Getting back into ZC

[Glenn the Great]

So a certain discussion I had yesterday got me thinking about Zelda Classic. This was something I was very involved with in my early days at AGN and something that I rather sadly drifted away from several years ago and never really paid much attention to since then.

I started looking over some of the newer quests and I saw some YouTube videos of one called The Legend of Zelda: Lost Isle. There are several YouTube videos of this quest, and watching it just blew me away. Zelda Classic has really come a long way since the old days. I'm planning to download Lost Isle and try it out sometime this weekend when I have some free time.

I'd like to start playing some more Zelda Classic quests. I feel that some of the more quality Zelda Classic quests may actually exceed the quality of the casual-friendly shit that Nintendo has been putting out over the years which contributed to my loss of interest in the series in general. Zelda Classic quests have always been very hit or miss with me. Most of them are put together by people with no prior development experience and are thus very rough around the edges, not to mention buggy. A lot of them feel like the designers slapped a bunch of rooms together and never bothered to play through their own quests or have anybody else test it before release. That being said, I know that the community has produced some star developers over the years, and I get the impression that DarkFlameWolf is one of them. If I like Lost Isle I will probably play through the rest of his/her quests. I'm interested in knowing who the other "star developers" are as well.

My history with Zelda Classic started when I joined AGN over 12 years ago. I didn't join AGN because of Zelda Classic... I found AGN while I was searching for information about the at-the-time upcoming release of Majora's Mask. The Internet was young back in 2000, and AGN seemed like the busiest place that one could go to and discuss Zelda. It was only after I joined AGN that I discovered Zelda Classic and it was the perfect thing to tide me over until Majora's Mask was released a few weeks later.

Besides collaborating with Orion on his Return to Dreaming Isle quest (which was one of the first quests to make use of a Link to the Past tileset) I didn't really make many quests of my own.
The quests that I released included:
- an unofficial 3rd Quest done in the style of the original LOZ
- a remake of the 1st quest using the CGBZ Tileset I had developed beforehand
- a quest that consisted of one large overworld that simultaneously served as the game's sole dungeon

This latter quest was called "CGBZ Demo". I thought it was pretty badass for what it was: a bite-sized experience that could be completed in less than an hour and featured some great level design, but sadly it appears to have been lost to the sands of time as I cannot find it on any of the remaining fan sites nor on my personal disk drives.
Any help from anyone who might have this quest floating around somewhere would be greatly appreciated.. I'd like to put it on the Quest Database and I'll credit you in some fashion for helping bring it to light.

I don't have the time or the creative energy to ever get back into Zelda Classic quest development. I know I can't hold a torch to what the DarkFlameWolfs of the community are doing. I would like to experience some of these works of art, however.

I know some of you guys are or used to be involved in Zelda Classic. Feel free to share your stories in this thread, I'd like to hear them.

[ShadowTiger]

The fun thing about ZC 2.5 is that it can do just about anything.

The bad thing about ZC 2.5 is that it can do just about anything.

When you have limitless potential, it's hard to know just what to work on and what to fantasize that you're going to work on, because it all seems to wonderful because it all seems so possible.

I have about sixty (Maybe fifty four.) ideas for quests running through my head on any given week. Ten years ago, I had to rely on putting down combos and seeing where they led me for inspiration to complete a given screen and then a whole map and give it a plot. That would have made a decent-enough quest back then.


So nowadays, it's a whole mess of creativity coupled with either time on our hands or lack of time on our hands. Let's see where it takes us from here, hm?

[KJAZZ]

Interesting timing. When I was recently going through the old family computer, checking for any old files I might want, I nabbed my old ZC folder. Turns out I have a cgbzfirst.qst, not sure if it's what you're looking for, but it's something:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jmk9udawqqi9ab6