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This chapter will introduce you to some basic concepts about the ZQuest editor while getting started on the first real screen. By the end of this chapter, we will have something that can be opened in Zelda Classic and played… at least for one screen. But there has to be a start somewhere.
Before we jump into the tutorial proper, let's take a look at the main ZQuest interface. Don't worry if you can't memorize or understand all of this. We will be covering each piece of the interface as it is needed in the tutorial. This is mainly to act as a quick reference for later parts of the tutorial.
Let's begin the actual tutorial by opening ZQuest. This process varies somewhat between Windows, Linux, and Macs. In order to follow this tutorial, you should probably use Windowed Mode rather than Fullscreen Mode at least for this first page since there is a file to download.
Upon opening ZQuest for the first time or starting a new quest file from File→New, you should be greeted with this dialog:
Quest Rules are various ON/OFF options that you can toggle for a quest that change how it behaves in Zelda Classic. These rule sets determine which quest rules are initially set in the quest, though they can be changed later through the Quest→Rules menu. If you click through the various rule sets in this dialog, you can see short descriptions of what they do.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be using Authentic NES as a base for our quest rules. Though this won't matter since we are going to be loading an existing quest file in the next step. But for the moment, let's humor this dialog by selecting Authentic NES and pressing OK.
Note: If you spent some time reading through the tutorial while ZQuest was idling in the background, you might receive a short error saying something along the lines of the quest being made with an older ZQuest version and that auto-saving is disabled for it. Ignore this and click OK if you get it.
Before we go on, please make sure to download the following template quest:
Comprehensive Tutorial Template Quest
Unzip it to a directory you can easily navigate to (such as your Zelda Classic directory).
Now let's open the template in ZQuest. Go to File→Open…
Select the template quest and press OK.
The screen should now look… almost exactly the same as it did after you closed out the ruleset dialog. In order to make sure you indeed have the template open, check ZQuest's window titlebar for the name of the quest. It should match the name of the template quest file.
Now that the template is open, let's save it as a different filename so that we don't accidentally overwrite it. Go to File→Save as…
Enter a new name for the quest file. It can be anything that is valid for the operating system. Press OK.
You are probably wondering why we bothered loading a template that looks eerily similar to the quest file you get with File→New instead of just going with what you get from File→New.
Before we start working with the quest file we just created, we need to check some settings. Go to Etc.→Options.
Make sure that Overwrite Protection is turned off in tab 1.
This feature literally disables File→Save and lets you only use File→Save as. It was useful when 2.50 was in early beta testing to avoid accidentally trapping your quest in an unstable release. However, 2.50 is rather stable now, so this is very annoying to leave on.
While we are in the ZQuest options, there is something else you may want to check. Chances are, you've probably noticed this pop up by now:
If not, you will. Though if you are using Release Candidate 4 or above, it will not bug you for confirmation like this screenshot shows.
By default, ZQuest will make backups of the currently loaded quest every 5 minutes. If you ever lose your quest progress, it may be possible to recover it by using these generated backups. While the popup is somewhat annoying, you will probably want to keep auto-saves turned on. You can change how these settings work on tab 2 of the options.
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