With another Zelda gaming coming any day now, the series has become a topical buzz on the internet. The anticipation is growing for a title which sets its story back a few years to be a prequel to Ocarina of Time in a roundabout way. It has a nasty little problem with the introduction of possibly alien technology in a certain area which for a Zelda game is approaching on slightly a bit to advance, at least a bit to advance when you consider in a few more centuries Ocarina of Time happens. Ocarina of Time was a very bare and baron game technological wise, with the series also been centred especially in the early games as some middle ages quest, with latter titles such as Sprit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass starting to approach some sort of crazy middle ages industrial era hybrid.
So the question is, as Zelda games ever so slightly start to add technology which might seem alien in the early titles start getting added into the series- how could Nintendo create a Zelda game which is set in the 21st Century with our modern day laws, cities and organizations. I remember years ago reading a fan fiction which proposed this exact idea, while it ended up going a little crazy like all fan fictions do the idea was the same- how would a 21st Century Zelda title work?
The gameplay and core elements of the story would have to change slightly there is no arguing there, but is the abandonment of these values enough to make this title feel Zelda? Possibly no, however with the series been placed around many time travel elements, as well as magic I feel as if this crazy idea could work in some ways.
If the game could work with some magical elements and time travel, the next main goal is a ghastly one at that how would the main three characters be defined in the 21st Century? Who would Link be, or Zelda, or Ganondorf? Well one mistake would be to have the evil villain be an extensive rich monopolistic business man, that is defiantly going a bit too crazy. I believe the best way to protect the sanctity of characterisation in the series in a modern setting would be to make all three main characters; Link, Zelda, Ganon. As childhood friends who go to school together. As this is a Zelda game a modern setting the game would clearly have the multiculturalism and races which previous titles have. So the believability that these characters would find themselves drawn to each other in a modern setting isn’t that hard to believe. I also think that keeping the characters as children would benefit such a title then compared to having full grown characters. For one a full grown character would come off as a bit crazy and a bit depressing to be running around saying the end is near with swords. However keeping them as kids allows the childs imagination in describing areas and events to flow through the story. The locations can alter without having to physically of altered, just because this kid believes that this ledge is a high unsalable wall, doesn’t mean in the real map that it is. The world can be altered and changed without much effort. What I’m saying is the kids are just playing, yes possibly they are really saving the world- and it might come off a bit corny or unbelievable in that regard, but I believe the only way to make a serious attempt to try and latch onto a modern day Zelda would be to explore this option. As for where time travel comes in, the characters could find themselves taken back in time through portals created by the series gods to allow them to obtain spiritual stones which would have long been gone.
Moving on to the map, the location would be a small country city which has become the capital of the land. I believe that the land around this city would be walled off but still easily accessible for children, with the surrounding areas to be ruins of times gone by where only monsters sprawl the land. Or maybe not, maybe the land is vast but baron, the point is that the ruins in these areas would be the dungeons and it would be up for the kids to travel to these locations to find the various stones and magical artefacts which would bring back the Triforce.
Centring back to the adults in this world and how they would react to the kids (specifically Link) running around in town. The elements of most Zelda games is the town is a centre for bustling shops and interaction. In this idea I feel as if this could still happen, with the Adults just been aware of what Link is doing (at least to them, he is obviously a kid been a kid, playing around etc.) so they would humour him and that wouldn’t change any of the core elements from previous series in that regard. Another angle which could be explored could be if Link comes home with certain elements or ancient stones that he gets grounded, or they get taken off him. Also when Link gets the legendary green tunic, he is a boy after all which means closed minded people in the town might react differently to Link then. Remember in this idea he is still a kid and in a modern setting over parenting is quite the common scenario, it could be an interesting angle to explore even in a title which isn’t set in modern settings.
Also I think at this point many of the old ways would have dried up, even the royal line if it still existed wouldn’t have a clue as to what they once believed in, basically the whole world has become atheists. The only problem is if a game did exist with these elements when the Triforce is reunited and everyone goes back to believing in the Gods this is basically saying atheism is wrong and I believe in this day and age that could be some tricky footing to be on, even though currently more people are religious then others I believe any “this is right” or “that is wrong” in regards to religion in a title would be a bad move. Despite that I believe that a modern day Zelda would have many avenues to explore, especially with how it interacts back with the previous titles and lore. I for one wouldn’t mind a title which explored these elements in the future.
The designs which I’m going to talk about today are from Trinest.com, however are varied in what they represent and the years they were used. Today I’m going to talk about seven designs from the period of 2009 to 2010, and a little treat that some of them include development versions so you can see where they came from and where they lead to.
The first design is called in its archived form “April_Social_Article_TriProng” and it is from 2009. From the name it is given in the design archives I have you can tell that this little gem is from April 2009, however like all my designs could possibly be earlier.
So what does TriProng offer the average user? I was going to say nothing, but then I clicked on the archive and remembered that design TriProng is. I’m quite proud of TriProng, it is based around three colours Red, Blue and you guessed it- Green. So what does this RBG style design offer the average user? Well it is a quite well designed layout which features a right navigation. The main navigation is designed using a font I made using a free font maker as well as having little pictures above the text to give the user a simple idea of what the sections are about. One of my most proudest features in this design is the header. I’ve used this style in a few other designs around the time and what it is, is a picture I took with a camera with no Photoshop or any other artificial modification the header is drawn on a piece of paper with some textual differentiation to make it stand out. Such as a pen cap thrown across the top of the logo, or another main feature in this header a prominent shot of my hand.
Scrolling down the bottom to the footer I show off Facebook, Orkurt and WordPress links. The rest of the design isn’t as eye catching as the header or the side colour sections but still engolths the user quite well compared to other designs I had made from that era.
