Re: :AZC ongoing Beta reports:
Changes in ZC 1.93 Alpha/Beta 4
1. Fixed the bug where Link would, after entering a passageway, brielfy appear in the same screen position as the warp entrance while the screen is loading.
2. Fixed the bug where Link would, when holding an item over his head in an item room (not an item cave) float above the floor by 2 pixels.
3. Fixed the bug where some of Link's extra tiles (holding, swimming, diving, etc.) might show incorrectly if he had any equipment on that had a Link tile modifier variable set.
4. Fixed the bug where the screen wouldn't close properly after getting the triforce.
5. Fixed the bug were Like-Likes could grab Link out of the water if he was swimming 1/2 a tile below them. Doing so would also paralyze Link.
6. Fixed the bug in ZQuest where, if the mouse was in the same place as some text in a newly opened dialog, moving the mouse would erase some of the text.
7. Fixed the bug where Ctrl-Alt-End would force ZQuest (and ZC) to quit abruptly.
8. Fixed the bug in ZQuest where exporting a file would cause a status message box to appear with "Error" as the title, but a successful result inside the box.
9. Fixed the bug with Link's colors getting stuck if he was flashing (through injury or from getting a clock) if he went from one screen to another.
10. Fixed the bug with garbage files littering the root of the drive that ZC is on.
11. Fixed the bug where the file select dialog box in the grabber function would not be centered in ZQuest if ZQuest was running in a scaled mode.
12. Fixed the bug in ZQuest where the arrow would be invisible in the palette grabbing function. This bug (once it happened) would cause one of the buttons in the tile editor to be blank.
13. Fixed the bug with Link walking over cave up combos when entering them and being completely covered up when exiting them.
14. Fixed the bug in ZQuest where two of the tabs in the door combo set editor were labelled wrong.
15. Fixed a typo in the enemy list.
16. Fixed the bug with gleeok necks being stuck on the left side of the screen.
17. Fixed the bug where changing the map count in ZQuest would delete the last map.
18. Fixed the bug in the tile editor where the bottom and right sides of the Edit, Ok and Cancel buttons weren't responsive to the mouse.
19. Double-clicking a tile in the tile selection list will now either select it (if it's called from something like a sprite editor) or edit it (if it's called from the Graphics->Tiles menu).
20. Double-clicking a combo in the combo selection list will now either select it (if it's called from something like the door combo editor) or edit it (if it's called from the Graphics->Combos menu).
21. The mouse scroll wheel now works in the tile selector (by scrolling through pages).
22. The mouse scroll wheel now works in the combo selector (by scrolling through pages).
23. Fixed the bug where peahats were only changing direction if they hit the side of the screen or landed.
24. Fixed the bug where the Right-Facing Aquamentus was vulnerable to attack on the tail instead of the head.
25. Fixed the bug where either Aquamentus would, if the new enemy tiles quest rule was enabled, display 4 death sprites instead of 1 when dying.
26. Fixed the bug where Aquamentus fireballs weren't starting from an Aquamentus's mouth.
27. Fixed the bug where the Right-Facing Aquamentus was positioned 1 tile too far to the right.
28. Fixed an inconsistency between ZC and Zelda 1 regarding how the screen opens when you start a quest or exit a dungeon (ZC's opening was too smooth, it's supposed to open 1 tile at a time).
29. Fixed an inconsistency between ZC and Zelda 1 regarding Link and the subscreen when the screen opens at quest start or when exiting a dungeon (things aren't supposed to show up all at once in the subscreen and Link isn't supposed to be visible until the screen finishes opening).
30. Fixed the bug with Dodongos (and BS Dodongos) sometimes vanishing if they are placed near right or bottom dungeon walls.
31. Fixed the bug where segmented enemy segments were counted as enemies for the purpose of determining if armos statues would turn into armos enemies or if graves would release ghini 2's when touched.
32. Added a quest rule "BS-Zelda Graves". With this enabled, releasing a Ghini 2 from a grave by touching it will cause the grave combo to advance by 1. This allows you to have a grave only release one Ghini 2 (if the next combo is not a grave combo) or you can set up a string of grave combos to determing how many Ghini 2's you want to occupy the grave. This is similar to how pound combos work.
