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Thread: Stagnant Waters

  1. #1
    Lynel Dart Zaidyer's Avatar
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    Stagnant Waters

    Over the past month, I've observed a disturbing trend in the Zelda Classic community: everything has grown dangerously and depressingly stagnant.

    With all of Zelda Classic's potential, especially the expanding potential of the new betas, I'm saddened to find that not only is it under-utilized, but is done so in unimaginative ways. We still see Link slogging his way through one water temple or forest temple or fire temple after another. We have approximately what, three or four decent and usable graphics sets in existence, despite that almost all of them cross over with one another in some way? Take a look at RPG Maker communities sometime. They have dozens.

    Ask yourselves: Why are we still able to count the number of truly innovative quests out there on one hand?

    Are quest makers that easily bored, or do they just suffer from a crippling lack of vision? Well, I'd say both of these things are true. Many authors with new and interesting ideas often shelf their work after a while and some even say "never again", like Exate, the pioneer of the original and shockingly decent Metroid quests. Many others continue to churn out retread after retread. And yes, even in the face of real, forward-thinking change that users have been asking for over the course of years, we are still faced with luddites who will actively complain about inane concerns of overcomplication.
    Neofirst in particular can be cited as the ultimate example here. With the Zelda Classic community united in one project, we could have had something really unique and special! Heck, I would have loved to see some awesome new graphics and cool ideas that have never been done before, like C-Dawg's marshmallow dungeon. So what did we get?
    Standard graphics pack, make some typical tweaks, toss in some tricks that everyone has done before, add your usual Forest Temple and Water/Fire dungeon, top off with a plot that comes across as someone's "epic" Zelda fanfic and ship with ZC by default. Congratulations, you've done nothing new or exciting. You've just made every quest ever.

    This sort of thinking is apparently entrenched so deep in the community psyche that it's causing more and more to leave, and turning off those who are discovering the game for the first time. Why is there only one Sabotage Dragoon? Why is there only one Metroid quest that doesn't suck?

    ZC enthusiasts need to be asking these questions. Otherwise, I fear what they may do to the future of such a wonderful creative tool. What will the history of the Internet have to say about Zelda Classic? Will it be "this was a fun program that let people make Zelda quests. Some of them were really great, but the rest were just like playing Nth quests or some kid's fanfic over and over and over and after a while nobody cared"? Or could it be "This thing started out as letting you make your own Zelda quests, but turned into something even cooler and went from Link killing Ganon in dungeons to stuff that's every bit as prolific as any new Nintendo game, Zelda or otherwise"?
    ~Dart Zaidyer

  2. #2
    Wizrobe Pineconn's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    I see what you mean. This is even found at the ZC website. It's, like, dead. It seems that nobody cares about it.

    My current quest, in my opinion, is decent. But the dungeons are the standard swamp, cave, forest, ice, water, desert, graveyard, and a new "sky" dungeon, though that idea came from Minish Cap's Palace of Winds (I believe it was called). The final is a lava dungeon. Sure, they are the standard Zelda dungeons, but what's in them is really what makes or break a quest, what really makes it stand out. That's why Shoelace's Hero of Dreams is excellent; the content, the puzzles.

    Plus, we all have lives. I have almost no time to work on my quest, so its release won't be for a few months.

    Also, we're all kind of lazy. There has been a few (maybe twice?) times when I haven't touched my quest for 2 weeks. I just get a little... bored. Making my quest is no longer "fun," but more of a "chore." (But it really is still fun, when I'm in the mood.)

    So, what's holding you back from making a tileset?
    My quests:
    End of Time - First quest, uses classic graphics (Help/discussion thread)
    Link to the Heavens - Second quest, uses Pure tileset (YouTube LP | Help/discussion thread)
    End of Time DX - Remake of my first quest (YouTube LP | Help/discussion thread)

  3. #3
    Wizrobe Yoshiman's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Originality is what keeps me tied to a quest. It's one of the reasons I finished "Mario's Insane Rampage" (c'mon, it was so weird you had to play it). It was an original idea. It wasn't the same old "Hey Link, go get the 8 Triforce pieces and rescue Zelda!"

    I really agree with your point. I'd really like to see a lot more original quests than the basic Zelda storylines. Using other video game characters is okay, but what would be really neat would have people make up their own characters and storylines.

    Which is what I'm doing for the quest I'm (lazily) working on. It has nothing to do with Zelda, and I'm trying to stray a bit from the standard formula (IE: go to the 8 elemental temples and find a "Triforce piece").

    Just because it's called "Zelda Classic" doesn't mean that the quest has to be Zelda.

