Welcome to the main tutorial featured on ZC Guides, The Comprehensive ZQuest 2.50 Tutorial.

This tutorial is primarily geared towards ZQuest newbies. That is, people that have never opened ZQuest before. Still, people that just want to familiarize themselves with ZQ 2.50 should be able to skip around and find useful information.

ZQuest, the quest creation program for the Legend of Zelda fangame known as Zelda Classic, was once a really simple piece of software. All you had to do was open “zquest.exe” through DOS and follow along with Alphadawg's definitive tutorial. There were some rough spots due to some of ZQuest's weird design decisions, but it was still a pretty easy process overall.

But then ZQuest got a new interface in 2004-2005 that eventually ended up becoming the default quest making interface for version 2.50. This interface came with tons of new features. It also got some ports to other operating systems. But with these new features came an intimidation factor. Due to things moving around, older tutorials became obsolete. Even in 2012, there had yet to be a tutorial to replace the tutorials from the Zelda Classic 1.84-1.92 days for Zelda Classic 2.50.

Until now.

Our main objective with this tutorial is to introduce you to ZQuest 2.50 by creating an extremely basic quest. While we will start out working with an original The Legend of Zelda style quest project, we will be adding things to it in order to introduce the newer Zelda Classic features that are available for quests. We are also hoping to show you that despite the massive interface changes, ZQuest is ultimately still the same program it was in version 1.84: it just has more features.

This tutorial is heavily based off of Alphadawg's work with his original ZQuest 1.84 and 1.90 tutorial, so a lot of thanks go out to him for making a winning ZQuest tutorial formula that didn't really need to be changed all that much to cover basics. Without his tutorial, many people that were introduced to ZQuest through earlier ZC versions would have been stumbling around blindly.

We are honestly not trying to rip him off or anything: it was just a good tutorial format and there isn't really a need to mess with something that works.

This tutorial is currently a work in progress. We don't recommend newbies picking this up until it is in a more complete state. If you decide to go through with reading this regardless, please note that there may be mistakes floating around. Also, be sure to give us feedback about this on PureZC so that we can make the tutorial better.

Begin Tutorial

1. Chapter 1: Getting Started
   • Page 1
     • Part 1: Quick Interface Reference
     • Part 2: Starting ZQuest
     • Part 3: Loading the Template Quest
     • Part 4: Why did we load an existing Quest File?
     • Part 5: Quest Overwrite Protection and Auto-Saving
   • Page 2
     • Part 6: Navigating Maps
     • Part 7: Quick Notes about Combos and CSets
     • Part 8: Placing Combos and the Fill Ability
     • Part 9: Block Drawing and Other Drawing Functions
     • Part 10: Show Misaligns
   • Page 3
     • Part 11: Creating a Cave Entrance
     • Part 12: Setting up the Cave Information
     • Part 13: Setting up Strings
   • Page 4
     • Part 14: The Cave Template Screen
     • Part 15: Setting up a DMap
     • Part 16: Checking the Tile Warp
     • Part 17: Setting the Cave Exit Point
     • Part 18: Setting the Screen Starting Point
   • Page 5
     • Part 19: Show Screen Info
     • Part 20: Quest Header
   • Page 6
     • Part 21: Testing the Quest
     • Part 22: Quest Rule Suggestions
2. Chapter 2: Onward with the Overworld
   • Page 1
     • Part 1: Color Set Fixes
     • Part 2: Armos Knight and “Under Combo is Combo 0”
   • Page 2
     • Part 3: Creating a Maze Path
     • Part 4: Placing Enemies
     • Part 5: Setting up a Maze Hint Cave
   • Page 3
     • Part 6: Creating a Shop
   • Page 4
     • Part 7: Favorite Commands
     • Part 8: Favorite Combos
   • Page 5
     • Part 9: Creating a Secret Money Cave
     • Part 10: Placing Combo Flags
     • Part 11: Secret Combos
   • Page 6
     • Part 12: Burnable Tree Entrance
     • Part 13: Preview Mode
   • Page 7
     • Part 14: Enemy Spawning Patterns
     • Part 15: Quest Rule Suggestions

This rather bad table of contents will be replaced with a better one later.

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• Chapter 1-1: Getting Started
• Chapter 1-2: (Continued)
• Chapter 1-3: (Continued)
• Chapter 1-4: (Continued)
• Chapter 1-5: (Continued)
• Chapter 1-6: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-1: Onward with the Overworld
• Chapter 2-2: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-3: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-4: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-5: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-6: (Continued)
• Chapter 2-7: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-10: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-1: The First Dungeon
• Chapter 3-2: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-3: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-4: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-5: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-6: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-7: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-8: (Continued)
• Chapter 3-9: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-1: Continuing the Overworld
• Chapter 4-2: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-3: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-4: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-5: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-6: (Continued)
• Chapter 4-7: (Continued)
• Chapter 5-1: The Final Stretch
• Chapter 5-2: (Continued)
• Chapter 5-3: (Continued)
• Chapter 5-4: (Continued)
• Chapter 5-5: (Continued)