"Link and Zelda: Panoply of Calatia" released on the Quest Database

Link and Zelda: Panoply of Calatia on the ZeldaClassic.com Quest Database

Download the Panoply of Calatia Support Pack (on Dropbox)
Download the Panoply of Calatia Support Pack (on ZeldaClassic.com)
(Includes the Enhanced Music soundtrack, a full Instruction Manual booklet, Secret Guides, and the original script files. The music will not fully work unless you put the Enhanced Music files in the same directory with the quest!)

Download updated files for the Support Pack
(This contains an improved Seashell guide and some scripts that were updated after the first release.)

http://i.imgur.com/252JWdy.png
Link and Zelda embark on an adventuresome quest in the Land of Calatia to rescue Hyrule's King and Calatia's Queen from the dastardly fire warrior Militron!

This quest features a character-switching system, and many, many scripted items, some based on later Zelda games, and some reimagined or new. The primary emphasis is on exploration and item puzzles!


Difficulty:
In terms of combat, the challenge level is meant to be medium/low, with a gradual increase, but there are adjustable settings (and optional items) to make the game easier or harder, however you prefer. There's also a bunch of guides including in the support pack if you get stuck on some of the harder puzzles, or if you can't find some of the secrets- it's all up to you how you want to play!


Inspirations:
I tried to sort of combine everything I loved about Zelda II, A Link to the Past, and certain elements from Link's Awakening- the kind of stuff I always wanted to see in ZC that it wasn't able to do before scripting. This is a quest where you can release a Bee (from LTTP) to fight a Moby (from Zelda II), for example. Things like Bow-wow (LA), the Switch Hook (OoA), a note-by-note Flute (based on OoT), the Spinner (TP), a Parachute Leaf (WW), and even the Beetle (SS) are all in this quest- and many more. I also completely redesigned the Ladder, which is a manually-used button item now.


For variety of items, I think the most inspiring Zelda games were actually the Oracles games, since they had excellent puzzles. For puzzles, I took a little bit of inspiration from The Lost Vikings, though my style is fairly different. In terms of having lots and lots of inventory options, I also took some inspiration from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and my partner system is more than a little inspired by Portrait of Ruin, too.


Story:
I wanted to keep the story simplistic and brief (much more succinct than this post). There are very few cases of multiple-line dialogue anywhere in the quest, and most cut scenes focus more on actions than words. However, there is also a scrolling intro, and the game is meant to be a simple little sequel a while after the events of Zelda II. The full introduction story is inside the Instruction Manual Booklet (in the Support Pack).


Game design:
My other goal was to give the player more options, ways to go to, more different types of abilities to use, and generally have more complex puzzles than standard Zelda fare. There aren't a lot of standard block puzzles, nor true enemy gauntlets; instead, you've got to climb all around with different tools, moving objects, holding pressure switches, switching places, and all that kind of stuff. However, there's also a lot of optional sidequest content, with several minigames, a trading sequence, and secret seashells.


In short, it's a complicated quest that's more about experimenting with a million items and the character switch mechanics than anything else, but it also has a lot of thematic tie-ins to Zelda II.

Advice:

• There's usually more than one thing you can do next
• There's often more than one way to solve a puzzle
• Experimentation with your growing inventory of items is vital
• Most secrets have some kind of hint- keep an eye out for little oddities. There may also be other contextual hints.
• Although the game is nonlinear, most of it is set up such that you usually have something you need before you get to a place where you'd need it for anything weird.
• Don't forget about your old items- they often come back around to be useful again, or even required again, by the end of the quest!

I'm open to answering any questions anyone might have about this game, although that may result in spoilers. I have also left the quest un-passworded so that anyone may edit it and experiment with it's resources, though most of my scripting is kind of confusing and badly organized probably, so this may not be helpful. (I apologize if I'm not around very consistently however, but I will follow this thread!)

I uploaded your support file to the database when I approved the quest.
The issue with this, is if you ever need to update that file, I'll have to do it for you.

I did this though so it doesn't just go missing one day and wouldn't be available for download with the quest.

Oh cool, thank you! I didn't even notice that link went to Zeldaclassic.com instead of dropbox now, but I appreciate it; I'd previously thought about trying to mirror it somewhere but hadn't thought of a good way on my own. It's nice to know it'll be preserved (and publically available) somewhere else too now.

