Zelda Classic - its future. 35+ adults only please

[James24]

This is intended as a discussion for older people who are more mature in life and who aren't playing Zelda Classic - allowing you to be clear minded, rational and objective in your thoughts no matter how nasty they might be. But you should have been a fan of Zelda Classic at some point in your life preferably when it was first out in the early 2000s like myself. I tried a thread like this in pure but it seems like the younger people there don't really take well to it so hopefully if I post here they shouldn't go near it.

As you might know from pure, the fanbase of Zelda Classic is diminishing year by year. There are fewer quests made each year, fewer visitors and fewer quest makers. As for Armageddon Games well just take a look around. If the current trend continues then it'll be game over for Zelda Classic. In my view, the underlying reason for this trend is that scripting has made ZQuest inaccessible to new quest makers. It simply takes too much time for an aspiring quest maker to learn how to make a quest that is a "hit". So a new quest maker is going to either skip scripting and make a quest they aren't really proud of or spend a large amount of time learning how to script - and most will get deterred by this. No new quest makers means fewer quests, fewer quests mean less for the fans, less for the fans means no new quest makers - you get the picture.

We should all remember back to the pre-scripting days. The glory days of ZC - its golden age. I remember it like yesterday - thousands of fans and virtually everyone was a quest maker. NES Zelda was the currency accepted by the fanbase and quest-makers alike and every person and their dog had their own NES Zelda Nth quest. The reason why ZC was so successful was because the entry requirements for becoming a quest maker were very low. Anyone could make a quest similar to DarkFlameWolf's classics easily and without any real barrier to entry. And that lead to the huge numbers of fans and a large fanbase. Nowadays, no one will even touch a NES quest and no aspiring quest makers want to make a NES quest - despite ZC having being built and designed for exactly and precisely that purpose.

Recently, there was a 6th quest contest and the results of it should be very depressing compared to the glory days of the 3rd quest contest. You all remember how successful that was right? What's worrisome about it is that there was a very low turn out of would-be contestants and only a handful actually finished their quests. It says to me that quest makers are finding it too expensive to make a quest they think is quality and that will sell well to everyone else. What should be even more worrisome is that all the completions are heavily scripted apart from Gleeok's and Glenn's older completions which no one would even go near. I tried the newer completions and I'm thinking to myself "how on earth would a newbie quest maker learn to do all this?". One of the newer completions is going to be the winner of the quest contest - I have no doubt. I have this picture in my mind of a newcomer to ZC using it for the first time and absolutely in awe of the 6th quest winner. They aspire to make a quest like that. Then they see how much scripting they have to learn to make something similar to it. And they are forever put off quest making.

The scripting genie has been let out of the bottle and it can never be put back in. Even if it could, the modern fanbase would never accept NES Zelda again and there would be too much work involved to remake ZC's engine so that it has the features that the modern fanbase wants. So what are the solutions to this problem? I don't see any solution to this problem outside of a very long shot. Credit to Zoria - at least he sees the writing on the wall and has a plan to fix it. The solution involves getting rid of the Zelda branding in the game's engine so that copyright isn't an issue anymore. Then, "pro" quest makers who have mastered scripting can sell their quests to the ZC fanbase like any normal steam game. We're all older in life and should know how important money is and how influential and necessary it is hmm? There are inherent and obvious risks with this plan - firstly getting rid of the Zelda branding is going to hurt the game's popularity and reach. Zelda is iconic and replacing it with something else is going to attract fewer aspirants. Secondly, is the ZC fanbase going to accept paying for their games like a steam game? Another drawcard for ZC is that its completely free to play and changing that is going to be a very risky move. Finally, allowing quest makers to sell their quest doesn't solve the problem of investment. Quest makers need their money as they are making the quest - not when their quest is finally made.

But what other choice does ZC have? The status quo is almost certainly going to lead to a game over. What are your thoughts?