33. Fixed the bug an Armos would switch the combo under its starting position to the screen's undercombo even if the Armos was not created from an Armos statue combo.
34. The mouse scroll wheel now changes flags when you are in flag placing mode.
35. The Page Up/Page Down keys (change panel) and Less Than/Greater Than keys (change map) now work in flag placing mode.
36. Combos now continue to animate in flag placing mode, along with the static in the minimap.
37. The mouse combo scroll trigger positions have been fixed for large mode.
38. The icon trigger positions for panel 2 (item, tile warp, warp return, start point, and flag) have been fixed for large mode.
39. The mouse wheel now changes the current map when used over the minimap.
40. The mouse wheel now changes panels when used on the panel area.
41. Fixed the bug where Link would immediately attack at the end of a message if the player was holding down a button to scroll through the message quickly.
42. Fixed the bug where having a blank item or price in a shop would cause the setup to be incorrect. Now, blank items can appear in any of the 3 shop item slots and the program will arrange the remaining items properly. Also, a price can be 0 for a free item.
43. Fixed the problem with overhead layers in the sequence when you pick up the big triforce left by Ganon. Also made it frame-by-frame identical to NES Z1 (you probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway)
44. Fixed the Ganon intro sequence. Moving of screen drawing code caused this sequence to be static. I've fixed that as well as made it frame-by-frame identical to NES Z1 (you probably wouldn't notice this one either)
45. Fixed Ganon's death animation.
46. The screen should now flash gray when a bomb explodes, as in the NES original, unless the "No Bomb Palette Flash" quest rule is checked (which is automatically checked on loading an older quest, for compatibility).
47. Fixed the "invalid quest" error that would appear after the "win game" sequence.
48. Fixed the "win game" sequence problem with layers, among other things.
49. Fixed the bug where sparkles would stay on the screen (continue to animate and not vanish) when Link enters a cave.
50. Fixed a bug with the quest loading where the "Fliers Can Appear On Walls" Quest rule wouldn't automatically check for older quests.
51. Added a stationary fairy to be used as a non-enemy-dropped item. Acts just like the regular fairy but it doesn't move. It also has its own sprite.
52. Messages and prices (but not their items) now appear over any layers, but under sprites. If a sprite is covered by a layer, it can also be covered by the messages, but not otherwise. So if part of the screen is layered, but not the part where messages appear, Link and others with still appear over the messages. This works on a per-pixel basis.
53. Re-fixed the interpolated fading code in the Link dying/game over sequence.
54. Fixed the bug where the "Kill All Enemies" item wouldn't work on Gleeoks and a Gleeok that had been "killed" by this item would eventually crash the game.
55. Changed the "BS Graves" quest rule into a separate combo type so that Graves and BS-Graves can co-exist.
56. Fixed the bug where the last head on a Gleeok (the last one added, to be exact, when a Gleeok is loaded and, thusly, the last one to start moving) will usually start to creep to the left or right instead of moving normally when the "Enter From Sides" enemy pattern is selected, depending on where Link first appears on the screen.
57. Added 2 new screen openings that are used when the "Cool Scrolling" quest rule is selected. Now, ZC cycles through three different openings in order: Circle (the original one used in ZC and in BS Zelda when Link enters or exits caves), Oval (as in Zelda 3), and Rotating Triangle (as seen in the opening of BS Zelda). Currently, there is no way to pick a certain one to use. This will come later if these new openings seem popular.
58. Screen opening and closing shapes now pause when the game pauses. Before, when you paused the game and then unpaused it, the opening or closing shape would have already finished opening or closing.
59. Added a new screen opening/closing style: All-Stars, in the style of the title screen to game selection screen transition in Super Mario All-Stars.
60. The speed at which the screen opening/closing animates now depends on how far away Link is from the center of the screen. This causes the opening/closing animation to finish exactly as Link enters or exits a cave.
61. Fixed the VSync code to correctly keep ZC running at about 60 fps.
62. Fixed a bug in the tile selector screen where the End key would move the selector to the beginning of the next line instead of to the end of the current line.