(By the way, is there a filesize limit on the database? That was the main reason I kept it separate, instead of combining them when I first uploaded).

I don't know if I'll find anything else broken enough that I decide to update it again (it's gone through two patches since I released it in December, but I'm hoping I covered basically everything, since I had a lot of beta testing help before release); there's like, 6 text files (most of them slightly-modified scripts) in the second zip file I linked above, and that's it for new stuff. If you'd like me to make an updated all-in-one-zip I could, though?

Either way, thanks : )

I think that @War Lord set it to 30MB.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZoriaRPG

I think that @War Lord set it to 30MB.

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I do believe this is true.
I was toying with the idea of a seperate quest add on pack if uploading a quest. However, I don't think we ever came to a conclusion on potential max size.
Are all current ones less than 100? More?

Play as Link and Zelda? What is this madness? :)

I'll have to check out this quest when I get some spare time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by War Lord

I do believe this is true.
I was toying with the idea of a seperate quest add on pack if uploading a quest. However, I don't think we ever came to a conclusion on potential max size.
Are all current ones less than 100? More?

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Well, the real question, is how big of a database do you feel that you can handle. If you own the hardware, and can put a 1TB RAID system in place, you could support 200MB per package and may never need to care; but then, it could be a bandwidth concern. The average expansion pack is 100MB to 200MB, but beyond that, it may contain copyrighted music, or other things. I;d say, if the expansion includes original media, allow it; as there are far fewer of those, and this limits both your liability legally, and it reduces your server overhead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DarkDragon

Play as Link and Zelda? What is this madness? :)

I'll have to check out this quest when I get some spare time.

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You're going to like this one. it has a lot of gameplay variety, and bizarre items that can be manipulated (in intentionally ...gamebreaking is not the right word... sequence-breaking is better) ways. Some of the stuff I;ve been adding, is specifically to help support scripted quests of this magnitude.

This quest is bad-ass! I just randomly popped in a few days ago and saw this post. I haven't messed around with ZC or played any new quests in many years, but this looked intriguing enough for me to install ZC. I am thoroughly entertained. Thank you!

I think I'll give this quest a whirl. I haven't played much ZC this year; it's good to take a break from things sometimes. :)

I love these types of off-the-wall quests. Is there any bonus for completing the game without the sword? Has anyone done it yet? I will accept your challenge. ^_^

Thanks! I hope it continues to entertain. It's a big weird heap of mechanics ideas I tried to cohere into a flexible, not-completely-broken game with mixed results, basically.

I've found a few more bugs that are in the present version though, so I might be releasing another minor update (to Version 1.3) before too much longer. The way my scripts work, updates are usually friendly with old save files, though.

As far as completing it without the sword, there's no real reward or advantage, but you can find the sword in a special alternate location (which is normally an empty room) near the end when it finally becomes necessary. Personally, having tested it out, I think the game is less fun without the sword, but, I like the idea because of Zelda 1 allowing that, and because it helped me make sure to keep the rest of the game a little more flexible.

Hi! I've been playing this quest and strongly enjoying it, but there are some issues I had with the temple I just finished that I'd like to bring up while they're fresh in my mind. I hope I don't come off as too harsh; this quest is polished to a professional sheen and I'd love to see you make more stuff, whether it's for Zelda Classic or an original game, in the future.

Spoiler: show

I liked Nakago (palace? temple? shrine?) a fair amount. I thought it was clever that in the same breath you give the player the ability to walk on water (which would have made the raft obsolete), you also offer the raft some new functionality. Very smart! My issues come a bit from the level design, namely...


http://i.imgur.com/ZWa6Rgt.png
This screen right here. I did eventually figure it out, no help, but I came very close to asking (and I did check the puzzle solution guide, though it lacked the answer). I'm not entirely sure this is a fair puzzle, but it's mainly because it requires the player to figure out multiple different things, and there are external elements that obfuscated the answer for me.

In terms of things the player has to understand for this puzzle to come together:
1. When they're returning to the player, boomerangs can travel through the blocks that nothing else can travel through.
2. Boomerangs that are in mid-flight can have their course altered if the player character is swapped.

