Summary: This somewhat short section will cover 4 different lessons that will be crucial to The Demonstration Quest that we will begin making in the next section. The lessons are about maps and screens, the Quest menu, using the set of graphics we'll be using, and a new way of helping you in the tutorial.
Key points
- How the grid of screens in a map is set up
- Basic hexadecimal
- The basic functions of the options in the Quest menu
- Using the tileset properly
Lesson 1: Maps and Screens
Did you remember when I said that we would be going over a certain concept later back in Section 1? Probably not. Anyways, what this lesson is about is how the screen coordinates work.You know, the ones at the bottom left of the screen in ZQuest.
As said in Section 1, maps are composed of about 136 maximum screens. These screens are organized in a grid-like system that I will explain now. First off, you probably already understand this kind of grid. It's used in chess and Excel and a whole lot of other things.
Well, ZQuest's grid system is like that, but a bit different. Rather than use a letter and a number to show a coordinate, it just uses two numbers.
But, if the grid is 9 rows by 16 columns, how does ZQuest display a number over 10 on the columns? Simple: it uses what is called hexadecimal. Hexadecimal, though the word may be intimidating, is a pretty simple concept. All it does is use 16 digits for numbering instead of 10. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9... have we run out of digits? Nope! It continues with A B C D E and F. Not too bad eh?
Anyways, that is how ZQuest numbers the columns of screens on a map. Wrapping it all up, here's an image that shows all the screens on the grid, ZQuest format.
Note that the bottom row is just 8 screens for you to mess around with; only 3 of them affect the game, and they do not affect the game much.
Lesson 2: The Quest Menu
This menu contains a lot of things that are very important, but we haven't worked with many of them. This lesson will give a short description of the options between the top two dividers in that menu.
Header- Here, you can indicate a few things. First, the name of your quest and who made it (you!). Second, the version numbers. You can even indicate a Minimum Version. If the player redownloads the quest, but the new quest's minimum version is higher than the version of the quest from the player's old saved game, it won't be playable. This is useful if you want to make major changes, such as drastically increasing the difficulty, and want to make players start over.Last, a password so that people can't open your quest after downloading it, ruining the challenge.
Rules- This option contains a lot of different things you can specify that will change the whole quest; there are 60 in Beta 163! There are many many kinds of rules. Here are some examples. 24 Heart Containers changes the maximum amount of heart containers from 16 to 24. No Level-3 Pal Fix fixes a coloring bug that was in the original Legend of Zelda; the programmers of Zelda Classic put this bug in on purpose to make the game a true replica, but added an option to "fix" the bug. There are some that even I do not understand, like Fade CSet 5.
Cheats- Useful for when you want to debug the quest. By typing in certain codes that you specify, you can open up options like Invincibility, maxing out your Life with the press of a button, and Walk-thru Walls.
Strings- See Section 3 for a brief explanation of this menu.
DMaps- A scourge for new and intermediate questmakers because of their picky nature. Experts however use these cleverly to put advanced things in their quests. I won't go into detail about the dreaded DMaps now.
MIDIs- You may have heard me talking about this in Section 1, when I mentioned a Play MIDI option in the Etc. menu. To refresh the memory of those who didn't know before, a MIDI is the music file that Zelda Classic supports. You want to put custom music into your quest, you have to get it in MIDI format. Well, actually this changed in later betas, but I won't get into that. This menu option allows you to setup the custom music in your quest.
Init Data- In lots of Zelda Games, Link starts with a fair amount of stuff. Three heart containers, for instance. Well this is where you set all of the things that Link begins with when you start the quest. You could give Link every item in the game if you wanted, or very little heart containers, or 2 pieces of heart, or the map for a certain dungeon... all kinds of things! It also has a few more miscellaneous options. A useful menu item indeed.
Lesson 3: Using the Classic Tileset
What I mean by this is getting used to how you place the combos of the tileset to make the quest. It's called the classic tileset because those are the classic tiles from Zelda 1! Let's begin by showing you how NOT to place the tiles.
Whoa! There's quite a lot of errors on this screen! Let's start with the top left. First, if you're going to make half of one of the objects that requires a large amount of combos, do the other half too, or it's going to look horrible. Now, I suppose you COULD put these two next to each other even though they're different. It's a tree and a statue, so you could give a really-ancient-ruins-being-overrun-by-plant-life feel to the area. This is a commonly used technique in good quests, though the authors make their own graphics to fulfill their needs.
Moving right from there, you really shouldn't make it look like a waterfall is pouring into a pool of water if there is no water nearby. Try to at least have some science in your quest. Then there's that other water. While this MIGHT look good in unusual circumstances, there ARE tiles that you can place on the edge of the water to make it look better, as well as a tile to replace that little island in the middle.
Next, the top right. These are meant to be placed with the statue tiles we saw on the left to make the appearance of a monster's mouth being a cave. But alone here, they look kinda awful...
The bottom left is just pure random combos. It is VERY RARE that this will look good at all. You need to have SOME organization in your quest, so don't just place random combos on the screen like this. Finally, the bottom right. All of these tiles are discolored, having blue or green where it doesn't really make sense. That's because these are dungeon combos and use different colors. Now, you COULD edit the graphics so that it does look good in overworlds, but these unedited ones just look discolored.
Now for a better screen...
To be honest, this screen will be one of the best screens you'll ever see made with an unimproved Classic tileset. It doesn't have any of that blank space of ground that all of my teachers stress not to have on posters and stuff, and it has a large variety of combos, all used correctly.
Now what can you do to improve? Play around with the tileset, of course! Try to make it so that you can use every combo properly without it looking discolored, ending abruptly... etc. Good luck! Just remember: the bottom combos are dungeon combos and will look discolored, so I recommend not trying them now.
Lesson 4: When reading the tutorial...
This lesson (final one) will tell you about reading this tutorial. Specifically, I will be doing a simple little new thing to help you some more. Here's an example of it.
New Room Type - Special Item: Pick up an item inside the room
Each time we introduce a new room type, flag, combo type, quest rule, or anything else, I will give you one of these to help you identify them, as all of them are quite important anyway. I'll also put a list of all of them that were in the section at the end of it (doesn't the end look empty anyway?) for your viewing pleasure. Understand? Good!
Ready to begin building The Demonstration Quest (TDQ)? If yes, onward to the next section!