Zelda 2 in ZC, back from the dead.

I've been busy working on enemy AI, as well as ripping sprites of course. Anyway here are a couple of screenshots I took. The first two show a forest encounter with spiders and Moblins and the third shows the desert environment before I added enemies / flying rocks. The road scenerio works too but I didn't include it since its just an empty screen (desert like ground with some desert weeds or something).

Forest, all the enemies work.

Desert.

Next set of screen shots should be from within the palace, with palace enemies. 😊

Looks great!
Are you using/have you made scripts for the leveling system?

bobrocks95 wrote:Looks great!
Are you using/have you made scripts for the leveling system?

I've been working on the Palace. I had to redo part of the layout and have been working on getting keys, elevators, doors, etc. working correctly. So the plan is to get the entire palace working, then go back in and get all the enemies going again (and implement the missing enemies).

Anyway I put together a video showing blocking projectiles with the shield, in the desert random encounter. It also shows part of the palace including the elevators, keys and doors. For some reason the video isn't completely smooth - but it was rather large so its probably due to Youtube compression. It still runs smooth normally. 😊

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuystzkuobQ&feature=channel

I'm liking the palace, it looks exactly like the original. Nice work, blue_knight.

The Palace is now fully working, except for some enemies and the boss. All the elevators, keys and doors work correctly and you can get through the entire palace. So next up is the remaining enemies and finally the boss. Then I get started on the spell system and finally finish the level system and then release the demo. 😊 The level system is mostly in place, I just have to add the UI (the screen that comes up and allows you to pick the current level upgrade or wait for the next one).

When and if this project is completed (or nigh-completed), I'd be happy to help you package it as a general purpose Zelda 2 creation system. After the scripts are in place, it would seem a simple matter to set up a point and click creation system just using standard Zelda Classic tools.

C-Dawg wrote:When and if this project is completed (or nigh-completed), I'd be happy to help you package it as a general purpose Zelda 2 creation system. After the scripts are in place, it would seem a simple matter to set up a point and click creation system just using standard Zelda Classic tools.

I just finished implementing the active subscreen. When you hit start, instead of scrolling down like Zelda 1, it just pops up over the screen screen (like Z2). It displays the correct number of keys and also shows items. Obviously it shows that you can pick up and use items such as the candle (which is passive, i.e. used automatically).

Here are some screenshots of subscreens as I wander the dungeon. You can see it showing the current number of keys and showing the candle once I pick it up. (I realize that these might be boring screenshots but they are meant to show functionality).

I also want to mention some enhancements that will be made to this game to help make it more fun and accessible.

* The title screen will be very similar to the original, with the title modified appropriately. However instead of having the simple story summary scroll by, once you start for the first time it'll show you the more fleshed out story from the manual. The manual text and pictures will be used, to give you the better version of the story that many people may have missed.

* Difficulty levels. Zelda 2 was too hard for many people, but to make this version more accessible there will be multiple difficulty levels. Normal will behave very much like the original game. There will be an Easy mode for people who want to play the game but find the original to be too difficult or frustrating. There may be a hard mode too, I'm not sure yet.

* Changes to the continue/save functionality. In Zelda 2 the player starts out with a couple of lives and once they run out they must start from the Palace in the beginning of the game. They keep their levels, items, spells, etc. but they lose all experience that they have acquired - even though the secret experience bags are gone permanently. So there will be a couple of changes:
- When you run out of lives, you will not lose all the experience you have gathered. This means that its always worthwhile to get secret experience bags since you won't "lose" them.
- Towns and the Palace entrances will now be save points. This means that if you lose all your lives you will start at the Palace entry if inside a Palace, but the enemies still reset. If you are outside, you'll start from the last town you visited. This also means when you save and come back later, you'll start in these save points - no more going across the world to go back to the dungeon you're in. Since the enemies reset its still almost as difficult - just not nearly as tedious or frustrating.

Any comments are welcome. What do you guys think about all this?

