Zeldas most dedicated fan game developers built an engine anyone can use. Art by Deviantart user oclero for Zelda Mercuris Chest, a Solarus engine game. Nostalgia runs deep in videogames. Despite the huge technological leaps the industry has made in recent years, fans still cling to the 1. Official remakes of games like Metroid and Final Fantasy resurface on a regular basis, but some folks feel the urge to take matters into their own hands. Some have even developed their own engines to recreate their favorite videogame memories. Enter Solarus, a fan made, open source game engine and quest editor dedicated to the creation of Zelda likes and other 2. D action games. The engine, built in C, is a result of five years work for creator Christopho, a dedicated Zelda fan. Tired of the limitations of other game creation studios like RPG Maker, Christopho designed Solarus with the vision of developing games as independently as possible. Anyone can script a game with Solarus for free. Users script their games in Lua, offering amateur developers complete control over the design process, including anything from HUD to UI to dungeon design. PCc0f04Wsfc/ULQLTRKOI-I/AAAAAAAASRA/gOp5pOzq5ZU/s1600/ib+free+pc+horror+game.jpg' alt='Free Roguelike Game Maker' title='Free Roguelike Game Maker' />The integrated quest editor provides game designers with open source sprites, sounds, and other assets to help them get started. Creating my own games has always been my passion. When I was 1. 0 years old, I played Zelda Links Awakening and then Zelda A Link to the Past and obviously I loved them. So I immediately started to draw my own maps and dungeons, he explains. The Solarus Quest EditorI did not have a computer, so all of this was on paperA description of tropes appearing in Dragon Quest. A longrunning Japanese RPG series with eleven installments. Often credited as the first turnbased battle. But there was a world map and various dungeons and mazes. I made my brother, my sister, my parents and my friends play it. At that time, I did not imagine that it would be possible for this to become a real videogame one day, but I remember having a dream about it. Fast forward to 2. Christopho at last had computer access, and began creating Zelda games with RPG Maker 2. He eventually released Zelda Mystery of Solarus, his own fangame based on his childhood drawings and designs in 2. The game was largely a success, though it did suffer from the flaws you might expect from someones first independent game projectChristopho cites long, gruelling mazes, poor boss design, and limited four directional movement. Chasers Of The Light Epub Download Site. What surprised me the most is that actually, the game I had drawn on paper when I was a kid, and then the first RPG Maker version, were really far from official Zelda games, Christopho remembers. Oblivion Streamline 3.1 more. Of course, it was hard to make interesting enemy fights on paper. But people loved the tribute to Zelda A Link to the Past, started to help me improve the game, and soon enough, we were a team that decided to make a second Zelda fangame, He recalls. It takes a village, as it turns out. The birth of Solarus. For the growing teams second project, they decided to branch away from RPG Maker due to the tools limitations. We tried The Games Factory and then Multimedia Fusion, which are more powerful software to create a game without any programming, Christopho says. Young The Giant Mind Over Matter Zip. The main feature of these tools is to avoid programming, but in the end I realized that it makes it harder to really control what I was doing. After several years of trial and error, Christopho opted to make his own project in C with SDLa remake of Zelda Mystery of Solarus. After five years had passed, Christophos team found themselves with three disparate yet completed projectsthe Solarus engine, the Solarus Quest Editor, and the finished game, Zelda Mystery of Solarus DX. Nowadays, Christopho says people are using Solarus everyday, asking questions and contributing to the engines development. After five years of work, open source Zelda engine Solarus is now a free tool for fans to make their own actionRPGs. Hes created a series of a video tutorials to help other fans using the tools hes built, garnering something of a following for Solarus on You. Tube. There have been a number of games created with the Solarus engine including fellow fangame Zelda Book of Mudora. Another game made by a community member, the roguelike Tunics, really shows off what Solarus was capable of. The player has to traverse randomly generated dungeons until he loses. So the dungeons are different in every game you play, Christopho explains. They use very clever algorithms in their Lua scripts to generate rooms procedurally from some template maps. This is the most impressive project from the Solarus community that I know so far. While Solarus has seen growing success, its the fear of every fangame designer that they will get shut down with the dreaded DMCA notice, especially from particularly protective companies like Nintendo. Christopho doesnt seem to be too worried, though, despite the fact that Solarus provides a free Zelda resource pack with assets from older Legend of Zelda games. Nintendo has never contacted us so far. Maybe they tolerate Zelda fangames like they tolerate the use of their graphics and names on videogame websites or in videos Christopho posits. What I know for sure is that Solarus itself is independent from any Nintendo asset. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past sprites usable in Solarus. The core Solarus engine is free of licensed assetseverything you get outside of the Zelda resource kit, music, graphics, and sound effects,  is open source under Creative Commons. If Nintendo tells us one day to stop using their graphics, we will remove from the download page the Zelda resource pack and our existing Zelda fangames, Christopho says with assurance. But Solarus and the Quest Editor will continue to work with the free resource pack. The teams also working on a remake of Zelda Mystery of Solarus DX, Children of Solarus, that only uses Creative Commons assets, just in case. So what about the fans that are teetering on the brink of starting their own fangames, regardless of the risksChristopho has over a decades worth of experience to back up his advice Creating your own game takes more time than one thinks. No matter which game creation tool is used, it takes years And the motivation level has all the time to change during this period. That is why a lot of fangame projects never finish. You really need a lot of tenacity. Designing a fangame can be a lonely road at first. Solarus didnt spring from a vacuumChristopho was working on Zelda Mystery of Solarus for quite some time before the project got traction and support within the community. Solarus and the games created with it are a far cry from the original Zelda Mystery of Solarus that Christopho made with RPG Maker. The engines games today look like fully fledged classic Legend of Zelda games playing them really feels a bit like finding a lost Nintendo deep cut. And dont expect people to join your team when you begin the project. People who dont know you wont just work for you for free when you explain them that you want to create a game, Christopho notes. You are on our own at least at first. Work a few months until your have a first playable prototype, and only then start the communication, if you want a graphic designer to help you for example. And then always continue to work hardThats where Christopho is at now, working collaboratively with a growing team of fellow Zelda fans. We are working on completely free graphics and music. This is now possible thanks to amazing and talented people in the Solarus team, he says. As a programmer I could not do this myself. Despite the risks and challenges, there is a lot of passion in this work.