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Topics - 4Sword

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 12
21
Updates / Great Graphics Cleanup!
« on: September 03, 2011, 09:15:59 pm »
The full state of the Graphics board is a mess. The task of making it better is daunting, but I have devised a way of handling the whole situation incrementally with the use of many members here. To this end, ZFGC is currently hiring global moderators to help deal with this. All that is requied is that you be competent, familiar with the content of the Graphics board, and willing to help out every now and then. Please post in this topic if you wish be a global moderator so you can help out.

At most three global moderators may be added. Members who have frequented the Graphics board may be preferred.

22
Updates / NCFC 2011 - Now Open!
« on: August 01, 2011, 07:02:44 am »
http://www.nintendocfc.com/

The event itself is at a date about 3 months into the future, but I am announcing the event itself in order to avoid it being mentioned too late at a point in time where nobody would be able to get anything ready at all. For those who do not know, the NCFC, otherwise known as the Nintendo Community Fangame Convention, is an annual event where fangame communities come together to represent their talents and abilities through making Nintendo fan games. And just because ZFGC represents Zelda, ZFGCers aren't "required" to do Zelda games. The information from previous years are on their site.

In the meantime and hopefully before the start of the event, ZFGC is going to be spruced up. I also took the liberty of deleting all users with 0 posts who had not been active within the past 100 days (most tended though to be past the 200 day mark). The plan to go from a global moderation system to local moderation system is scrapped based on demand and SMF 1.1.x's feasibility, all global moderators will remain. This sentence is a chocolate chip cookie. Upcoming improvements will relate to the improvement of the default Kokiri theme and an upgrade to SMF 2.0 (and all the super cool improved features it has). I'll be posting work-in-progress screenshots of that improved forum theme in Feedback eventually so that you all can critique it.

But yeah, while NCFC is a ways away it would be a good fun time made better by us being ready and involved.

23
Coding / GM Minish Cap Engine
« on: May 16, 2011, 07:56:49 pm »
This topic contains a listing of the topics associated with the GM Minish Cap Engine project; a project which sought to code aspects of the Minish Cap in Game Maker for users to have a sense of how to code various aspects. The project itself is still somewhat ongoing but due to the speed of its development it has lost the need to have its own boards. This topic will be cleaned up and adjusted in the future if additional progress is made.

Stickied:

 Feature List
 Stable Releases

Development:

4Sword
 Tile-Based Collisions & Leveling
 Primary Object Collision
 Platforms & Bouncing
 Dryland & Ice Rolling
 Getting Started
 Ice-Based Movement
 Movement
Niek
 Combat System
 Generic Graphic & Drowning
 Boomerang
 Menu System
 Swimming
 HUD
 Magical Boomerang & Pushing
 Bow, Rolling, & Lantern
 Ledge Jumping
 Bow and Arrow

24
Updates / Host Transfer, Upcoming Downtime
« on: January 01, 2011, 06:44:43 am »
The server stuff is getting moved from Vash's hosting to metallica48423's hosting likely sometime this weekend. This means when that happens the forums may be down for a few hours and/or however long the DNS takes time to switch.

25
Updates / Board Restructuring
« on: December 30, 2010, 09:51:25 pm »
Projects -> Development

We want to expand development on ZFGC to highlight more than traditional projects, and at this time Engines has the most potential to grow and more so if given an improved board structure. The main way we are going to do this is by dividing Engines based on the Zelda and Other focuses. This way is more practical in terms of activity and management than dividing it based on skill. This also allows for the GM Minish Cap Engine to be merged into the Zelda Engines board instead of being outside and above it.

There is also going to be an effort for the Contests board to be used more. The board itself will be open for anyone to hold the contests they want to so long as they have a solid contest plan and get a reasonable amount of interest in doing the contest from the community. We want there to be contests dealing with mini-game, engine, or graphics development. There will be some staff management of contests if there isn't a member drive to do them, but for the most part we want it to be a community effort. Things such as events will also be held outside of the Contests board which should increase their visibility. The Projects category is being renamed Development. The Contests board is being moved under the Development category, while events will be held in their own specific boards which will be placed under the ZFGC.com category when they are occurring.

