Zelda Starring Zelda 2: Dev Blog Part 2

Number of sprites completed: 151
Number of sprites left: 60

Well, 60-ish.

The extra-long arm is in the code. I can't change it.

She sticks out her butt when she pushes. :)
One of the changes I made to Link's original animation.

Zelda, the character, is mostly done at this point. She moves. She slashes. She spins. She runs. She has a cape and a tiara.

She's a full character. I'm currently doing a play through to check that everything landed correctly. And to take some preliminary notes on the story. There's only a handful of pronouns to flip around, but they're very important.

You know what those last 60 sprites are? About 30 are her "ice rod" moves, ten are her "bunny costume" and the others are odds and ends, including the other princesses in the game. I actually have to get to those parts of the game to check the animations I'm creating.

See those lines? Those are markers for a sprite set. These are the in-betweens for "walking on curved stairs" sprites. The orange is for "up", green is "down". Pink for "not sure". Those in the middle? Some of the "Ice Rod" sprites and "Push" sprites. Only some.  Just... randomly laid there. Nintendo's sprites are a mess.

And yes, that means I've been playing the opening castle over and over for weeks. Pity me.

Link in his broken colors. He looks like a crusader. Hey Link! Where'd you get the coconut?

Remaining issues to deal with
~ Link is the wrong color. Right now, his coloring is white, purple, & red.
~ Not sure how to explain why Zelda is in the shack in the beginning
~ Not sure how Zelda's colors will hold up throughout the game
~ Kinda worried about the "badrom" error at the bottom of my emulator
~ Not sure if added text will wrap in the text boxes.
~ Cannot. Find. Link's. Mugshot.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS I DON'T KNOW WHERE THIS IS.

This will bug me.

The mod will be done by the end of this month, barring any bizarre technical difficulties. Please stay tuned. My next post will be about my final story decisions. This game is very important to a lot of people, so I'll need to back up my decisions with lots of complicated reasoning. Don't worry, though. Zelda will always be a Princess.

My work space. I pause the ROM when Link suddenly strobes into view, then I draw a box over possible matches for the sprite. I save, recompress (with the command prompt box on the left), and run the rom again. If the box pops up, I know I've found the sprite. Sprites can sometimes take around 2 hours to track down.

I don't expect this mod to take off in the way that the first one took off, of course. This is mostly for myself and for the people that supported me (And my donors. You all are the best.). But don't worry, I'll still release the patch here.

I'll leave you all with this. A big thank you to Eran Fowler, who painted this beautiful promotional material. Eran posted some amazing progress shots on facebook and I plan to turn them into a .gif.  You can see Eran's professional portfolio (which includes art for video games, hint hint hire Eran hint hint) at EranFolio.com.

If you'd like to earmark any Coffee Fund donations for Eran just make a note. The donation link is at the top of the page.