The Legend of Zelda: Trials of the Gods

So, yeah, I totally forgot I had this account.... Anyways, I posted this on AGN, too:




Ok, so this is my new project. It started off as just an idea for a difficulty setting on a quest, but it kinda mutated. As it stand now, the game forces you to choose one of four paths, which each lead you on a slightly different quest, with different enemies, dungeons, and secrets. it took me a while, but I finally finished the first demo. Special thanks to Zim for the scripts he provided.

I bit of a bit more than i could chew, originally, but I've revamped the quest, and cleaned it up, considerably. You are Link, a young janitor for a local temple. But on your 18th birthday, you are called to undergo a trial, given by the gods.
Quest description:
11 Dungeons (3 completed as of demo V2.0)
Large overworld (approximately 60% completed as of V2.0)
Mix of play styles, some dungeons are more puzzle based, some more action based, and some in between.

You can download the most recent demo (V3.0), for ZC 2.5, here

Here are some screenshots:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...s/zelda029.pnghttp://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...s/zelda028.png
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...s/zelda031.pnghttp://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...zelda030-1.png
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...s/zelda032.pnghttp://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...zelda033-1.png
Sorry, if you don't like the classic tileset, with the amount of work involved, I figured it best to not have to worry about making tiles and layering (There is still *Some layering, but it's minimal).

Anyways, the demo goes up through level 1 for Courage, Power and Wisdom, and through level 3 for balance. Please let me know if you encounter any bugs, have any suggestions, or if you just think it's lame, I'm extremely open to suggestion.


TESTERS (Could always use more, too):
Gouanaco
My dad


CHANGELOG:


V1.0 (4/30/13):
Initial reliease

V1.1 (4/30/13)
-Fixed south door in "Temple Interior"
-Fixed DMap issue preventing locked door in "Temple Interior"
-Added enemies to the Death Mountain (Balance) area.

V1.2 (5/1/13)
-Fixed warp return squares in water temple
-Fixed secret items not appearing in caves
-Fixed under combos in Forest (Balance)
-Fixed blue ring positioning (Balance)
-Fixed south side warp in Lost Woods (All)
-Bomb Bag (Small) and Bomb Bag (Medium) no longer allow you to carry Super Bombs.
-Fixed various DMap oversights (wrong map type)
-The guy in the "Water Tribe Domain" area who tells you the location of Lake Hylia now correctly says it's in the southwestern area of Hyrule, rather than my previous error of having it say "Southeastern"

V1.21 (5/3/13)
-Set strings to wrap around text boxes.
-Set floors to darker tiles in Intro temple (Temple Interior) and Level 9 entrances. (Strings were hard to read)
-Moved warp return positions closer to their tiles in Forest Temple and Forbidden Forest
-Revamped Zora's River, Hyrule Field and Forest maps to fit together better (making a map to be released with the quest, once finished)

V1.3 (5/6/13)
-Fixed string issues that resulted from the last time I fixed string issues
-Fixed warp return points
-Added lava, and pitfall scripts,
-Enemies will no longer drop Arrows or Bombs if you don't have the Quiver or Bomb Bag
-Quiver and Bomb Bag place Wooden Arrows and Bombs into your inventory on pickup.
-Recolored Level 3 palette.
-Added some additional secrets on the overworld.
-Mild recoloring on the overworld
-Added Fire Tribe area to Death Mountain.
-Expanded the overworld to give you a little more freedom.
-General clean up things, you probably won't notice.

V2.0 (5/13/13):
-Cut significant portions of the game out (reprinted maps for the now-defunct paths)
-Added more secrets
-Increased puzzle difficulty in the water temple
-Nerfed a bunch of enemies that were way too strong
-Custom subscreen designed
-Added Wind and Ice tribe areas (incomplete)
-Adjusted a number of item sprites.
-double-checked all secret tiles, warps and warp returns (PLEASE let me know if I missed any)

V3.0 (8/17/13):
-Changed subscreen, removed a large number of items.
-Remade "Keys of Balance" into "swords of balance"
-Added scripts for upgrade shops, magic container pieces, OoT-style Farore's WInd,elemental weapons and elemental damage
-Added more of the overworld
-Added more secrets
-Decreased enemy difficulty
-Adjusted dungeons to account for items no longer available.