Developer Rank -> Local Moderation

Also the Developer rank is hereby abolished. It isn't that the idea of the rank is fully bad it is just that keeping it filled as a rank is problematic. Its functionality though will be preserved through a system of local moderation, with all local moderators having access to the Staff board. Basically a local moderator position is given to someone when they are working on some aspect of development and giving local moderators Staff board access allows them to discuss things at the staff level.



There are still more changes in the works. Originally I had introduced a plan which other staff members had found some fault with, so I reintroduced a newer plan which sought to better conform to their perspectives. It seems to take forever to get responses though, so I am going ahead with the ideas which had mostly been agreed upon. I'll update this topic when and if I get feedback on that.

26
Feedback / Development Focus
« on: November 22, 2010, 07:05:29 am »
Due to initial reaction, the Developers board idea was removed. I want to emphasize though that in its absence the Feedback board is open to discussion on ZFGC's development focus. Because there are a multitude of issues with it, we want to encourage conversation on how to make things better. So if you have ideas on how you think the Resource or Projects categories or the boards within them can be improved, feel free to post the ideas you have here so that as a community we can figure out stuff.

27
Updates / Developers Board
« on: November 21, 2010, 02:31:34 pm »
http://www.zfgc.com/forum/index.php?board=303.0

I have made the Developers board public. While it has not been formally formulated, issues with it would be easiest to work out when and if they are encountered. The board's purpose is mentioned in the Developers Info topic, and any further questions can be asked here, in the Developers board, or through a PM to me. The Feedback board will remain obviously for moderation issues and general suggestions, but the purpose of the Developers board is to be proactive about issues rather than just simply discussing them.

28
Coding / Tile-Based Collisions and Leveling
« on: November 19, 2010, 12:33:09 am »
In response to something that Xfixium said regarding collision systems running into problems when they have a large number of wall instances I have created a system that uses tile for simple collisions. I think this gives the overall appearance that the complexity of the code has increased a bunch, but in practice I think that it will still have equal performance in small rooms and better performance in large rooms. Essentially the key to this is that doing collision checks for the parObstacle object search through all of its instances in a given room - i.e., if there are less instances to process through, not as many checks will have to be done. Furthermore, with things like environmental effects on a playable map, Link will have to always be checking if he is over something - i.e., the previous way of doing this required large empty instances too.

The code isn't too perfect though, I had been working on updating corner-cutting so that it fit; I had it working with the exception of it sometimes setting my othr_o variable to 0 for a reason I couldn't determine. I figured I would just remove that stuff so I could post what I have done instead of making it look like I was just talking out of my ass. I didn't fully comment this one, but am open to comments about what I made and would be willing to answer any questions that anyone has. I should also note that in lue of making everything integrated for the GM Minish Cap Engine which takes time, I am just going to put out my ideas without expecting them to be fully perfect.

The GMK (for GM8) contains a room with just one object (Link) and how he can interact with tiles. There is a hole that he can only fall in if the hole is one level beneath him. The background files for Level1, Level2... were created sequentially; this might not be strictly necessary in that a lower level need not always be 1 less than a higher level, but meh. There is probably not that many levels in the actual Minish Cap as ledge jumping and some stairs are really just manipulations done on one level. Also in terms of leveling, the layer 0 I created when used for collisions means that regardless of level there will be a collision (useful for bridge ends), but when used for the layer which is for environmental effects, it is just another level.

