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OMGLOLMYFIRSTQUEST

57 replies · 19,526 views · Started 29 April 2008

I'm kidding. I've made 3 entirely functional and complete quests already that I don't want to release because I'm not the type of person that thinks that my first (or second and third) shot is likely to be a winner.

I've been toying around with the editor for years, and my most recent quest may be something I'd want people to see. It's very nearly finished, and will probably be done about 1 week after I find an editor that works.

I call it:

Wizzrobe's Big Day Out

The highest peak of Hyrule:

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Red sky? Hyrule is in a pinch!

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It uses a lot of the original art (although heavily modified in many cases) and a good deal of my own art, all kept looking 8-bit. Everything in it could be on an 8-bit cartridge as long as you assume that the game is capable of layering sprites for getting like 5-6 colors like in some later NES games.

Snowy place.

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Guess whether or not that tree is a secret and win a secret.

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Did I use a palette shift? Why yes, I did!

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Obviously, you're playing as the titular character, a Wizzrobe. Ganon is building a fortress in the sky with which to wield and amplify his mighty magical powers and Link is nowhere to be found. The Player is an inexplicably uppity and pugnacious Wizzrobe who doesn't much care for Ganon. Most of the Wizzrobes of the world are still allied with Ganon. They look like normal Wizzrobes, you don't. Some of them look like Zelda 2 Wizzrobes. You know, the KKK guys. You do, however, have a couple quirky and mysterious Wizzrobe buddies on your side. And by quirky I mean annoying and by mysterious I mean Mexican.

I get the feeling there's something he's not telling me.

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Wizzrobe's Big Day Out is fairly non-linear, although it's usually pretty obvious when you're in the wrong dungeon.

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Occasionally some very ridiculous things happen. This picture is a huge spoiler if you like surprises.

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OMG do those pillars have lighting effects?! Not really.

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This quest is HARD. I've played Zelda games a LOT and have set it to be at a challenging difficulty for myself, which I have to keep increasing to keep it from being boring as I play test it. The most difficult parts (the ones I die on more often than not) are all optional.

Entrance to the very difficult and optional Temple of Trials type thing:

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It's more like the original quest than newer games in that most secrets don't really have any hints about where to find them, and you can rarely be sure you've found everything even when you find a secret area. There is a Lens of Truth, but it's not wildly easy to locate itself.

Here's the general back story if you're in to spoilers:

After Ganon's previous defeat all of Hyrule hosted a huge party for Link. Link got terribly wasted and passed out in the evening and that latino Wizzrobe stole all of Link's belongings and left him on a boat to Tijuana. Ganon either didn't die or got revived somehow and decided that with Link in an unknown foreign country he'd go and build a flying castle. That's when you, a lowly Wizzrobe, steps up to the plate to take a swing at Ganon the second time around. Ganon's first act after his hovering palace of doom is finished is to blow up the ocean, so that Link can't get back to Hyrule and stop him.

Anyway. Like I said, I've already made everything from start to finish, I just need a stable platform to bug test it on.

If the Expo were still around for entries, I'm sure this would've made top honors. Never before have I seen the classic set (with obvious modifications) go so far with innovatibility before. What you've done to make all those tiles and yet retain a classic feel along with fitting perfectly in with the classic tileset is bloody brilliant. I especially like the cloud and sky effects. And being a Wizzrobe? It's probably been done somewhere before... but it hasn't been executed anywhere near close to this well. The only things I'll probably not be able to see until this is released are the gameplay (fun factor) and the music selection. Aside from that, everything I see so far is superb.
I look forward to playing this quest soon.

... as for a stable platform... do you mean which build to use it on? Firstly, I have no clue which build you're using, and secondly... well... the only stable builds I know of are pretty old ones relative to the latest stuff, and odds are, you're probably a little past b254 or whatever else I'm still stuck on.

