With Round 2 among us, it is time for us all to join forces, and make a huge collaboration level!

I think this could be be done with either Hannah and the Pirate Caves, as everyone knows how to make levels for that game, or something like Knytt Stories, as there is much potential for expansion and collaboration in it. Do you guys agree? What should we do?

It is also important to make an extra note that EVERYONE must contribute to this one. No two-person teams or anything like that.

Let's brainstorm!

Let's make, like, the best Red Remover level EVER!

I think the obvious choice is HATPC. It'd be hard to find something where everybody could actually contribute. Note that "Everyone" doesn't mean -everyone-, IMO. I just means, I think, we should reach the final product as a team. I'm working on downloading Knytt right now, and if I like what I see, I might push for that, but I don't think I want to have to learn a new level editor for this comp.

So if we go HATPC, there are a couple of ways to do this. The most obvious way (and this will have a nostalgia factor) is to make it like the guild caves, assigning each member a room. Another way is to pass the cave around, with each member adding small portions as they go. Or, we could each take a trap out of our best caves and combine them together. That's the easiest way, I think, and though perhaps too easy, it's at least an interesting concept.

I think we should each just be assigned a room.

My main complaint about Hannah and the Pirate Caves is that our skills and styles vary dramatically. Me, I'm into thick terrain and a more "cavelike" feel. Your levels aren't often limited by rooms. GF4 tends to make large open areas with a bunch of stuff in the middle, like spikes, for example.

Do you see what I'm saying? I'm all for doing Hannah and the Pirate Caves, but I don't think doing individual rooms would work well.

Also, Knytt Stories has a confusing editor. (You ARE downloading Knytt Stories, right?) I highly recommend watching some YouTube videos on how it works. Most of the stuff you won't be able to figure out on your own. It's rough, haha.

Dekudude, varying styles in creating levels is true for all games, not just HATPC. Regardless of what game we did, the level would never be entirely consistent. The Kyntt Stories editor is too complicated for us to use for this competition, so we should just stick with the basics and go with a HATPC level.

[1] Make a template, assign rooms
[2] Pass the cave along and add as we go
[3] Take traps from previous caves and combine them

#3 is an instant no, in my opinion. That just shows laziness, and for people who've already played these traps (the judges), our level will be incredibly bland. This has already been done by Livio for a competition--he made a video, even--and if I remember correctly, the feedback it received wasn't all too great. #2 has my vote, since the end result will be much smoother. The transition from room to room will flow easily, instead of there just being an obvious hallway with rooms to enter on each side (I'm thinking of Boot Camp). We have a bit to do this, so let's try #2.

I think we should have one person make the main skeleton of the level, and some of the main, important traps that work with other parts of the cave. This first draft might also have tutorial arrows, so further editors know where to go, and they can be removed later. From there, other people can make the smaller rooms with less important traps and puzzles.

That's all fine and good... but is there something different we can try? This whole collab thing has been done before, and I think it'd be nice if we came up with something original. Let's all cave blindfolded, and we pass it around, and whatever have at the end we'll call "abstract art" or "impressionism" or something? That's probably not the right idea, but it should give you an idea of what I mean. Let's place some additional restriction on ourselves, and see how each of individually copes with that restriction? Like an art school film project or something...

/noideawhatimtryingtosay

Yeah. You guys should try to make a cave in iambic pentameter and see how that turns out.

Edit:  Whoops, I probably shouldn't comment here.

Interesting. I'll keep this idea in the back of my head.

What if we attached a story to go along with it? We could make each section part of the story.

Maybe not. Ha, I know what you're trying to say, CSD, but I can't think of any good... examples of that. I really think a good cave would be our best bet. Especially if it's not too hard.

One interesting idea would be to have one person make a really simple trap for the whole cave, say a speed or puzzle cave, then pass it along, letting each person add a bit more complexity to that speed or puzzle trap.

And what about ZC? I mean, the level editor isn't too hard to pick up on (except that it crashed every 30 or so minutes... save often?), but I mean, I could put the level together, if nobody else wants/knows how to do it, while everybody else could come with the the level design, the music, or draw some additional tiles or something?

Does it allow custom music and graphics? I could definitely help there, if you were willing to design the level. I don't want to make the level, but other people I'm sure would, and that could be an interesting idea.

Have you tried any of the ZC levels I've submitted to this site? It was originally intended as a clone of the original Zelda... so it you'd played one of those, it'd be pretty obvious that it allows for custom music and graphics. Lol, I used a couple of those midis I supposedly "made for Aeon" as the bg. I didn't make my own tiles, though, I can't draw, so I used a tileset.

The music should be in midi form. Mp3 is possible, but it'd made the file way larger than it's already going to be. Wav is used for the sound affects.

I'm not really sure how the palettes and the csets or whatever they're called work, so it'd be nice if, if you make some graphics for it, if it you put it right into the ZC quest that I would make the level into.

There's also a scripting language, if that's anybody's thing. I could probably learn that and make a couple things, but I don't know if we'd have enough time for me to make the whole dungeon and also learn scripting, so maybe somebody else could specialize in that.

If we're gonna do ZC, we need to decide on doing that and have a plan ready ASAP. It takes me a cautiously optimistic 30 minutes to transcribe a single screen, so we need to be away and working soon, in order to finish it by the end of the 4 weeks. Does anybody have any ideas for a dungeon theme and gimmick?