  4. #4
    Robots in Disguise
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    Dark Nation's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Quote Originally Posted by Dart Zaidyer View Post
    [lots and lots of ranting about the low number of new/innovative quests]
    Fair enough. Although, once we add in all the quests you've submitted...
    Dart Zaidyer's quests at PureZC
    Dart Zaidyer's quests at ZeldaClassic
    ...we end up with the same number.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dart Zaidyer View Post
    Neofirst in particular can be cited as the ultimate example here. With the Zelda Classic community united in one project, we could have had something really unique and special! Heck, I would have loved to see some awesome new graphics and cool ideas that have never been done before, like C-Dawg's marshmallow dungeon. So what did we get?
    Standard graphics pack, make some typical tweaks, toss in some tricks that everyone has done before, add your usual Forest Temple and Water/Fire dungeon, top off with a plot that comes across as someone's "epic" Zelda fanfic and ship with ZC by default. Congratulations, you've done nothing new or exciting. You've just made every quest ever.
    So, things would be improved somewhat if we had used a new/completely different graphics pack? A reasonable request. Let's just use one of yours. Which one, though?
    Dart Zaidyer's graphics packs at PureZC

    Oh. Well, maybe just some nice loose tiles of yours.
    Dart Zaidyer's loose tiles at PureZC

    There we go. 4 submissions. 3 sets of Link tiles and a set of mini trees. All of which are "...standard [...], make some typical tweaks...". Still, though, I did find the trees to be interesting and quite useful. Would certainly give more room on the screen for movement as they are smaller than normal LttP trees.

    Perhaps you are focusing your attention on helping with NeoFirst, as it is a "united community project".

    9-26-05 (Tileset suggestion/quest purpose suggestion)
    9-27-05 (Graphics comment)

    2-27-06 (Music suggestion)
    2-28-06 (Tileset comment)
    2-28-06 (Tileset suggestion)
    3-1-06 (NeoFirst purpose comment/suggestion)
    3-3-06 (Tileset comment)

    8-24-06 (Subscreen submission)
    8-24-06 (Subscreen comment)
    8-24-06 (Vote)

    10 posts to the NeoFirst forum since its creation. Only 4 of those are actually suggestions and 1 is an actual submission. Perhaps you are making a unique dungeon to counteract all of the horrid staple dungeons you so despise.

    2-27-06 (ShadowTiger mentions your name in a quote of your third post listed above)
    9-26-05 (Freedom mentions your name in a quote of your first post listed above)

    So, if you are making any contributions to this "united community project", nobody has mentioned it in the forum.

    Having said all of that, I agree with your assessment of the state of things. The ZC community is growing a bit stagnant. However, other than standing on a soap box and pointing out questions that "ZC enthusiasts need to be asking", what are you doing to improve the situation? Questions are nice, but answers are better.

    "It is far easier to complain than to contribute." -Unknown
    "There is nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others." - Randal Graves
    "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." - Sydney J. Harris

  5. #5
    Octorok Imprisoned's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    I totally agree, everyone is like "ZOMG, now I know how to open SHUTTERS, I'm going to make a new quest! The name is going to be "Link Rescues Zelda by Getting 8 Triforce Pieces And Killing Ganon"! Wow! Excellent!!






    3 months later...

    Yaay. I... finished the 1st level... agh this is stupid, I'll just make a dungeon with all the triforces and ganon in the end... then I'll submit it... this is boring...

    3 years later...

    Hey.... whats this Zelda Classic? Oh ya its the questmaking program... well i dont remember how to open shutters but I'll just start making a looooong quest...

    Repeat "3 months later"

  6. #6
    chaos machine ZTC's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Back 6 years ago, I found out about ZC and decided to make my own 'awesome' quest. Fast forward 6 years later, and it still isn't done. Due to stuff in real life, I lost interest in Zquesting a couple a times, and I've found it hard to get back into. I really dunno if I have the time/energy to work with ZC anymore. (which is really sad) We really need solutions to this problem.

  7. #7
    On top of the world ShadowTiger's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Well, if we are going to do something about it, then ... I think that what we don't want to do is force people to do stuff. People will work at their own rate, and release whatever they see fit to. It's their own work, and their own permissions will apply.

    Do also remember that there's no money being exchanged whatsoever in ZC terms. If you want to see something amazing, PM people and ask them what they're doing. If you want them to do something, then ask them politely to do it, and find out if they can, and have the time to do so.

