GRIKARUGUN *Insert coin(s) to continue*

Yeowza. THIS is why I thought it was wise to script and design out in the open, rather than in secret. This looks bad ass. Downloading now!

<<Plays, gets hammered by first boss>>

Haha holy shit. You really did get the bullet hell concept working on ZClassic! Are the bullets all draw primitives? So that you can control the hit box?

The problem now, of course, is that I have to revamp my own shmup levels because they're pretty tame in comparison to this stuff. Well done!

<<Waxed by boss again>>

I can't seem to get your special weapon combinations to work. Backwards shot works, nothing else.

This looks good. I'm obviously using easy mode, but this defiitely shows what ZC has come from. First, it could just clone Zelda 1. Now, we have arcade games with it. Simply amazing!

C-Dawg wrote:
<<Plays, gets hammered by first boss>>

<<Waxed by boss again>>

I can't seem to get your special weapon combinations to work. Backwards shot works, nothing else.

Are you using a keyboard or controller? I did a run through of it before I posted it and I didn't notice anything not working correctly. (besides the stuff that only almost works correctly)

Damn, what settings do you have it on? I'll look into it, there's a small chance I overlooked something with weapon type, but it should be working correctly.

Also, OK, by now you've figured out that easy mode is just the same as normal but with more hit points basically. 😉 So...yeah...I never got motivated to actually make easy mode substantially easier. I'm going to have to go through lots of code. XD Next demo, I promise. 😉 I'd hate for you to not see the rest of it though. 😞 If you want the cheat code, I give it to you no problem. ...everyone else, tough luck 😛

Also bonus points for anyone who can name all the games used in the title.

Do I get the cheat code Gleeok? =P

This is just insane =P

EDIT:
Well, I managed to get to the second boss in the end anyway.

Pretty impressive I must say.

I hate you, first boss.

These sort of madness SHUMPS are so pretty, and I'm so bad at them.

Dang it! I almost beat the first boss! Almost! Wow, I have to say, that was pretty impressive Gleeok.

Wow! What a game!

I got to the first boss! I beat the first boss! And I got to the 2nd boss! With only one and a half health bars left... on easy mode... DANG IT!

Can I have the password? I have no idea how Joe beat the 2nd boss, but I need some scripting help, inspiration, and techniques that could probably be found in your .z file! PM it to me, PLEASE! (Although I could just use the one from your previous game...)

Either way, I am just in awe of your scripting abilities, Gleeok!

OK, now this is why I needed to get a demo out at a still somewhat early stage in development. Thanks for the feedback guys, your comments are useful. 😊

Some major revamping in regards to the game modes that are now very far reaching indeed, without losing any of the 'artsy' visuals, cool patterns, or compromising the structure in how the game plays.

The enemy death retaliation fire is now adjusted according to difficulty setting. (2 shots slow / 3 shots medium / 4 shots fast speed)
Medium, large enemies, and bosses now have a variable HP respectively. (The boss bar still shows a full bar, and drops by percentage of boss HP)
Likewise with some of the more diabolical enemy groupings and patterns, but perhaps more importantly , bullets. (they start shooting at you later on mind you 😮 )

Added 7 new enemy types and finishing up stage 1c...It's a doozy. I think what I'm gonna do is make it so you can continue at the last boss of the final stage in each level...which is like a whole level in itself. That way I don't really have to worry about people complaining that it's the most fucked up thing ever to have to start from the beginning of each level for the final bosses. 😉

I gotta post some of these enemy movement scripts too, and, anyway's...I'll try and update the demo with all the changes I've mentioned, and lv1 fully complete, as soon as possible.

AgentLym wrote:
Can I have the password? I have no idea how Joe beat the 2nd boss

I didn't, I said I got to it, not beat it =P

Oh... my bad. Heh. Well, that makes me feel alot better!

AgentLym wrote:Wow! What a game!

Can I have the password? I have no idea how Joe beat the 2nd boss, but I need some scripting help, inspiration, and techniques that could probably be found in your .z file! PM it to me, PLEASE! (Although I could just use the one from your previous game...)