Glad you like it. 😃

I wasn't really expecting phrases like "top honors" and "hasn't been executed anywhere near close to this well" and "aside from that"... uh... I mean, "superb." So far the music is stuff that's probably been done before, original and Z2 stuff. I've been toying with the idea of using my brother to make music. He writes things like chiptunes so it'd be fitting in that respect, it's just hard to get him to stop beating everything to death with the "Make it sound like the '80's stick."

By a stable platform I mean anything that runs on my computer without crashing on start-up or while idling. I used 2.10 for the entirety of this quest, but it arbitrarily stopped working a few months ago. I was distraught and went into a long, brooding silence. When I emerged I saw that there was 2.50, I was ecstatic. Then I learned it crashes like Princess Diana every 5 minutes. I decided this time that I'd wait for a while before sealing myself away.

ms_zelda_lady,

The only other one that I like enough for people to play is about 95% finished, but I forgot the password several years ago. Also I don't remember what I was doing with it so it would take FOREVER to go through each screen and figure out what's in the game. That was before I started making notes about what I'd done...

I FORGOT! I drew this a while ago. It's just an idea for the title screen I'm gonna have with the Wizzrobe looking pretty much like that, and Link looking really confused in the background wearing a sombrero.

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Those screenshots look great, and your quest certainly seems interesting, but they are far too big.
Howcomes you've taken such big ones?

They're about 1024x768. My resolution is 1280x1024, so they look fine to me. I was lazy and just snapshotted and resized by 4x in photoshop. It's far better than making them too small!

Well, no it's not actually >_<
So long as you don't loose any quality (obviously scaling them down 50% so you lose half the detail looks awful) it's fine.
Most screenshots people post aren't scaled up 4 times =P

They don't fit on my screen, it's really not much fun to look at having to scroll around and stuff >_<

Here's some smaller screenshots so that people with low resolutions don't have to scroll around or use a browser that automatically resizes things.

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Yeah, that's right. This is for you, Joe, you big baby.

Nice, you know, there have been times when I was getting my ass kicked by wizzrobes in a quest and I would wonder, "What if I could actually be one of those things?"

I didn't expect that those of us who thought that way would soon be about to get our wish... 😎

Well, your "sword" always fires a projectile in my quest to simulate being a Wizzrobe. Quick Sword is also on, but don't worry, it doesn't make you overpowered.

I'm actually worried that I'll have to make an easier version of the quest because it's probably too hard for any casual player to beat. Blue Darknuts in the first dungeon surrounded by damaging floors in a dark room and you only get 1 heart. I might have gone overboard, but that's what it takes to make it hard for me. 😃

I've also confirmed that my brother will in fact be making me some original music for this quest. If he writes as well as he sings it might not suck!

Well then, I can't imagine what levels in the neighborhood of 5 and 6 are like. :scared:

If you really need to crank up the difficulty that high before it is no longer too easy.... well, that's what beta testers are for. They'll be able to tell you how hard is right for the common folk of planet earth.

Oh, and by the way. I really appreciate the positive responses I'm getting from people here. I wasn't sure if I was ever going to finish the quest after my whole recent "editor not working" problems began, but I'll definitely get it done now. I hadn't really even shown screenshots to anyone before this thread so I didn't have any idea if the quest looked fun or not.

You've no idea how much I want to be working on it RIGHT NOW! ARGH!

EDIT: OMG! I finally get it now! I didn't know how these forums worked and didn't realize that you had to turn on images to see them in a post instead of in a link. Weird default settings. NOW I see why Joe was complaining, that IS really annoying if you're not linking to the picture and seeing it in the post. I fixed it. Very sorry. I was also wondering why nobody had avatars.

Joe is not a baby. I was a fool. Can I ever be forgiven for this transgression?

AaronJer wrote:Oh, and by the way. I really appreciate the positive responses I'm getting from people here.

Sometimes in life, people actually give praise when it's due 😉

If you're that close to completion, you should employ beta testers and figure out your "crashing issues". I want to see a completed quest. 😮

I actually do play around with zc. More than most of you realize. I'm working on creating a quest again.

Joe is not a baby. I was a fool. Can I ever be forgiven for this transgression?

No. All you can do is pray that no anvils fall from the sky.

