8 bit (1 byte) system. There was a limited amount of memory the NES could handle, including colors on screen (which Zelda Classic somewhat emulates). That's why colors was limited. This was heavily lifted by the SNES and especially by the N64 and PlayStation.

Also, this is a very huge difference, but space was a huge problem with the NES as well. We REALLY take this for granted today considering that the usual HD space is 2 TB, the max SD card size is 128 GB, and the max Blu-Ray size is 50 GB. The maximum NES cartridge size was I think 512 KB (or a half of a megabyte, not even a Gigabyte!), and most later NES cartridge sizes were 256 KB! This is really hard for everyone to comprehend because it's been so obsoleted (and quite frankly, in this version this got thrown out the window as well, and most devs HATE this honestly and there was no way with new .MIDs and DLC contest this is going to stay under 256 K), but New Quest 2013 and before and the 5th Quest contest were judged to some degree on how accurate the quests were to actual NES cartridge size. If a quest is to be considered true NES style, this has to be taken into account. This is why I name most of my 9-level quests with mini-dungeons "Dungeon Rompers" instead of NES-style, because a lot of the new features don't actually follow the true limitations of the NES.

I hope this provides some insight on some of my design choices. You are free to agree or disagree as you wish, but please, be respectful.

That's not to say there aren't tricks you can use to get around it, especially with 4 CSets where you can build 4 different enemy colors into it with sprites. This is certainly a loophole I abused with Demo SP to no end to keep it looking classic style yet create numerous amounts of enemy colors.

Post 2:


Well, also, part of it is the fact that as a ZC original developer (and only having to Palette 00F I think available, and obviously far less combo pages due to size limitations, which was abandoned in 2.10), it was one of the few options available for mini-dungeons, and the fact I think an Overworld color dungeon is interesting and cool (yes, I do have some weird tastes in graphics, other people have said it, nothing new). I guess that's just the old NES-style developer in me. Once again, feel free to disagree.



EDIT: My old computer with ZC original crashed, so if someone else with old versions still (@Chris Miller, Gleeok) can confirm please let me know.



But just some file size information from previous versions of New Quest (once again, lost 1999 due to my HD crashing), but here is some of the information:



New Quest 2004 (Level 11 expansion): 295 KB (could fit on an NES with some trouble)

New Quest 2013 (2.50 Upgrade, Custom Enemies): 350 KB (could fit too, but would take a max size cart, in other words, mucho dinero)

New Quest DLC: 533 KB (wouldn't make it, I'd arguably have to cut some of the music out, and future DLC would "technically" be impossible)

My 5th Quest Candidate: 315 KB (would also fit the max size NES cart if Zelda had a re-release)

[Nightmare]

I'll get back to the first post later to reword it KA

But I do want to say something, and some people may not like this, but at this point it has to be said:

1. You are welcome to criticize, but you are not welcome to take over and hijack the project in any means, whether it means co-ercing me through admins, gang trolling, or anything else of the ilk.

2. Just because you say criticism doesn't mean I have to do anything with it besides acknowledge it. Some things I am keeping the same because I either want to, or they go with the original design restraints. I have heard you loud and clear otherwise.

3. Ultimately, if you are under say the age of 18 and don't really like classic quests, this may not be for you honestly. While technically I don't like saying things like this because they're project killers, I'm kinda forced to say it due to the controversy. My general demographic is competitive NES players and people like 30 and up, who have an interest in NES style quests. Keep this in mind before making comments. I won't "not sell" to the younger demographic though. If you want to play and enjoy it, you're more than welcome, but it may not necessarily be geared towards your taste.

Hopefully I've addressed the worst points here. Some people may not like this, but I'm telling it how it is.

-James

[Goriya]

Alright then, now that that's settle, lemme give my opinions on your quest update here:

If you're going to take the time to update a really old quest, it couldn't hurt to at least do some touch ups, let me give a really good example.

http://www.purezc.net/Projects/279_no5io9.png
This screen.

Now, I understand, as you mentioned before, you're not an artist. But the problem isn't that it's a badly designed screen. The problem is that the screen is outright lazy. I can think of multiple ways to make this screen more interesting without having any artistic ability or getting rid of the feel of the quest.

