Here's the changes so far for ZC 2.11 Beta 1:
1. Fixed Gleeok's hp (was too high).
2. Fixed the bug where slashing (or using the hammer or wand) on one side of the screen could affect things on the other side of the screen.
3. Made the game data dynamic (for security purposes).
4. ZC no longer writes it's temp files to the root of drive C. Now, it stores them in the same directory that ZC is housed.
5. ZGP.DAT is now called QST.DAT.
6. The tile format has been reworked. At the moment, the change should be transparent to the user. However, this change will allow for new tile formats in the future (256-color tiles, 16-bit tiles, true-color tiles, etc.).
7. The bug with ZC not remembering the correct quest dir has been fixed (it would change whenever you switched directories to load a quest file in ZC).
8. The bug where ZC would only look in the quest directory to find a quest has been fixed. Now, it looks at the location where the save file says that the quest is located.
9. The quest loading progress box no longer shows the percent done for the tile reader. This makes quest loading somewhat faster.
10. Sprites now have a Z variable. This allows for expansion for new enemies (and other things) that will be able to jump and fly. Although a few enemies already do this (tektites and peahats, for instance), the calculation for them is faked. The new method makes jumping/flying easier to do from a programmer's prospective.
11. Eyeball combo calculations are only done when an eyeball combo is encountered. This should speed up screen rendering by a few fps.
12. The year has been fixed in the title screens.
13. The key name display in ZC key dialogs has been fixed.
14. The wrong text background in the ZC key grabber has been fixed.
15. Fixed the issues with the mouse jumping to the wrong location when when you move off the ZQuest window in scaled windowed mode.
16. Fixed the bug where SPC files would stutter when paused instead of going silent.
17. Fixed the bug where enemies don't drop clocks anymore.
18. Fixed the bug (oversight?) where you couldn't adjust Link's walk style (2-frame or 3-frame) in ZQuest.
19. Fixed the bug where some older quests would freeze on the starting DMap.
20. Fixed the bug where some of the enemies would be wrong in old quests.
21. Fixed the bug where double-clicking a combo in the master combo list would only edit the combo if it were on the first combo page.
22. Fixed the bug where deleting a screen was not counted as a change in ZQuest, so ZQuest would not ask to save if that was the only thing done before exiting.
23. Fixed the bug where non-MIDI songs would stutter if the game were paused (with the 'F3', 'F4', 'p', or 'a' keys).
24. Fixed the bug where selecting 'Stop tunes" from the Etc menu wouldn't uncheck the 'Lost Woods' option.
25. Music playing is stopped now when MIDIs is selected from the Quest menu.
26. ZQuest can now play the alternate music types that ZC handles (mp3, ogg, spc, it, xm, s3m, and mod).
27. Renamed 'Play MIDI' in the Etc menu to 'Play music' to correspond with the above change.
28. Fixed the year in the end game credits.
29. Fixed the tile import/export.
30. Now, changing the title screen for ZC causes it to reset so that the correct title shows immediately. Before you had to either wait for the title to cycle through once or manually reset the game.
31. Alternative music now continues to play while the game is paused (with the p key, not the Start button).
32. Fixed the bug where the Triforce init settings weren't being saved by ZQuest.
33. Fixed the bug where the Triforce init settings weren't being used in ZC.
34. Fixed the bug where a DMap Intro on the starting DMap could freeze the game.
35. Misalignment arrows now show up on disabled screens.
36. Pasting a map screen now causes the color to change immediately (before, you had to switch screens and then return to see the correct colors).
37. The 'Heart Container' room type is now called the 'Red Potion or Heart Container' room type.
38. There is a new List Combos Used (shortcut key is `) under the Tools menu. This will show you a list of all of the combos used on the current screen.
39. Deleting a screen now counts as a change, so ZQuest will ask about saving when you try to quit after doing a screen delete.
