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Essentially, jman (And others. :p ) have expressed their wishes that a new DemoQuest be created which would display all, if not most of the newest features in ZC. The quest will be called "NeoFirst.qst" and it will be similar to Demo quest in design. (Though not in layout.) It will use as many features as possible, have three dungeons, (One standard hunt for keys, one "gimmick" dungeon, and a third and final "Master dungeon.") And will be between moderate to hard on the difficulty scale.
Therefore, what we need to do will take place in the following steps, in pretty much this order.
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Discuss what this quest will need to accomplish and exhibit.Figure out if we're doing a: 1) NewFirst replacement. 2) DemoQuest Sequel. 3) Whole new quest. (Click)
Find a useful tileset as well as tiles which will facilitate that need.]
- 2x2 Link.
- ALTTP Style Movement complete with frames for the 2x2 Link.
- Tiles for a Custom boss which will be discussed later.
- ]Once we have the tileset, we'll need to plan it out. An overworld, complete with at least three themes (Winter area, Spring Area, Swamp, etc. Can be anything, really. Anything at all.) will be necessary. (8x8 minimum, 32x16 maximum, though something closer to the minimum would be nice. :p )
Actually, concerning the tileset, I was sort of thinking that we should plan out all three dungeons first, and our overworld should follow from their placements.
- Three dungeons will be made. One will be a dungeon of moderate difficulty. Something along the lines of any given level 6 (Out of 8.) from any random quest. It will be your average key-quest dungeon, maybe one or two gimmicks, but nothing major. It will exhibit the abilities of the Treasure Chests, and the Lockblock Combos, and Tiered Combos. (Which were technically already in, but it's still nice to use them.) They'll be using the Reset combo, of course.
- A second dungeon will be somewhat more difficult. The Gimmick will be its primary focus here. It can be any of the stereotypical:
- Forest Temple - Plant vines to ascend, burn trees to continue, play music to make things happen.
- Water Temple - Raise and lower water levels to go around the temple.
- Shadow Temple - A Temple filled with illusionary walls, items, sprites, and things to make your skin crawl. Undead optional.
- Fire Temple - Watch where you step. Possibly an Elevation-based dungeon.
- YOUR IDEA HERE
- A Final Dungeon which will feature Ganondorf (Or just Ganon, who knows.) as the final boss. It will be a penultimate dungeon, which will require all of your mental processes to maneuver around, as it will make exceptional use of just about every new feature which can be used toward the dungeon. It'll definitely either be something non-conventional, such as a corrupted Bastion of Angels, ... or the extreme stereotype of the "Final Dungeon Of ur head asplode x 1,000,000." Something like that. Demo Quest was pretty difficult, but not unbeatable, ... and it impressed hundreds, if not thousands over the years. NeoFirst should do the same, only moreso.
- We'll need to assemble a team of developers to help create the many aspects of this quest. We'll need:
- Builders - People to actually construct the quest within ZQuest.
- Planners - Creative people to map out the overworlds and the dungeons so they won't be randomly drawn when the time comes to create them. DFW would be wonderful for this, I think, but that's only one of many whos name pops up.
- Graphics Artists - (*b*, C-Dawg, Radien, Petoe, Myself, etc.) Tile/Pixel artists who are willing to design the custom graphics for the quest. From what I believe, Gashin (*b*) has been nice enough to lend us his own tileset for NeoFirst. Now we just need the Custom Boss. We'll also need tiles for whatever we plan out for the future, but that comes later.
- Midis - We'll need midis for the quest. The thing is, this comes much later for when we have just about 100% of the quest's themes done. A good mood makes or break a quest, and the music makes or breaks the mood.
- Quest Testers - This will come much, much later, obviously. We'll need a few people to test for bugs, and to make sure that it's at least playable. We'll need two types of testers:
- Bug Testers - Very diligent people who look in every crack and crevice looking for the occasional blank undercombo, or continue bug, etc.
- Difficulty Testers - A few brave souls who will go through the quest without any assistance or cheat codes whatsoever, who will see if the quest is playable by the intermediate players out there, and at least able to be admired from a relative distance by the TLOZ Newbies out there.
- When the quest is done, we'll need a little bit of space to upload the files to. We'll also need a few tantalizing screenshots. Maybe even someone to write up a brief FAQ for the quest could help a little with that.
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So, what are everyones' thoughts? Remember, this quest is meant to be two things:
- A Demo Quest for the new generation of ZC. Short but sweet, and very detailed.
- An exhibition as to most, if not all, of ZC's new features.
3/18/06 - I am not hiring anyone to work on the project just yet. As it stands, NeoFirst is still in the planning phases, and no real "work" may be done until it's thoroughly planned out. We need to find a good tileset which we can work with. Initially, I'm thinking about using the DoR Tileset (By Radien.) or the PTUX Tileset (By Mr. Z.) I'm also waiting for Gashin (*b*) to show off more screens from his tilesets. He has quite a few nice things in development. If any of you guys have any suggestions as to what set we should be building this in, please feel free to come forward (In the appropriate thread!) and say it. Also remember that whatever graphics (Tileset.) are used, will undoubtedly be duplicated in many future quests, as this quest will become a standard amongst users new to ZC.
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This post by IDK:
This will act as the checklist of features we should be displaying.
Here's a checklist of sorts of things that, imo, must be in the quest: (in no particular order)
--Treasure Chests
--Appearing Treasure Chests
--Triggering things in order & other uses for tiered secrets
--A Custom Boss
--Cutscenes
--Title or Intro Screen
--Sprites that you can talk to on the overworld
--Multi-warps (if you're using the latest beta)
--A timed warp (for whatever purpose, like with the cutscene or custom boss, or a minigame)
--All items that were not in the original LoZ (hammer, hookshot, din's fire, superbombs, lens, flippers, etc.)
--True Arrows,Quivers, & Arrow Ammunition
--Bomb Bags & Bomb Ammunition
--Slashing (by default or learning it later in the quest, either way)
--A lot of Push Block Puzzles with 'Block Trigger' flags
--Weather or environmental effects, such as Rain, Snow, Fog, Heat, Underwater, Poison, Wind, or any combination thereof.
--Combo Cycling for things like spikes that go up & down, or retractable walls that go back up x seconds after being triggered.
--All enemies since the original should be included as well, and used carefully too (in other words, don't just pack together herds of death knights to show them off & make an area riduculously hard)
--At least 1 Link-Tile Mod (other than for the shields)
--Magic System (demonstrates how to set up the magic meter, shows off magic jars, use a magic enhance room type, etc.)
--Direct Warps
--Use of the Reset Room Combo
--Lock Blocks & Boss Lock Blocks
--Freeform Dungeons & Off-center Doors
--Use of Room Carry Over Data
--Inherent Flags
--Inherent Flags combined with Cycling Combos
--Use of Initial Data (perhaps have the player start with an item you usually don't begin with or have more or fewer heart containers when beginning
--Save Combos
--Heart Container Pieces
--The latest Subscreen Type
--Autowarp Combos
--Multiple Undercombos
--Over & Under Bridges
--Bushes & Flowers
--Layers & Autolayers
--Eyeball Combos
--Enemy Shadows
--Water & Shallow Water
--Dmap Titles & Intro String
--Linked Strings
Pretty much anything you can think of that was not in the original game should be in this quest--it'd be great for veterans & newbies alike. It'd be nice to see everything new that you can do in one quest that you couldn't do years ago and it help teach different techniques.
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