[MX][release] Flash MX zelda engine - giveaway

[luxregina]

The engine looks, and works very nice !

but what really impressed me is the concept art you did : you seem to be as at ease with graphics than coding, and that makes me jalous !

By the way, you have some free time to do more concept art ?

[guardiankitty]

all i can say is...

WOW!


you really made a big immpression on me.


Unfortunatly I wish to look at your fla, but the like you have provided seems not to work. please repost it, and/or if you need a place to host it let me know.

very nice work... I am still blown away!

[renderhjs]

since this evening the server seems offline (but this wasnt before today). Anyway I reuploaded the file to another server because you asked so nice:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr2/dwnld/zalda_engine._rar
(save target as,.... then rename to zelda_engine.rar)

oh and thx for your kind words

[Evaman]

Again, I think your Zelda engine is inspiring. The one I worked on is crap compared to yours.

[T1ger]

You, sir, is a true Zelda fan!

Amazing work you got there.. Finally we have something to throw at those "help me make a zelda game"-guys

Soo.. i guess you have finished Zelda:TP on the Wii?

[Evaman]

Hey I don't know if you received my message because my computer was messing up with the browser, but I was wondering how did you make those splash screens for your engine if you don't mind me asking.

[renderhjs]

haven´t played TP,- but to be honest my all time favourite zelda is still the SNES "link to the past" and not the N64 ones wich resemble the new one a little bit. Windwaker was also awesome but many n64 zelda fans hated that one- so i´ll have to see how the new one goes

I doubt that the majority of them will be able to understand my code though

got a PM

asking for style & art help for Zelda games,-
so I though about posting this vector collection I collected & created in the past:

and notice that those are just not some random auotmatic traced graphics but lots of them manual traced with high quality:

(oop´s didn´t resized that one in PS, I hope no one complains)
swf file:
http://www.renderhjs.net/bbs/flashki...endo_logos.swf
(not protected,- just import into Flash, Illustrator, Corel or whatever suitable vector tool)

oh and
do not abuse it!!! all copyright still belongs nintendo. I´d suggest using it only for a fan- game




@ Evaman:
since you already asked here I´ll tell you more in detail what I found out:
The snes font collection is mainly the UNIVERS font family (sane btw. for the origianal Playstation). They usually used it in manuals and on the system itself (start, select, power,....).

The Zelda logo has a sub or introduction titlle "the legend of " wich is a serif font but don´t know anymore wich one,- but a font like Trajan should look nice too. But whatever font you choose never ever use TimesNewRoman becuase that font should be forbidden by default.

some font (/download)- links:
http://www.dafont.com/trajanusbricks.font
http://www.linotype.com/1560/univers-family.html

as for the logo effects:
I simply copy a screenshot out of flash where I quickly turned the logo black and white.
This screenshot pasted within flash is copied again to the channel section to a new alpha mask. Hit ctrl+ click on the yet created mask and there you have your logo selection. Go back to the layer section, create a new layer and fill the selection with a color of your desire. Double clicking on that layer will open the layer effects and lets you add borders, shadows, texture patterns or glows.
Play around with them to get a nice result- I always play alot with those sliders.

[PhobiK]

Nice stuff you got there. I only took a quick look to it online and it was very well done. Thanks for sharing that with us, I've wanted to work with xml and I'm shure when I need to do so this will come in handy. Nice drawings btw.

[jonnyblazedx]

fantastic work render....
it seems to run even better than the real zelda engine :P

although in my 5 minutes of playing i couldnt figure out how to do the 360 sword swipe, not in the engine?

[renderhjs]

not in the engine,- I wanted to but as you propably know never finished this big one. At the end I was rather concerned about AI behaviour, how it would interact with the behaviour layer and how it would attack/ interact with link.

if I´d had to redo the engine I would propably use bitmap data for the map stuff and real tilemaps (gif or PNG images) for the sprites.
Maybe in the future if i´d have freetime for this even trying implent a multiplayer coop mode just like the gamecube and GBadvance 4 swords edition. Where 4 players can play at the same time. There would be alot of potential

[jonnyblazedx]

there's a lotta potential with all your stuff render...
at least all 3 things i saw in ur sig :P

uve got a lotta talent... give us something to drool over

[Evaman]

I was wondering. I'm trying to work on your engine and I wanna create a new behavior. The behavior I would like to create is the sword slashing the bushes and making go into another frame that shows them gone or with an item leftover. I'm not sure how to do this in xml, but my guess would be something like this

[bush]
hit = 1 /nothing
hit = 2 /hearts
hit = 3 /rupee
[/bush]

and in flash I have no code on the top of my mind.

