Zelda Classic ongoing Beta reports

[Cronic]

Wel with as much crotch as there is being put into the next version of ZC updating a web page got to be too much to handle.


So Kratheous and I have decided to simply report them continully withion this closed, pinned thread so that you'll know exactly what's going on.

Please direct all questions regarding new additions to ZC discussion, and our ine testers I'm sure will be able to explain anything you may not understand or things you may want more info on.

The nature of this reporting system is the most true and thourough of it's kind, and I must warn you not to get upset if one of these features mentioned should not make the final cut.
As with everything you see here nothing is gauranteed.

If you have a suggestion regarding add ons to new features please feel free to post them in ZC suggestions.

Now with that being said we'll start from just beyond the publicly released build 104.

Skipping to build 120 know at this point that ZC beta is Windows which is later turned into a dual platform.

Enjoy :)

Kratheous, take it way

And should anyone with the ability to respond (Admins, mods, etc) wish to add to this thread when you recieve a new beta feel more than fre to do so :).

[Kratheous]

Thanks DC. Alrighty folks, here's the stuff for Beta 120:

Originally posted by Dark Nation
Stability should be improved some (fixed a lot of nasty bugs that crashed things).

Here's what's fixed since beta 115.

1. Palette crash bug.
2. Conveyor belt crash bug.
3, Triforce pieces editor crash bug.
4. Bitmap loader bug.
5. MIDI loader/player bug.
6. Magic mirrors and prisms.
7. Link's shield (magic shield and small shield somehow got swapped).
8. Zoras facing the wrong way in classic enemy mode.
9. Dodongo vertical collision bug.
10. "Exit to DOS?" has been changed to "Exit Program?"

Hopefully this will keep you busy until I can fix some more bugs.

I'm mainly concentrating on bugs at the moment, so don't expect any new features for a while (though there may be some, but I'll tell you if I throw one in).

Also, I'm considering making 1.92 dual-platform. Instead of just a Windows version, I'm thinking about keeping the DOS version, too, for people who can't run the Windows version for some reason.

But, for the moment, it's Windows only.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
What's new:

1. Fixed the zora always starts at 0,0 bug.
2. Fixed the enemy conversion bug.
3. "Finalized" the new enemy tile positions.
4. New quest encryption method for better security.

Also, I've included a quest with this version (newfirst-fixed.qst) that has all of the new enemy tiles set up correctly. Also, I've included a PDF file that shows each enemy and what tile they start on.

Usually, if an enemy is one tile and it spans one row, then the sequence goes: up (1-4), down (1-4), left (1-4), right (1-4).

If a one-tile enemy spans 2 rows, the second row is: up-left (1-4), up-right (1-4), down-left (1-4), down-right (1-4).

These correspond to the enemy direction. Sometimes an enemy is moving that way, and sometimes it is just looking in that direction. Also, you will notice some new enemies that aren't in the game. A few examples are: boulder, BS Aquamentus, Flame Dodongo, and Stalfos 3. These may show up later, they may not.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
Just fixed up the enemy code some more.

1. Removed the debugging window that popped up when you took off a Gleeok/Gleeok2 head.
2. Gleeok flying heads were using the attached head graphics.
3. Gleeok2 flying heads were invisible.
4. Patra Oval, Patra 2, and Patra 3 were using the wrong graphics in normal mode.
5. Mirrorrobe and Batrobe were using wrong graphics in standard mode.
6. Newfirst-fixed wasn't quite fixed right.

Can't remember any of the others.

The newfirst-fixed.qst should be right now (no more shadow octoroks in normal mode and no more trippy Aquamentus butts in the graveyard).
New.til is an exported tileset of the new enemy tiles. To use it, clear pages 6-32. Move the tiles from those pages down so they start on 35 if you have to (that's what I did to fix newfirst-fixed). Next, import the new.til file and tell zquest to start importing into page 6. There you go!

If zelda.exe or zquest.exe die immediately after starting, download beta 115 and install that. Then, this one.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
What's new in this version:

1. Dual-platform support. After several hours of pain-staking backtracking through the Windows-modified code, I was able to put in conditional code that would allow me to compile a Windows or a DOS version from the same source code. So, for those of you who couldn't run the beta before, this should bring you back into the fold.
2. Fixed the Level-Color keese tile bug for the new enemy tiles.
3. Updated the credits in Zelda to include information about the Windows port (under the Etc menu, choose Credits to view them).
4. Fixed the screenshot function in ZC and ZQuest (I hope). Let me know if it doesn't work. I already know that screenshots taken of the game select screen are still messed up. I hope to fix that by the next beta.

As you will notice, the DOS and Windows versions have different filenames. This will allow you to use both of them on your system if you choose. If the Windows version dies immediately after start, try downloading the Windows support archive. If that doesn't work, look in the ZCBeta folder for a file called 'allegro.log'. It should have information about what happened to make the program die.

