Sunday, May 3, 2009

Alpha01 Preview Demo : Now Online

Howdy do everyone!

The Legend of Zelda - Ballad of The Wind Fish Alpha01 Demo

The Legend of Zelda - Ballad of The Wind Fish Alpha01 Demo Low Process Mode

(If your computer will not run the game properly such as not responding to controls accurately, use the Low Process Mode download, which runs a little slower due to using less processing power but should work on any PC with half a graphic card.)

PLEASE NOTE : This project is only a month and a half old and I have not been working on it every day. There are countless errors and missing content, so roll with the punches with me on this. It's just a preview demo to let you guys know what the game will be like. This is an alpha release and more of a tech demo than anything else. Everything in the game is WIP and subject to a LOT of change before the final release.

Obviously, this project takes ton of work, and I only have so much time to work on it. I'm well aware of all errors and issues. Trust me, if I had the time to fix everything straight away, the game would be finished by now.

For Controls and debugging notes, press the F1 button.

Also, not noted in the Controls is the 'Careful' button. By holding the CTRL button when walking or aiming a weapon, it is possible to control movement more accurately.

I also forgot to mention that the Hookshot can snag onto Wooden Crates.

Other Notes

*This current build actually kicks your computer into 16-bit mode to ensure that weaker PCs can run at optimal speeds, so this build does not actually look as good as it is supposed to. The game normally runs in 32bit, and the option to run the game in different modes will be implemented with a later release.

*You can actually 'climb' Ulrira's House in this game build to test the ladder/vine climbing animation and physics.

Items (with functionality)
Bomb
Bow /Arrow
Boomerang
Magic Powder
Cuckoo Balloon
Shield
Sword
Hookshot
Roc's Feather
Ocean Rod

Combination Effects
Bomb + Bow
Magic Powder + Boomerang
Ocean Rod + Roc's Feather

Missing / Incomplete Items
Fire Rod
BowWow
Ocarina
Bottles
Guardian Acorn
Siren Instruments

Map Areas (Obviously, all areas are unfinished and still being developed)
Mabe Village
Library Path to Mabe Beach
Mabe Beach

Enemies
Octorok
Sea Urchin
Leever (animation incomplete)

Other Modules
Reading Signs
Using Game Menu to switch items
Talking to NPCs
Picking up Items
Swimming
Climbing
Ledge Grabbing

Areas are missing textures and models and structure are still being adjusted and refined.

Game Build Issues

If you get the error message :

"Failed to copy an animation from the model "resources/anm/npc/human_stand1.an8" to the model "resources/anm/npc/model_npc_boy1.an8". The source model has 0 bones, but the destination model has 26 bones. This is not allowed. Please make sure, that the skeletons of both models are identical and try again."

Just hit OK and continue playing. It shouldn't affect gameplay. Because I am unable to make the error occur on my PC, it will take some time to repair, and beside that, the message should be physically impossible to generate.

* Quite obviously, the game script and game events are not implemented yet.
*Title screen and Enter Name / Load game screen is not implemented yet.
* The Camera is still not 100% smooth and perfect. It will take hours of testing and adjusting to get it just right, so it is a long and tedious process.
* Optimizations are still unfinished, so on older or weaker machines, a slight FPS drop may occur.
* Due to adjustments to physics, Link may phase or stick to certain objects when jumping or rolling.
* There is an animation glitch that occurs if Link is attacked while performing certain actions. He may get locked into his animation until he is hit again. This will take a while to repair this so it may not be fixed before the release of this game build.
* The orientation variables for picking up certain items (such as rocks) has not been adjusted, so Link will hold them in a very strange manner.
* Animations are still not complete, some are not implemented yet including 'connecting' animations and T-target-while-using-a-certain-weapon.
* Textures are not finished in many areas.
* Certain Game Maps require adjusting texture maps and retexturing.
* Using Bow with Bomb sometimes ignores the Bow-use button.
* Link can walk off the maps where the other game areas are not implemented.
* The Hookshot physics is not yet 100% perfect.

Enjoy
Jerrel

40 comments:

  1. Fantastic!
    Downloading now.

    Probably won't be long before this link is spread over the whole of the internet :P

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  2. That is really impressive

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  3. I get an error as soon as I leave the house saying the number of "bones" for a model don't match up :\

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  4. Unless the file names of the models have been changed around, this shouldn't happen. This hasn't occurred in the tests I ran before uploading but I will have a closer look in the morning.

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  5. I got the error as well. Just hit "enter"; it doesn't seem to have any effect on the game.

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  6. Perhaps it would help to see the actual error message. On mine, this is exactly what comes up:

    Failed to copy an animation from the model "resources/anm/spc/human_stand1.an8" to the model "resources/anm/npc/model_npc_boy1.an8". The source model has 0 bones, but the destination model has 26 bones. This is not allowed. Please make sure, that the skeletons of both models are identical and try again.

    As suggested, you can hit enter and continue on your merry way.

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  7. You know, I was not aware Game Maker had this kind of power... I assume you're using extensions to be able to do this? Anyway, it looks great, and I can't wait to see its development from here. Excellent work, Jerrel.

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  8. Very much awesome, it's very close to an official game, feel a lot like OoT.

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  9. has a great feel to it. Its a job well done.

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  10. An amazing job! Especially for a month and a half of production on and off.
    Holds a lot of great potential for the final product!

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  11. it's really amazing you did this all in a month and a half :]

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  12. It isn't working for me, again.

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  13. The game is very fun so far, I enjoyed it a lot, I hope this is finished someday!