[renderhjs]

i´ll give it a look (quite a while since I took a look), but remember this from the frontpage?

I introduced this tool to add many more custom actions like you are trying to archive right now.

From what I can recall all unique actions were placed in the header of the xml map file, eg:
loadWorldMap(myMap.xml,0,0)
and later used in the actions- layer with it´s shortage/ ID that was defined in the header before the command as well. But i´ll look into it to give you a more advanced answer- because of course the FLA needs to be changed if you introduce a new behaviour as I call them.

[newblack]

you've accumulated such wonderful projects- and taken what must have been immense amounts of time to achieve such a sophisticated level editor/interface; not to mention the aesthetics... the tiles are fantastic.

so it's disappointing to not see these projects come to fruition. i'll lose interest in a project quite often; but if i've come as far as you have- i'll always see it though. i'm wondering why, at this stage, you'd choose to abandon the project?

[renderhjs]

one main reason:
messy AS1 code all in 1 layer(s) that get fast buggy once I add new functions or variables. I wasn´t used to *.as files at that time and object- binding as I used years after that (a method to use objects insead of classes like you see in AS2/AS3).

some others:
Far to big project for just me alone (art, code, concept, story, editor, tools, logos, design, ai, behaviour scripts,....)- plus I am someone who always learns new stuff and advances pretty quickly so there were other projects as well that were itneresting or even more.
Another reason was that at that time I was applying for the university (needed to be talented) and they took me- and so I moved, university started ect.

maybe,- I´ll rewrap this whole thing, I´m sure that if I would rewrite this baby completely new it would took me maybe ~ 2-3 weeks. It has a great potential like using it as a community website where everyone can create their own Zelda missions, worlds ect. and share/ rate them with others.
But right now I´m really intersted into my orthix project wich is imo. interesting as well

Well to summ everything up: I really discovered and learned ALOT with this project not just code wise but how to concept something like the editor, design and how everythign sticks together. Today I would certainly have things more different (like using real tile- maps as extern PNG files, using bitmap data for the tile handling,...) but the concept´s I learned still remain the same.
And I hope that some people just from seeing or reading the first pages got some of my ideas or concepts as well- or found it at least inspiring.

[jasoncoates]

That's one hell of a lot of work to give away.

Simply awesome!

[Evaman]

Yeah and one more thing. How do I load new textures to the editor to use on the XML world file.

[renderhjs]

create a new Flash document with a emptyMovieClip on the stage and give it the instance name "i0" (also known as instance 0 as for beginning).
Inside that movieClip paste or import all sprites in that packge you want each sprite as a frame. For examample 16 Sprites = 16 frames length in the movieClip with the instance name "i0".
Put the fla and swf file in the /sprites folder (any other is fine as well)

Now open a sample map file from the /maps folder. The file looks like this for example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Information  c 2005 hjs	 -->
<map>
	<header author="hjs" date="29.05.05" 
		startPosX="3"
		startPosY="3"
		exitN="..mapTest1.xml"
		exitE="..mapTest2.xml"
		exitS="..mapTest2.xml"
		exitW="..mapTest3.xml"
	/>
	<!--the external librarys  -->
	<librarays>
		<assign prefix="w" target="sprites/sprite_water_cliff.swf" />
		<assign prefix="b" target="sprites/sprite_outdoor_1.swf" /> 
	</librarays>
....

now inside the librarys tag add another line like:

<assign prefix="c" target="sprites/my_just_created_flash_movie.swf" />

where the target attribute defines the path to the Flash file you just created with the new tiles within the movieclip of that Flash movie.

As soon as you open the map in the editor the library of you new tiles should appear. Keep in mind that an unique prefeix attribute in the xml map file for the library path is needed otherwise you can´t map it in the map- data later.

If you want to have you map listed automaticly in the editor if you open it (the quick list on the right) edit the maplist.xml file in the _root folder, because that xml file defines the map list for the editor and the game where you can choose from in a list view.

I´m trying to work as soon as possible on your other question including the xml thingy with custom variable comparison- as for now I hope that answers you question

[Evaman]

Yes that did help a lot actually. But this is just like a curious question. How did you measure those sprites into those sizes perfectly!?!?!?!

[renderhjs]

ever seen these zelda sprite sheets on the net?


basicly all tiles in Zelda are either 16*16 or 32*32, with such sprite sheets its easy to find the single sprites out.
I have lots, lots, lots of them- collected them from a zelda lttp development forum I joined a long time ago but they closed and their sprite rips arent available anymore there. If you have trouble finding some I can upload a package.
I also have almost any soundtrack of the game as midi file,.. well anyway I collected lots resources back then.