Official 5th quest? Should we have one?

[SUCCESSOR]

Personally, I don't think the 4th should be the last one. Difficulty-wise it's about the equivalent of the 2cd quest, and there's just too many cool ways to push it to the next level. It would be a little anti-climactic to leave it there. There's tons of new "gimmicks" that 2.5 would be able to add, even without scripting, such as how the Stalfos in the 2cd quest now shot swords and the bubbles were a completely new type by being split into red/blue, and so forth.

I say, it should go out with a bang. You can use whatever features you want as long as it fits in a cohesive manner.

Despite my original and painfully obvious bias toward a more modern contest I am actually warming up to the idea of a 5th quest. Keep in mind we don't actually have to pick one or the other. The question actually would come down to "Would 5th quest have the needed support?" You know what is great for determining that, Gleeok? A poll.

Okay.


Changing gears here a bit, one thing I would NOT want to see is a rule *requiring* quest entries to make use of every feature available.

While use of the new features should definitely be allowed and encouraged, forcing people to shoe-horn a checklist of features into their quest would run the risk of making the quests feel unnecessarily gimmicky.
The quests should be judged on how they stand up as a whole... someone could hypothetically make a quest that is light on new features but plays as a better overall experience than the other entries, and I think that would be OK.

I wouldn't want to require use of EVERY new feature but I think new feature requirements would not be unreasonable. Contests use requirements all the time to challenge entrants and to ensure the end product isnt just of great quality but original and characteristic(if that is the right word). For instance I wouldn't mind seeing a minimum set of rules to highlight 2.5's most notable features similar to:

* Must use enemy editor to create at least 2 new dungeon enemies
* Must use enemy editor to create at least 1 new dungeon boss
* Must use item editor to make at least 1 new item
* Must make use of "suchandsuch.z" script

I don't think these requiremnts would be unreasonable in either contest(now refered to as Nth Quest and Proto Quest). For instance "new" doesn't necesarilly mean completely original. An octorock that shoots swords and a slingshot(bow) that shoots rocks instead of arrows would be "new". It wouldn't win you any points with whoever is judging but it satisfies the requirements and doesnt overly burden the quest maker. "suchandsuch.z" could be a simple script like Item Message script or Sign Post script or even both. Neither are hard to implement.

For an Nth Quest contest obviously the restrictions to keep it in line with 1-4th would still be around in a minimal sense. I would say overworld changes would have to be approved by "judges" unless explicitly allowed. For instance if someone wanted to swap one chunk of the map with another it would depend on how well it was implemented and if the resulting change was something that wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb in Zelda1. The graveyard is now on the right side of the map now but looks as if it was meant to be there. Dungeon design would have to be Z1 style and any liberties taken with it would have to not disrupt that. This way we ensure it has the feel of 1st quest gameplay. I personally wouldn't want to see too high of difficulty. High difficulty is great for Z1 enthusiasts but not for most of the ZC community.

For a Proto Quest overworld I think it would have to be an open overworld where 90% is accessible without making use of items. It should have at least 4 distinct areas (forest, mountain, lake/sea, desert) and a consistent look and feel. The whole idea would be that the overworld would be easily used as a base for future quest designers. Maybe even restricting the number of layers that can be used and how.

If we have a contest where the entire quest is built from scratch I think it could use most of the same requirements with a little more leniency. Maybe set a minimum and maximum number of [freeform] dungeons. Limit the size of the overworld. Or something.

just some ideas

[Gleeok]

Despite my original and painfully obvious bias toward a more modern contest I am actually warming up to the idea of a 5th quest. Keep in mind we don't actually have to pick one or the other. The question actually would come down to "Would 5th quest have the needed support?" You know what is great for determining that, Gleeok? A poll.

Alright, poll added!

Vote for ANY/ALL you want. The purpose is simply to weed out any unappealing options, unless there is a landslide victory of course.

snip

There of course would be rules for a 5th quest. For example you would have to incorporate ideas and mechanics from previous quests. 4th quest introduced stronger bosses and boss keys, to name a few, so those would be mandatory. (I can't remember if there was new enemies in that one though...been a while)

tuck

For difficulty - I'm a fan of ramping it up a bit since the people likely to play them in the first place are the more hardcore, or Z1-type enthusiasts, as you say. Chances are the meek have never even beaten 2cd-quest, let alone the 3th or 4th (Someone had to say it.)

[Nightmare]

As a suggestion for voting, have your Quest Players Club play the quests (1 each) and put Let's Play up on YouTube. Then, you can have the judges watch and make their decision based on what they see. The Quest Players' Club should be instructed to play like bug testers to show all the new features and not just a speed run. It'd keep everyone's time fair and get it done reasonably fast (providing the dev time for the contest doesn't take a year) and avoid situations if someone gets busy at school/work and can't complete the project.

