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AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

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AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

Okay, so splitting this off of the "What should our next engine be" thread so that we can keep these ideas separate from the RPG or Megaman ideas.

The first thing we would need to do is figure out who has experience with Zelda Classic, and in what areas. I myself have helped to bugtest some Zelda Classic games that are still in production, though I am one of those fools that needs to have a handbook for everything. I've got some contacts that I can try for in case we want to make something fiendishly difficult, but they're all more than likely going to be too focused on their own ZC projects to really be bothered with the assistance.

Basically, the person who is most confident in their ZC creating abilities would be handed the reigns of chief developer.

We would also need to decide how many dungeons we're going to have, and in what order we want the dungeons to be cleared. One idea was that the Roc's Feather (which enables jumping, for those who don't know) would be given out in the canonical First Dungeon, which would free everyone up to make as much or as little platforming as they so desire.

The idea that I presented in the other thread was teams of two for dungeon designing - one person focuses on making the dungeon, the other person focuses on making sure the dungeon isn't broken. We should probably come up with some basic dungeon rules before we start "claiming" dungeons, so that we have an idea of where to start from.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raocow »

One important question: since it has the 'a [base name] thing' nomenclature, is it going to be 'Demo' based?

I have ZERO idea how Zelda Classic works, and unlike smw and smbx I'm going to try to be as in the dark as possible about the engine so I can stay amazed at basic things, like in the good ol' day. Assuming this gets off the ground and stuff I guess!
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

Just wanna say, I am totally in for this. I don't have any experience with Zelda classic itself so I'm not qualified for project leader, but I've been messing around with a few code-based engines lately and I have a beginner's understanding of python, so in theory I should be able to learn how to use the engine without breaking my mind.
raocow wrote:One important question: since it has the 'a [base name] thing' nomenclature, is it going to be 'Demo' based?
I think there was some discussion about that back in the suggestions thread. Although I think Demo is a contender,
Sheath
was also suggested.

As for the number of dungeons, standard Zelda fare is eight or so, right? That might be a decent 'base' number until we find out how many people are interested; if we work in teams of two, that gives places for sixteen people on dungeon elements alone. Of course, you could probably double those numbers without too many problems. We're probably limited in how many dungeons maximum we can have simply by items; it'll feel cheap to have a dungeon without an item, and we'll probably want to avoid the Megaman power-up problem of all the new unlockable weapons being just sword reskins or extremely situational.

I think, however, that the first thing we should do is make a list of things we need to know in advance/stuff to do. Some stuff:

-Who's the player character
-Plot or no plot
-How many dungeons
-Order of dungeons, if any
-Item acquistion
-Overworld design (including: do we have non-dungeon locations a la Link to the Past, or is this a strictly Zelda 1 no towns no nothin' experience?)
-Location of dungeons
-Max consumable upgrades

Stuff we'll probably have to work out as we go:
-Difficulty curve (it's easier to work that out when at least some work's been done)
-Dungeon themes (again, these'll probably be up to the dungeon designers)
-Linear/non-linearness, to a certain extent (if dungeon y can be completed before dungeon x, it helps to know what puzzles are in dungeon x and y so we can tell if there's any sequence breaking via items, and if so, whether it's tolerable)

Probably a bunch of other stuff, too. I'm no expert on game design, so hopefully someone more qualified can help us organise. Also, I'd like to say right now that I volunteer to go through any text the game may include and spell/grammar check it. I write fiction in my spare time (quite well, according to some), so I can probably help with the proofing. I'm also down for helping to write any plot the game might contain, although since this is a talkhaus thing I'm not really expecting too much on that front.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by jayScribble »

Count me out about knowing Zelda Classic coding: I'll be more suited being a tester than a designer, but what thing do we need to know about?

From what I know from Zelda Classic, there are around 8 dungeons, but we can add an extra or two for those who want a challenge. (though it'll be more bragging rights than giving an item) I suggest making more of a sandbox, since we're more exploring the overworld rather than follow a linear fashion and we can allow sequence breaking to get an item easier in another dungeon, but pray do the dungeon designers thought of testing every item if we go with a sandbox, otherwise we'll have some bugs we need to iron out. (sometimes of the hilarious sense, but glitches are glitches nonetheless :? )

We also need to know about the limitations of the Zelda Classic engine, but that will be for someone else to answer.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

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I would like to join. Instead of my avatar being the final goal it should be an item for hilarities sake. :P
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

jayScribble wrote: I suggest making more of a sandbox, since we're more exploring the overworld rather than follow a linear fashion and we can allow sequence breaking to get an item easier in another dungeon, but pray do the dungeon designers thought of testing every item if we go with a sandbox, otherwise we'll have some bugs we need to iron out. (sometimes of the hilarious sense, but glitches are glitches nonetheless :? )
This is why we need to have basic rules for the dungeons before we can even start making them. If we do the wide open sandbox method, then everybody will have to build around the same base assumption of "Four Hearts, a Sword, and the Roc's Feather" as the entry equipment. If we want to make the order a bit stricter, we can have items necessary for entry-gaining - much like how in vanilla LTTP you need the hammer in order to do anything in the Dark World, you need to do at least part of 3 before you can clear 5, you need Ether for 6 and Quake for 7, and you have to have the big chests from both 3 and 6 before you can do much of anything in 7
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by jayScribble »

Well, there goes the sandbox idea, but I like the entry gaining Idea you got.