I'll be posting pretty much everything I'm tinkering with sooner or later. You can find alot of what I'm doing in this thread. Plus I'll release the tileset when it's complete also, so it should be easy enough to reverse engineer the game, with a little work that is. If you wan't to know anything specific just ask away, it's really not a big secret.

Oh, and I've got enough results out of the lab mice :P (for now), so the lv1 cheat is 'help'. They get progressively harder to figure out from there, not that you'll need them, seeing how every one of Link->Inputs is disabled anyway. Next version will be easier guys, I promise. 😉

EDIT: Why the heck can't anyone beat the second boss? Look at the pic of it on hard mode for pete's sake. It was originally supposed to be a miniboss. 😛

Can't beat it because I'm down to one third of my health after the first boss. Just can't last that long.

So far I enjoyed the first part of level 2 the best. The part where you had to quickly switch colors to evade the long solid beams of nastiness coming at you from both sides. Pretty, all around.

I'm guessing you did alot of ripping out of gradius, ikaruga (music anyway) and other deals though. Any custom work in there?

This is certified win. I'm too much of a masochist to go any lower than hard though, so the first boss is killing me XD

You get some credit too, Jman. As I recall, scripting was your idea. Now we've got at least three, maybe more master scripters out there pushing Zelda Classic far beyond what anyone thought it capable of.

The challange for you devs is going to be keeping ZClassic accessible. The tools are there for ZClassic to be a development engine that caters to ANY skill level. Just getting started? Really simple to make your own Legend of Zelda 1 clone game. More experienced? You can add custom graphics and start making your own Zelda 3 clone. Really motivated? You can use scripting to do whatever you want. ZClassic is really, as you say, "certified win" if we can get the initial stuff intuitive enough for entry level people to use.

Unfortunately, accessibility and power don't typically go hand-in-hand. One aspect that seems to turn off newcomers is how cluttered the interface is, which is I'm I've been pushing so hard to make large mode the standard. Of course, game making is complicated no matter how you slice it. I mean, even if you ignore scripting altogether there's still a learning curve before you can understand how everything in ZC works :P

Also, DarkDragon is the one who implemented the current scripting interface (I designed the internal engine), so he deserves as much credit as I do.

Yeah, you developers deserve most of the credit, especially you jman2050, for this game at least. If you hadn't added the ZScript weapon functions I would have given up trying to make this....In fact I did throw in the towel a few months before said weapons were added. So, thank you sir. You are awesome.

And I'm sorta agreeing with you on the hard mode thing. The plus side is that I've gone through and meticulously redone any instance of enemy bullets, slightly decreased the hit box, and finally added in the hitboxs' offsets. So collision detection is way more precise..and sane. And for the fixed demo I've enabled saving, and made it so you start with a full life bar no matter what game mode.

C-Dawg wrote:Can't beat it because I'm down to one third of my health after the first boss. Just can't last that long.

Ahh, see that's the stuff I need to know! But you're supposed to start every level with full life....Is that not happening?

So when you guys are getting to the bosses, is it hard because it's just waaaay to hard, or because your life is low initially? ..I probably should of asked this stuff earlier. <_<

C-Dawg wrote:
I'm guessing you did alot of ripping out of gradius, ikaruga (music anyway) and other deals though. Any custom work in there?

There's actually more than I care for...I'm not big with custom graphics. I basically just made the tiles 8-bit, then redrew/recolored each enemy 6 times for the different colors. Pretty much all or most the weapon spites and ship/shield stuff are the only thing that are original.

EDIT: Also, Is anyone else getting random crashing?

I was mistaken. The player's health does start at max after each boss, it just goes down to zero almost immediately as I am hammered by unblockable enemy spray.

Got up to the second boss this time. I get the boss' concept - there is probably a pattern, a rythm to the sheild switches to get in synch with the spraying gunfire... but hell if I can keep up with it.

C-Dawg wrote: I get the boss' concept - there is probably a pattern, a rythm to the sheild switches to get in synch with the spraying gunfire... but hell if I can keep up with it.

When I test the bosses I make sure that there is plenty of strategic options open to the player. With that boss you can stick to the outside and knock down a few of the laser orbs, take out orbs of one color first (this makes it too easy), or concentrate your fire on any single point, to name a few. Consequently, as you can kind of guess, this demo was a bit rushed. I just really needed some feedback for it, so thank you guys for checking it out.