-James

[Gleeok]

As a suggestion for voting, have your Quest Players Club play the quests (1 each) and put Let's Play up on YouTube. Then, you can have the judges watch and make their decision based on what they see. The Quest Players' Club should be instructed to play like bug testers to show all the new features and not just a speed run. It'd keep everyone's time fair and get it done reasonably fast (providing the dev time for the contest doesn't take a year) and avoid situations if someone gets busy at school/work and can't complete the project.

-James

That is a horrible idea.
You can't judge a contest by watching peoples shitty LPs. I would rather spend 4 hours playing a quest than watch someone wander around for 5 hours!

Usually a reasonable amount of time is allocated to play a quest though - at least two weeks each as a lower bound.


[edit] Another possibility is to do both. We could do a 5th quest contest while organizing something else. Realistically options 2 or 3 are going to take a lot longer to amass resources, create content, and beta test.

[Nightmare]

That is a horrible idea.
You can't judge a contest by watching peoples shitty LPs. I would rather spend 4 hours playing a quest than watch someone wander around for 5 hours!

Usually a reasonable amount of time is allocated to play a quest though - at least two weeks each as a lower bound.


[edit] Another possibility is to do both. We could do a 5th quest contest while organizing something else. Realistically options 2 or 3 are going to take a lot longer to amass resources, create content, and beta test.

Well, I'm just saying that's how I got into trouble when I was designing the 3rd Quest rules: Just passing that on so that the same mistakes don't repeat themselves.

How about both a 5th Quest contest AND a "Tiny Quest" contest?

-James

[SUCCESSOR]

For difficulty - I'm a fan of ramping it up a bit since the people likely to play them in the first place are the more hardcore, or Z1-type enthusiasts, as you say. Chances are the meek have never even beaten 2cd-quest, let alone the 3th or 4th (Someone had to say it.)

Well we do need quests packed with ZC that will appeal to everyone so I guess that means we need a new quest contest/project whether 5th happens or not.

I added some poll options. If you voted already I can add a tick for you on the new options if you like.

[Gleeok]

Well we do need quests packed with ZC that will appeal to everyone.

This definitely has some merit, though as Glenn pointed out - file size can become an issue. "Epic" quests can typically weigh in at about 5-10 Megabytes nowadays, and even the DoR tileset, for example, by itself is over 1MB as even a 1.92 .qst file. Keeping SFX in check will help a bit, but it's something we need to consider.


I think we had the right idea with neofirst, at least in the beginning (not sure what happened there, maybe @ShadowTiger can enlighten us?) - it was a quest to showcase all the new features of zc, sort of like demo quest did back in the day, where content was contributed by ZC's best (I think Shoelace designed the forest dungeon for example). Like I said, I don't know what happened, but at some point _L_ was the only person working on it, and the "community content" part of it was suddenly no more.

It also may be possible to combine all of the previous ideas not related to the 5th quest into one idea (a Voltron quest lol) and create neofirst-part duck (2). (Hey, sequels are usually always better, right?)
Essentially it'd have a crew of designers, scripters, and contributers to keep it running, organize the graphics and quest data, and just generally not from blowing up,. However, content could all be community driven.
It could have 5 levels where, each level is hashed out, scripts and mechanics are written and planned out before-hand for mandatory use, and we have "best dungeon" contests. (One LV is much less pressure than an entire quest.)
Things like bosses and mini-bosses would be scripted before hand also, so those rooms could be left blank by entrants.

So in summation: it would be a combination organized/community/contest based quest.

[CJC]

I like the idea of making a new 'template' world and then reinventing the classic Zelda vibe with the whole "Same Overworld, new Interiors". It gives us the power to package a new 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quest while still allowing players that struggle with the more difficult quests (myself included, 2nd was INTENSE and I never even touched 3rd) to enjoy some of the new content.


In this case, the contest should be as Gleeok described: pre-fabricated mechanics with dungeons as the primary submissions. It would need to be handled in several contests, each for a single dungeon in this official 'new 1st' and each explicitly stating which items could and could not be used in the dungeon. As for the overworld, players could post screenshots of overworld screens that they'd like to include, and the project director could then recreate those screens in the quest file.

[Nightmare]

Another strategy could be the fact that you could do each level one at a time and have a contest for each: If a person wins a level, then they can't submit for any other level, same goes for the overworld.

Is that any good?

-James

[Zim]

Anything close to Z3 ALTTP is realistically just way too much work for anyone to do.

The scrolling aspects and everything else is done if using modded ghost.z and my last quest I shared for a Z3 style quest... I would love to see some (more) submissions using that. I understand that my system was top-notch pert near though and that many people wouldn't be able to use it.
Aside from that neo-first looked great to me when I was looking at that thread although I haven't checked out the quest file myself. I'd like to see that done, and also 5th quest and another custom contest. I voted for neo-first.

isSolidScroll should work for a CanWalkScroll, which is all ghost would need to be modded.