[cbailey78]

That would be like an apocalypse of Zelda Classic. It was a total dream come true when I first got into Zelda Classic back in 2001 and making my own quest. It was perfect for newcomers and I was in heaven at the time. I was making my own Willow NES game too. I could make almost all other nes games when it came to sidescrolling and top-view type games and I could improvise within the ZC limits really good as newer features got implemented, it has widened it's limits reaching closer to it's potential. This was until the scripting came in. Scripting is very off putting to the majority of the people who love ZC especially for newbies. Scripting in my eyes requires a 4 year college education to barely get a hang of it and understanding parts of scripting. I just hope Zelda Classic doesn't die as it seems to be in the elderly phase.

I think it would be a good idea that essential scripted things such as pits, shovel, lift objects, ice, etc. turns into features down the road like someone made a sideview test quest that was made by scripting before the Roc's Feather item and "Sideview Gravity" screen flag came in.

Let's hope ZC stays alive!

[Chris Miller]

I'm pretty much in the same boat. Around 2012 I finally finished Titan's Quest, which I guess will be my Zelda Classic magnum opus, as it were. I was about to move on with another project, it hit me that it would be basically pointless to do so. I know just enough about coding to look like an idiot, and it seemed like every new quest, big or small, relied heavily on ZScript. As time has gone by, I've fallen so far behind the curve that it all might as well be wizardry.

[Emily]

Yes, scripting is the DOOM of ZC! Adding a new feature set clearly dooms a program.
You want to make a non-scripted quest? You go right ahead.
You want to make a quest with some scripts but don't know how to script? Script Requests forum. Scripting database.
You want to have a fully scripted quest, with all sorts of bells and whistles? That's harder. That takes learning. But, it's not out of reach.

You want new features in the engine? Why not look at the 2.55 alphas, then? A metric fuckton of new features.

James, all you do is doomsay and act like a child throwing a fit when people don't agree with you. This contributes nothing.

https://www.purezc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=75442

[VEL]

I haven't made any quest in years, but I have thought about starting again sometime. If I make one I'll just use what parts of it I understand, and like to use. I don't care if it's a popular quest or not, I'm not a competitive person, I just did it for fun. If people like them, they like them, if they don't, they don't. I'm just glad ZC didn't get shut down like many other fan games have.

[Starkist]

Funny, I was just looking into ZC again. I have forgotten how to use it, so I have to start the learning curve from scratch, but I want to try to make a quest again. No matter what happens to the program and community going forward, the actual program will never go away. I think it will be fun for my children when they are older.

[cbailey78]

I checked out 2.55 and i am impressed by the semi-customizable combo type like the "generic" combo type and other things like it. The other features i find are a work in progress and not fully implimented. It's looking amazing in the future.

[ShadowTiger]

Even with a mind like mine that is analogous to an amoeba struggling to determine the true scope of the hamburger they are about to attempt an uncertain ingestion of, I am still able to wrap my head around crafting an extremely simple script that sets the player's health to a certain value and then stops doing anything. There are tutorials out there that show you how basic scripting works and let you get your toes wet. Saffith wrote one such tutorial and I'm happy to say I latched onto it pretty well. I'll probably never be able to do Moosh-level scripting sorcery, but I'll at least be able to use ZScript for little things that I need, and can maybe use some FFCScripts where necessary from other sources.

I'll always be a person that will miss the 2002 - 2006 ZC, but it's like with anything else in life. If you're not adaptable, and you're not willing to try, you won't get very far.

[TheDarkOne]

I still haven’t totally figured out ZQuest, let alone scripting. I did one cool thing, though. I was playing around with one of the remakes of the first quest and hid the fire boomerang somewhere. All I will say is that makes one of the hints you get from the old men mean something a little different.

[Dimentio]

I don't know; does the ZC community even have 35 adults? Adding that + in there with the assumption you can even find more than 35 of them is a big kek. :lmao:

[cbailey78]

It would be nice to have ZC community strictly for 30+ members. It seems like the world is really coming down. "When the world is running down" by the Police!

[ZoriaRPG]

It would be nice to have ZC community strictly for 30+ members. It seems like the world is really coming down. "When the world is running down" by the Police!

Funny, I had once discussed starting a forum only for that audience. While that is clearly not the specific target of openzc.org (https://openzc.org), but the early 1980s themes both on the site and in the new software, do at east nod back toward that old notion.