Touch Up #1: Tile Variety
Ignoring the darker default palette and subscreen, I took that screen, and made some minor adjustments.

http://i.imgur.com/apYstjs.png
See? Now it looks a lot nicer than the one color, and I'm pretty sure it's still true to the NES.

All I did was place random sand tiles, and that's what happened. The screen looks quite a bit nicer than before.

Touch Up #2: Them Corners
Here's another thing that, yet again, requires no artistic ability to do, and takes like, a minute at most.

http://i.imgur.com/3wrxU0X.png
Don't worry, I'm not saying "Make the screen cramped," I'm saying that if open space is unneeded, it's best to close it. It immediately looks nicer this way, and nothing is broken about the quest, since this is intended to be an update to an old quest.

Touch Up #3: Finishing Touches
Feel free to ignore this one, this is just myself saying "Hmm, something's missing here...oh, I know!"

http://i.imgur.com/2ypFTuh.png
Smoothened things out slightly just to show a difference from the original.

So yeah, that's my 2 cents. If you're going to take the time to update a quest from years and years ago, I feel like it would be more fitting to add a little bit of polish to it, and these are some things that can help, even if you're not an artist. If the change can be made, and not hurt the quest, then I think it's a welcome change.

[Nightmare]

Goriya, paging Dimentio (also known as Arceus)'s on this subject. He did the touch-ups on New Quest 2 2015 (and did an awesome job mind you, and that's why there was a bit of a dramatic delay between development wrap-up and release). I have a tendency to blunder this kind of stuff really badly. I have no touch quite frankly, and I'll admit it.

-James

[Samer]

I think adding sand tiles is a good idea, the world looks like a nuclear bomb hit killing off the earth.

Doesn't have to be overboard, a few touch up here and there wouldn't hurt. Blank screens aren't that good in my opinion but whatever floats your boat Nightmare.
With the size thing, Nintendo has a trade secret that allows them to super compress their games by a significant margin. OoT, if ported to PC, would be at least 500 MB. Yet it was only 32.

Hardware and software are two different things. Software has the driver to run it on it's own, but it needs to be modified to work on the hardware. Reverse engineering.

[Nightmare]

I think adding sand tiles is a good idea, the world looks like a nuclear bomb hit killing off the earth.

With the size thing, Nintendo has a trade secret that allows them to super compress their games by a significant margin. OoT, if ported to PC, would be at least 500 MB. Yet it was only 32.



I wish we had Nintendo's compression algorithms sometimes, but a lot of times when we judge file size we go by cartridge size when judging quests. I don't know how "terribly" accurate that'd be to the real cartridge (which is 128 KB on the gold release, ??? on the gray release). I don't know the compression ratio of .QST files, but I'm pretty sure they could still cut it down by five times.

However, this compression causes the ability to overwrite areas and glitches. This is what caused FF6 to have the famed "overwrite and crash" glitch if you went into certain battles (and this is why I don't do glitched speedruns or attempt them)

And if anybody's wondering, that blank screen that everybody sees, is like one of the very first screens ever created in Zelda Classic (behind some of Demo Quest and my very first beta quest which I lost when my computer got stolen. Not all of New Quest is even close to being that way.

-James

[Gleeok]

Nintendo doesn't have any "super secret classified best compression ever" routines. They use standard ones.

Games typically use compression algorithms akin to the LZ* family, or ones that offer similarly fast decompression, some type of huffman encoding, etc. The key to games is that decompression needs to be fast, but compression doesn't. Currently I am using LZ4 compression because it has insanely fast decompression rates, high compression, and is open source. I seriously doubt Nintendos OOT compression could beat it. They may simply use different methods for different file types based on what the binary data looks like.

[Nightmare]

Nintendo doesn't have any "super secret classified best compression ever" routines. They use standard ones.

Games typically use compression algorithms akin to the LZ* family, or ones that offer similarly fast decompression, some type of huffman encoding, etc. The key to games is that decompression needs to be fast, but compression doesn't. Currently I am using LZ4 compression because it has insanely fast decompression rates, high compression, and is open source. I seriously doubt Nintendos OOT compression could beat it.

