It seems that going with a lava theme will generally give you more options. Go with that.

Also, I don't know how much of this I'll be able to contribute. I have absolutely no experience with the Zelda game, I'm horrible at making tiles and I have not a first concept of how this game operates. Just as long as you know.

I did some testing today and found that if you disable the flippers... you can still swim. Now I dunno what to do. I posted about whether this was the intended behavior... but it's a slow forum and I dunno if I'm gonna get a response.

We could just do the desert one, with quicksand and whatnot.

...... That too needed disabled flippers.

I think I can get lava done with damage combos and the stomp boots, since I think there's a by-the-screen checkbox for whether or not the stomp boots work. I'm not sure if I can get lava zoras in this scenario, without at least putting them in places that are unreachable. We'll see if the stomp boots still work while swimming.

Alright. So we're doing lava? I'll start making music for it. Should we have an intense, or passive, soundtrack?

I still have to get the walking on lava a fire zoras working somehow. I've got some ideas, but if it doesn't work out, we'll just do lava anyway, I guess, I dunno. Right now, I'm gonna hack together a piece of junk with 3 arrows, and before the end of the night, I'll hopefully have a few screens with the stuff that I wanna do working.

Now, give me some ideas for what I could do as far as overall puzzles are concerned. I had one idea, if I can get it to work, to give out the nyrue's love item in this dungeon, and then you use it to swim across some lava to reach the boss, but I don't know yet it the stomp boots work while swimming, but then, you have to do some more questing and puzzling in order to be able to get to all the mandatory magic refills. And a lot of the dungeon would be spent setting up the final lava swim. But before that, I have to get to the fire boots and then get to the nyrue's love..... so any ideas for macro-level puzzles for the first half?

I did some testing, and the boots protect you from damage combos, even when you're swimming, bleh, I guess I can still use the boots, but you have to get them AFTER you complete the nayru's love section. I spent quite a while today setting up that nayru's love item. The subscreens needed to be edited to make room, and the tileset didn't have nayru's love tiles, to I had to import some and recolour them a little... bleh.

Anyway, I set up some fire-type enemies, including the fire zora (which unfortunately I couldn't make breathe fire, so only shooting slightly more entertaining fireballs), the level 2 slimes (they leave a fire trail as they move, and when you kill them, they split in two, and if you don't kill those quickly enough, the evolved into full slimes again, so the fire trails will build up quickly), the fire octorock (breathes fire and explodes out a ring of fire on death), and the fire wizrobe. All these enemies are pretty tough, so I think this dungeon would probably need to be something like level 8. Most quests I play, it's level 7-9 where it gets ridiculous, so get ready for a pretty hard one, I bet.

I threw together a test screen just to get everything working on. The nayru's love mechanic works well, I think. I could send you the nearly-empty test screen, and you could give me some suggestions. I don't think I got the dungeon's floor tiles right, but I dunno what to use. If there were some good tiles to use to transition into the lava, that would be nice. Perhaps that's what you could make, as far as graphics are concerned? Some floor tiles, and some tiles to use along the edge of the lava. This would consist of 9 tiles, 1 for the floor tile and 8 for inside and outside corners. I'm also gonna need a tile for some sort of item that makes you immune to the lava. You're probably thinking of the red tunic, but that's already being used as a defensive item, like in LTTP. The fire boots from chip's challenge are one idea, but then, you wouldn't think they'd allow you to swim in the lava... I'm gonna make a couple of real screens, and then upload something for you to take a look at.

This competition ends in two weeks, but I think, if we're actually putting a lot of effort into our entry... well... Livio owes us after the oscillations debacle.

Can you fully style one room, and take a screenshot, so I have an idea of what the music should sound like?

Here's a screen:


It could use a better floor tiling. Right now, I just put a floor decoration around the edge of the lava, but if there were a version of some new tiling made for transitioning into the lava, that'd probably be better. BTW, that lava is swimmable, lol, but I covered it with invisible damage combos on layer 1, that do two hearts of damage every second or so. If you use the nayru's love item, you can swim in it for a short while without taking damage (easily longer than you can last in the lava if you just stood there taking damage). The idea is that you have limited magic, so after crossing some lava, you'll need to take a break and find some magic somehow, before continuing, and you may have to do things in some rooms before starting the long swim in order for it to be possible to reach the magic. Most of the time, there'll be a way to return to the main level without dying, I hope. At the end of the nayru's swim is the "stomp boots" item, which make you immune to damage combos. If somebody could make me a graphic of a "fire boots" so that it'll only work on lava, that'd be nice. With the boots, you'll be able to reach the boss key.

Sound reasonable? Sound completely absurd, but whatever, just go with it? I've only got 6 screens made so far, and none of them make any progress towards the plan that I just posted, lol. Hopefully, I'll get off my butt and make that long swim today, and then after I can start working out how the pre-long swim section of the level works, and figure out some way to get you the nayru's, too.

That looks great so far. Explain to others how they can help, and I'm sure we'll make acceptable progress.

I'll get started on the music ASAP.

One thing that would help is to have original music, of course, lol, and you're working on that. Optionally, a revamped version of the same theme for the boss?