Screens:


Download:
see attachment

29
Updates / Staff Ranks
« on: November 10, 2010, 08:04:37 am »
This has been subject of a little confusion due to informality and lack of explanation, but the new staff ranks are as follows:

- Administrator
- Advisor
- Moderator
- Developer

As it is currently, the only one who is identified as an Administrator is myself (4Sword). Windy (who codes the site but didn't want to have his name listed as a full Administrator), Vash (who owns the server host at the moment), and metallica48423 (who owns the domain name and the server host in the possible future) are listed as Advisors but technically are or do more. The rest of the listed Advisors are CrystalAngel04, Infini, and Mamoruアニメ. The purpose of the Advisors is due in part to how the Administrator rank is currently just helmed by myself (4Sword); i.e., the administration's decisions are not made just on my own whims, those who are Advisors help out by formulating ideas and giving input.

Additionally, Advisors can tell users here to stop a certain behavior if they feel it is against the rules or in the general interest of the forum - and this will not be considered rent-a-modding (Advisors were at one point previously Moderators or Administrators). However, as the forum/site already has Moderators, Advisors should only be doing any moderation for things which require immediacy (spam-bots on the loose) or in conjunction with the Moderators. The idea is that there will not be two moderation factions that users should be having to deal with.

Furthermore, some users who have the Developer rank, namely Niek and Martijn dh, also have secondary moderator permissions. This is so they can better manage when things are posted to the Community Project board and dealing with the Project of the Month stuff respectively. The secondary permissions do not imply that both have the right to moderate user behavior or really to tell users to not be doing something, although coincidentally Niek and Martijn dh are both more than qualified to be Moderators. There is some other stuff coming out about that but I'll say more about that later.


Also there has been some discussion in the staff boards about the moderation policy of ZFGC. In the near future there may be polls posted (likely by an Advisor) in which we will have anonymous voting (the forum modification which allows the staff to see who voted will be turned off) to gauge opinions. We want to make sure that moderation on ZFGC is both fair and just. The full explanation as to what those polls are will be mentioned when one is posted. later.

Also if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask them here or to send a PM.

30
Updates / NCFC 2010 - Uh-Oh Spaghetti-O's
« on: October 08, 2010, 04:40:59 pm »
http://www.nintendocfc.com/

The Nintendo Community Fangame Convention's deadline for booth entries is October 22nd, 2010, which is about two weeks away. Anyway they currently don't have any Zelda entries which would be bad because a Nintendo contest event like this without Zelda might be lacking. The previous year's contest we only had two entries submitted for the event, King Tetiro's Legend of Zelda: Chiming Bells and Bludleef's The Sage Knight. This year even with somewhat of a later announcement I think we can do just as good if not a little better!

Also though, the leader of this event is MetroidMaster1914, who is also an administrator at Metroid Headquarters - Metroid HQ also being our most recent affiliate and a cool site to check out if you are into Metroid games. Also as with previous contests, just because we are a Zelda forum here doesn't mean that our entries have to be limited to just Zelda - if you are working on something else Nintendo related you could submit that too!

31
Coding / Pokemon Overworld
« on: August 14, 2010, 05:14:04 am »
I've worked on a Gameboy-styled Pokemon engine previously and decided to restart some work on it because Zelda coding was giving me slight headaches. Some of the features I was working on then haven't been integrated into this current working engine - namely having an overworld Pokemon follow Ash, animating water tiles, and going into buildings. The stuff in this one though is worth putting out now.




Download Link:
http://www.zfgc.com/index.php#?action=resources&sa=view&id=201

Current Features:
- Grid Movement
- Ledge Jumping
- NPC/Sign Text
- NPC Movement

The first two are obvious, the second two I am a little proud of. I got the text engine to animate and work correctly without relying on refreshing the screen in a for-loop, using sleep, and not using keyboard_wait. The entirety of the text can be contained in a single string. When it is drawn, it can go to the next text line, wait for z to be pressed to go to the next line, or wait for z to be pressed then "clear" the lines and keep going. All the NPCs are stopped when Ash reads a sign or talks to an NPC - if they are moving they can even be frozen mid-step appropriately.