Also a *small* sort of status report. Cool stuff, I think you'll like it.

Basic Weapon Edit functions have been added. This currently includes many subtle changes, but a pain in the arse to add initially. Now when you switch shield modes you get a second option that will fire and absorb shots like the first. Also added four option types, choosable by the player, that include; Spacing type (Will spawn one on each side of the ship, press 'L' to increase or decrease the space between ship and option), Rotation type (Again, press L to adjust the radius), Freeze type (Hold L to lock them in place)..there's still some obscure bug with this one for some reason though... , And Direction type (currently just follows the player).

Also got rid of knockback completely. (Why there isn't a simple "no knockback" rule I have no idea...seems kind of strange, there should be one.)

Multiple ships- I'm pretty certain that sometime soon (very soon) I'm going to simply Get rid of Link completely and turn him into an ffc. This seems like the best thing to do. That way I can use different graphics at my discretion. Anyway, You can now select from two different ships with a slightly different weapons array.

Finished the last stage of level one, and the lv1 end boss known as the Patralike. 😃 Takes up the entire screen, has 22 orbiting bodies, the smaller 'eyes' are invulnerable and will block harmful fire and absorb homing lasers while protecting the inner eye, and did I mention they shoot solid beams? Also has three forms. Good luck with that...

I think I will add a mini boss right before the main one also, Something really easy where you probably wont even get hit once, but something really pretty to look at, like some cool touhou type patterns. I have about a 45 second space to fill.

Also re-organized all the screens in ZQ and some code to make it fit in with the extended soundtrack. 😊 (optional, but shouldn't be more than 100 MB)

Adding an "Insane" difficulty mode 😛 and adding loops at some point. When you beat the game you can replay it on a harder setting where all the levels are completely different! ...and harder.

Oh, and finished a "Level Clear" screen. Will show you how many enemies you killed in that level and your max chain. Later on it will have remain bonus, boss destruction bonus, and total score.

Maybe a few weeks for a demo.

Gleeok wrote:
Multiple ships- I'm pretty certain that sometime soon (very soon) I'm going to simply Get rid of Link completely and turn him into an ffc. This seems like the best thing to do. That way I can use different graphics at my discretion. Anyway, You can now select from two different ships with a slightly different weapons array.

I know it's just another minor step, but somehow taking the game engine's automatic Link functions out of the equation seems like the final lynchpin between using ZeldaClassic and basically just programming your own game. Not much is left of the ZeldaClassic API after that except drawing functions on the screen and easy graphics processing, ya know?

And with what you've learned here, you could probably go out and make a C++ version of your game from scratch. Just need to learn a little bit about Windows programming and you're set.

C-Dawg wrote:I know it's just another minor step, but somehow taking the game engine's automatic Link functions out of the equation seems like the final lynchpin between using ZeldaClassic and basically just programming your own game. Not much is left of the ZeldaClassic API after that except drawing functions on the screen and easy graphics processing, ya know?

And with what you've learned here, you could probably go out and make a C++ version of your game from scratch. Just need to learn a little bit about Windows programming and you're set.

Well I've actually thought of that, but become adept at bending ZC and Zscript how you want and programming a game from scratch are two completely different things. I just simply don't know enough about programming to conceivably finish this as such a thing. Granted, having the ability to use and recycle objects rather than ffcs would be much less constraining, but look at all the awesome projects people have started on the web only to see an 'abandoned' or 'cancelled' tag next to it. Tons of them. I couldn't really hope to learn a new language and make a game out of it by myself with my spare time like I could with zc.

I've also decided against that, and am just making Link translucent. That way I can get the ship to 'roll' and whatnot.

You know, I could ask you the same thing. You're putting together an entire side-scroller and shmuper with a zelda clone, yes?

I,for one, think that using ZC to create projects outside of it's top-down adventure intent is awesome.

For one, you can draw from a community of Zelda Players, and for two, you can show people outside of the community what you're with doing your project, and attract them to the project, if not Zelda Classic in general.

As for the quest, it's really cool and shows off just how far we've come from the days when you couldn't even have animated combos.

