Author Topic: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung  (Read 132659 times)

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Offline Will

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #15 on: April 03, 2008, 02:37:18 am »
I understand there is no existence of Oracle of the Hours but now that April Fools is more or less over, Jon, don't you think that the maps of this month ought to be from an existing game? Take "Art of Fighting" for instance. Nobody seems to really care about Neo-Geo games or maps, mostly Sega and Nintendo (I don't have anything against Sega or Nintendo I just prefer variety), still I don't anyone on the site who is a Neo-Geo fan, I know Neo-Geo games consist of Fighting games.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #16 on: April 03, 2008, 07:03:42 am »
April Fools' jokes on VGMaps.com have always been for the full month.  As I said earlier, it wouldn't be fair considering how much more work goes into making them, and then it wouldn't be fair for whoever's "real" maps for the remaining days of the month, they'd miss out on a day.  Maybe if April had 31 days...but again, I'm not going to let my work disappear off the front page after only one day, especially this year when no one seemed to take notice, except for the people here, though more than half of whom knew about it and expected it.



I said it before...perhaps it's too subtle?  It's not like the addition of "Super" or "Advance" to a title (as two of the past ones were) or something outrageous like Mega Man Solid X: Guns Of The Mavericks.  I would've hoped that The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours would've been fun to work out the paths through the dungeons.  I didn't copy and paste any whole puzzles, but it meant a lot of work that might go wasted now.  There were so many things I felt I could've done if I only had more time, but I wonder now how much difference that would've made.  I don't want to get too cynical yet, though.  At least they're pretty.



I can just hear a certain someone saying, "if you had time to make this, you should be mapping real games!"  Ah, how true...

Offline Will

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #17 on: April 03, 2008, 10:49:08 am »
On the contrary these April Fools maps show that people do have a good imagination and creativity besides being a fan of the games. I think it would be a good idea if all three Legend of Zelda Gameboy Colour games were put together and were adopted the trilogy title "The Legend of Zelda, Oracles of the Era - A GBC Legacy" which make all three games together seem very fancy.

Offline Revned

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #18 on: April 04, 2008, 10:18:24 pm »
Sorry I haven't commented yet, I really haven't taken the time to devote the attention these maps deserve. One of these days I'll mentally play through some (or all) of the dungeons. At first glance, though, they look great. I'm amazed you finished it.

Offline Mahrla

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #19 on: April 05, 2008, 12:40:55 am »
The maps look really good. I first thought that there will be only one overworld map or so. But there's even a night version of the overworld map. And also lots of dungeon maps.

It's hard to believe, that this is no real game^^

Nice work, Jonathan!

Offline Will

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #20 on: April 09, 2008, 07:46:06 am »
I have just started doing my own April Fools maps hopefully for next year. Throughout the year I will share it with Jon alone until 1st April 2009, but every month I shall give some clues as to what the game title might be. To start with, I shall be slightly vague. The game is a platformer. I do so want my gamemaps to be a success next year as much as the Legend of Zelda was.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #21 on: April 09, 2008, 11:08:42 am »
Seems this is a busy month as well, I hope to eventually share some points about this project's creation process, but it's probably not going to be as in-depth as originally planned.  Hopefully I can get it done before people lose interest (ie. next month).



It'll probably just be one big post on both overworlds and one big post about whatever neat things there are for all of the dungeons (rather than one each).  There's probably not a lot the regular mappers wouldn't already know, or that anyone wouldn't be able to see for themselves, but you might like to see the dozen or so intermediate images between the concept to the final overworld map, that I had saved along the way specifically to show anyone who's interested.  I think I'll make them into a reduced-sized animated .GIF.



As for next year, perhaps I'll make another brainstorming topic and try to remember how I granted people access to it, then adjust who would have access, and we can figure it out.  After doing yet another whole one by myself, I really feel these should be team projects, but everyone's going to want to do their part for it to be any fun.  If it doesn't bring in the hits (obviously my motivation) it should at least be an enjoyable experience that results in something worth looking at.  (Not that MMSX:GotM was badly planned or anything like that, but I feel it could've been better.)

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #22 on: April 09, 2008, 07:36:11 pm »
Here's a .GIF showing twelve snapshots of progress:

User posted image

Offline marioman

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #23 on: April 09, 2008, 08:55:50 pm »
Concerning next year...  I may have an idea.  When the official thread is opened, I will unleash it on you guys.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #24 on: April 12, 2008, 03:04:16 pm »
In that case, I'll continue by talking about the overworld.



Knowing that there would be day and night, I didn't expect the two worlds to be considerably different.  So my focus was on the day version, knowing that the night version would only take one evening's worth of work to do (which it did).  You know, palette swap, adjusting certain things, etc.  Almost all of the actual landscape would be taken care of once the world of the day was done.



You may have noticed in that animated .GIF that I started with a hand-drawn plan, here it is again:

User posted image



I chose to do a 16 x 16 screen grid for the map, or 2560 x 2048 pixels, which is the same size as Koholint, or Holodrum (without the westernmost lonely screen).  Then I just freely drew what came to mind once I had decided the size of the "canvas".



