Re: A89: trying to get some...


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Re: A89: trying to get some...




> Yeah, that game would be REALLY cool if it had been finished!  Why is no
one
> working on it any more?  If no one plans to continue working on it, why
has
> the source code not been released?  Great things could be done with that
> source code.  It would really be a shame if Zelda was never finished and
the
> source code never released.  All the work done on it would be wasted!

The source code (primarily Jean Milleron's work, with a lot of work also
credited to Gary/Hatch/Doomsday and a few trivial sections by other authors)
was released into the ticalc.org archives by CarBiN and me [yes, "me", not
"I" =] many months ago.  I spent several weeks looking at the code after
Jean "disappeared," and came to the conclusion that expanding it into the
"full game" people expect is not really feasible.

The main issue is that the game does not appear to have been designed with
scalability in mind.  The engine ain't too bad, but the map/data format is,
IMHO, very, very poorly structured.  The map can only be a certain size,
with a very limited tileset (in other words, all of the map graphics in the
demo are about all that we could fit) and no real possibility of non-linear
progression through the different "screens" beyond simple one-tile warps.
Besides, each screen was only 5 $#@*) tiles tall.

By the way, milleman has returned to coding for the 89, but he says that he
lost much of the vital material for zelda in a hard drive crash and is no
longer interested in the project.  It almost seems to me like the game was
never intended to be much more than a demo with some amazing (ripped)
graphics.

Once again, the source is available on ticalc if you like, but I highly
recommend that you not waste your time attempting to expand it.

    -Scott




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