40. Panel 4 now shortens the room string when displaying it so it doesn't run into the combo scroller.
41. The Catch All caption and value now match up with the other captions and values in panel 4.
42. The room types are now alphabetized.
43. The screen palette dialog now has a dropdown list of the screen palettes with the palette names instead of a numeric entry box.
44. The < and > keys (you have to hold the shift key down) will now flip through the 256 possible screen palettes.
45. Changing the message more x and y variables now counts as a change in ZQuest.
46. When deleting a message string in ZQuest, the scring is shortened so it will fit in the confirmation dialog.
47. When deleting a message string in ZQuest, the End Game string value is updated if necessary.
48. Fixed the bug where there would sometimes be random characters appearing at the end of a message string in panel 4 and in the confirm string delete dialog.
49. The DMap number in the Edit DMap dialog titlebar is now correct (before, it was 1 number too low).
50. Going to the MIDI editor now stops music playback in ZQuest.
51. If a screen doesn't have a message string associated with it, it is now shown as (None) instead of (none) on panel 4, to make it match up with the other items there.
Dark Nation wrote:Here's the changes so far for ZC 2.11 Beta 1:10. Sprites now have a Z variable. This allows for expansion for new enemies (and other things) that will be able to jump and fly. Although a few enemies already do this (tektites and peahats, for instance), the calculation for them is faked. The new method makes jumping/flying easier to do from a programmer's prospective.
Sprites? Does this include items? ... Whatever. My main concerns here with the enemies are that I've noticed that that when you stun a creature that's jumped into the air, it stays hovering in the air, and its shadow doesn't move either. Does this mean that the tektite (Or other) will fall to the level of its shadow when stunned?
Thank you for the bug fixes. 😊 We look forward to testing a new version produced.
Sweet, so beta testing is still in business.
I'll have to get off my ass and organize these forums. (Well, technichally, I'll still be ON my ass.. but , uh, you know...)
Oh, and btw, please make enemies drop clocks again x_x A good clock animation is woe in a quest where you cant find them.
Actually, with the Z variable, it can. As it is now, jumping is approximated by modifying the y variable based on a timer. The shadow's position is calculated based on the Y position and the timer. When you stun the creature, it's movement is simply paused at whatever X and Y position it's at. In the new style, the shadow is kept in memory and the creature's position is modified during movement based on the Z variable. When stunned, it would be fairly trivial to make the creature drop to the ground_y location (where the shadow is). Granted, that could be done now (in a backwards manner), but the Z variable makes this easier.
And, yes, it includes items. So, it could be possible to have hearts floating to the ground like in Z3.
17. Fixed the bug where enemies don't drop clocks anymore.
Dark Nation wrote:Actually, with the Z variable, it can. As it is now, jumping is approximated by modifying the y variable based on a timer. The shadow's position is calculated based on the Y position and the timer. When you stun the creature, it's movement is simply paused at whatever X and Y position it's at. In the new style, the shadow is kept in memory and the creature's position is modified during movement based on the Z variable. When stunned, it would be fairly trivial to make the creature drop to the ground_y location (where the shadow is). Granted, that could be done now (in a backwards manner), but the Z variable makes this easier.And, yes, it includes items. So, it could be possible to have hearts floating to the ground like in Z3.
And it would be neat to have things like keys fall from the sky like in the Gameboy Zelda games.
Falling bombs couldn't hurt also(no pun intended).
Yay, now I don't have to worry anymore. 😃 You just have no idea how much little things like that get to me...Thanks!
18. Fixed the bug (oversight?) where you couldn't adjust Link's walk style (2-frame or 3-frame) in ZQuest.
(nam)
woo hoo! Z variable! I don't really get it, but it sounds important
I'm not sure if these are related, but since you're messing with the temp files ZQuest makes, could you make it so that ZQuest can store a bunch of temporary files? (for more than just one undo, and so the previous action isn't lost when you change screens)
That's an entirely different matter. Temp files are just the files that ZC and ZQuest create temporarily when loading a quest. But, I'll look into it.
Does #8 mean that the quest directory is no longer needed? That would certainly eliminate a lot of n00b confusion.
