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Zodiac, the Side-Quest

199 replies · 62,157 views · Started 21 May 2007

jman2050 06 Dec 2008, 17:50

I was thinking that C-Dawg probably had a good reason to not be around. That is a pretty good reason.

Congratulations!

Din 12 Feb 2009, 23:41

Huh, did you just edit an hour ago? Could that mean that there are new features? Hope so, I really want to see this quest finished... even if there's not any features, though, how are you doing on it?

C-Dawg 13 Feb 2009, 15:53

Din wrote:Huh, did you just edit an hour ago? Could that mean that there are new features? Hope so, I really want to see this quest finished... even if there's not any features, though, how are you doing on it?

I just cleaned up a few things about features that are now completed, thats all.

As far as progress, well, it's slow. I'm still full of spit and verve, but I'm low on time and sleep. Once baby starts sleeping through the night, that should help.

C-Dawg 20 May 2014, 05:55

Hi there.

Guess what I did today? I updated the scripts for this thing so it runs in latest beta. I don't have easy hosting at the moment, but if anyone wants a working file, I can provide it.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be motivated to continue working on this thing.

Gleeok 26 May 2014, 23:38

Hey waddayuno, it's C-Dawg back from the abyss of real life. How's it hanging?

If you still need hosting you can just throw up the most recent version on here for now: http://filesmelt.com/simple/basic_upload (that's usually what I do.Just don't expect it will be there for an indefinite length of time.) It'd be interesting to see how the newbies fare against this vertical/side scroller, heh. Because of the *completion* of ZC 2.5 nobody does the "use beta version xxx" anymore, and rightfully so. I'm not even sure how many of them are still available for download.

C-Dawg 27 May 2014, 16:25

Well, like I said, it now works fine in the latest public version of 2.5. I'm working on it again, and I'm logging my progress over at PureZC for the most part. I might take you up on your idea for hosting. On a short term basis it at least lets people offer suggestions, check bugs, and take scripts if they want.

Also, have you updated that Ikaruga clone you were working on for 2.5? It wasn't as hard as I thought to do Zodiac. The only big changes were to DrawTile and Step. Each DrawTile command needed an additional variable added, since they broke scale into xscale and yscale, and each Step (you know, how fast a projectile is moving) needed to be increased by 100. I don't know why Step changed so much. Maybe to give people finer control over the speed of things? Your shooter was far superior to my shooting levels, so I'd hate to see that just fade away.

EDIT:
I took Gleeok's advice, and now there's a download link.

http://filesmelt.com...date5-26-14.qst

I'll update OP too.

SUCCESSOR 29 May 2014, 05:45

C-Dawg wrote:Well, like I said, it now works fine in the latest public version of 2.5. I'm working on it again, and I'm logging my progress over at PureZC for the most part. I might take you up on your idea for hosting. On a short term basis it at least lets people offer suggestions, check bugs, and take scripts if they want.

Also, have you updated that Ikaruga clone you were working on for 2.5? It wasn't as hard as I thought to do Zodiac. The only big changes were to DrawTile and Step. Each DrawTile command needed an additional variable added, since they broke scale into xscale and yscale, and each Step (you know, how fast a projectile is moving) needed to be increased by 100. I don't know why Step changed so much. Maybe to give people finer control over the speed of things? Your shooter was far superior to my shooting levels, so I'd hate to see that just fade away.

EDIT:
I took Gleeok's advice, and now there's a download link.

http://filesmelt.com...date5-26-14.qst

I'll update OP too.

Hey! Look who's not dead! I'll have to check out what you've got here. I missed a lot of ZC gold between a century ago and yesterday.

Here you go: http://armageddongames.net/showthread.php?88524-GRIKARUGUN-*Insert-coin%28s%29-to-continue*&p=898386&viewfull=1#post898386

EDIT: Well I tried but... Protip: the ... in the url should only go in the link name not the actual link. ;D

Gleeok 29 May 2014, 22:17

I always loved the artwork in this quest. SNES-esque Lifeforce meets Earthworm Jim meets Metroid.

There's also been a lot of improvements to scripting. Not so much the base engine or AST, but the exposed functionality and the utility libraries and functions. I wouldn't say you won't need workarounds for new behaviors anymore, but it's much easier now, in general, than it was way back then.

C-Dawg wrote:
Also, have you updated that Ikaruga clone you were working on for 2.5? It wasn't as hard as I thought to do Zodiac. The only big changes were to DrawTile and Step. Each DrawTile command needed an additional variable added, since they broke scale into xscale and yscale, and each Step (you know, how fast a projectile is moving) needed to be increased by 100. I don't know why Step changed so much. Maybe to give people finer control over the speed of things? Your shooter was far superior to my shooting levels, so I'd hate to see that just fade away.

Last year I actually got around to doing just that. The quest can be found here: http://www.purezc.net/index.php?page=quests&id=429 It really needs another update though, since there is a pretty bad bug in it. What happens is if you die on the 1st Crystal Boss (After level 3) You continue at the last boss and skip Lv.4-5. I doubt anyone is good enough to beat it on the first try. :P So if you play it you'd need the password to see the later stuff.

