How do you do custom bosses?

[EIHoppe]

Now please, no flaming, but I really wanted to put custom bosses into DoD, but I just didn't know how. Could somebody please kindly tell me? Thanks a lot, I will be eternally grateful!

[*b*]

well, here's an idea I had, make a wall to look like a boss, and have let and right aquamentus' look like hands, so it looks like the body has arms all around you

[itschris]

C-Dawg would probably be a better person to explain this, but it basically involves using layers, pits, regular enemies, and animated tiles. Someone else with more knowledge in this area can explain it in more detail. :)

[Immortal Warrior]

Yeah.. depending on what you want to do, it can either be quite simple to set up or damnably difficult, for example, I'm making my first custom boss at the moment, and it's looking like its gonna use a whole map when it's finished -_-...
Like itschris said... C-Dawg is probably the most knowlegable person here on this subject

[Nick]

I have some knowledge with making them, but C-Dawg is the greatest expert with them.

Basically, you will need several screens (maybe a whole map), know how to use layers, know about pits, and stuff like that.

You would start off by planning out what you want your boss to do. You would then make screens around this stuff. Using layers, you can "place" the boss in the room. You put damage combos around the boss and whatever projectiles it fires. All of this is done with warping to different screens and layers.

It is hard to explain. C-Dawg (as countless people have said) is probably better at explaining it. You will have to give up the boots if you have them in your quest.

[Kairyu]

Well, here's a start for you. We'll make... Mr. Bob the Meany Monster. For this demo, assume Link has equipment from... oh, the average player of the origional Zelda at dungeon 3-4. And they don't have the boots.

Here are the steps:
1: Find/create an image for Mr. Bob. Look at sprite websites or learn to draw good, and place the image in your quest with the grab function. Mr. Bob should be about 25-50% of one Zquest screen, since we're just starting out. Make or grab a pallette for Mr. Bob, or change the colors for his tiles. Animate him if you want, but that's just extra stuff.

2: Create a screen with Mr. Bob at one of the edges of the screen. Make sure that the area around him and all the other tiles on the screen are blank. Not black, BLANK. As in, the little [X], not the red square. Set it up as a layer over the screen you want to have for the battle with Mr. Bob. Make sure that Link either can't walk up to Mr. Bob, or that Mr. Bob is covering up damage combos.

3: Set the Secret Tile 0 for the screen to a Pit combo that looks just like your floor tiles (And not an actual pit.) Cover every tile that Link can walk on with Flag 16, and copy the screen. Use "Paste All" to make 7 copies of your screen, maybe from left to right on the top row of the Dmap he's on. Each screen represents one "Life". So if you do the left-to-right thing, try naming the Dmap "Boss Life Bar" or something. You can wait until after step 5 to copy if you want, it will make it easier to set some of this up anyway.

4: On the first screen, create a little 1x1 Pen underneath Mr. Bob's weak point (Head, arms, nose, whatever.) Make sure Mr. Bob covers the center of the pen, blocking anything under it. Use Enemy Placement flag 1 on the Pen's center. Set Enemy # 1 as a Stalfos or Gibdo. Set the "Enemies-Secret" rule up. Now, when Link smacks the weak point enough, he will warp to the next "Life" of Mr. Bob.

5: Place one or two statues somewhere under Mr. Bob. Eyeballs, hands, ears, whatever you want shooting at Link. Make sure the Statues shoot fire rule is on. If you feel sadistic, cancel the fireballs and set up the enemy "Rock" to fall from the top of the screen (maybe two if you feel extra sadistic.). That would be Mr. Bob throwing stones at you. Now Link actually has to work at killing Mr. Bob.

6: Now to work on the next screen of the fight. This time, Mr. Bob will be lazy and throw enemies at you to do his job for him. Take out any enemies under Mr. Bob, and use Enemy placement flags to put enemies in Link's half of the room. Preferably something Non-flying, like Moblins, Stalfos, or Armos (These are actually kinda nice for summoning because they flash before appearing.). Draw a nice big wall and place it between Link and Mr. Bob. Now you can't hit Mr. Bob, so Link must first wipe the floor with the summonned enemies.

7: Alternate the next few screens with these two attacks, but save the final screen. Mr. Bob will go out with a bang.

8: On the last screen, setup Mr. Bob's "Weak Point" attack style. However, instead of a Keese, set up a Red Lynel in the "Pen". Now Link is not only attacked by Rocks or Fireballs, but by Mr. Bob's weak point itself. Set the warp for this screen to take you to a room connected to the Triforce room with a Heart container in it (And a set of tiles for a dead Mr. Bob, if you wanna be fancy. Othewise, just make him dissapear.)