63. Reworked the keyboard routines for the tile selector. Home now takes you to the first tile of the current screen. End takes you to the last tile of the current screen. Ctrl-Home takes you to the very first tile in the tile list. Ctrl-End takes you to the very last tile of the tile list. Ctrl-Left takes you to the first tile in the current line. Ctrl-Right takes you to the last tile of the current line. Ctrl-Up takes you to the tile in the first line of the current screen while keeping the cursor in the same column (the cursor moves straight up to the top of the screen without moving left or right). Ctrl-Down takes you to the tile in the last line of the current screen while keeping the cursor in the same column (the cursor moves straight down to the bottom of the screen without moving left or right). Ctrl-PgUp takes you to the tile in the very first line of the tile list while keeping the cursor in the same column (the cursor moves straight up to the top of the tile list without moving left or right). Ctrl-PgDown takes you to the tile in the very last line of the tile list while keeping the cursor in the same column (the cursor moves straight down to the bottom of the tile list without moving left or right).
64. Brought the Mac OS X port up to speed with the DOS/Windows/Linux ports.
65. Added a new command key to the tile selector screen. Pressing the P key will bring up a dialog that allows you to enter a page number to go to. The cursor will be moved to the current screen position on the requested page (if you are on the 3rd row and 7th column on the current page, you will end up on the 3rd row and 7th column on the new page).
66. Added a new command key to the combo selector screen. Pressing the P key will bring up a dialog that allows you to enter a page number to go to. The cursor will be moved to the current screen position on the requested page (if you are on the 3rd row and 7th column on the current page, you will end up on the 3rd row and 7th column on the new page).
67. Fixed the menus so that child menus (menus that show up when you click on a menu item that has a right-pointing triangle at the end) don't cover up most of their parent menus.
68. Fixed the JWin menu code to more closely match the way Windows works, particularly regarding titlebar text that is too long to fit in the titlebar.
69. Fixed the ZC title screen to add the copyright and "Jeremy-right" logos, as well as updating the year.
70. Fixed the original title screen with the current year in the "Jeremy-right" as well as making it non-static (before, the year was actually part of the titlescreen graphic; now, it's added by the ZC program).
71. The scale used for ZQuest running in a window is saved between sessions now. Now, set the scale once on the command line, and ZQuest will keep using that until you change it to something else.
72. Fixed the bug where switching between fullscreen and windowed modes while in ZQuest would cause some of the colors in the quest loading status window to be altered.
73. Fixed the bug where the mouse cursor would sometimes be incorrect (namely, the mouse cursor would show up as the select (hookshot) cursor when it was supposed to be blank.
74. Fixed the bug where the paste and move commands wouldn't work in the tile selector if the far right column was part of the original copy selection.
75. Added a new tool to the tile editor: move. This allows you to slide the tile around with the mouse instead of the arrow keys (though they still work). Using the right mouse button causes the tile to slide without wrapping (moving the tile away from the border leaves the edge pixels as color 0).
76. Now, holding a mouse button inside of the zoomed tile edit window locks the mouse to the window, preventing you from accidently wandering outside of it.
77. Added the ability to slide tiles in the tile selector. Holding down the alt key while hitting an arrow key in the tile selector will slide the pixels in rectangular selections of tiles as a single group (whether or not the rectangular selection is forced because of the rectangle selection mode). This makes repositioning a multi-tile object easy, as well as being able to redistribute an object over a different number of tiles.
78. Changed the keyboard behavior in the Mac OS X port. Now, the Control key is replaced with the Command key (so, Control-Left is now Command-Left) to make it more like other Mac OS X applications. This is due to the fact that on one-button mouse systems, the right mouse button is emulated by holding down the Control key while clicking the mouse button.
79. Fixed the bug where the 'b' cheat key wouldn't give you any super bombs, though the bombs cheat menu would.
80. Fixed the bug where doing a 'Save As' in ZQuest wouldn't update the quest name in the titlebar in windowed mode.
81. Fixed the bug where horizontal and vertical flips would affect all tiles within a striped selection, even if the selection method was set to rectangle.
The new transitions can be seen here. It is a 563K animated gif which shows all 4 transitions. If, for some reason, it doesn't play, try viewing it from this html file. You may have to save the gif file to your hard drive in order to view it if these 2 methods don't work.