Here is a dungeon theme; give credit to the artist. I have no experience with the ZC game, but if that's what we're going to decide on, then I'll get started and learn it as soon as I can. I'm all for being original with this competition--I'm assuming most, if not all, of the other competition entries will be HATPC caves. We can score some easy brownie points just by shoving away the easiest choice in this competition.  

I was assuming one of us would write the music ourselves, timi, after we'd decided on a theme or the dungeon. But before we decide on ZC, I'd like us to all be enthusiastic about a particular theme+gimmick combination.

If we make original music, we'll probably get even more brownie points. I can be in charge of that. Once the first room is made, show me, and give me a mood for it, and I'll make something snazzy.

As for tile sets, we would probably be best off using the main Zelda ones, give or take a few details. They take a massive while to make. HOWEVER, if you can give me access to the tiles we'll be using, I might be able to spice up the graphics a bit. I'll download ZC later, and see how it works. Also, if we have one person design the rooms, we can have others embellish it. (add pots, textures, stairs, etc)

What should our story be? I like the idea of doing ZC, but I have zero experience with it. We should try it though. In worst case scenario, we don't win, right?

"As for tile sets, we would probably be best off using the main Zelda ones, give or take a few details."
You can go to purezc.com, and they have a bunch of them, and you can pick and choose whatever you want. Hell, a lot of them don't even have anything to do with Zelda. And then there's loose tiles, too, that you can use for stuff. There's no way we'd actually make the whole tileset, lol, but the idea was, if there's some specific important objects that we can't find anywhere, we could make those ourselves. I usually use the Pure tileset. The most recent version of that is a good balance of versatility and easy-of-use, but the Link tiles "suck out loud". I replaced them with some LTTP Link sprites I found on purezc. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I think it worked out OK. Actually, I could probably send you a quest I'm working on with a bunch of stuff already set up, and we could build our dungeon on top.

I would actually suggest you give my dungeons a play, to see if you're OK with the type of stuff I'm making.

"I'll download ZC later"
You'd probably want to download one of the more recent 2.5 builds. shardstorm.com has that. I'm currently using build, I think 1050, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that right. You'd probably just use the most recent one, unless there's a game-breaking bug that's been recently introduced. For whatever reason, zeldaclassic.com is a "reported attack site", so I guess, I dunno, avoid that somehow.

"What should our story be?"
A story? I never thought of that... I was thinking we'd just make a dungeon, which would supposedly be part of some larger quest with a story, but the story is largely absent from the dungeon. If we do have a story, we're talking now of making more of a mini-quest, which would include some overworld-type areas, npcs, a town, a dungeon, music and graphics for all the area, etc., which is a lot more ambitious and would take a lot more time to make. But if we do come up with some type of story that would be worth telling, then I guess we should try it.

Worse case scenario is that we put a lot of effort into our entry, but don't even come close to finishing on time.

What I was thinking by story is just something really simple. Maybe one or two overworld situations, no more, with a couple people to talk to. "Oh no, my baby is missing?!" or something. Just to make it a little more believable.

I'll check this out later, for sure.

I'm good with that, lol. "Help my baby has been stolen! It looks like they're taking him deep into the Death Mountain Volcano! Help, Link! Save My Baby!". And then it turns out they're using him to bring back the spirit of Volvavia or something, and you show up too late, and now it's an evil baby that breaths fire.... Lolwut? I doubt I could actually manage to get that to work.

I just downloaded ZC, and your Level 3 game. I don't know how to open it though, haha. I went to File>Open in Zelda Quest, and then it asked for a password. >_> Whatttt?

EDIT - Oh, just saw that you intentionally password protected it. Then how do I play it? Do you have a Level 1 or something?

You don't play the game in zquest, lol. That's the editor. You gotta open it up in zelda classic. I think they recently made a more obvious way to open it, but back in my build, you have to like, whichever of the two buttons (a or b, and not the a or b on your keyboard, but in the controls menu) starts the quest, before you play a new file for the first time, press the other one. Then, press it again, and the load custom quest dialog comes up.

Oh and make sure you read my descriptions before you start. There's important stuff in them... I think. Like, in level 3, don't lose your shield (you lose you shield when you get swallowed by those circle things for little more than a second). There's only a few ways to get it back (there'd normally be a shop on the overworld for you to buy one from... but there's no overworld).

If you wanna open up the quest in ZQ (the editor) and look at the innards, I think the password is "cavetester" but I'm not sure.

Of my two dungeons, level 5 is the better one. It's probably slightly easier, too, lol (well it used to be, but I added a bunch of bushes which readily drop hearts, which should have made it much easier, but nobody's played it since I did that, lol). Once (read: if) I finish the whole quest, I'll smoothen out the difficulty a little. You know what, maybe just eventually give both a try, lol.

Ah, got it working.
Yes, I like this graphics set, and the design. I think this will work quite well, and you'll do fine designing it. My main complaint right now is the difficulty. You have about a hundred bad guys in every room. Drives me insane, haha. And having to kill all of those stupid blobs over and over every time I mess up that puzzle is kind of annoying (I'm going to bed, so I stopped there) but besides that, this is good.

Is it possible to change the music throughout, or do I have to make a single song that works everywhere?

Oh yeah, for sure we can change the music.
In that puzzle room, there's a switch on the floor that if you step on it, it resets the room.

Please, no ZC - not only for my sake as a team member with no experience of the game, but also because I am a judge (). I have no idea why we even have ROM games on here, because frankly, getting one on your computer is illegal. I know that hacks are not, but that's not the point.

If we really want to scratch HatPC just because it'd (probably) be the most used game, we should settle for something easy to share, yet without a fixed size. I recommend SMF or AA.