There you go, Mr. Bob is now done. This isn't a very fancy boss, but it is custom, and you now know how to make them. Mess around with various things. Make traps. Lazer beams. Unescapable Lazer Beams of Death. Swinging arms. Aquamentus-turned-hands. Magnetic attractions/repelations (Is that a word?).
Just see what you end up with.


Edit: You don't NEED to give up the boots. Just make them ultra secret items which protect you from certain attacks used by bosses, or just don't use Damage tiles on the Custom bosses.

[C-Dawg]

Very nice explaination, Kariyu.

The people in this thread so far have all brought up very important points about custom bosses. For starters, realize there is no hard-code for custom bosses. You can't just ask someone "how do I make a custom boss?" and expect the same simple answer you get when you ask "how do I put an item in a chest?". Making a custom boss is just stringing together a series of specail effects... and there are innumerable ways to do these. To get you started, here's what I'd consider.

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First- What do you want your boss to do? Get a general idea of what you want, and THEN start thinking about how to bend the
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Second - Decide if you want your boss to be mobile or immobile. engine to your will.
This is probably the most important design decision you can make. If you want your boss to sit in one place and attack, then you can use missiles of various kinds. Otherwise, you're gonna have to rely on damage combos for your boss attacks.

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Third - How you handle your boss is really up to you, but there's a grab bag of common effects that make bosses possible.

BOSS ATTACKS
There are three ways to make your big bad boss attack. Firstly, you can use enemies, either as waves of underlings the boss sends out, or change the tiles to make enemies into projectiles. (Ie, make traps look like fireballs).
The second way is to pen in enemies under a layer, or use shooting statues to simulate the boss throwing enemy missiles your way.
Lastly, you can use damage combos and layers to draw in special enemy attacks like large beams, or just damage from the bosses body. Combine this with screen animation to make it worthwhile.

MAKING YOUR BOSS MOVE
Heres where things get interesting. First of all, ANIMATE YOUR BOSS'S TILES. I cant stress how much better a boss that blinks, breaths, flaps it's wings, or whatever, looks than one that just stands still. It's hard work to get a large critter animated, but do it. Even on screens where the boss isnt moving, it should still look like an enemy and not part of the background. If you're having trouble, the key is to animate body parts seperately and use layers to put them together.
Combo animation is all you need if you want the boss to sit still. If you want it to fly around the room, then you're gonna be using Screen Animation. This is a clunky but serviceable system, and essentially involves using pit combos to send the player through a sequence of rooms. Draw the boss or his attack in a different place on each screen, and violia. Make sure to move around your damage combos on each screen, too, so that the enemy's attack moves around. Also- dont forget to animate your boss even while it's moving with screen animation!! It helps detract from the choppy animation if the boss is still flapping it's wings or it's fireballs are still spinning when the player stops moving.

DAMAGING YOUR BOSS
At some point in your boss battle, you're gonna want to stop the tile animation and keep the player on one screen until he or she damages the boss. Make a particular part of the boss's attack sequence when it's vulnerable- maybe it stops to spit fireballs at you or whatever. When it comes to damaging the big lug, either use enemies under Layers (Like-Likes are nice because they are so hardy- use as many as you can fit under a layer to make a boss take a few blows. They also don't shoot back, so they act nicely as just damage-absorbers). If you're penning in monsters to act as damage absorbers, make sure you pen them in a STRAIGHT, ONE-TILE LINE. This way the player just has to hit on particular spot to cause damage; you don't want to make the player wonder why sometimes he hits the Grand Dragon in the head to hurt it, and sometimes in the arm.
You can also use weapon-triggered flags, if you prefer. These only take one hit to clear though, so you're gonna want to use a sequence of them, probably.

Either route you choose, the general idea is after the player triggers enough damage, an Enemies->Secrets flag is tripped and the floor changes to pit combos, sending the player to the next part of the battle.

