Thanks for the renewed interest lately, there are some good suggestions here. I want to let you in on some of the things I've already decided on and not told you about yet, and give you some reasons why a couple of the suggestions you've made might not work alongside them.
And if I start to sound cryptic, it's probably deliberate...
There
will be warp points, but not many. Possibly as few as three, even! This is a small part of a much bigger gameplay element I want to keep secret for now (I really want you to be surprised by it when you come across it in the demo.
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What I'm going for with the overworld, in the normal waking world at least, is pretty much the usual Zelda formula. There will be plenty of room to explore either on foot or horseback, but the greatest distances will be covered with my top secret gameplay element, making yer standard warping rank some way down the list of travel options...
Exploring every inch on foot would, as ever, be the best way of uncovering all the secrets but it would probably slow your main quest down as there are some fairly huge rooms already...
The nightmare world, on the other hand, will be a much more dangerous place, and navigating it will be much harder. You'll be far more restricted in where you can freely go. Even though it's exactly the same size, you'll hopefully feel that the nightmare realm is oppressive and more claustrophobic, and that you really only have the safety to explore in the waking world. But this means there will be plenty of places for you to enter it. At the moment, these 'portals' will be beds, but there will be points at which story events take over and you are sent there involuntarily.
By the way, when I've said in the past "finding a bed", I'm speaking broadly. There was always gonna be other places you can curl up and go to sleep other than the obvious.
Will there be an item that allows you to go in between worlds freely later in the game? Usually that happens...but the only thing I could think of is like...a portable bed, which is kinda lame.
Have some sort of thing representing a warp point, perhaps a special kind of bed or hammock (if outside) that you could use a pillow on, and perhaps later on you could get a better item, such as a sleeping bag(OoA).
Magic (aka Sleeping Powder)
Special Areas that cause him to go to sleep
Hypnosis? Drugs???
Hehe. You might as well make it Zelda like, as in certain types of plants or grass you can lay on the groud and light with your lantern and the smoke will make you fall asleep.
I could add something along those lines. I had thought of giving you the ability to make camp fires in certain conditions, or more likely just light existing ones. The idea would be that you'd bed down and sleep in front of the fire. But the trouble with that is it's essentially the same as searching for a bed: you'd still only be entering the nightmare realm in predetermined places, and you'd still need to hunt them down. Still, it adds a little variety I suppose. And until you find the lamp to light the fire, those areas would remain inaccessible to you in the nightmare realm.
Another possibility would be to give you the equipment to set up camp where you choose, only it would be kept in your horse's saddlebag. On one hand you'd be restricted to only camping down in places where your horse could go, but on the other hand you'd be able to sleep in big open-air places miles from any settlement. Typically though, these areas would be swarming with enemies, so I guess you'd need to clear the area first to avoid being woken up with a nasty surprise...!
Or contextual things, such as (don't use this) you get a massage and fall asleep. Or you go to the local diner and the heavy meal makes you fall asleep.
Way ahead of you, Scooter, though not a massage, no. ;D Same principal as speaking to (was it Anju's?) granny in Majora's Mask: she'd tell you a really long story and you'd fall asleep. Basically it was a way of getting time to pass quickly, but that could easily be adapted and there should be plenty of variations.
Hmm...Maybe the power of Dreams could be endowed in the Shadowgazer which gives Link the ability to freely warp to the Dream Realm or something. Maybe at item that warps you too the nearest bed?
I see a lot of you have suggested this, but having an object that lets you travel between realms at will is only something I'd consider if the gameplay demanded it. I personally like the idea of being restricted as to where you can enter the nightmare realm, at least to begin with. It naturally lends itself to puzzles, and would allow for very different routes round the two versions of the map. And I think it's an interesting dynamic we've not seen before in Zelda. All the other games with alternate worlds have either one single portal, or several that you can freely move between, or have an object that moves you between worlds wherever you happen to be. In this one, wherever you roam in the nightmare realm, whether you return to your sleeping body or you wake/are woken by some other means, you'll return to the point at which you left, i.e. the bed you were sleeping in.
I actually like yues idea about falling asleep every 10 minutes or so, that way you have to keep on task before being sucked into the dream world. Then after mabye the third dungeon or so the effect gets trapped into an item that you can use whenever you want.
Personally, I think that would be really annoying. Imagine being dragged against your will back and forth in time every 10 minutes in OOT... You'd get nothing done - it would totally disrupt the flow of the gameplay. Not in this game, I'm afraid...
And I also discounted the idea of a 'tiredness' meter very early on for this same reason.
Hey I'm not sure if anyone noticed but King Mob, in your demo you cannot shoot your boomerang in any direction except the one you are facing and you have shadow problems on Link (the one I noticed was using the shield and facing down and walking up)
I've since added diagonal throwing to the boomerang, and the issue with the shadow has been tightened up a bit.
I'd say i have only one criticism so far, and that would have to be the shadows located under characters being one static colour.
I'm just emulating what they did in The Minish Cap.
Great video, will the cucco's swim like in OoT. I just found that out yesterday at Zora's river, they like flap their wings in the water and swim, though they can't hurt you while swimming they swoop down and peck your head, though they almost always miss.
I guess I'll have to do something about this! But I reckon you'd be able to avoid a cucco attack by diving underwater till they've gone...
It should be more like something with the Shadowgazer playing Navi...where it gives you a sign that you're needed in the nightmare world, whenever that might be...and you can choose either to let it warp you to an inn (or some other way to engage in sleep), or you can tell it to go away if you're in the middle of getting a heart piece or something. That way it has the same effect of progressing the story...but it's a lot less demanding. The idea of not being able to control when you're sent to sleep, and just hoping you're not in the middle of something else when sunset comes...that seems pretty aggravating.
You're not actually far off the mark here. I don't want to reveal
too much of the story at this stage, but you do have a Navi/KoRL/Midna-type guide throughout the game. Basically, there's a guy who has been trapped in the nightmare realm for thousands of years - he's the one who defeated the nightmare creatures the first time they set their sights on Hyrule. He made the Shadowgazer as a kind of totem to protect his sleeping body while his spirit was fighting in this other realm. Though he was successful, he never found his way back, and his physical body aged and died long ago. The essence of his spirit is still contained within the Shadowgazer, and he teaches Link how to come and go between the two worlds, but only once he's proven himself. Before that it's pretty much the story that dictates your movement between the two.
Wow. That was an epic post... If you have any more questions, please, keep 'em coming!