I have a list of like 15-20 fixes I need to do before I bother having anyone beta test it. Things like tile warps stuffing you into a wall that I just haven't gotten around to fixing yet. I think I may have a solution to the crashing problem as well, and that is to finish the quest on a different computer. Normally I wouldn't do this because I need loads of time where I'm not bothered but it's so close to done I should be able to finish it over a weekend at a friend's house.

The time limit will also keep me from deciding to add another dungeon or partial overworld or something...

Oh yeah! I got a whole selection of music now. The main overworld still has the standard song and the first dungeon has the dungeon song, and the level 9 song is used somewhere... but other than that every dungeon and partial overworld has a unique music track. All the music is arranged, rearranged or written (just 2 or 3) by my brother (he works quick! 😮). You'll probably recognize a song or two, although some of them are pretty damn obscure.

Here's a couple examples of what the music will be like in my quest.

Ruined Hyrule Overworld
Ice Palace

The first one is something I don't remember and the second one is written by my bro. There's a version with and without percussion. When you're in the snowy overworld it plays the no percussion version and when you enter the dungeon there the percussion starts. It's almost pretty cool.

If either of them play funny or make horrible loud noises at awkward moments, it's not a problem with the file, midis are just retarded and play wrong a lot.

tho's are some sweet tunes from your bro! he really does know what he is doing when it comes to midi =)

Just a quick question, are they optimized for 'General Midi'? (I assume yes because they sound awesome :P)

I'm pretty sure they're optimized, like I said, if he didn't write it he DID arrange/rearrange it. I can't imagine why he'd be rearranging it if it wasn't to optimize it, but I don't really know about that sort of thing.

I got to say, this looks amazing. I'm a big fan of classic set quests, and this has got to be the best looking classic quest (graphically) I've ever seen. And I love that ice midi. It just screams out "Classic Ice Mountain" to me.

russadwan wrote:I got to say, this looks amazing. I'm a big fan of classic set quests, and this has got to be the best looking classic quest (graphically) I've ever seen.

Good then, maybe you'll stop loving End of Time like your own son. 😃

I've been rearranging some midis myself now that my bro has shown me the ropes. I'm aiming for all general midi. I hope that isn't a bad idea. The only program I have to use for midis is an ANCIENT version of musictime. It's like, windows 3.1 old. It's the only one I can find that shows things exactly as sheet music. Too bad I can't affect instrument cues with it... makes things complicated!

Also, I can't access this site from home anymore. I have no idea why. I thought it was down or something, but now I see people were posting when I couldn't get here.

I hope to finish this quest during this weekend, but it's looking unlikely because I won't be able to work on it on Sunday due to some very unfortunately timed gardening.

Sweet MIDIs you got there, especially the one your brother created. Anyhow, there's one called Anvil Studio that's completely free (actually, there is a retail version, but the free version will give you more than enough to created a piece... except that you can't have tempo changes within a piece). There may be better ones out there for free, but this one is very simplistic and should conform to what you're more used to. Ok, so it doesn't show the entire sheet music, but it does show you the lines that you can quicklink to, so it should work fine.

Anvil Studio Site
Unless you already tried that one...

Sorry I haven't released the quest yet. I've been IP banned from this site and I basically can't do anything until that stops happening. Proxy servers are slow! It took like 5 minutes just to get to this page!

I HAVE however tried out that Anvil thing. And it rocks. TYVM for the suggestion.

I updated the spoiler picture, it's probably the final version now. It was supposed to look like a cloud, and now it does.

How awesome would everyone think it would be if I made a lot more stuff like the picture linked to in the post above for my quest? I'll have a lot of time since it doesn't look like this IP ban thing is going to be resolved any time soon. Any suggestions, thoughts, complaints, escape plans?

My quest didn't die or anything, I just haven't been back here since the whole banning thing. I guess I'm not banned right now, but that'll probably start again soon. Anyway, I'm posting on PureZC these days if anyone cares, because I don't get IP banned there. Here's some pics of a dungeon and part of the custom boss in it.

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