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Zelda Classic 2.5 released (PC, Mac, Linux)

T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
HiRCZ.png


What Is Zelda Classic?

Zelda Classic originally started as a from-scratch recreation of the original NES Legend of Zelda on PC that included a "quest editor" allowing one to make their own quests, but over the past 10 years the program has expanded and expanded to become an incredibly robust 2D Zelda game creator, capable of making games on such levels of complexity as Link's Awakening and The Minish Cap. There is already a healthy amount of high-quality fan-created quests for the system, but with the release of 2.5, by far the most powerful and robust version of ZC to date, its possible for even more amazing quests to be developed.

Where can I get it?
Zelda Classic is freeware and is available at this link for PC, Linux, and Mac.

What can I do in Zelda Classic?
-Make locations, dungeons, and puzzles easily with the tile-painting interface, no programming knowledge required.
-Edit items and enemies with the built in tools that allow all the relevant parameters to be tweaked.
-Import custom art and music.
-Make just about anything you can imagine, custom enemies, items, and world objects, using the easy to learn C-based Zscript scripting system.

Whoa, scripting? I'm not a programmer!
Don't worry, its entirely possible to work in ZC without being a programmer. The programming capabilities are just a set of extra tools for those who want to use them.

What do Zelda Classic quests look like?

The Hero of Dreams


Lost Isle


Stranded


Where can I get quests to play?
Two great databases:
ZeldaClassic.com
PureZC

Where can I get assets?
PureZC has an enormous database of tiles, music, scripts, and more, completely free for you to pilfer and use in your own quests.

Where can I learn how to use this thing? That interface is terrifying!

Armageddongames.net where the developers post.
The PureZC forums

Happyman's Ultimate Tutorial This tutorial is very out of date and many of the more obtuse things it has you do have been streamlined, simplified, and made better in more recent versions. However it does teach you some of the core concepts of ZC like the Dmap, the difference between Tiles and Combos, how you set the enemies on a screen and more. Ignore the horrid background.

Everything is documented on the Official Wiki

Or just ask here! I know a hefty amount about how this program works.
 
M

Myriadis

Member
Awesome! One of my favorite fan projects- I surely spent more than 100 hours combined on the many games that were developed with the excellent engine.
I played through "The Hero Of Dreams" 3 times alone, and it shouldn't be forgotten that the game takes around 20-30 hours to beat, depending on your skill and how many optional dungeons you want to visit or how much you want to explore.

I also tried creating a Zelda game once, but once you're used to the tile mapping system of the RPG Maker, it's hard to use editors that don't have autotiles and multiselection. Created two small dungeons and part of the overworld in classic grpahic style before quitting. Maybe it has improved since 2.10.
Edit: I looked in it again. The idea is actually pretty great. Instead of the dungeon->get triforce piece-structure, you had to traverse through smaller dungeons to get items which allow you to get triforce pieces in little caves.
 
S

sphinx

the piano man
it's great that this exists,

but I have to wonder, how come nintendo hasn't send them a "cease and desist" petition?
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I'd definitely recommend checking out Lost Isle, its one of the best quests overall and also gets close to demonstrating the power of the newer versions. One quirk about it though is that since it was released during a very tumultuous period in development I'm pretty sure it has its own build of ZC that you have to download as well to play it. But its worth it.

OneEightZero said:
Also, have you constructed any yourself? ^_^
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not, I bit off many projects when I was younger that never came to fruition. But with this release I'm thinking of getting my hand back in.

atomico said:
Looks great, but is Nintendo cool with this?
Click to expand...

Its freeware and non-profit, and its been around for ten years. Its been "reported" to Nintendo multiple times, so far they haven't said anything.
 
H

Holy Order Sol

Member
I used to follow this to an extent, but making stuff work with W7 was a hassle with older versions. Glad this is finally released.

_Keiichi_ said:
To be fair, fans can probably make a better use of Zelda IP than Nintendo right now!

The_legend_of_tutorial.jpg
Click to expand...

Kinda like how the SMWC community has arguably made Mario games superior to the original game. People tend to forget that for all the trouble they go through and the resources they may lack, fans who are really dedicated to their projects also have much going for them in terms of time, valuable feedback and freedom in their design choices (in the sense that there are compromises they don't need to make). Expecting greatness from fan games isn't always unreasonable.
 
The Horror the horror

The Horror the horror

Banned
Nintendo will only send a C&D if:

1.) The free game could cause irreperable harm to the image of their IP.
2.) The "free" game is actually not free and is generating revenue.
3.) The free game is actually an improvement on its recent retail counterparts.
 
Y

Yowza

Member
OneEightZero said:
Which quests do you suggest?
Click to expand...