  8. #8
    Wizrobe C-Dawg's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Bear in mind, too, that building off of what is already done is a really efficent way to go about quest building. I don't think ZQuest's graphics have stagnated at all. What has happened is that the really good tiles get re-used and refined, and the old ones fall away. Look at the current best tileset, Dance of Rememberance. It combines the best of Pure, LttP, and a wide variety of other sources, ripped and custom. And it's a beautiful set to design with because of the care taken to set it up.

    Sabotage Dragoon is my attempt to do exactly what you're suggesting - start with a bare bones tileset and then make everything else by scratch. The goal is to have a game designed based on interesting ideas, not on the limitations of any given tileset. The result is very slow progress. I'm on year three with it. Scripting is going to make progress immeasurably faster once I get the hang of it, true, but it's also going to require going back and re-working alot of the quest that can now be done much more cleanly using scripts and freeform combos.

    I guess what I'm saying is that there are advantages to all quest design methods. Is a truly original quest just plain better? I daresay it is. But it's quality over quantity, baby, so you can't complain about not seeing too many of them.

  9. #9
    Wizrobe Petoe's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    Quality over quantity indeed!

    The thread starter may not understand that making the kind of quests he is hoping to see more of aren't finished in a week or two. Not even in months. It takes years and years. Sabotage Dragoon is a good example. Is it an awesome quest? It sure looks like it will be and I can tell you that it is one of those rare quests that I really can't wait to play! But when will it be finished? Who knows, maybe not even C-Dawg himself.

    That's why we are seeing so many "just another Zelda" quests, because it is so much easier to build them and not so time consuming when you have tilesets and everything ready and finished.
    For example the group quest I am working on with DFW, it is based on the pure set. Nowadays the Pure set looks boring and bland, true, but that's a good basis for something great, and I have been editing the tileset heavily to get some pretty and original results. Because of the decision to make the quest with the pure set, the quest will probably be finished in a few months. If we had decided to go 100% custom, I'm afraid the quest would never have been finished.
    Will the quest be something revolutionizing and unbeliveably original? Nope, but it should be solid as a rock and offer hours of fun, thanks to the new features that make questmakin faster and allow for some neat trciks. Of course, if there were 2 very good quests with one being a Zelda quest and one being a Mario/Final Fantasy/Something original quest, I would pick the later option, but I think we should just be happy that we are still seeing quests released and even good ones even though questmaking has become so much more complex and demanding.

    Dunno if Imade much sense, but had to say something. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of original and custom work and now that I am part of making a Zelda quest myself, my Zelda quest defending may seem hypocritical or something like that. But from the experience I had with Megs Man - Dr. Wily's Revenge DC I learned that sometimes it's just fun to make smaller quests and concentrate on the gameplay more than creating pretty and custom graphics. i guess that's one of the reason why MMDWR DC has so many flaws as it has, I tried too hard to make it so "revolutionary" and "you havent seen this trick before, ha!" kind of quest that maybe the gameplay suffered a bit. But enough of my own projects. I pretty much agree with everything what C said so I'll end the post here. :p
    --------------------
    "GET a stable version, THEN add more with the builds, DON'T just keep adding bloat to something that doesn't work already.
    Has common sense just left the building, or what?" -Freedom

  10. #10
    Wizrobe Freedom's Avatar
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    Re: Stagnant Waters

    What stopped me cold, is I guess my own impatience.
    (and the fact I'm trying to get my house ready to sell)

    I got tired of waiting for a stable bug free beta that I could actually build and release a good quest in.
    The 2.10 has 2 game stopping bugs, the map and the shops.
    If a shop decides not to show up, then whoever is playing the quest is not only finished at that point, but they are PISSED OFF as well.
    Why put months into a project just to get people pissed off at me?

    When the focus went to adding features at an allarming rate, and the bugs increased to record numbers in the beta releases, then I figured it would be years at best before a bug free release would ever come, so I decided to find something else to do until that day arrives.

    I did however beta test from before the 2.10 (193-A3) release until the 2.11b12 release, in hopes of seeing a stable release, so I feel I did give it a good chance toward a stable release, it just seems others feel that new features are more important than a release that quality quests can actually be built in.
    It also seems that the ones screaming more more more never release quests, so I have to wonder why their opinions are given priority of the folks that DO build quests and have been asking for several years now for a stable release.

    You can say it's become stagnant because of the available graphics if you want, but I believe it has more to do with the fact that every release since the 190 has serious bugs that screw up peoples quests that they invested months of their lives building.
    :O)

    ZC information I've compiled and my quests
    Adventure Tileset
    Elise's Zelda Classic

    Don't ever buy an MTD Product, it's cheap over-priced garbage

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