Rebranding and legacy support ("2.6+")

[DarkDragon]

I know I've posted this already in a few places, but thinking about this I've come to the almost opposite conclusion: IMO the one advantage ZC does have is the existing userbase, existing quests and resources, and existing brand.

In the early 2000s ZC was the only real game in town, and it would have made sense to "reboot" ZC and take it in a completely new direction. Now? Other "game maker" programs are a dime a dozen, including some that are Zelda-gameplay specific, such as Solarus. What is the purpose in trying to compete with these (already established) alternatives?

Now, I'm not against major changes per se: moving beyond Allegro 4.0 to a more modern backend; revamping the scripting aspect of ZC and making ZC's gameplay more customizable in general; overhauling screens and dmaps and scrolling; reducing the barrier of entry to crafting your first custom quest; etc. But I just don't see any sense in a complete rewrite/reboot/rebrand. Instead, I believe that ZC is currently propped up by a few foundational pillars that must be carefully maintained:

1. The community of existing quest authors, and their expertise with using ZQuest's current features;
2. The large canon of high-quality quests available for download and play.

Abandoning either of these two pillars would be disastrous, IMO, including making all pre-2.50.2 quests unplayable, or rebranding the program. Why give up on our main advantages?

[War Lord]

I know I've posted this already in a few places, but thinking about this I've come to the almost opposite conclusion: IMO the one advantage ZC does have is the existing userbase, existing quests and resources, and existing brand.

In the early 2000s ZC was the only real game in town, and it would have made sense to "reboot" ZC and take it in a completely new direction. Now? Other "game maker" programs are a dime a dozen, including some that are Zelda-gameplay specific, such as Solarus. What is the purpose in trying to compete with these (already established) alternatives?

Now, I'm not against major changes per se: moving beyond Allegro 4.0 to a more modern backend; revamping the scripting aspect of ZC and making ZC's gameplay more customizable in general; overhauling screens and dmaps and scrolling; reducing the barrier of entry to crafting your first custom quest; etc. But I just don't see any sense in a complete rewrite/reboot/rebrand. Instead, I believe that ZC is currently propped up by a few foundational pillars that must be carefully maintained:

1. The community of existing quest authors, and their expertise with using ZQuest's current features;
2. The large canon of high-quality quests available for download and play.

Abandoning either of these two pillars would be disastrous, IMO, including making all pre-2.50.2 quests unplayable, or rebranding the program. Why give up on our main advantages?

I agree with this. The fact that you can come in and play tons of quests that are absolutely amazing and could be standalone games is huge for ZC.
It's an older game with slow development. Although it does most everything needed and then some at this point. Way more than we ever anticipated.
I'd rather look to upgrading the engine while adding features to the site, such as official YouTube quest Playthroughs and reviews of quests from the main page highlighting some of these gems.

[Nightmare]

I agree with this. The fact that you can come in and play tons of quests that are absolutely amazing and could be standalone games is huge for ZC.
It's an older game with slow development. Although it does most everything needed and then some at this point. Way more than we ever anticipated.
I'd rather look to upgrading the engine while adding features to the site, such as official YouTube quest Playthroughs and reviews of quests from the main page highlighting some of these gems.

An option on the site for the quest uploader to post Let's Plays in their uploads would be really nice. Should be link based and not direct video based.

-James

[Nightmare]

I know I've posted this already in a few places, but thinking about this I've come to the almost opposite conclusion: IMO the one advantage ZC does have is the existing userbase, existing quests and resources, and existing brand.

In the early 2000s ZC was the only real game in town, and it would have made sense to "reboot" ZC and take it in a completely new direction. Now? Other "game maker" programs are a dime a dozen, including some that are Zelda-gameplay specific, such as Solarus. What is the purpose in trying to compete with these (already established) alternatives?

Now, I'm not against major changes per se: moving beyond Allegro 4.0 to a more modern backend; revamping the scripting aspect of ZC and making ZC's gameplay more customizable in general; overhauling screens and dmaps and scrolling; reducing the barrier of entry to crafting your first custom quest; etc. But I just don't see any sense in a complete rewrite/reboot/rebrand. Instead, I believe that ZC is currently propped up by a few foundational pillars that must be carefully maintained:

1. The community of existing quest authors, and their expertise with using ZQuest's current features;
2. The large canon of high-quality quests available for download and play.

Abandoning either of these two pillars would be disastrous, IMO, including making all pre-2.50.2 quests unplayable, or rebranding the program. Why give up on our main advantages?

Well, I know this is being addressed now, but the upgrade from B 182/3 to 2.5 series (I skipped 2.10) was possible, but there were a lot of compatibility issues getting things to play around with, had to update a lot of things (some things needed to be totally remade), and this affects more than just me. Personally, I have like 10 quests now (some smaller, some larger), and keeping them all updated is a ton of work. Plus, I want to code my own engine someday and possibly make money off of it.

I think you know as a dev how time consuming some of this can be, and some of it is becoming cumbersome to deal with. Even small things like say Demo 1st and 2nd need to be updated periodically due to balance changes or just plain version updates. Now add in full testing runs of this stuff (maybe not for Demo 1st and 2nd, but Demo SP has been an extremely taxing affair testing it, going on now 2 and a half years in development), time adds up. And you lose your life in the process.

Also, as I said before, DMCA. Need we look at the BotW quests and AM2R? It'd be nice to be somewhat safety net from that too.


-James