They haven't released it publically, but they bragged at one time they could get at least ten times compression rate on their stuff. I don't know how accurate 500 MB is uncompressed for OoT, but at 32 MB that's compressed 15.625 times! That's way above industry standard (and also shows why things like the FF6 bug happened when things got overwritten)

-James

[Gleeok]

FF6 I believe used LZSS for most of the data. FF1 PSP used LZ77 for most the data. I know for a fact about FF1PSP because I wrote a utility to unpack everything, and I now have every single file that was in the iso in it's original format as used by the developers. ;)

As for 15x compression I'm not really impressed. Some things compress extremely well, other things don't.


[EDIT] Just for fun Nightmare:
In my Core FFC engine I have tilemaps, tilesets, etc. The overworld map to FF1 in this example is 256x256 tiles with animation support, is 2 layers, and is roughly 524000 bytes, or around 512 kilobytes uncompressed in memory. On disk or in packfile format this gets compressed to 46 kb, or around 11x+. This is actually better than what square-enix used!

[Nightmare]

Demo SP Beta 2: (see later post)

Changelog:

Overworld:

1. Fixed an wall integrity bug with the water so you can't overlay into other screens anymore
2. Fixed continue point on DMAP 2

Bonus Dungeon:

1. Eliminated a test code area in the first room
2. Fixed some broken flags in a few statue rooms

Pandaemonium:

1. Scrolling warps fixed
2. 10 Death Knight Room changed to 10 L4 Darknuts
3. Aesthetic changes made to the enemies
4. Gohma 4 has new color

I still got some bugs to fix, but this should take care of the major stuff from Samer's Let's Play.

Enjoy people.

-James

[Dimentio]

Sorry if I'm late! I just got my new computer 4 days ago and I haven't been checking PureZC as often as I should. I also started a Semi-Webcomic over at MSPA Forums, so I was pretty busy.

I will have to install Zelda Classic, but just tell me what you need in terms of graphical stuff and I will do it! In fact, if you want me to, I can go and beautify everything in the game :D

[Nightmare]

There is a bad bug in New DLC, something I don't know if I can deal with:

But the palettes for the Game Icons have been messed up severely. They don't show up when you put on CSet 6. It has something to do with .ZPL backwards compatibility.

Dimentio, Gleeok, I don't know if one of you two would like a crack at it and/or convert the "new" default palettes to the current ones. Let me know, but I want it as close to the old ZC .ZPL as possible.

-James

[Jaydeadone]

Is there no way to get a reference to Old ZC palettes and fix them manually if you have to?

[Nightmare]

Is there no way to get a reference to Old ZC palettes and fix them manually if you have to?

That's part of the problem. I'd have to write down every single color and hand-translate them over. It could take forever in terms of time.

At this point I'm wondering if it's even worth it to continue New DLC, considering many people in testing have not liked it, been weirded out by it, and there seems to still be framework issues.

-James

[Jaydeadone]

That's part of the problem. I'd have to write down every single color and hand-translate them over. It could take forever in terms of time.

At this point I'm wondering if it's even worth it to continue New DLC, considering many people in testing have not liked it, been weirded out by it, and there seems to still be framework issues.

-James


I'd imagine there is a reference somewhere.
Are they completely jacked up or just partially?
J~

[Nightmare]

I'd imagine there is a reference somewhere.
Are they completely jacked up or just partially?
J~

The Game Icons are messed up. When you load them they go completely black, and I've tried everything to get them to normal, but they don't cooperate.

-James

[Jaydeadone]

The Game Icons are messed up. When you load them they go completely black, and I've tried everything to get them to normal, but they don't cooperate.

-James

When you say Icons...are you talking about weapon, sub screen, ect sprites?

[Nightmare]

Game Icons are the sprites that show up when you start the game up and select the quest.

It looks like the palette work for it is totally busted.

EDIT: More Demo SP bugs squashed, including getting stuck, the oasis problem, and a life meter issue. It is now up to Beta 4, unavailable to the public as of yet, I want to hit nearly everything before I go for a final beta

-James

[Nightmare]

It's official: New Quest DLC is now cancelled.

It'll be literally impossible to save it from the palette framework, competitive players don't like the presentation, new players don't like the artistry, and is overall played out.

I'll be redirecting the team to finish Demo SP. New Quest "3" is WAY off, so I might make an unnamed miniquest, but I need a break unless someone finishes the JQ-2 artwork.