Would this z-variable allow for picking up and throwing bombs and rocks, as well as the rock's feather? Or am I on the wrong page?
Cloral wrote:Does #8 mean that the quest directory is no longer needed? That would certainly eliminate a lot of n00b confusion.
It's no longer needed, but it's still useful. If you use quests that are in the quest directory, then move the directory somewhere, simply pointing ZC at the new quest directory will fix those quests. Any quest that is not in the quest directory will have to be manually relinked if it is moved.
Orion wrote:Would this z-variable allow for picking up and throwing bombs and rocks, as well as the rock's feather? Or am I on the wrong page?
No, you got it right..
19. Fixed the bug where some older quests would freeze on the starting DMap.
20. Fixed the bug where some of the enemies would be wrong in old quests.
Doesn't the BS Animation rule control Link's walking style? What's the point of adding an option to change it? Do you plan on allowing more options that way or something?
20. Fixed the bug where some of the enemies would be wrong in old quests.
Hey, great!
As far as adding Z height to sprites, perhaps one of the first things you could try it out on is an "Items fall when dropped" quest rule. So when you kill something and it drops an item, the item will launch into the air a little bit, then fall to the ground and bounce a couple times, like later Zelda games. A new shadow sprite would probably have to be made though.
Dart_Zader wrote:Doesn't the BS Animation rule control Link's walking style?
It used to. But it was moved to Init Data a somewhere in 1.93, I think, but no way to change it was added. So, older quests have this value converted automatically. But there wasn't a way to change it (or set it) in new quests.
And the idea about falling items sounds good. I'll look into it.
Hm. I wonder how it would be done. Initially, you (I, actually. 😛 As I have done this, and can give you guys the tiles for it if you want.) could draw a heart spawning in, flashing, and still flashing a bit as it enlarges, is flipped toward the northeast, rises toward that direction, slowly enlarges, slowly directs itself toward the south and eventually southwest, then south again, growing as it does it, ... eventually landing, and then starts pulsating. It continues to do that until its ending animation. Of course, it must be timed absolutely perfectly, lest it appear to spawn from the air once more while nearing the end of its lifetime on the ground. But that's a very minor thing. A "Item Spawn" graphic would ameliorate that.
So concerning the falling item, would there or would there not be a phase during which it is falling, that you cannot pick it up? All the speeds, frames of animation, and no-pick-up-times would be configurable as well?
A small change, but definitely full of the detail that ZC'ers love seeing from you. 😉 :thumbsup:
21. Fixed the bug where double-clicking a combo in the master combo list would only edit the combo if it were on the first combo page.
22. Fixed the bug where deleting a screen was not counted as a change in ZQuest, so ZQuest would not ask to save if that was the only thing done before exiting.
23. Fixed the bug where non-MIDI songs would stutter if the game were paused (with the 'F3', 'F4', 'p', or 'a' keys).
24. Fixed the bug where selecting 'Stop tunes" from the Etc menu wouldn't uncheck the 'Lost Woods' option.
25. Music playing is stopped now when MIDIs is selected from the Quest menu.
26. ZQuest can now play the alternate music types that ZC handles (mp3, ogg, spc, it, xm, s3m, and mod).
27. Renamed 'Play MIDI' in the Etc menu to 'Play music' to correspond with the above change.
Well it could be possible if there is a screen flag that would make the item fall from the sky, with a no interact rule set for a few seconds while it's falling and bouncing.
Another idea would be that if an item appears on any Z location that's not equal to Link's current Z position, that item is not obtainable. This means that how it would work is that when an item appears, it could appear on the 6th layer, and then decend each layer, then it could be unobtainable for a split second. A shadow could be affixed under it via a screen flag(actually could work for any item).
Anyway, another concept could be an item stuck on top of a column or somthing that you need to bomb to make it fall. It just checks to see if the Z location has a certain combo, and it will pass to the next layer.