CURRENT PROGRESS:
Overworld completion level: 60% (Or, thereabouts, how bout you look at the map and see for yourself?)
Dungeon completion level: 3/10
Secret placement: 42 (couldn't tell you completion level, cuz I have no idea what the final number will be)
Heart containers: 3/9
Magic containers:3/9
HC Pieces: 7/12
MC Pieces: 7/12

KNOWN BUGS:

Blizzard Hammer is non-functional currently (shouldn't be an issue, considering you can't get the hammer until level 6, and I haven't even gotten to making level 4, yet.)

I've got a question to anyone who has been playing the quest so far (if that even applies to anyone on this site, that is): Should I keep it the way it is, or consolidate it down to one, more focused path that I can spend more time perfecting it? I ask because, honestly, it's an insane amount of work having to build all these maps over and over, many of them being nearly identical, and I'm not feeling that the idea is working as well in practice as it did in my head, so maybe it would be best to change tactics and go for something that is a little less work (at least from a tedious, repetitive standpoint) and a bit more story driven. So, any thoughts on the matter?

I haven't really spent any substantial amount of time playing anyone's quests since Peteo's Megaman Wily Revenge, but upon looking at the quest shots it seems like a decent quest so far, and the multi-path idea does seem neat.. I would rather actually play a quest that is longer altogether though, so maybe consolidating these maps into one game might be a thing worth considering. My opinion on games that are shorter but with alternate routes is that they are good, but all in all it's not really any different than playing a linear game. You could, maybe, put the Power course after the Wisdom course, and set all the enemies in the Power portion with higher HP and MP, and then Link would need a higher level sword upgrade for that portion, and make them played consecutively, or maybe even give Link the freedom to go back to the base level of where he starts and be able to choose any of the paths over again, making it possible to pick the harder course first, but pert near impossible if he does so, to pick a balanced course first, complete only half of it to rack some Heart Containers, then go back to the base and start on the Power Course.
In fact I've been telling myself I was going to indulge in checking out some of these quests people have been spending a long time on to make any time now and now that I have pc controllers I don't have an excuse anymore.. So I'm going to download this demo and take some days (which hopefully doesn't turn into months) playing with some of these.

Well, the way it's currently set up, it locks you into the path you choose, and you pick your path at almost the beginning (My dad says the balance path is unwinnable, I say it's just REALLY freaking hard... well, actually, it is unwinnable, but that's only because there's a side warp bug after level 2 that I haven't gotten around to fixing, actually another good reason to condense it down, most of my bugs come from having 4 nearly identical maps, so I lose track sometimes of what has or hasn't been done on a specific map). I really like the idea, actually, but I think it's just too much work for me to do alone. If I consolidate it, I think I can make it better all around, then maybe I can try to get a team together to work on the different paths idea for my next project, split the work, so that each person does one path's dungeons (like get someone really good with puzzles to do wisdom, the best enemy editor for power, etc) so that the work is split up, and hopefuully quite a bit more varied.

UPDATE: I finished condensing the quest down and have released Demo V2.0

UPDATE: After 3 months and 4 days of no news whatsoever, I bring you an update: Demo version v3.0 is out!

Schweet, I haven't checked this out yet. Downloading...

Ah, there's a few bugs you should know about, then, they're all listed in the thread for this quest on PureZC, very minor ones. A continue bug on the volcano summit, a subscreen bug on a minigame, a couple small enemy bugs, nothing game breaking as far as I know, and I'll have a bugfix for this demo later tonight, just waiting to make sure there isn't anything else major.

Here's the other thread:
http://www.purezc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=59312

EDIT: I just uploaded the bugfix, so it'll be available in a few hours

So, yeah, my push blocks in the Water Temple got all screwed up, so I had to add another fix to the demo. But, barring any new bugs that show up (there shouldn't be any, I believe, considering at least one of the testers has reached the end of level 3 without incident, as of the most recent bugfix, so...) the next release will include level 4!

EDIT: and there is now a discussion topic that might make that last statement a complete and utter lie, go weigh in here:
http://www.purezc.net/index.php?page=topics&id=271