Every enhancement sounds great.

The only change I ever wanted to make to Zelda 2 was to make the throwing sword not suck donkey balls. I mean, seriously, that weapon was God almighty in The Legend of Zelda, and it's only a little better than peeing on enemies in Adventure of Link. It even sounds sort of like peeing.

Demo Testing
In an unrelated note, before I release the first game play demo I'd like to have someone else test it out first. The demo will probably be complete in a week or so, can I get a volunteer to pre-test it before I release to the general public?

I'll test it, if you want.

I'll do it.

OK, the testers will be Din and Moo2wo. I'll PM you guys when the demo is ready to test - it'll be about a week as I said before. After a limited testing phase I'll release the demo for everyone to try. Thanks for helping. 😊

Damn, that's what I get for not checking my e-mail often enough.

bobrocks95 wrote:Damn, that's what I get for not checking my e-mail often enough.

Also there will be a proper beta later before the project is complete - I'd like the final game to be as bug-free as possible.

blue_knight wrote:Also there will be a proper beta later before the project is complete - I'd like the final game to be as bug-free as possible.

I'm pretty good at Zelda 2, I'm up for the beta that'll probably be far down the road.

Moo2wo wrote:... By the way, any idea on what our time frame will be? One or two days should be fine for me. And exactly how easy will the easy mode be? Similar to Zelda 1 would be nice.

blue_knight wrote:As for easy mode - I haven't fine tuned the difficulty yet; Link will be tougher, have more lives and the enemies will be a easier to kill (especially Ironknuckles).

We'll see. The mechanics of Adventure of Link will be hard to replicate exactly. For example, Iron Knuckles become easy as pie in the original game, once you get the hop-slash technique down pat. (When Link is jumping, he crouches, which means the Iron Knuckle's shield drops, so if you're hopping just one tile off the floor, you'll hit his unprotected head.) Unless these mechanics are in your game, it just won't feel like the original...

Subtle nuances such as that would be hard to get in there.

In this quest you also crouch when you jump. It tracks where your shield is through the jump and similarly it'll track when you're crouched. So the Iron Knuckles will still behave like they do in Zelda 2 - they'll just be easier to defeat in easy mode. 😊

A small update - the level system is now working. You can go up in levels and the subscreen is updated accordingly. Much of this was already in place, but now all the interface is done. So now items work, the subscreen works, keys and doors work, experience and levels work. So next up is spells and that pretty much completes the gameplay elements needed for the demo. 😊

Here's a screenshot of the subscreen that comes up when you gain a level. You can either choose to raise something you have the experience for or cancel, in order to save up and raise something else sooner.

Something seems off with your screenshot. In the original game, when you had life selected, didn't it say "Life will go up" or something like that? (Same thing for the other two when selected.)

CaRmAgE wrote:Something seems off with your screenshot. In the original game, when you had life selected, didn't it say "Life will go up" or something like that? (Same thing for the other two when selected.)

There are also a few other differences from the original game - all minor in my opinion.
1) There are 2 vertical tiles missing on the screen - I'm adjusting the screens to make sure the play area is almost the same. This is a Zelda Classic limitation - I could get around it by drawing into the passive subscreen area with scripts but I'm not going to do that in this quest. This also means that the passive subscreen is 2 tiles too large vertically.
2) In Zelda 2 the subscreens are blue in areas where blue sky is visible, in this quest they are always black (like they are in Zelda 2 whenever the sky is black or you're inside a cave, building, palace, etc.). This may be fixed eventually but not for the demo.
3) The enemies and Link don't disappear when a subscreen is up like in Zelda 2. There it was a limitation - they didn't want the sprites to show up on top of the subscreen. Zelda Classic has no such limitation because of layers, so I'll probably keep it this way in the final quest.

I hope those two missing tiles don't mess you up....

bobrocks95 wrote:I hope those two missing tiles don't mess you up....

Do you have a day picked out you might send Din and I the demo?