C-Dawg wrote:The challange for you devs is going to be keeping ZClassic accessible.

And bugfree? What happened to bugfree and stable? ZC is accessible and simple enough, but why the fuck no one cares about stability and bugfreenes anymore? No matter how many cool new features there are, ZC is pure shit as long as there isn't a full and stable release. Why the hell I'm the only ZC user (or ex user in this case) who cares about stability? Sigh.

Forgive me if I crossed a line with my comments.

EDIT - Now I'm not saying that eg scripting is bad, you could potentially make really great games with the good old overhead adventure stuff and have some space fights or cool sidescrolling parts in the game too, but it is just so infuriating that there's no stable ZC in sight and no one else seems to be worried about it. People are like this "woah, new cool feature! Who cares about bugs, this feature is a must have!!!" 😞

Hey, I care about stability too!

What are you talking about, Petoe? We're not talking about new features. We're talking about scripting. We make our own new features nowadays. The devs can focus entirely on stability. We quest-makers will take care of the feature creep.

Petoe wrote:And bugfree? What happened to bugfree and stable? ZC is accessible and simple enough, but why the fuck no one cares about stability and bugfreenes anymore? No matter how many cool new features there are, ZC is pure shit as long as there isn't a full and stable release. Why the hell I'm the only ZC user (or ex user in this case) who cares about stability? Sigh.

Forgive me if I crossed a line with my comments.

Go to shardstorm.com and check out the feature listings. You will notice a significant rise in bug fixes and a significant decline in feature additions. Now, there was at one point an agreement to make a feature freeze. There were a couple additions since then, but only ones that were considered necessary enough to be added in before the next public release. That way, once that release is made, they'll be in already, and we won't have to wait the usual 3-4 years pulling our hair out. While I was in support of the feature freeze, I'd say the decisions on which things got past it were wise. As well, very few (if any) bugs seemed to be produced as a DIRECT RESULT of those additions.

A lot of those additions do not affect the gameplay whatsoever.

Cases in point:

Integrity Checks/Quest Reports - They do nothing to the game whatsoever, and are used to pinpoint design flaws in quests.

Renaming of Stuff - Used to better convey the effect of rules/combos/etc. Again, no effect to gameplay whatsoever.

General Tidyfying - Not necessarily bug fixes, but effect the game in a positive way and do not produce bugs.
Example :

ZC Change Log wrote:* Surprise! Link's sprite decorations are now drawn on Link when he scrolls between screens.

This means that if Link is on shallow water and walks to another screen, the water covers him for the duration of the scroll. If you were a quest developer for 2.5 and this issue wasn't addressed, wouldn't it kind of gnaw at you?

If anything, judging by the trends, it seems more and more like they are preparing for a release. So uh, have a bit more optimism.

What are you talking about, Petoe? We're not talking about new features. We're talking about scripting. We make our own new features nowadays. The devs can focus entirely on stability. We quest-makers will take care of the feature creep.

QFT.

It used to be Developers -> End User. The developers had to do all the work in creating productivity for the quest makers.

Now its more like Developers -> Scripters -> End User.

Developers add the core features and fix engine bugs. Scripters script the fancy wangimazzangs. The end user sits back and makes his quests from the many available resources.

Any script-related feature that makes it past the feature freeze is fine by me. That way the developers will have no more part in the designing of new items/enemies/etc, and therefore can turn their guns directly towards engine bugs and obliterate them.

With all of this out of the way and taken care of, 2.5 will be the magnum opus of all the developers work, rather than a shoddy "almost" like previous releases. And we definitely won't be bored waiting for 2.6, because we'll have an infinitude of things to do with 2.5.

Egh, forgive me for hijacking the thread, but I had to give Petoe some perspective on the issue.

Sorry that I kind of took this thread off topic, but bigjoe, no matter what you say it doesn't make me feel any better. We've been waiting for "ZC 2.5" about 2 years and a stable ZC version for abour 4 years and there's still no sign of one. It is true that the developers do not own anything to the community and it has never been easy to be one because some people want features and others want stability. But still, so many mistakes have been made it's not even funny, why doesn't anyone take a look at the quote in my sig and think about how much sense it makes? I guess it makes too much sense. *shrugs*
Here:

Freedom wrote:GET a stable version, THEN add more with the builds, DON'T just keep adding bloat to something that doesn't work already.