Zelda Classic 2.11 Beta 2
1. Fixed Gleeok's hp (was too high).
2. Fixed the bug where slashing (or using the hammer or wand) on one side of the screen could affect things on the other side of the screen.
3. Made the game data dynamic (for security purposes).
4. ZC no longer writes it's temp files to the root of drive C. Now, it stores them in the same directory that ZC is housed.
5. ZGP.DAT is now called QST.DAT.
6. The tile format has been reworked. At the moment, the change should be transparent to the user. However, this change will allow for new tile formats in the future (256-color tiles, 16-bit tiles, true-color tiles, etc.).
7. The bug with ZC not remembering the correct quest dir has been fixed (it would change whenever you switched directories to load a quest file in ZC).
8. The bug where ZC would only look in the quest directory to find a quest has been fixed. Now, it looks at the location where the save file says that the quest is located.
9. The quest loading progress box no longer shows the percent done for the tile reader. This makes quest loading somewhat faster.
10. Sprites now have a Z variable. This allows for expansion for new enemies (and other things) that will be able to jump and fly. Although a few enemies already do this (tektites and peahats, for instance), the calculation for them is faked. The new method makes jumping/flying easier to do from a programmer's prospective.
11. Eyeball combo calculations are only done when an eyeball combo is encountered. This should speed up screen rendering by a few fps.
12. The year has been fixed in the title screens.
13. The key name display in ZC key dialogs has been fixed.
14. The wrong text background in the ZC key grabber has been fixed.
15. Fixed the issues with the mouse jumping to the wrong location when when you move off the ZQuest window in scaled windowed mode.
16. Fixed the bug where SPC files would stutter when paused instead of going silent.
17. Fixed the bug where enemies don't drop clocks anymore.
18. Fixed the bug (oversight?) where you couldn't adjust Link's walk style (2-frame or 3-frame) in ZQuest.
19. Fixed the bug where some older quests would freeze on the starting DMap.
20. Fixed the bug where some of the enemies would be wrong in old quests.
21. Fixed the bug where double-clicking a combo in the master combo list would only edit the combo if it were on the first combo page.
22. Fixed the bug where deleting a screen was not counted as a change in ZQuest, so ZQuest would not ask to save if that was the only thing done before exiting.
23. Fixed the bug where non-MIDI songs would stutter if the game were paused (with the 'F3', 'F4', 'p', or 'a' keys).
24. Fixed the bug where selecting 'Stop tunes" from the Etc menu wouldn't uncheck the 'Lost Woods' option.
25. Music playing is stopped now when MIDIs is selected from the Quest menu.
26. ZQuest can now play the alternate music types that ZC handles (mp3, ogg, spc, it, xm, s3m, and mod).
27. Renamed 'Play MIDI' in the Etc menu to 'Play music' to correspond with the above change.
28. Fixed the year in the end game credits.
29. Fixed the tile import/export.
30. Now, changing the title screen for ZC causes it to reset so that the correct title shows immediately. Before you had to either wait for the title to cycle through once or manually reset the game.
31. Alternative music now continues to play while the game is paused (with the p key, not the Start button).
32. Fixed the bug where the Triforce init settings weren't being saved by ZQuest.
33. Fixed the bug where the Triforce init settings weren't being used in ZC.
34. Fixed the bug where a DMap Intro on the starting DMap could freeze the game.
35. Misalignment arrows now show up on disabled screens.
36. Pasting a map screen now causes the color to change immediately (before, you had to switch screens and then return to see the correct colors).
37. The 'Heart Container' room type is now called the 'Red Potion or Heart Container' room type.
38. There is a new List Combos Used (shortcut key is `) under the Tools menu. This will show you a list of all of the combos used on the current screen.
39. Deleting a screen now counts as a change, so ZQuest will ask about saving when you try to quit after doing a screen delete.
40. Panel 4 now shortens the room string when displaying it so it doesn't run into the combo scroller.
41. The Catch All caption and value now match up with the other captions and values in panel 4.
42. The room types are now alphabetized.
43. The screen palette dialog now has a dropdown list of the screen palettes with the palette names instead of a numeric entry box.