The NPC movement is also something cool. An NPC can not move at all and never have to return to a direction (a simple sign), can not move at all and return to a direction (standing Professor Oak), can not move at all but can still change directions, can only move horizontally or vertically, or can move in all directions. The engine shows off all of those kinds of movement. It should be noted that for each NPC the value for such things much be set in the room editor, control + right clicking on the NPC instance, and then setting the creation code. Also even though the NPC movement code checks for the absolute boundaries of the room, in the actual game the rooms are fully bounded by objects so that code can be removed later.

Even though it is not in the engine, getting the menu system worked into this wouldn't be as difficult as the text engine due to the menu text not being animated. Additionally things like doors, stairs, and grass collisions would just be done through checks when Ash is on a 16 x 16 tile (something like grass would only be checked once though otherwise just standing on grass for a while would trigger something). I'll throw in more features later!

32
Updates / Site Tinkering
« on: August 11, 2010, 07:22:26 am »
In order to bring later addition to the site, Windy has been going over and possibly editing some of the forum/site code. Because of this, and possibly something else I am not noticing that could be unrelated to Windy at all, the forum and site might be experiencing some technical difficulties. There have been some preliminary error reports about the ill-effects of quoting, how the footer at the bottom of the site is goofy and how quick logging-in from the site didn't properly.

If you experiencing any major difficulties though feel free to let us know, preferably by posting in this topic, in Feedback, or by using the bug report feature of the site (assuming that at the time of your grievance it will still be operational).

33
Updates / z3 2010: Suspension and/or Death
« on: August 01, 2010, 10:33:16 pm »
With the overall turnout for this event being as low as it is, the staff has decided that the z3 event scheduled for later this month will not be held. It is not cancelled in the sense that it will definitely not happen any time this year, as it might happen later in the fall/winter - assuming it can fit around or subtly coexist with the outside NCFC event. Niek's Community Project feature contest will also not be held as its turnout too is low.

34
Recruitment / [For Hire] GM7/GM8 Programmer
« on: July 12, 2010, 09:16:03 pm »
z3 is about a month away so I am offering my services to anyone who needs help programming something for a game they are working on. If there is something you want to add to your game but do not know how, are having trouble with doing so, or you just want to figure out how someone else would do it, I can help! Also though that doesn't mean I can do everything but I would be willing to try and help you out with what you are asking.

Furthermore I think I should add that if anyone is using the GM Minish Cap Engine for a game they are working on, not only does that make adding of new features to a game easier but that I am always open to explaining and showing how to use that engine or assist you with troubles you encounter while using it.

35
Updates / z3 2010: 1 Month Away!
« on: July 11, 2010, 07:26:24 am »
Overall the promotion of this event has been a failure on my part, so due in part to that the start time of the z3 event is changed to be August 15, 2010. The event will last 4 days. Registration should have been opened earlier, but again the failure is mine - registration is open though at:

http://wwfan.zfgc.com/new/index.php/z3/entries/apply

Overall too, the process has been simplified too where the categories and just Zelda and Other, and one just has to fill out a project description of what their booth can be expected to contain.

36
Coding / Link Push & Pull [Not Done]
« on: June 27, 2010, 10:48:37 pm »
This is not yet finalized but overall it is mostly completed. Essentially pushing is nothing new and was integrated with the primary collision object I had shown earlier. Pulling however is something different entirely. The code in the download is at this point unimportant as it has not yet been made more efficient. Actually as mentioned most of the code is done; with simple additions I'd be able to do Link straining when pulling, Link switching to pushing if he is in the pull state and moving towards the pull object, etc. The foundation of pulling is that if Link is in the pull state, there must be a pull object.

I NEED SPRITES; I said that big so that the rest of these words won't confuse that. Currently Link's pushing is messed up; when he is pushing while straining, his push animation is different from when he is not straining. The strained image just doesn't go over his face. And also I need all of Link's pulling animations.

So in short, the code is mostly fine, but I need the complete animations for Link pushing and pulling while straining and not strained. The attachment contains the GMK file of what is currently there, the image below shows Link pulling an object with an incorrect animation.