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  14. This is so amazing!
    I can't believe you've done so much work in such a short time.
    I will read your blog every day, and wait patiently for the games release!

    A lot of people will complain about the little bugs, but don't listen to them, you're creating the greatest fan game ever.
    By the way, I love you.

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  15. Hi! Huge thanks to everyone who has tried it so far. I appreciate the feedback and am glad it is being positively accepted so far! Phew!

    Thanks Salty for posting the error message. It's very befuddling to me, considering that the error message does not occur on my machine, and it should be physically impossible to occur.

    I used Game Maker with the U3D extension for 3D functionality. Game Maker is like any other programming language in that it takes a lot of practice and proficiency to make anything fancy, but I have still yet to push GML to its limits. Guess I gotta keep trying.

    Can someone tell me exactly at what point in the demo that the error message about bones occurs.

    Also, has anyone tried the Hookshot? How about swimming? Wee!

    Cheers

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  16. Not bad for only one and a half months.

    Is there joystick / custom controls support? I tried playing with my 360 controller, and while moving worked, all of the buttons were not mapped correctly, and nothing but moving worked.

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  17. I used the hookshot, it works great! It's a little hard to aim accurately though. You've probably already thought of it, but a targeting reticule would help.

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  18. bravo man! i like how the sword swinging is like the other 3d zeldas, where if you press the button three times real fast link does a kinda spin thing, VERY good job! fun demo.. it just kinda blows cuz my computer sucks and i get like a 15- 20 frame rate,... I have a older graphics card too, intel something er other...

    ...I still cant believe you made this in just a month tho, it really is close to a official zelda! ANd its cool to walk around in mabe village and stuff in 3d!~

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  19. Um... sorry for the really late response to this, Jerrel. I JUST read your response comment.

    First, thanks for the name of the extension. I'll have to experiment with it a bit. And yes, GML is a quite powerful language. I've been using it for years. Still haven't found its limit. It seems like every time I get close to finding the edge of its limitation, they release something new that makes it 10x more powerful... Ah, I remember back in the days of v3.0, when I started using GM. It's grown so much since then. That was back when Mark Overmars still owned it outright, and he was only asking for donations, rather than making you buy a license for the pro version.

    Anyway, for me the error occurs basically anytime you enter or exit a building. I'm not sure what models are being referenced here, so I don't know if I could pinpoint for you, but if you still haven't found it, I could upload a private video (or just email it to you :P) to show you exactly what's happening.

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  20. You are going to change the art style, aren't you? Cos it looks fiendishly ugly.

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  21. Dillonlcasto@gmail.comJune 18, 2009 at 11:11 PM

    Yo Jerral, I just discovered this little treasure trove of Nostalgia. This has a lot of potential, but is definatly far from complete with a nice polished shine. TO give some constructive critism, there were only three basic things I didn't really like. A.) You lacked a stop collision for NPCs. B.) The camerea angle when walking outside a building should be lowered, I twas hard to running around becuase I felt like Link was only looking at his boots! C.) Lack of button layout description before the demo began. I coudn't figure them out for a few minutes.
    As For the good stuff. I thought the Artstyle was aestetically pleasing. I'm happy to see you use the old style link, since technically this is an old Zelda game, You took advantage of the keyboard and made Links sword and shield permenant weapons (where as in the old one it had to be in the A or B button coice.)Like I said this has some great potential.
    I'm just happy to be seeing a remake (although "unofficial")of this awesome game.

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  22. Hi everybody, Megaupload access denied on me
    please upload other sites :( need thnks u!
    my hotmail adress
    DragonaNest@hotmail.com

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  23. Hi all,
    I couldnt get this demo to work.

    I get an error "Failed to open file for reading", followed by "Failed to load the texture "resources/hug/[filename].png" The input file is invalid.

    This repeats MANY times with different file names then later the extension changes to ".an8".

    When the errors finish, there is a grey screen where some number which look like parts of the hud are there but no graphics.

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  24. JAW DROPPINGGGGG D:

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  25. This won't run on my computer for some reason. I run Windows 7 with an intel graphics card. I also have a dual core processor.

    Is it a compatibility issue or what? Please let me know, because this game looks sweet and I'd LOVE to test it out!

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  26. The game its aswomme but now you need a history and a better gameplay but gretings for your job ;)

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  27. How come this dosnt work on Mac? Also after I unzipped it i had click the game and all got was an entire page of some symbols and at the very to of the letter it only able to work with win32.

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  28. the link doesnt work anymore because of megaupload

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  29. Please !! Put another link than Mega upload ! It's closed ! please, i want to try your game that looks so great !
    Thanks !

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  30. PLEASE REUPLOAD!

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  31. Dude your version of LA looks amazing, I loved this game as a kid, was the best game on my gameboy by a long shot (just realised i made a pun there...ahem). I love the screenshots and Link looks the part, I really like how you've made him look retro. I can't wait to try this out, again with the above comments, please can you re-upload? I hear the Wind Fish calling me once again...

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  32. I got a notice saying that I can't download from megaupload... it's too bad because I've heard great things about this remake! :) Are you able to reupload this at all, even though i saw that you weren't going to work on this anymore?

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  33. Would it be possible for you to put up a new upload Mega Upload got shut down by the government so yeah ... a new download would be appreciated,can't wait to try it :)

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  34. PLEASE REUPLOAD !!

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  35. Reuploaded http://www.mediafire.com/download/4cye8ph1hb0od4c - The download contains demo beta001, beta002b, and alpha01.

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