If you fancy yourself a 'hardcore retro gamer' then the three most challenging/notorious ZC quests are (chronological release) Armageddon Quest, Armageddon Quest Forever, and The Liberation of Hyrule. Liberation is without a doubt the hardest of the three.

I managed to beat all three of them without 'cheats' but they really do test your patience in spots and you'll accumulate dozens/hundreds of deaths in the process. There are some great puzzles built around them like using the bait or the leave your life or money rooms to make the dungeons more than just 'spam sword attacks!'

waa3Z.png
IFQst.png


There is liberal use of those jinx bubbles and spikes where you typically need to use the candle to push yourself through with invincibility damage.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
jman2050 said:
Since 2.10?

Way way way way way too many to count. It'd be an adventure just compiling them all honestly.
Click to expand...

Seriously. 2.5 has been in development for...at least four years now, maybe closer to six. Its really come into its own in terms of getting rid of some of the quirks and replacing them with more robust, customizable systems.
 
A

added_time

Member
Looks amazing! What are the best quests for someone that wants a normal amount of challenge for a Zelda game and not some super extreme difficulty version?
Hero of Dreams looks like it may be a good place to start?
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
atbigelow said:
Is there a changelog for the new version? Curious as to what the version bump represents.
Click to expand...

There is, but its massive. 2.10 -> 2.5 was trapped in development hell for a while. The big points are:
-Enemy and Item editors that allow you to change all of the relevant parameters (damage, health, movement speed, animation, etc)
-A bunch of items such as the Roc's Feather and the Cane of Byrna.
-The scripting system that makes a jaw-dropping number of new things possible.
-A bunch of interface improvements and general changes to how users control things that make stuff a bit less obtuse

If you want to look at it: http://shardstorm.com/
 
J

jman2050

Member
The Technomancer said:
Seriously. 2.5 has been in development for...at least four years now, maybe closer to six. Its really come into its own in terms of getting rid of some of the quirks and replacing them with more robust, customizable systems.
Click to expand...

Yeah, although many of those systems and solutions to the original program's limitations weren't well designed to begin with.
This is partially my fault.

Also the ridiculous amount of bugs that came about because the code base is a complete mess and Allegro kinda sucks.

Disclaimer: I worked on this up until about two years ago (I think), and most of the past few years has been fixing the many, MANY bugs that have cropped up, so I can more or less answer any question about 2.5 that is thrown out. Unless of course one of the currently active developers is also on this forum, but I doubt that. Also the development hell Technomancer talked about was also partially my fault as well. :(
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Awesome.

I didn't realize this still had such a large fanbase, I used to play around with different quests a few years back. I'll have to get back into it and check out some new stuff. Thanks OP.
 
V

Vibed

Member
Once I finish the Oracle games in a few days I'll have beaten all the Zelda Games. I've seen this before, but I never got into it, I think I might with this version though.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
jman2050 said:
Disclaimer: I worked on this up until about two years ago (I think), and most of the past few years has been fixing the many, MANY bugs that have cropped up, so I can more or less answer any question about 2.5 that is thrown out. Unless of course one of the currently active developers is also on this forum, but I doubt that. Also the development hell Technomancer talked about was also partially my fault as well. :(
Click to expand...

Ahh, the exciting times. That Christmas season where you revealed the scripting system, every few months a new major release with awesome features, hours spent by me just drawing dungeon maps on scrap paper and putting them together in ZQ...time passed, and the bug-fixing hell began, and things faded, but every few months or so I would check Shardstorm just to see if 2.5 was finally out.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
Well the last time I used Zelda Classic was about 10 years ago! Time to give it another go.

On another note, has anyone made a steam banner icon for this?
 
J

jman2050

Member
volturnus said:
Is there a way of adding RPG elements?
Click to expand...

The scripting engine is more than flexible enough to accommodate things like RPG elements (one of the developers even made a raster-based FPS engine using the scripting language as a Proof-of-Concept), although of course you'd have to have programming experience to really take advantage of it. The built-in creation tools are almost all tailored to Zelda-1 styled games.

The biggest limitation to the program is that it's a single-screen room game like Z1. Larger, scrolling rooms were planned but scrapped for this version because trying to rewrite the code to support it would be a nightmare.
 
J

jman2050

Member
If in worse-case-scenario Nintendo complains about it, all they'd really have to do is strip all Zelda assets from the release package and change the name into something more generic. That's why I there was never really a worry about C&Ds.
 
E

epmode

Member
Kazuma Kiryu said:
hmm
Click to expand...

I never said Nintendo was sane!

Trying to run a Pokemon MMO for $0 is a pretty awful idea though. That's the kind of thing that could never work as a fan game. Even if Nintendo didn't bother to shut them down, their own success would accomplish the same thing.
 
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