These two things alone probably wouldn't require too much of a leap to figure out with the right level design, but there are a few other things that confused me when I was trying to figure this puzzle out. For one, there's a spider crawling along the room's ceiling when the player enters this screen. In retrospect, I now know that the purpose of the ladder on the far right is to position Link/Zelda such that the boomerang will arc towards them when they swap, but, initially, I assumed it was there for taking out the spider. As well as that, the switch on the far left kept making me question what it was supposed to do. Again, after the fact, I know that it refills the water, but I was really confused by it at first because it didn't appear to do anything except make my HUD flash. There's also a door not too far off to the right that appears to do nothing, which had me thinking that maybe it somehow had to do with this confusing puzzle. Another point of contention is that I don't think the mechanic of separating Zelda and Link is used often enough for it to spring immediately to mind as a tool for solving puzzles unless the level design makes it really clear (and, again, the new ideas that need to be learned here sort of muddy the waters in that regard). In fact, I think the reason it occurred to me at all is because when I stepped on the left-side switch, the parts of my HUD that would flash were the current player character's name and the icon for leaving behind the non-player character.

I'm certain that not all players would struggle with this as much as I did, especially ones who have the concept of "boomerang goes through bad block when moving backwards" more thoroughly ingrained than I do, but it's been my most major sticking point with the game thus far. In the end, I felt like the main reason I eventually figured out the trick to it was because the boomerang is the dungeon item and it had only been used once to this point, so I had to factor that in (after remembering that I could separate Link and Zelda) and I ended up putting together a "what if" sort of thought that pushed me to the solution. It's a shame, too - the core idea of this puzzle is really clever, it just took way, way too long to click with me.


There are a few other things I wasn't really sure about, but they didn't drive me quite as crazy as the above puzzle.


http://i.imgur.com/RHHyQGR.png
This complaint is a bit more minor, but earlier in my exploration of the dungeon (before I got the water-walking boots), I went back and forth through the top door here a couple times to get my bearings. The problem with this ended up being that getting back up there after you've solved the puzzle is a bit on the tedious side. This dungeon is a bit sluggish in general until the boots are acquired, since you have to repeatedly dive into the menu for the ladder, although I will admit that the payoff of free movement in the water is somewhat worth it.


There's also one of those orange/blue flip switches in this dungeon and it affects exactly one set of blocks that the player doesn't know about for a while. This sort of just feels like it's there arbitrarily. It's not like getting to it if the blue blocks are flipped the wrong way is a big deal, I'm just not sure there's much point.


Also, with respect to that one screen that has a Boo in it: probably not very hard to avoid if you're thinking carefully, but once it's on top of you, it can knock you down your ladder repeatedly and there didn't seem to be a way to ward it off, which got pretty frustrating.

I have a lot of other thoughts about this quest, mainly positive ones, but this particular dungeon had a lot of hiccups that bothered me. With that said, I still think this is a fantastic game so far. It takes a lot of the things I liked about many of the earlier Zelda games while also cutting a lot of the fat and having a difficulty that's much more to my taste. Amazing work!

edit: also...

Spoiler: show

http://i.imgur.com/SHdr85C.png
Was I supposed to get the key in this room by using the beetle and jumping around a lot?

Never mind - I figured it out and beat the dungeon without grabbing any keys from the shop. I hate to say it, but I'm pretty annoyed about the fact that one of the keys was hidden beneath an armos in the desert. I'm glad I was at least able to finagle about and do most of the dungeon without getting that key, but the only real hint to its existence is the one from Impa at the start of the dungeon, and I had initially thought that that was referring to the other two keys in the outside area. The word "entrance" is used as well, and I suppose that could have helped if I had read it the right way, but the way I'd interpreted it was to mean that there were multiple ways into the "inside" portion of the dungeon from the "outside" portion of the dungeon. To be somewhat fair, though, you get into this dungeon to begin with by going through multiple layers of armos, so there is some prep for that concept, and that's probably the reason why I even thought "haha wouldn't that be crazy if the key I'm missing is under one of these armos statues" after I accidentally left the dungeon from the top screen. I guess the fact that I did do it without help suggests that it's certainly possible, but that's one that should really have been in the puzzle guide.

All that said: fantastic dungeon. Loved everything else about it.