After I get a few more bugs worked out (mainly cosmetic problems caused by compiling with Allegro 4, such as screen elements not being large enough to hold the text inside them, thus making the text disappear), I'm thinking about releasing another public beta.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
What's new in this version:

1. Fixed the dialog glitches (I hope). What would be great would be if someone were to open the dialogs for beta 104, take screen shots of them, and compare them to the dialogs here. You would need to overlay one on top of the other and set the opacity to like 50 or so to see where things don't line up right. This would require knowledge and possession of a program such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.
2. Fixed the leech function so that it will now leech tiles from til and zgp files (I hope). I tested it in DOS on a .til file. Anyone wanna run some more extensive tests?
3. I think I fixed the weapons. The glitches were caused by a feature I was trying to add that didn't work right.
4. Took out the code that makes items move on conveyors. This should solve the subscreen items moving bug.

Next, I hope to fix the Aquamentii (Aquamentusses?) not using the new enemy tiles in new enemy tile mode. Still trying to figure out why the NES title screens are goofed.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
Yeah, I'm releasing this a day early. So, sue me.

What's new in this version:

1. Totally rewrote the hookshot code. This makes it more stable (no more crashing on conveyors, I hope) and allowed me to make it the way I had originally intended, like the Z3 hookshot (after a few links, it will stretch insted of extend). Now, for people who were using the hookshot as a whip, where stretching is a bad thing, the number of links before stretching is customizable. So, you set it to 6 for a Z3-style hookshot, and set it to a high number, like 100, for a ZC 1.92 Beta 127- style hookshot.
2. Split the hookshot chain sprite into vertical and horizontal sprites. Now, you can make a proper whip.
3. Added a few more initialization data things. Now, you can tell how many (or what percentage of your maximum) hearts you need to be able to fire a sword beam. Each sword can be set differently. You can also set different damage percents for each sword beam and it's not locked to 50 and 100 like before.
4. Re-added and fixed the "items move on conveyors" feature.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
This is more of a Beta 129b than anything else. I think I finally got the game loading routine fixed. It works for me anyway. Other than that, the only change is I tweaked the hookshot so it doesn't go off the screen when you fire downwards.

There is one known issue in the Windows version that I noticed but haven't had time to debug. When you use the hookshot and latch onto something to pull Link over to it, sometimes, the game will crash when Link reaches his destination.

One thing I haven't had a chance to check... Can someone try to take screen shots of the game select screens and the load custom game screens in DOS and in Windows?

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
New in this version:

1. Fixed the hookshot crashes sometimes when pulling Link bug.
2. Added new push blocks. In addition to the push up/down and the push 4-way blocks, there are now 19 others:
-push left/right
-push up
-push down
-push left
-push right
-push up/down (no secret trigger)
-push left/right (no secret trigger)
-push 4-way (no secret trigger)
-push up (no secret trigger)
-push down (no secret trigger)
-push left (no secret trigger)
-push right (no secret trigger)
-push up/down infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push left/right infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push 4-way infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push up infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push down infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push left infinitely (no secret trigger)
-push right infinitely (no secret trigger)

There is also a "no push blocks" flag that allows you to set up where blocks can and can't go without restricting Link's movements. Simply put, you can't push a block onto a "no push blocks" flag.

Finally, there is a "block trigger" flag. If you push a block of any kind onto it, the secret is activated and the block becomes immobile. Why you would need this for anything other than the infinite push blocks is beyond me. Unless you want to use it with one of the 2 or 4-way no secret trigger blocks so that it only activates the secret if they push the block in the right direction.

[Cronic]

Originally posted by Dark Nation
New in this version:

1. Fixed the bug where activating a trigger with a pushblock turned all infinite pushblocks on that screen (maybe everywhere on the DMap or possibly in the game, haven't checked yet) into push-once blocks.
2. Added the ability to have more than one trigger block so you have to activate all of them to activate a secret.
3. Fixed the default quests bug and put the real 3rd quest in the support archive.
4. Altered the pushblock code. Now, anything with a push flag will appear on top of layers 1 and 2. The reason is, Link is walking on layers 1 and 2, so he can't very well push something below those layers. If he could, then the block would slide along under those layers when it is moving. While this may be a desired effect at times, if you wanted to have some sort of animated combo on layer 1 attached to the push block, it wouldn't work. So, to simplify things, I made push blocks be above layers 1 and 2. This also hase the added side-effect of allowing you to push a pushblock over different combos and it not change them all to the same thing (it is actually still doing this, but if you set up the real floor on layer 1, then the block won't be erasing it, just layer 0, which is covered up by layer 1).
5. The Windows versions of ZC and ZQuest can now run in a window (like in fatcatfan's post). To do this (I may make an in-program option later), you have to use a switch. Here are the options (these only apply to the Windows versions):

"-fullscreen": Makes the program run full-screen, using a directx hardware accelerated driver (default)
"-fullscreen -directx": Same as above
"-fullscreen -directx -soft": Makes the program run full-screen, using a directx software accelerated driver
"-fullscreen -directx -safe": Makes the program run full-screen, using the safe directx unaccelerated driver
"-windowed": Makes the program run in a window, using the directx driver
"-windowed -directx": Same as above
"-windowed -gdi": Makes the program run in a window, using a GDI driver. I think you can use this even if you don't have DirectX. It is very slow, though.


I would have included the updated quest default (what shows up when you start zquest), but I left it at work. Maybe Tuesday morning.