C-Dawg 02 Jun 2014, 03:32

File updated again. Using a different host, because Filesmelt is crapping out on me.

http://www.solidfiles.com/d/992f059acf/ZodiacUpdate(6-1-14).qst

EDIT: New update.

http://www.solidfile...b8/ZodiacUpdate(6-4-14).qst

EDIT: New update.

http://www.solidfiles.com/d/17c79d62c1/ZodiacUpdate_(6-8-14).qst

EDIT: New update.

http://www.solidfiles.com/d/4c6a26797f/ZodiacUpdate_(6-21-14).qst

Also, at my current rate of progress, I should have a finished version of this quest by August. Probably will be a bit of a rough draft, but it's nice to see the end of the tunnel.

(Note: Distractions associated with my eldest child dealing with public school slammed the breaks on as I entered the final stretch. Will get back around to it eventually)

C-Dawg 20 Jan 2015, 15:50

Another update: the game is now playable from start to finish. There are still lots of bug testing to do, and I have to do the ending cinematic. Otherwise, though, its complete. Basically it's in the same shape Dreams of Yesterday was when I left it behind. This time, however, I'm going to stamp out the bugs and tweak the game myself before calling it quits.

On another note... Shockingly little activity on these forums anymore, huh? I wonder if anyone is still around.

CJC 20 Jan 2015, 22:02

Wow, you finished it! This was the quest that made me want to learn how to script, so this is really exciting.

Yeah, AGN is still recovering from its crash; we were overrun with spambots for a while and it's been difficult to regain the confidence of the community. But we're trying and that's all we can do.

C-Dawg 21 Jan 2015, 14:13

CJC wrote:Wow, you finished it! This was the quest that made me want to learn how to script, so this is really exciting.

It's only "finished" in the gameplay sense. You'll keep seeing updates over at my project site on PureZC until the ending is done and the bugs are gone.

Yeah, AGN is still recovering from its crash; we were overrun with spambots for a while and it's been difficult to regain the confidence of the community. But we're trying and that's all we can do.

Well, keep doing your best. I can say that PureZC's system for allowing users to store and update quest projects is amazing, and really adds to the appeal of using that site. AGN is a little broader than just ZC, I can see, but it would be a great feature.

C-Dawg 26 Mar 2015, 17:08

Those who have not checked out Zodiac in awhile should go examine the latest downloads. I've replaced just about every LOZ enemy the game with a completely scripted new enemy. I need people to play the game and give me feedback on them; are they too easy, too hard, too durable, etc. Check it out!

SUCCESSOR 26 Mar 2015, 21:04

It has been quite a while since I tried this out. I really admire your dedication. Scripting that many enemies really shows your drive. I don't play quests often but this has now jumped to the top of my list.

C-Dawg 26 Mar 2015, 21:17

SUCCESSOR wrote:It has been quite a while since I tried this out. I really admire your dedication. Scripting that many enemies really shows your drive. I don't play quests often but this has now jumped to the top of my list.

Thanks! Yeah, I really want to make sure this game stands on its own and is not a glorified tech demo the way Dreams of Yesterday ended up. I don't want to have to call in ShadowTiger to revamp the quest to fix every bug in it. Plus, I'm using this as a kind of training grounds, as I want to move into Allegro after I'm done and make my own projects from scratch.

Before you play: READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. Some people don't understand they need to configure the A, B, L and R buttons correctly and they have a bad time right away.

As far as the custom enemy scripting goes, it's actually a pretty tame part of the whole project. Once I got the generic outline done, many of the enemies are formulaic:

1. Fire up MSPaint and draw some enemy sprites.
2. Import sprites.
3. Do some math to set up the draw_creature function to display the sprites correctly. It's virtually a copy-paste job if it's the same size and has the same amount of animation as a pre-existing enemy.
4. Script a few states of behavior for the enemy and plug that into the existing shell.

This sounds like a lot, but for simple enemies without complex behavior I can crank one out in twenty minutes. Palette swaps that are stronger/faster/better/harder versions of existing enemies can be done in like five minutes.

No, the enemies are just one tiny fraction of the massive work going into this. We're at about 95,000 lines of script at the moment, and we'll break 100,000 before being done. That's not much as far as games go, but it's hella big for Zelda Classic. At this point, the ZClassic engine itself is being used almost only as a data structure, the secret flag system, and FFCs as game sprite objects. Very little else remains, and that which does is often more of a limitation than a benefit.

It's been a big learning experience, however, and without ZClassic's pre-existing structure, it would have been impossible to keep interest going. The ability to see results instantly and make playable games even before all of the code is written is huge.

C-Dawg 07 Jul 2015, 16:21

I don't know if anyone still reads these forums who does not also read PureZC, but just in case...

I'm in the final stages of bugfixes and polishing for a final beta. I'm doing my own playthrough and taking notes, and after that, I plan on maybe one more beta release before I add some additional content and call the game complete. So, if people want to offer feedback, now is the best time to do it!