Moving on the next design is from some time in 2009 which devotes itself to 6 years of Trinest based websites. Well it says 7- but that is a lie because I can’t count. The design is quite green, and the pallet is a forest green instead of lime. The key feature for the design would be the navigation which is quite stylish in its own right. The design also features an array of sprites I have made over the years which represent “trinest”.
I’m going to move on once more to another design which is from early 2009 as well. However this design is quite disgusting in colour and appearance. It does however feature sprites and a nice header which is ruined by Photoshop effects.
The key design in this next section of layouts is from 2010, moving away from the previous year and grasping at straws to keep viewers to the site. The new layout has punk and dims the lime to an interesting shade of green. I like this early 2010 layout for a few reasons, but most of all because it is simple without been complicated. The key layout also ended up changing a few times as well, with the May revision showing an updated footer, and the “df” version showing a more development version of the layout with various things such as news sections been tested.
I would talk more about that design, but I won’t- layouts which I have done well seem to have that effect as there isn’t much to talk about how they went wrong like the next layout. This layout is from a series of layouts which slowly morphed into this layout. Also if you think this layout is bad, then the original design for this is much worse. I think the only good thing about this layout is the background as well as the elements which have been used from other designs, outside of that it has issues such as consistency in colours and general overall feel. Also a main problem is the overuse of shadows on the text and the general darkness of the header which clashes with the light overall appearance of the design.
Once again from early 2010 is another series of layouts which also use bases of the previous layout discussed (or lead to that layout using things from this layout, it is quite confusing to figure out where half these designs were made during the year). If you look that this layout the middle bit is quite nice, it dims the background and overall is quite easy to read and look at. However the header is a bit ugly and the footer also isn’t a site to behold. So in the “Remake” version of the design you will notice it goes from ugly to lovely with a header and footer with a similar style which is transparent to the background. The navigation also has more class and looks smooth alongside the main content area.
Moving on once more to the final design series for today, a design which rolled out around July and August and lead to the slow evolution and devolution as well as the eventual revolution which became the 2011 designs. It is quite stylish and the only fault I could find is maybe the grey colours could be a little lighter or differenciant differently. The only difference between the original and final version is a slight upgrade in various HTML calls the design supports as well as a modification of the “header” image. It would have to be one of my favourite designs I have made, outside of TriProng and well of course the current 2011 theme.
While there are many more designs I have made for Trinest.com, as well as other sites we are slowly reaching the brim of interesting designs which I want to talk about. As well as the fact it’s quite annoying to dig up archives to make these articles. This might be the last Site Histories on Trinest.com for some time. Until I move on to discuss the evolution from late 2010 to the current design.
TriProng |
Trinest.com 6 Years of 7 |
“Newsletter Trinest.com” Unknown |
Unknown Name Series [O] |
Unknown Name Series [DF] |
Unknown Name Series [MAY] |
Early Project Site |
Return to Blog Site [O] |
Return to Blog Site [R] |
“Summer” Beta [O] |
“Summer” Beta [R] |
“Summer” Beta [PAGE] |
So lets go back to the stone age for a bit, today we are looking at Trinest.com designs and while they are only from 2010 in the history of Trinest.com these designs where used a long time ago. My love for making a new design almost every minute has stagnated since then, however back in July there was a new flavour of Trinest.com which was taking a few pages out of the bit generation era with a series I like to call “Retro Summer”.
I don’t know the exact date for these designs, but they are listed as been created in July 2010. However the index pages seem to have an archived date from late May to mid June. So in fact not July at all it seems. However I do believe the designs were used for a period of time in July if that counts.
Before I go crazy trying to decipher when I made these designs, the big event has to occur. The big event were I talk about the designs as if I learned much more since making them.
I think the first design we look at should be the design dubbed “beta idea”. No doubt this was probably the original idea and were the direction for the resulting designs came from. Compared to the other two designs I will talk about (which one is a revision of the other), this design is quite dark in pallet. There is left navigation which uses a sort of simple style which I think is the key winner for the design. However before I get too attached to that navigation I have to say the header is the real winner, it uses Survival Kids sprites to give clear definition between the two sections as well as the social navigation and title sections using a transparent background. Other than that its footer is a pretty generic footer style which I have used in many of the designs since then and before.
I think from a design point of view this layout could have worked quite well, I don’t believe I kept this design up on my site for long, if at all. However I do see key elements which do not work, such as the footer. In my mind the layout is quite simple and cantered mainly around the black and white pallet outside of the header. I believe the bold footer colour which appears to have been picked out from the colour of the trees in the header is too bold in that location so it throws off the whole design.
Moving on to the other two layouts which are basically one in the same bar a few slight changes. I based the layout around Daniel Primeds layout and gave it my own twist. The previous header was made using Survival Kids sprites returns only in spirit alone as I’ve made my own sprites for this header which capture the simular essence which the other layouts header had. Other than that it has some quite descriptive colourful language for my testing which I’ve had to dumb down this time around for this newly published version here because I think you are more drawn to those words rather than the design.
If you look at the two designs they are basically the same, go ahead open them both in two different tabs then click on them. All you will see different in the two designs are the newer one has a background and a bolder border as well as some patchy dotted lines on the titles.
If I remember right I did use these designs for quite some time, well in terms of how many layouts which I had made during that period I believe that these had some use out of them. Maybe something along one or two weeks instead of only a few days. Don’t go digging through web archives to find out, because I’m just shooting in the dark here.
Design wise, I think these worked. Yeah there not the best in the world, but the layouts show consistency in colour pallet as well as been one of the testing grounds for many techniques which ended up been used on other designs.
Retro Beta Idea |
Retro Summer in July First |
Retro Summer in July Revision |