Question about Z3 Scrolling

Please forgive me, I could not find the original thread with the Z3 scroll demonstration.


If I recall correctly, someone was able to script a free-scrolling screen by having the game 'snatch' combos from adjacent screens on the map. Would it be possible to set a 'snatch' radius (through careful calculation of x and y positions) and then trigger a pit-warp to the next screen over when that radius is reached?



As far as I can remember, the script locked Link at the center of a screen that has scrolling edges, causing motion instead to trigger 'combo snatching' in the appropriate direction (For example, if Link was centered horizontally and tried to walk right, it would shift all the snatched combos leftward and snatch a new combo from the right).
When the snatch extreme is reached (Halfway into the next screen, so in the example it would be snatching combos from half-way into the screen at right), could a pit warp takes Link to that screen and reverse the snatch (So Link is still in the center, but now one screen over, with combos grabbed from the screen to the left)? I know the version of Z3 scrolling I saw was limited to four screens due to processing limitations, but a pit-warp trigger should be able to keep the amount of combo information referenced to a minimum... right?

I'm curious if this is possible, because my quest plans involve completely animating Link by drawcombo, and it does not mesh well with scrolling. Also, being able to manually control the size of 'z3' screens (By having nine versions of this code, one for each possible position in a 9x9 layout) will make them more versatile (and make a metroid-esque side-scrolling game more... possible).

Are you referring to this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL7BBtLcVFY

If so, the 4 screen limit is not because of processing, but because anything larger and you would have to script all the enemies from scratch. (not that there aren't enough problems with the scrolling already) My usual reply to Z3 scrolling threads are, "Don't do it unless you have a lot of free time and/or know what you are doing", mainly because you cannot use many of ZC's built-in screen stuff - but it is possible.

If you want to check out some ZC quests that have scripted scrolling here is a few:
-Z2 remake (sideview : demo) by blue_knight. ( I forget the actual name of the thread/quest, sorry :\ He also had another with top-down scrolling, no demo though. gettable at purezc.)
-Zodiac by C-Dawg (Not really scrolling in itself; think Guardian Legend Corridors) .
-I also did two shmups for ZC 2.5: StarShooterSupreme and Grikarugun. (SSS had true top-down scrolling over a randomly generated background with a playable arena of 1000x1000, and Grikarugun was something like Guardian Legend or Ikaruga.)

[edit] Someone also did a cool Metroid demo with a customized tileset, but without scrolling.
(Sorry - No Links.) ;)

Actually, that's exactly what I was talking about (I didn't remember it was you that programmed it, Gleeok, but it makes sense. You are a scripting god). It actually looks a lot simpler than I thought it was (I was under the impression that Link could leave the center of a screen when he was at a map edge, but I suppose that was a false memory.


Collision and enemy behavior are not a problem with what I'm planning, and here's why...

I'm going to be creating a quest much like LittleBigPlanet, where the player can switch between three 'tracks' of walk-ability in a side-scrolling environment. In order to do so, I have to customize a version of the 'IsSolid' bool that checks combo walk flags on a particular layer (In this scenario, layers 1, 2, and 3). As such, all the enemies will have to be scripted from scratch anyway to behave in the manner I intend.


(Granted, I have no idea where to start, and I don't even have time to dedicate to this yet, but where would I be without grandiose and impossible pipe-dreams?)

I find this at least somewhat interesting, both for the metroid reason that CJC posted and also for the possibility of creating a proper SHMUP in ZC (which Zodiac was a nod to, but it was more Asteroids than it was Gradius or Raiden).

Back when 2.11 was all the rage, I did create a short little shmup-esque game in ZC. conveyors pulled you to the right, you had infinite arrows to blast enemies with, but touching anything (obstacle, wall, enemy, bullet) was a one-hit kill. You basically had to get through the whole "level" in one shot.