Do we start placing rules, or are we going to wait until we find a component person who can create a Zelda Classic hack? (the percentage on the latter one are pretty slim)

I'm full of ideas: bad one are pretty numerous in my head.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

Hm. I'm doing some spelunking in the documentation, and the absolute limit to the number of maps (which is to say, 16x8 screen slots) to a quest is 255. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but that means we shouldn't need to worry too much about space. It's probably more complicated than that, but we could easily allocate one map per dungeon (which is 128 potential screens) and get away with it. I doubt most dungeons will reach anywhere near that, though.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by cheez8 »

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. This will be interesting.

My experience with Zelda Classic spans all of two tutorial videos so far, so I'm absolutely not going to be the chief developer here. That said, I'm hoping to contribute anyway, and maybe help with coordination too if it's needed.
TheVulpineHero1 wrote:As for the number of dungeons, standard Zelda fare is eight or so, right? ... We're probably limited in how many dungeons maximum we can have simply by items; it'll feel cheap to have a dungeon without an item, and we'll probably want to avoid the Megaman power-up problem of all the new unlockable weapons being just sword reskins or extremely situational.
I don't imagine that would be a problem. Zelda Classic has had a ton of items imported from other games. From what I've heard, things like the Hookshot, Din's Fire, and even Hover Boots made it in, so we should be able to have a useful variety of items without any trouble. I still think eight is a good number though, maybe ten, but that would really be pushing it depending on their length.
TheVulpineHero1 wrote:I think, however, that the first thing we should do is make a list of things we need to know in advance/stuff to do. Some stuff:

-Who's the player character
-Plot or no plot
-How many dungeons
-Order of dungeons, if any
-Item acquistion
-Overworld design (including: do we have non-dungeon locations a la Link to the Past, or is this a strictly Zelda 1 no towns no nothin' experience?)
-Location of dungeons
-Max consumable upgrades

Stuff we'll probably have to work out as we go:
-Difficulty curve (it's easier to work that out when at least some work's been done)
-Dungeon themes (again, these'll probably be up to the dungeon designers)
-Linear/non-linearness, to a certain extent (if dungeon y can be completed before dungeon x, it helps to know what puzzles are in dungeon x and y so we can tell if there's any sequence breaking via items, and if so, whether it's tolerable)
I wouldn't oppose Demo being the playable character if others support it, but I do feel like somebody else could work better. I also think the semi-linearity thing that LTTP had going on is a good idea. While I kind of want to avoid having a strictly linear path through the game (look at me, yakking it up like this is my own project) there's also a bit of a pitfall in having all but the last dungeon available from the start. If that were the case, then clearing the earliest dungeons would become the hardest part, and the game would get easier and easier until the final dungeon due to having more hearts and equipment. Keeping some sort of difficulty curve present would be good.

As for plot, I wouldn't oppose one in this case since Zelda games do tend to have some sort of plot, but I will oppose a plot if it's only there for the sake of being there and isn't actually worth having.

For everything else... I can't really say anything one way or another yet. We should probably look into which items are available and decide on somewhere from 15-20 that we'll actually choose to include, because the items we choose to use will affect a lot of what we'll end up making. (That count includes passive things & upgrades to existing items, of course. I think you can still only carry 8 to select from, though I may be wrong about that too!)
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

jayScribble wrote:Do we start placing rules, or are we going to wait until we find a component person who can create a Zelda Classic hack?
We should probably decide on Sandbox or LttP-style first. I vote Sandbox.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by TheVulpineHero1 »

If I had to vote, I'd say LTTP style. Given that most of the people who've expressed interest so far aren't too familiar with the engine yet, it'd probably help our game design if we have some idea of what the player's got when they walk into the dungeon. Although it's good to be ambitious, I think it'd be far harder to make a 100% sandbox style quest enjoyable.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by Awakenyourmind »

I'm not gonna walk in here and demand to be the captain, but I am probably the most experienced ZC user on this site. Or one of them anyway. So I am offering my help to the team managers and the rest of you. :)


There's a wiki for ZC as well, and tutorials / guides. There's enough information floating around to make this possible! I love the idea, as I want ZC to gain more popularity. I've been following this program and it's releases / betas for a long time now. Finally a new stable release is out! It brings many new things. I'd also be down with helping to insert and setup FFC scripts for you guys. It's really not hard at all once you get it down. Global scripts are another thing however.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by KobaBeach »

I'd be interested.

