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  Open Zelda v6.2.4a - Release notes
  
  Written by GD, re-release by lukex 
  13 August 2004
  website: http://openzelda.sourceforce.net
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What is Open Zelda?

Open Zelda is 2D game engine for playing RPG-Style games such as
Zelda 3. Due to the Quest system used, anyone can make their own
games using the Quest Designer program. Open Zelda is essentially
just a tool for running Quest Files, it contains no game media or
specific game code, you dont strictly even have to make games with
it.

So to use Open Zelda you will need to get hold of a Quest file to
play, these are .QST files, they contain all the games media,
sound files, scripts, map and storyline in one package. Now, this
release comes with a demo quest, but that will get boring very 
quickley, pretty soon there will be lots of quests on the internet
to download, but the real fun is making them yourself!

Becuase of Open Zelda's unique scripting system, you have 100%
complete control in what goes into your game, nothing is hard-coded
into Open Zelda. Sure, the Quest Designer comes with a lot of scripts
and graphics that others have made, but you have complete access to
these scripts and files, so you can basically do whatever you want
you just need to know how to work it. The idea is that, when you create
a cool new quest you share it with everyone on the internet.

I mentioned the scripting system in Open Zelda, everything in the game
is treated as an "Entity", an entity is just an interactive object.
Every entity has a script which defines what it does, the scripts are
written (by anyone) in a scripting language called "Small" which is
very similar to C, but not nearly as hard. This means that the
only thing which sets, say, the player apart from a door is the
script that entity runs, it's an interesting system which works
extremely well.

The most important thing is that all the entity scripts are available
to anyone who wants them, which means that Open Zelda is Open source,
(in the way that matters).

Open Zelda is not written for financial profit, it will never be sold
in any form, I created it becuase I love video games and I like making
them even more.


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Who makes Open Zelda?

Open Zelda was created and programmed by GD, it's been in development
for over 2 years and it's been though 3 complete re-writes. The actual
game media though, the graphics, the sounds, the scripts, they are being
developed by a community of OZ fans. Anyone can create somthing for 
Open Zelda, you just need to be able to learn a few things and to
want to make your own video games.

Open Zelda is being developed in partnership with Gaming Universe,
they have a huge online community which we are proud to be a part of.


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Game Controls:

Move the Player - Arrow Keys
Talk/Interact   - Q Key
Use Weapon A    - A Key
Use Weapon B    - S Key
Menu Screen	- Enter


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Technical Info:

I will begin by stating that Open Zelda is techincally a 3D game, it
may look 2D, but all those images you see are made from flat polygons.
This has good and bad points, the good points are that Open Zelda can
do some amazing special effects, it can scale, rotate and alpha blend
sprites as big as the screen itself without dropping a frame. You can
do cool things like realtime day and night, shadow and lighting effects
and a whole lot more.

The bad news I guess is that Open Zelda wont run on older machines, it
requires that you have a video card with some kind of 3D acceleration, 
although most computers have them, certainly every new PC will have a
card capable of running Open Zelda extremely well. And 3D cards are 
dirt cheap anyway. Open Zelda might not run on every 3D card, I can't
test it on every card, but it has been developed to work with the
most popular card set, the Geforce cards. Open Zelda will run fine on 
any Geforce card, like a Geforce2.

You will need DirectX 8.1 to run Open Zelda, if you havn't got this then
get it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/directx



Minimum System Requirements:

Pentium 300 or higher
64 mb RAM
a 3D card capable of 3D hardware acceleration (Geforce card recommended).
16 bit desktop colour highly recommended
DirectX 8.1

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