.. Oh boy. You know what this means? We'll have to start getting COMBOS to have Z-Variables! O_O Height variables! Such as, Link cannot move from any (walkable) Z-Variable that is more than one number greater, and can "fall" onto any one that is less than one in height. Oh boy...
That'll make layering hell though. I mean, think about it. They'd have to be two different systems, practically. O_o
Britannianhero4 wrote:That'll make layering hell though. I mean, think about it. They'd have to be two different systems, practically. O_o
I got around this in my game by allowing the player to change the layer he is drawn on. If he's noted as 'layer 2', he's drawn between 2 and 3. If he's on 'layer 4', he'd drawn between 4 and 5.
The Z variable in ZC, I imagine, will allow for some LttP style layer effects, possibly affecting how the player interacts with layers above 2.
Regarding your quote, BH4, layering isn't a problem. If I want an item on layer 3, I just place it on the screen that corresponds to that layer. This isn't necessarily the way it's done in ZC, but there's as chance it might be in the future.
From what DN's said so far, I don't think the Z-variable is used for layering at all. Currently it sounds like what it does is act as a Y-displacement in order to make things like Vires and Keese look like they are moving upwards. In the future this could allow Link to jump by modifying the z value - as long as it was above 0, Link would not be touching the ground and therefore would be immune to ground-based stuff like pits. But I doubt this would allow Link to jump to a new layer.
Good point, but things like falling keys would also work like that as well.
Also, it just occured to me that cliffs, at least in the gameboy version, are just tiles that force a jump over the tile(and others) from just one directiion. Nothing special reguarding layers would needed to make such an effect.
Yes. The way cliffs work in 2d Zelda games is very simple... When Link jumps off, he keeps going until he has cleared all solid combos. This includes rocks, trees, boulders and what-have-you.
There's a really great example of this in LttP where you can jump off a ledge on Death Mountain and you will go past the stationary boulders on the ground before landing.
Dark Nation wrote:
10. Sprites now have a Z variable.
So, this basically means you now have an easier time measuring the height for sprites? If so, I think RPG Maker 2 helped me understand programming better than I thought.😊
Actually I just had another thought. Might you make a rule in future versions to make the enemy jumping more accurate? What I mean is, with Vires and Pols Voice, might you make it so when they jump, they cannot be hit because it's Z value doesn't match Link's?
Some interesting things could be done with stuff like this - there could be bats that only swoop down to attack and otherwise are too high to hit unless Link jumps up to hit them. Maybe Patra would be hittable while flying around so long as Link jumps up to their level. You could also have the skeletons from LttP that jump when you try to slash them.
Cloral wrote:Some interesting things could be done with stuff like this - there could be bats that only swoop down to attack and otherwise are too high to hit unless Link jumps up to hit them
that brings up an interesting suggestion - Z value for tiles, so jumping off cliffs could be possible?
That sounds like convoluting a perfectly simple idea, if you ask me.
No 2d Zelda game *ever* kept track of height that way. The way it's done now, sprites having a Z variable to make it look like they're flying, is the way Nintendo did it.
When Link jumped off a cliff, it was an illusion. It looked like he was jumping, but what he was really doing was going through a fake animation like Tektites do as he moved across the solid combos.
By the way, has anyone noticed the Roc's Feather/Cape only worked when jumping over non-solid combos? If you ran into a wall or a block or a pot, it would block you.
Dark Nation wrote:Here's the changes so far for ZC 2.11 Beta 1:6. The tile format has been reworked. At the moment, the change should be transparent to the user. However, this change will allow for new tile formats in the future (256-color tiles, 16-bit tiles, true-color tiles, etc.).
So how close are we to this future? Cause I would so love to have more color per Cset.
:king: PrinceMSC :king:
Dark Nation wrote:6. The tile format has been reworked. At the moment, the change should be transparent to the user. However, this change will allow for new tile formats in the future (256-color tiles, 16-bit tiles, true-color tiles, etc.).
Is this meaning that we will be obtaining the ability to rip SNES palettes, and GBA palettes easily in the future?
One question, are you going to be adding the new warp system that was being talked about and stuff?