Surely, learning how to use ZC shouldn't be too hard, I mean, Lunar Magic was kinda easy (I still need to learn overworld events, though).
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

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As stated previously I can do some graphics if needed
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by Zygl »

The full extent of my experience with this engine is looking at about half a dozen screenshots from it, but this sounds like it could potentially be interesting. I can't guarantee my mind won't kill itself trying to learn the engine, but as long as that doesn't happen I definitely intend to contribute.

As for Sandbox vs. LTTP, I vote NES style. Not Megaman-style no-intended-level-order sandbox, so it can still have a difficulty curve, but not as strict about the order as LTTP, so it could be played like a sandbox if getting one-shotted by Wizzrobes is what you call a fun time.
(I don't know how well that'd work these days, now that items that aren't ladders and rafts also provide mobility, but it sounds like a good idea when I don't think about it too much.)
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

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I'd go with what Odyssey said in terms of NES vs LttP, though.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

NES Zelda's 1st Quest was a bit stricter on order than most people realize, about as strict as LttP's Dark World. Yeah, you could skip the first two dungeons entirely, but you needed to enter 3 before you could enter 4, you needed 4 to complete 6 (and 5 I think), and you needed to enter 5 before you could even find 7 (and 7's item was the closest thing to a hint about 8's location that you ever got).

By contrast, you only need LttP Dark World 1's item to... access basically everywhere else, you need 3 to complete 5, 2 to complete 6, and 3 and 6 to complete 7... and that's about it.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by Moosh »

I've been using Zelda Classic for a few years now and I like to think I'm pretty good at it. From what I've seen of Lunar Magic and Super Mario Bros X Zelda Classic is a lot easier to learn than LM and a lot more stable and flexible than SMBX.

There's actually a Mario tileset already made that we could possibly use as a base although I'm not very fond of it myself. My personal recommendation would be the Pure 2.5 set which is currently being used for another ZC collab I'm coordinating.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

In all honesty, we'll probably end up reskinning this to star Sheath.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by cheez8 »

raekuul wrote:NES Zelda's 1st Quest was a bit stricter on order than most people realize, about as strict as LttP's Dark World. Yeah, you could skip the first two dungeons entirely, but you needed to enter 3 before you could enter 4, you needed 4 to complete 6 (and 5 I think), and you needed to enter 5 before you could even find 7 (and 7's item was the closest thing to a hint about 8's location that you ever got).
I think you needed the item from 1 to complete 6 and 8 too, but that hardly matters since I'd imagine most people would take a while to find 6 and 8 anyway.

That said, I have no idea what "NES-style" means (or LTTP, really, since I never played that one) but I guess I prefer the LTTP method over a completely open-ended sandbox. I probably wouldn't be too hard to sway on this though.

Also, as long as raocow's okay with it I would be very happy to see Sheath in this. She fits much better than Demo.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

You needed 1 to beat whichever one had Gohma as the boss, which I think was actually 4. But yeah, NES was more strict than SNES about dungeon order.

EDIT: 2-Head Gleeok was 4, Gohma indeed is 6 (though the Gohma in 8 isn't exactly required to kill if you don't mind skipping the Magic Key)
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by Cloaytonem2 »

This is definitely going to be tricky to pull off, but I'd like to help in any way I can that doesn't involve art or music.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by AlexanderXCIII »

You guys've piqued my interest. I've toyed enough with ZC that I theoretically know the ins and outs, so I may be able to help.

As for dungeons, I believe there's a maximum limit of 8 "triforce" dungeons, but we can theoretically have more in terms of mini-dungeons.

Regarding NES vs LTTP, I prefered LTTP's "Here are where all the dungeons are, go get 'em champ!" approach to Zelda I's "Here's a sword, go get 'em champ!" approach.
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by raekuul »

What I meant by LttP versus Sandbox (I prefer LttP over NES personally) is whether we wanted all the dungeons immediately completable (or one dungeon followed by whatever the hell order you want) versus the Zelda standard of "You need this item from this dungeon W to complete dungeons X, Y, and Z"
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Re: AZCT: A Zelda Classic Thing - Basic Planning Thread

Post by Moosh »

I could do scripting stuff. Boss scripts in particular are my specialty. Here's a video of possibly the craziest boss I've ever scripted (contains pretty big spoilers about a quest that I made a topic about here but I don't think anyone bothered to download that so I guess that's irrelevant). This guy has so many attack patterns I managed to kill him before he went through them all.

As for LttP vs. NES, I prefer the LttP style where you're told where to go but have to go around and collect the items you need to get there. Also ZC, to my knowledge, has no actual cap on the number of McGuffins (I suppose in this case they'd be leeks) you can collect. The only real cap is that the default triforce room only suports 3, 4, 6, or 8 depending on quest rules. Custom triforce checks are really easy to script so if we go over 8 dungeons that won't be a problem.
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