I figured I would have to go with the usual mountains-in-the-north and ocean-to-the-south that all three Game Boy games' main worlds used.  Though many of the dungeon entrances would shift at later phases of the world's development, the rough idea of where they were influenced what I would put in the various regions of Falsia.  At this point, however, the sixth dungeon (Magma Mines) and the seventh dungeon (Vampire's Crypt) were still up in the air, and so the grey area in the northeast was originally going to be the graveyard, for what was then going to be the area around the sixth dungeon, the Vampire's Crypt.  You can also see other oddities, most obvious being that the river is way too wide.



When it came time to make the grid, I had a grid of black lines showing the right columns and the bottom rows of pixels for every tile.  The blue lines indicate the screens.  (I'd never gotten around to using an image editor with a grid.)  The above image is the initial hand-drawn plan with the grid in place.



But then I realized that it was not enough to know where the screen edges were.  Though already marked, the corners would be particularly important.  Had this been a real playable game, like the other Zelda games, you would know that the corners must be "blocked off".  It can't be a standable/walkable space for Link, as I suppose the game would have to load up more data and quicker if Link co go diagonally across screens, not to mention being more disorienting, since the Game Boy game screens don't scroll.  You can see this even in the Super NES game (A Link To The Past) with areas that only scroll to a certain point; the Great Swamp has the same area size as other "zones" but is actually four segments, with a rock formation in the middle to prevent that diagonal-walking.  



User posted image

So I made another grid, this time with trees in the corners.  The image above shows four screens of that grid.  As in filled in the screens with tiles, many of these trees would be replaced with larger clumps of trees, or walls, or rocks, etc.  And they would serve as screen-edge markers when tiles filled in over the blue lines.  Always being aware of the screen edges was important, as I didn't want to place something at the edge of a screen that would block off Link walking in from the adjacent screen.



Details about managing the screen edges and corners was important.  Even if no one would notice if I made a "mistake" in a couple places, knowing the screen boundaries allowed me to make things with a certain scale in mind.



But the actual tile-filling would take place more than a couple months later, as I went to work on the right main dungeons.  More about them later, of course.  When I came upon the overworld again, it was the end of February, so I only had about a month to do it all!  Sure, the planning phase was done, but here comes the hard part.



User posted image

Most evident in A Link To The Past, but also noticeable in Link's Awakening, is that Zelda worlds are made up of square "zones".  Somewhat distinct geographical locations fit nicely into squares of equal size.  Knowing this, I decided to use that same idea, which not only kept the plan simple, but to break down this large task.  The initial plan was to do a region/zone a day...which proved difficult to keep up with, especially with other things I have to do outside of VGMaps.com.  And yes, Super Smash Bros. Brawl coming out on March 9 did little to help...  >_<

Offline Jade

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #25 on: April 17, 2008, 07:52:02 am »
Hello Jon.



Long time no see, and this April Fools map is ah-mazing. Keep up the great work and cant see what will looks like in 2009!



My life is now busy and have no time for map-ripping. I might seek to do some bit of map-ripping but can't really guarantee it since the newer Pokemon games are like impossible for me to rip. Lol.  



Take care.



Jade.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #26 on: April 19, 2008, 05:54:06 pm »
The Spinner puzzle in the west took a couple days, which is what derailed (no pun intended...maybe) the one zone a day thing.

User posted image



Another thing that took way too long was the Hourglass "Pyramid".  Originally envisioned as, well, somewhat more pyramid-like, or at least an hourglass made up of big pyramid-like bricks, coming down to the dungeon designs in the last week meant I didn't have much time to do much in the way of original designs, but here I had no choice.  Here was my attempt to mathematically work out how it would've looked.

User posted image



When I knew I had to give up and simply trace an hourglass to create a dungeon entrance carved into the cliff wall, Google ImageSearch was handy to find an image I could use:

User posted image

User posted image -> User posted image

Too bad it's not evident how it would've "flipped" between day and night...ah well.



Here's that grid check I made to confirm that my screen edges and corners were "acceptable":



User posted image

Offline Will

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2008, 12:32:49 am »
Excellent, what creativity Jon. I never could understand April Fools maps before. I wonder if I'll ever finish and reveal my own maps. By the way, besides maps of Oracle of the Hours what would the storyline be if you could compose one?

Offline Will

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #28 on: April 20, 2008, 11:04:44 pm »
Say Jon, you remember I mentioned that all three GBC Legend of Zelda Oracle games put together as a trilogy would be very good and would one thrill of an adventure for any GBC player. I have just created the title page "The Legend of Zelda: Oracles of the Era - A GBC Legacy" I think you will like it. Here it is.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: 2008/04: The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Hours (GBC) - JonLeung
« Reply #29 on: April 30, 2008, 09:58:26 pm »
I never did get around to talking about the dungeons, did I?  >_<  Wonder if I can make time to, if anyone still cares.



I wonder if anyone's "played" through them yet.  If you have, it'd be interesting to hear what you think!