I still haven’t totally figured out ZQuest, let alone scripting. I did one cool thing, though. I was playing around with one of the remakes of the first quest and hid the fire boomerang somewhere. All I will say is that makes one of the hints you get from the old men mean something a little different.

Play Origin from DFW.


There is a lot of constant bickering about the 'future' of ZC. Given that I'm executive producer at this point, the net for our target audience is substantially wider, if for no better reason than to to justify my expenses. I want to target people who like software like Pico-8, hommebrew NES era coders, and provide an alternative for commercialware such as RPGMaker, and something comparable to GM )or better than GM_ for 8-bit or 16-bit style game development.

-=SPOILER=-

Perhaps once this is all done, we can set up a donations page to reimburse some expenses, and to pay for stuff such as the not effectively mandatory security keys to register the software so that malware scanners don't blacklist it. That mates, is not cheap.

[cbailey78]

I just looked at openzc.org and I'm pretty impressed. It's a blessing to have a dedicated website target to that audience like me. I honestly liked the original nes palette that looks more brighter than the fixed palette which these days look so muted.

[Dimentio]

Acually, please clarify: Why do the opinions of people who "Don't play ZC" matter? That's like asking a boomer their opinion on the future of teenagers: it's fucking retarded. If you aren't playing ZC or developing for it, you have nothing to add to the conversation.

[Saffith]

In my view, the underlying reason for this trend is that scripting has made ZQuest inaccessible to new quest makers. It simply takes too much time for an aspiring quest maker to learn how to make a quest that is a "hit".


Scripting is very off putting to the majority of the people who love ZC especially for newbies. Scripting in my eyes requires a 4 year college education to barely get a hang of it and understanding parts of scripting.


I know just enough about coding to look like an idiot, and it seemed like every new quest, big or small, relied heavily on ZScript.

I don't know why it is that scripting is particularly intimidating to people. Maybe it's because it's relatively abstract, a bunch of symbols and codewords rather than images and sounds. Maybe it's because the compiler rejects invalid scripts, whereas even the ugliest sprites work fine. Maybe it's because doing a poor job of it often results in something too broken to convince yourself is okay, so it's hard to recognize progress. Maybe people just aim too high too soon, attempting difficult projects when they're still struggling with the basics. Whatever the reason, there's really nothing special about it. It's a skill that can be learned like any other.

Sure, most people aren't good at scripting at first. Most people aren't good at game or level design at first. Or mapping. Or screen design. Or writing. Most people's first couple of quests are pretty bad, scripts or no. But they keep working at it, and they get better. Scripting isn't any different. You'll be bad at it at first, but keep working at it, and you'll get better.

Honestly, I think the simple fact that it's (relatively) new is a big reason long-time users feel this way. ZQuest was so easy to use, and now there's this big, difficult new thing messing it all up. But there's a ton of stuff in ZQuest that's opaque and confusing, and it's always been intimidating and difficult for new users. It was only ever easy to use because you had already gotten used to it.

In 2.10, how do you make a treasure chest appear after defeating all enemies? In Data > Secret Combos > Misc, click a combo slot and select a Slash (not Slash -> Item) combo, then Ctrl+click the combo and select the Armos -> Item flag, place the corresponding (they're not labelled) misc. flag where you want it, set the Enemies->Secret screen flag, set the room type to Special Item, and set the screen's special item (not the regular item) to the item in the chest. And be sure you do all that on layer 0, because Armos -> Item doesn't work on layers. Want a custom boss? Just set up a dozen or so mostly identical screens connected by a convoluted series of invisible warps triggered by some combination of combo cycling and defeating invisible enemies. If you were able to learn crap like that, you can handle ZScript just fine.




Acually, please clarify: Why do the opinions of people who "Don't play ZC" matter?
Because they could become people who do play ZC. If there are people in ZC's target audience who aren't using it, why not? What would it take to bring in more users?

[James24]

Just from my personal experience in having learnt to script modestly well, the entire process is an absolute ordeal. If I wasn't so motivated to make my dream quest, i would have given up on it. I just cannot picture an environment where the majority of people are script literate. I guess its not really possible for developers who are so used to scripting to view things from the perspective of someone who doesn't know any scripting.