-James

[Nightmare]

Demo SP - Beta 5: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90050799/demosp%20-%20Beta%205.zip

Changelog:

Enemies:

1. Red Wizzrobes animation fixed
2. Batrobe animation fixed
3. Windrobe animation fixed
4. Patra 2 drops Super Bombs 100%
5. Patra 3 drops Super Bombs 100%

Overworld:

1. Eliminated two stairs that were randomly showing up and didn't lead to anywhere
2. Fixed some water areas where you got stuck.
3. Fixed a broken cave

Level 4:

1. Water tiles fixed
2. Block push integrity fixed

Level 5:

1. Water tiles fixed (x3)
2. Life Meter for Super Patra (Patra 2 form) fixed

Scripts:

1. Life meter for Gohma 1 fixed in Super Gohma Battles

-James

[Samer]

I'll probably go through this one more time with level 1 cheat because I can, lvl 4 isn't necessary unless you have a lot of unused screens

[Nightmare]

It'd really only be a checkup run Samer. I think I squashed most of the major creepy crawlies by now.

-James

[Samer]

been goin through this, been through A and J, full screen seems to play it a lot more smoothly. Health meters for bosses (the gleeok) seems to be consistent in J.
Level A's wind gleeok is a bit too easy if you have sword beams. If you don't wanna change it, it's fine because it gets more difficult throughout plus I already know where everything is now.

[Nightmare]

The Wind Gleeok is a balancing act. Annoying as hell, but as long as you know how to kill Dodongos, not too hard.

-James

[Nightmare]

Demo SP Beta 6: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90050799/demosp%20-%20Beta%206.zip

Changelog:

1. Changed the Beginning Gauntlet .MID (yes, I found something new that is surprisingly good, lol)

-James

[Dimentio]

So, what about New Quest 3? Do you want me to start brainstorming ideas for the boss?

[Nightmare]

So, what about New Quest 3? Do you want me to start brainstorming ideas for the boss?

We'll talk about that after the Nintendo World Championships are over.

-James

[Dimentio]

Nintendo world championships? Wait, what?

[Nightmare]

Nintendo world championships? Wait, what?

http://e3.nintendo.com

-James

[Dimentio]

Alright then, that's good news. I need to catch up on some homework, and having a break is nice.

[Nightmare]

We have a developing situation with Mero/Tamamo that is ongoing and I need to find a way to replace the boss that we were planning. I won't comment further in public, direct all questions to the AGN Staff about it.
Gleeok and Dimentio, reply back on this. We need to do something so we can get Demo SP back on track.

-James

[Samer]

Demo SP is near completion, ZC 3.0 should use C# for scripting or Boost (only used it for C++, don't know if it works for C#).

Otherwise, I'd do it myself.

[Nightmare]

Well, let's make this probably fair:

Demo SP will probably be my last 2.5 quest, unless I decide to do something short or someone does artwork for me for James Quest 2.

New Quest "3" will probably try to be ready by the next release.

-James

[Nightmare]

Dimentio, if you want to comment about the Nintendo World Championships, please go here. I made a separate thread:

http://armageddongames.net/showthread.php?97148-Nintendo-World-Championships-Thoughts&p=907326#post907326

This thread is clearly about my quest devevlopment and I don't want it derailed by anything, including grudges or even cool things like that. Sorry, but I'm being really anal here about that.

[Dimentio]

Okay, well I only have about 5 days of school left, 4 of which are exams. I personally think I can breeze through the 3 important ones (who cares about art anyways?), so I think I can start working on this again.

What do you need me for?

[Nightmare]

I need to have a group meeting with you and Gleeok to determine what we should do about the "last" room in Demo SP. Chime in when you can make it, it'll be on a separate one-time channel on AGN's chat server.

-James

[Dimentio]

I think maybe later tomorrow. I will try to remember, but my memory has been pretty bad lately. 8:00 or something around that.

[Nightmare]

Dimentio, just covering it by PM. Some people can't make it at certain times.

-James

[Dimentio]

So, we still doing stuff? I only just noticed the invite for the Demo SP dropbox folder.

[Nightmare]

Sorry, I'm embarrassed. I got a PS4 and a new computer, and with ZC 2.50.1 not working, I kinda took an extended break really without telling anyone.

Anyway, 2.50.2 installed, works with Windows 10. I'll be copying everything over and merging quest files.

If any updates are needed, I'll release the patches.

Main focus is on Demo SP.

I am probably going to start my monthly LP's over again now that I can record too.

-James