It'd be nice if somebody could come up with some custom graphics as well. After putting down that border, I don't mind the floor tiling as much, but it'd still be an idea to have something that looks affected by the lava in some way. Maybe some sort of stream of lava flowing across the top? I dunno. I also need the fire boots from chips challenge, lol, or something like that.

I thought of this great idea for a tile, where it's basically a geyser the occasionally spews out steam (while spewing, it'd cycle to a damage combo and back) so it'd be nice if somebody could make something like that. Lemme explain how it'd need to be made, though. I dunno how the CSets or the Palettes or whatevers work, so you might have to make it right into ZC, after downloading the tileset that I'm using (set it to the "fire red" palette). After it's made into ZC, you can export it (like, take a screenshot, lol) and when I import it, I won't have to recolour it or anything. What you would need to do is make the base of the geyser, one frame at a time (putting successive frames in reading order), and then, using the transparent colour as the background, make the steam that's released separately (but time it to be released in tandem with the geyser's animation) so that, when you layer them, the steam appears to be coming out of the geyser. The steam would hopefully extend for a tile above the base of the geyser, so you'd need two sets of tiles for the top and bottom of the steam. After I have the tiles, I can set it up from there.

But does anybody have any other ideas for some custom tiles that we could maybe have? Could you possibly draw them?

And also, it'd be helpful to have suggestions for the contents of individual rooms. Like, in what ways could I make it so that I have to do something in a room to make the magic refills accessible when I come to the room during the long fire swim? Any ideas for block-push puzzles? Any ideas about anything?

http://www.mediafire.com/?8d9x4ka4k5pom5a

Let me know how well this works. It's for the level, not the boss or anything else.

Do we also need an overworld theme, or just the boss theme?

I'm not gonna bother with an overworld. I'm gonna be lucky to get 3/4 of a dungeon made in the time we have left. I think if I can get to 3/4 I can justify and extension or could just fill in the gaps with some temporary stuff. A boss theme would be nice, but it's not necessary.

Alright. I'll see if I can find time to make one.

We really need more people working on this. I hope we don't get marked down for lack of participation.

It'd be nice if I could use all three author slots instead of just putting canadianstickdeath/Dekudude. Quick, GF4, contribute somehow!

Just put down whoever gave the most suggestions.

I really have no idea what you two are doing. It was too long and intimidating. I don't know anything about Zelda or Zelda classic so I chose not to participate in this effort. I just hope it'll be done before the 6th, considering Team GREATS is the only team that acutally entered.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ef4epqu885mbszy ::: UPDATED 8/7/2010

Here you go. Boss theme. I'm not too happy with how it turned out, but it'll serve its purpose. I hope it's good enough. :]

If there's anything you could help with it's to come up with an idea for a trap or puzzle or something. I still need a couple ideas for puzzles/traps guarding the magic refills. Maybe just come up with a block-push puzzle? It's kinda late for graphics or any overall designs or anything like that.

Progress update: 1/3 done. Ummm... With one day left, you'd probably hope for more than that, lol. I'll post what I have here tomorrow for you guys to look over. I'll also post a "Forthcoming KarmaBites Entry" to submit to the comp. Lol, I procrastinate so much... Seriously gotta work on that. I'll hopefully be done before the judges can finish the other categories. Like, Tuesday. Sorry.

EDIT: AN HOUR?! That's an awful long midi for a Battle that'll probably only last one or two minutes... Why is it SOOOOOOO long? Anyway, I'm using a start time of beat 17 instead of beat 1, because the song takes too long to start for what would probably end up being a fairly quick battle. An interesting side-effect is that the tempo at beat 17 is very close to the tempo of the main dungeon theme. I used a loop start at beat 33 and a loop end at beat 297. Hopefully I'm not actually losing any variations by looping so early....

Also, maybe Gold and somebody could also make a cave? There's no reason we can't have more than one entry, but, lol, you would have to work fast.

It's that long because of the loop: it slows down, which loops badly, so I just made that part play longer. Does it really take a lot of time to start up? If so, I can change that.

And ha, 1/3 is bad. I recommend you build the rest of the level first, and then come up with puzzles later, if time allows it. That's most important.

No it's fine the way it is now, except that the midi is taking up a mountain of space in the file. 800+kb, almost a megabyte, dedicated to a midi I only use a small portion of. I don't need to loop the whole thing, you know. I can set a place for the midi to start playing, and also set whether to loop and what part of the midi to loop over. The file-size isn't a deal breaker. I can cut it down myself before releasing it as part of a full quest, or something.

Also, you seem to have specified some sort of sound for the drums that isn't seeming to translate into ZC, and it's just sounding like the drums normally do. I dunno if you know what I mean...

Alright. Is this better? Make everything BEFORE beat 33 NOT loop. The remainder SHOULD loop.

http://www.mediafire.com/?krpuzz9u5f37e9u

Also, are the drums better? I made a slight change. Is the problem also in the other song?

OK, thanks, you brought the file-size down by a couple hundred k, which is nice seeing as how I have to upload this thing on dial-up. The drums do sound as they were intended now, yes, and the main dungeon them did have this same problem.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3yc4s6cnra4h6d3
There's the main dungeon theme.

I guess... just do your best to finish this. I don't think there's time for you to teach anyone how to do anything. Thanks for all your hard work.

Meh, screw time. I'm gonna be a little late. Even after I finish, I wanna give you guys a chance to playtest before I submit it....