44. The < and > keys (you have to hold the shift key down) will now flip through the 256 possible screen palettes.
45. Changing the message more x and y variables now counts as a change in ZQuest.
46. When deleting a message string in ZQuest, the scring is shortened so it will fit in the confirmation dialog.
47. When deleting a message string in ZQuest, the End Game string value is updated if necessary.
48. Fixed the bug where there would sometimes be random characters appearing at the end of a message string in panel 4 and in the confirm string delete dialog.
49. The DMap number in the Edit DMap dialog titlebar is now correct (before, it was 1 number too low).
50. Going to the MIDI editor now stops music playback in ZQuest.
51. If a screen doesn't have a message string associated with it, it is now shown as (None) instead of (none) on panel 4, to make it match up with the other items there.
Edit/Delete Message
52. Direct Timed warps. Still uses the side warp and is controlled via the screen data dialog. Difference is, there's now a screen flag called 'Direct Timed warp' that, when checked, saves Link's position onto the new screen when warped. Custom bosses should be easier now, although there are a few more things that need to be worked on to make things more versatile.
53. New quest rule: 'Combo cycling on layers' Incorporates code that allows combos on layers to cycle in the game engine. Properties don't take effect (as usual), but I assume it'd be useful for certain animations as well as changes in collision.
54. Fixed the bug where the dungeon progress maps would not save correctly.
55. New quest rule: 'Full Priority Damage Combos'. When checked, damage combos will ALWAYS take effect over any other combo if you walk between two different combo types. If this poses a potential problem, an effort will be made to give more flexibility to the user for determining priorities of combo types.
56. New screen flag: Secrets disable timed warps. basically, when a secret is triggered on a screen with this flag enabled, any time warp set up for the screen will be automatically nulled. This is mostly a custom boss convinience, as it will allow the user to assure that whatever happens after a boss is 'hit' won't be interrupted by the time warp.
57. THE MIDI BUG HAS BEEN FIXED Don't ask me how, don't even ask me why the bug occured at all. All I can confirm to everyone was that it was indeed an Allegro problem.
58. The first iteration of a new ZQuest feature: Preview Mode
Tired of setting up combo cycling and placing secrets, closing ZQ, opening up ZC, testing out the screen, finding a small bug, closing ZC, opening ZQ, and making that quick fix, wasting 3-5 minutes on a problem that should've taken 10 seconds to fix? Then Preview mode is the feature for you. When enabled in ZQ, it allows you the chance to see the effects of the more dynamic elements of a quest screen. made an elaborate system of tiered secret flags? Simply enable Preview mode, press 'S', and see the secrets trigger right before your eyes. Set up combo cycling for an elaborate boss? Enable Preview mode, press C, and watch the combos animate and cycle through each other, checking to see if it was done correctly. tired of having to go to the tile warp/side warp menu every time you want to check a warp? Go into preview mode, press 1 or 2 (for tile and side respectively) to easily warp between screens. Wanna easy way to test timed warps? Simply enable preview mode, press 3, and on screens with timed warps defined watch it cycle to the next screen without pressing anything. Wanna check your animations, secrets, and combo cycling again? Press 'R' to revert the screen to it's original form. Finally, 'F' will freeze the animations, allowing use of 'A' to advance frame by frame. 'Q' and 'W' also work, allowing you to see the changes to combo properties and walkability in real-time.
It's still somewhat rough, and only operates using the keyboard keys. Eventually, I want preview mode to become more functional as well as have a more usable interface. The goal regardless is to minimize the amount of time spent switching between ZC and ZQ when building your quest, allowing you to focus all your play-testing on balancing, progression of game play, and flow of execution.
59. New security measures: To prevent cheating and stealing of passwords, several security measures were taken, one of which is the heavy encryption of the quest password. In fact, DN did such a good job that not even I can see off-hand what the password to a quest is. (and from what I can see, DN didn't allow anyway for us to do that). However, a backdoor has been provided for those who forgot their passwords. When loading a quest and typing in the password, a challenge hash will appear. If given to one of us developers, we'll be able to provide a 'backdoor' password (all dependent on the original quest password) for one-time entry that will give the opportunity for the quest maker to regain access. Make sure this works correctly, and that all existing cheating programs don't work.
60. New BS-style subscreens! These aren't complete, though DN is working hard on them. Try out the four different styles when editing a quest in ZQ.