
Zelda De-make - orofino
http://labs.benpurdy.com/zelda/
======
Zikes
The associated blog post from Ben Purdy:
[http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-
zelda](http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-zelda)

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sthatipamala
What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would
contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things
using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor."

Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I
find such a software?

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benaiah
Presumably it just means that the engine constructs the levels from an
exported image (such as a png, not a psd), instead of creating the levels from
a more complicated data system. Because he knows the exact sizes of things,
and "sprites" are a 1 to 1 mapping to game objects, he can easily do this. In
a more complex game this would be impossible, but it works very well for his
purposes.

~~~
bane
Simcity 4k uses a similar technique for the region definitions. They're
actually just an image file, each pixel represents the size of the different
city zones, and IIR the RGB color of the pixel had some property as well. So
if you wanted a region with all small or all big cities, you just opened up
the file and edited it.

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daturkel
Just wish I could see my current orientation! (Seriously though—from a given
screen, I have no idea what the result of A is going to do or what the arrow
keys are going to do. If i'm at a square and facing left, hitting the left
arrow key will move me left, but if i'm facing any other direction, hitting
left will rotate me. It's important that I know which way I'm facing.)

~~~
benpurdy
Yeah, I thought about that problem quite a bit. I decided it's just gotta be
one of the challenges to playing this thing, otherwise I'd have to cheat and
use something more complex than a single pixel (or add some kind of
transparent or blinking "cursor" in front of the player).

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derefr
How about single-pixels-with-(8-bit-looking-)textures? A slight gradient
darkening away from the "front" of the character would make all the
difference.

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daturkel
This is exactly what I had had in mind for a solution. It's an aesthetic
compromise but, in my opinion, a boon to gameplay.

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dangero
This is a fantastic commentary on what makes a game fun. I'm always intrigued
by titles that require nearly no art skills. "Thomas Was Alone" kind of
surprised me in that way too because it was successful side by side with other
titles on Steam while using an art style that was so simplistic almost anyone
could have done it.

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NoodleIncident
Hmm. I don't think that saying "Thomas Was Alone" required nearly no art
skills is fair at all. If your only definition of "art" is static, visual art
that comes across in a screenshot, then sure, but that's not all that there is
to art, and it's not even the hardest part of a video game.

Just writing off the polish given to the jump physics, the water, the
narration, the small touches like dynamic lighting and rain, and everything
else as "not art" doesn't sit right.

~~~
dangero
I meant drawing skills. I agree with you it's not a fair characterization of
art at all, but probably a mistake on my part due to years of "art" class in
school which was typically resigned to painting/drawing/crafts none of which I
was any good at.

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fredleblanc
This quickly went from "I'll play for just a minute" to "where are those darn
last triforce pieces!?" Nice work!

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eXpl0it3r
I don't know. I find that pretty frustrating, because I've no idea what I'm
picking up and having in front of me or what I can do. It's probably only
interesting if you know the original by heart...

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Kenji
Pretty good work. Didn't like it at first but then ended up playing it for a
few minutes, even though I wasn't in the mood for playing games. I noticed one
thing though, I looked into the code (it's neat and tidy!) and the game logic
(updates) was built into the render function that gets called with
requestAnimationFrame. Might be a problem on devices that aren't refreshing
@60 hertz because the game runs as fast as the user's monitor.

~~~
benpurdy
Good point. At 30hz I expect it'd be like playing it on the NES when too many
enemies were on screen at once.. This flaw crossed my mind when I was building
the game, I decided to just ignore it and hope most people are running at 60hz
rather than tie all the various game timing to fractional deltas or implement
one of those fixed delta game loops.

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matwood
Memory is an interesting thing. I haven't played the original Zelda in many
many years and immediately knew where to go when I was dropped into the game.

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cschep
Not only does Ben seem to have infinite energy for making cool shit, he's also
a nice guy.

Nice!

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derefr
Reminds me of the end of REDDER[1]. Strip away the aesthetics of any modern
game, and you've got something very similar to this.

[1]
[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992](http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992)

~~~
groovy2shoes
I hadn't played REDDER before. It's pretty fun. Reminds me of Metroid.

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bane
I've long thought a minimalistic style like this could be very useful in
teaching game design and discussing game mechanics. You can learn a lot about
a game by breaking it down like this.

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scott_s
You may be interested in Jeremy Parish's "Anatomy of a Game" series:
[http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-
game/](http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/)

~~~
bane
Interested is too mild a word. This is fantastic, Jeremy Parish is also a
legend in the retrogaming community. Retronauts (old and new) is a must listen
to podcast.

~~~
scott_s
Agreed. I've been following his work for a decade.

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hayksaakian
Thank you for taking the time to make it work on mobile devices.

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benpurdy
It works?!? hehe.. I jammed mobile controls in late last night after seeing a
lot of mobile traffic on the analytics, only had my phone for testing so I'm
assuming it's buggy depending on the device, glad it's working for you!

~~~
judk
Mostly works... The buttons tend to get "stuck" on or unclickable.

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antidaily
Played for a good 15 minutes. Nice job.

Just finished A Link Between Worlds for 3DS. Highly recommended for Zelda
fans.

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bencoder
Really nice. Reminds me of ZZT.

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endgame
ZZT was brilliant. So simple and abstract visually, but it was programmable! I
don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for all the hours spent writing ZZT-OOP.

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jmcgough
I found a copy of Burger Time and played through it the other month, after not
playing it since I was a kid... some of the games people made with ZZT are
extremely creative and a lot of fun, even if they seem pretty crude now.

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pimentel
This has been awesome. Thanks! I was kinda disappointed that I didn't need to
get to Death Mountain after getting the 8 pieces. A 1-pixel Ganon would be
cool!

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benpurdy
I would have loved to get that in there, but I finished the win/die screens
just minutes before midnight at the end of the 48 hour limit, it almost wasn't
winnable at all.. Putting Ganon in would be fun, but I need to call this
project finished or I'll just keep adding stuff forever. :)

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RRRA
Awesome! But the secret passages do not appear to be there... :P

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jsmeaton
I tried moving and bombing so many tiles!

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alttab
This is very well done.