BRANCHES

This is the part of making a boss that's gonna take the longest, and I have to give credit to Nick for pointing out the most general way to use these. Branches are a solution to a problem; namely, that using pit combos, you can only go through one set sequence of attacks per boss. This works, but it's a bit dull. How can we get around this limitation and have a boss do different things? We use side warps! There's a variety of ways to fenagle a side warp into the battle- maybe link is pushed back by wind, or he has to duck off the side of the screen to avoid an attack, or whatever. Nick's contribution was to notice that if we use stair warps for part of the pit warp menagire on the floor, we can send Link to the very side of a the next screen, under a layer, sealed on a convayer that pushes him immediatly off the screen and into a side warp. However you do it, using side warps lets you force Link to do something at a particular time in the battle- if he misses his chance, he has to go through the battle again. You can also pull some slick effects like the boss attacking in the direction Link is realtive to it, or grabbing him, whatever... any thing that depends on where Link stands on the screen.
The side effect to the Stairs-Convayer angle on this is that Link "disappears" for one screen, but as long as you mix up the direction of the convayer so that the player can't intentionally pause the battle while Link stands on it, he should just "blink" in and out, and this should be alright. Also, you cant use this method for screen animation, since Link won't stay in the position he was on the previous screen, like a pit combo would ensure.

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Fourth - Attitude!

This is an oft-overlooked part of making things in Zelda Classic, but adding personality to your bosses will add life to them the same it would to anything else. Have the boss taunt the player, maybe.. or shout explitives when it's hurt... and when it dies, dont just make it dissapear. Make yourself some explosion tiles (or if you wanna be really fancy, set up an animation as used in Secret of Mana to show a boss blowing up) and have some text to make sure the player sits and watches the boss die.

Remember, bottom line- you're doing a custom boss because it's harder and flashier to do than a normal boss, but also because this boss is necessary for the design of your quest. Why is the boss necessary? You should know! And the player should know, too. Have some interaction between Link and the baddie.

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Thats pretty much all there is too it. Custom bosses take a hella long time to construct, and eat up tremendous map space. But there's something very satisfying about playing a quest and coming up against the sort of enemy you'd see in LttP rather than something from Gorf.... get out there and be creative.

Also, this isn't written for beginners. You'll have to have a good handle on Zelda Classic in order to follow what I'm saying, and (gasp!) do some tile editing in order to pull off nice looking effects. But dont let that stop you! Get out there and spice up your quests, kids!

-C

PS : Kariyu, I'd really say you SHOULD give up the boots. Giving the player the boots, even as a super-secret item, means that the final boss cant use damage combos anymore... and you're gonna wanna make your final boss as flashy as possible, this WILL involve damage combos.... and you dont want there to be a way for the player to make him a pussy, do you?

-C

[Kairyu]

1: You misspelled my name. I don't really care, it's too hard to spell anyway really, but just letting you know.

2: I don't like the idea of giving out the boots. I don't, but I might think about it as a super-secret reward... for beating a room with 3 Red Bubbles, 3 Red Item Bubbles, 2 Gleeok 2-Four heads, and 2 Death Knights in the same room... with 4-damage combos surrounding the 4x4 set of tile Link can walk on, which, incidentally, are conveyors pushing Link off into the spikes. That'll deter most people, eh? I may just leave them out, though. But you CAN put them in.

3: I was wondering how you would do the Side-warp thing. Sounds sloppy, but it might be seen in a few of the custom bosses I make for my contest quest... hmm...

4: I have my NORMAL bosses taunt Link before the fight... one group of Wizzrobes (Mystic Ice Wizards...) tells him he "Sucketh far too greatly to defeat us". I haven't used profanity yet, though.

5: Am I the only one who considers Unescapable attacks neat? You have the boss prep for a big, flashy attack that Link can notice with his eyes closed, ears covered and nose severed, and then the boss creates a small sphere of 4-damage combos surrounded by unwalkable tiles. If I manage to insert Death as a custom boss in my quest, he's going to use a lot of these.... with advance warning, of course...

6: I can't think of a number six.

7: Check the end of Step one and Step two in your post.

[C-Dawg]

Originally posted by Kairyu


5: Am I the only one who considers Unescapable attacks neat?

No. They have their place. If the design calls for it... then make it so. Design is all.

-C

[Angrysnake]

I've already thought of some custom bosses which I'm gonna use (P.S, no stealing them!)

1. A knight who has two seperate parts. His upper body flys at you while the orb on his bottom half's waist fires lazers. You must hit the orb while he is detatched from his waist. and when he is together again, he throws lots of fire balls at you. Once you destroy the orb, the rest of him goes down with it.

2. Two burrowing catapillars that must be coaxed into colliding into one another to do damage.

3. A small vegetable-like thing that throws rocks and summons other smaller plant based enemies.

So, do you think it would be possible to make these bosses?