Sorry that I'm such a whiny little bitch, but it just feels like I've wasted the last 6 years of my life on ZC. I've worked so hard for my quests and dreaming that they and ZC too will do well and be succesful some day, but instead people are losing interest and ZC is slowly dying. Oh well, maybe I'm just the only one who holds ZC dear and who wants to see ZC succeed. It really feels that way. 😞

Even though I have lost all hope of there ever being a stable ZC ever again, I find it too hard to just give up on the program and walk away. I'd love to help some way, but scripting is out of my league and ZC testing is arranged so poorly that if I were to start testing again, I would have no idea where to start and what to look for. The devs just keep adding and changing things and they never clearly tell about these changes and they rarely care to explain this new stuff which makes it hard and frustrating to test ZC.

Now I promise I'll stop ruining this thread, the game looks awesome, Gleeok.

Petoe wrote:I've worked so hard for my quests and dreaming that they and ZC too will do well and be succesful some day, but instead people are losing interest and ZC is slowly dying. Oh well, maybe I'm just the only one who holds ZC dear and who wants to see ZC succeed. It really feels that way. 😞

Seriously, what? You've been hanging around PureZC too much. ZC isn't "dying" or anything of the sort. Development on both the designer and programmer side is more brisk than I can remember.

The current betas are pretty stable based on my usage and the bug reports given. Stable enough for release honestly, once some of those nagging loose ends are taken cared of (some of them a bit more difficult than you think to fix). Unfortunately, there may be a bugs and issues that simply COULD NOT be fixed without rewriting the whole thing, mostly because it's becoming clear that using Allegro and 8-bit color for this was a bad idea. Oh, and keep in mind that even if ZC itself is ready for release, we still need to get it prepared, updating all the documentation and crap. The only real major addition I still want is migrating the ZQ GUI to use large mode exclusively, but there might be too many problems with that. We'll see.

Anyway, too much drama, not enough discussion about this awesome quest.

I made a star wars crawl about it. :P ..Unfortunately they don't tell you that it has to be under 650 characters, so I had to delete about two-thousand of them and now it's nowhere near as funny. 😞 ..Bastards.

Anyway, Petoe; There is exactly one zc bug in this quest currently. The rest are my fault. XD And no one else is even seeing it. (Random crashing on screen start..after the enemies are loaded though...might be Screen->Wavy..I dunno) Check out the next demo though Petoe, seriously c'mon. Back when in 2.10 time I'd mess around with zc, I'd always try and make whacked out bosses. Massively buggy and not really fun to even fight boss battles. It was like watching the screen have a seizure with poorly drawn combos making babies in there somewhere. Not only that but I'd make levels (rooms with floor and some blocks and water, thats pretty much it) as big as overworlds, with more enemies than anything you have ever seen...Nobody could even beat level 1... XD Well anyway, I remember playing MMDWR and thinking 'wow, those are much better. Ahahaaa... I may be late to the party, but nobody loves intense boss battles more than I do. Well now it's come full circle. Now maybe you can play this and get inspired in the same way, and maybe think to yourself "How the hell do you do that?!" in the same way other people have, myself included. ..Actually wait a couple of days though, I'm almost done with it.

And that reminds me! ...Two new bosses. A new crystal bonus boss, (accessible directly after the final boss of lv1...Yes _L_, I know, that wouldn't make it the "final" boss then, would it. :P) And a miniboss right before the boss....Did I mention I like bosses? 😃 Most advanced ones yet. Screenshots don't really work with this game too well though. <_< Best described through the words; "Pulsating, and Hypnotic"

Also, yeah I do agree that it is getting much more stable, I'm not really sure it's good enough for an immediate release though...

EDIT: Well, the ship's graphics are now displayed via ffc, (...I still might go Drawtiles here...we'll see..) and as such I'm going to add in the ability to select from one of multiple ships, each with a unique weapons system. So does anyone have any suggestions for ship design, laser pattern, attacks, movement??