37
Coding / Primary Object Collision
« on: June 08, 2010, 11:23:19 am »

This isn't a comprehensive, all-inclusive update; in fact it is probably boring to most people. When adding collision checks to Link's coding I ran into two situations. The first was that either I would be doing a lot of place or position checks when really Link can only run into so much at once; in the case of the engine so far, at most he can only run into 2. The second was that ledge jumping and pushing had similar code "phenomena". For example, both move Link over their respective object if he is also in contact with something that is not that object as well. Furthermore, without determining what Link is primarily running into, the ledge and push code was inexact which could lead to errors or a bunch of corrective code.

I am also aware that if you push the idol directly beneath the ledge and then jump off the ledge onto it that it will cause odd behavior. Also, I am aware that this code is boring; I switched up the commenting style so that it doesn't look so much like the real stuff is getting chopped up either. Truth be told, I am also not as good as Niek at integrating various facets of an engine together so much as I am someone who tries to get at the guts - I'm also lazy. The other parts of the code weren't what I was focusing on, and sorting it all out with new stuff sometimes gets a little hectic.

The hole checking is also in there with a decrement to Link's hearts. Earlier I had run into errors where if pushing off of a pushable object a certain way that Link would get stuck in the pit or something. I think that error won't come up, but who knows it might.

The download is in the attachments (the site page was taken down and will get put up again later)

38
Updates / New Moderator: Xiphirx
« on: June 08, 2010, 06:48:43 am »
Not much to note, but due to the busyness of lives and the hunt against the spam/ad bot scum, Xiphirx has been brought on as a global moderator. At one point previously he had worked on site staff and beyond that he is active on the forum and stuff.

(Unrelated but the PotM topics will hopefully get posted soon, I'll just skip the article for FrozenFire, and probably go with the Community Project or something for this past month's winner because I !@#$% up voting again - well technically nominations were all technically invalid)

39
Updates / Nominations - May 2010
« on: May 29, 2010, 08:13:03 pm »
Yeah, if any of you are wondering the PotM article for FrozenFire is impossible to do because he isn't here and the PotM article for the Xfixium and team Dekunutz from a while ago was not even able to get started. I asked for help in the staff area for that one but the topic was completely ignored. Chances are this one will get no help either, and while it should go without saying, one person can't do everything, or when one person tries to do everything then everything suffers.

If there is anyone who specifically wants to do the Project of the Month articles for the site, they will be given the ability to do so. In fact, if there is someone who wants to do the articles in a different way than what has been presently presented, their way will likely be okay. Past infractions of the one willing to help won't even factor into whether they will get to do this either, only a genuine wanting to do this will matter.


If anyone wants to do that, feel free to post in this topic; posting either a nomination or vote though with your post would be helpful if you are going to do that though. But yeah, this topic is also for nominating the Project of the Month for the month of May. Nominations require 3-5 sentences, votes require 1-3 sentences.

40
Updates / Templates & Tutorials -> Templates
« on: May 26, 2010, 09:14:43 pm »
The Templates & Tutorials board is being renamed Templates. This reflects the change in overall category functionality, that instead of having it to where tutorials of all kinds can be posted in a location separate from the boards they're related to, they will be able to be posted in their respective boards so that there is a more development related atmosphere. For example, the Graphics board will have tutorials on how to sprite, sprite topics, and request for sprites topics.

This also makes it so there is less confusion in the boards related to coding. The Templates board will be only for posting and working on what many refer to as engines. Requests can still be posted, but a request made must ask for an existing engine or for an engine to be made. The Discussion board is for the simple coding related questions.

The rule topics of the Resource boards will also be updated to be more relevant; some might be added if the topics do not exist. The tutorial reference topics will also be sorted out somehow soon. If you have any questions feel free to ask, but more importantly if you have ideas on how to sort out certain boards so that their functionality can be improved then please post to tell how so.

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