This is great! Now Zelda will be reawakened.:)

I wish Eric good luck, but I still believe that the map format is waaay too restricted to create a sufficiently advanced game.

The map consists of "screens" laid out in a rectangular array, and the game was designed to only allow linear transversal of the screens with a few teleports here and there, so levels can never be more complex than possbily a few floors of a dungeon laid out in a rectangular fashion. The game only has two tilesets - overworld and dungeon - each capable of only 64 tiles. The overworld tileset is 4 tiles away from being full, and you can only squeeze in a few more dungeon tiles.

The major problem is that the maps will all be more of the same, and I don't believe that anything there now shows any promise of being able to create puzzles of the same caliber as those in the NES original.

By all means, go ahead and try to improve it; I'm just not optimistic about it surpassing the technological limitations.

stupid me. . . "transveral" should be "traversal" =)

I would agree. That was definately the major problem of Zelda89. There were not enough tiles to create sufficient options for layouts of the dungeon rooms. Once a layer of walls was created in a room we had only 3 rows of space for link to move around which severly created a problem, all the rooms suddenly were moving horizontaly, then with a few objects in the way the room was full :(. I was the primary map designer, so if you hated the overworld and the dungeon, im sorry. I always felt that with one more row of tiles i could do sooo much more. When creating the game we originally began with the overworld, which seemed fine because you do not have the border of tiles like you do in the dungeons. This will have to be fixed in the new version. Possibly removing the bar at the bottom all together to get that one more row of tiles?? I dunno, this will be discussed.

Well, you don't have to remove the bar, just make an option to hide it when necesary. The other option,( taking the idea of the Zelda for HP calcs), to make an "standar" scrolling inside a room(bomberman), and the zelda-like scrolling when moving to another room/zone. Ehmm, It's just an opinion.

I agree with scrolling thing all except for sometimes in BomberMan you can't see the enemy coming so, Try to have the scrolling where you can see everything. Very good idea though.

Maybe you could create tiles that have walls on one side, so Link can still walk on most of the tile. That would allow more room for movement.

Good Idea, We will do that for sure, I know that zelda for the game boy uses these little half sprite walls that look like little squares, im sure we will impliment those.

Ok, I think i answered your statement wrong before, you are obviously referring to the map not the screen, Anyways, I dont know where you got the idea that the overworld map is 4 tiles away from being done! Besides we are going to redo the entire map and make it better. There are a total of 324 screens to fill the entire map including the dungeons. The overworld for for the game boy game has 256 overworld screens. ours has 144 overworld screens. So the gameboy game will have 112 more than our game. Sure the game boy game will be larger, but people will be happy with the size of the game, besides, one the game is complete, cranking out new games will be a since, therefore creating the possiblility of multiple games. Also do not doubt our creativity, im sure we will be able to create increadible puzzles that will keep you thinking for hours. And, the rectangular shape of the dungeon will not matter, the dungeon doesnt have to be the shape of a skull or something to make it kewl. As you said, there will be warps. It will be cool.

Just a quick thought.
Why do you have to use the rectanular scroll. Would it be possible to implement something similar to what was used in Sonic. I realize that is sidescrolling and this is an overview, but you should be able to do something similar. Just an idea.

This is the asm version right? Anyway hope it is a success. However I do wish someone would port tetris to hardware 2. There will be a positsion open on the Ginyu Force for the porter.

I just ported tetris to HW2. I planed to update it in a next few days.

Ah... How I have longed to play tetris again after Mr Satan destroyed my hardware 1 calc. I got a replacement but as the story goes, it was hardware 2. Now a port has come along that changes this all. Thank you Zeljko Juric, you are a true hero.

I just want to say that ALREADY i am impressed, the news has been on the web for only a few hours and I already have 10 applications! and its the middle of the night! Hope to see more of you guys applying!

Coolness!!! Maybe this program will get finished after all!
Maybe you should add "writer" to your suggestions for "grunt worker" jobs. You'll need writers to invent the story and the puzzles, which are certainly an important part of a Zelda game.

why did you take down the screenshot?

Magnus asked me to take it down in consideration for people with slow connections. Animated screenshots add 150K+ to the page.

Who said it had to be animated? Why not a still shot or two? Or put the screenshot on the Discuss page, so the front page doesn't get bogged down?

Man i can't wait to play a good Zelda game for the ti 89 can u tell me when it will be done? Don't rush though because the quality of the game is very important. Thanks for bringing Zelda back i had been checking every week to see if it was completed i didn't know it completely stopped for a while.