When you load up your save file, you will start with roughly half of your hearts. This is actually controlled by a table of sorts, which can easily be edited.

First off, there are 2 sections of the code that reference this table. They are at hex address x4F53E and x73CC3, and they are both identical.

Code:


AF 6C F3 7E     ;LDA $7E/F36C (Load "a" with the player's Max Health)
4A                   ;LSR (Divide it by 2)
4A                   ;LSR (Divide it by 2 again)
4A                   ;LSR (Divide it by 2 again)
                       ;(The goal here is to convert "health" to heart containers. Each heart container covers $08 health, so we need to divide by 8)
AA                   ;TAX (Transfer "a" to "x")
BF AC F4 09     ;LDA,x 09/F4AC (Load "a" with the value at address 09/F4AC, but shifted "x" bytes to the right.)
8F 6D F3 7E     ;STA $7E/F36D (Save "a" as the player's Current Health)


The table that it looks up has the following data:

Code:


x4F4AC (rom address 09/F4AC)
18 18 18 18 18 20 20 28 28 30 30 38 38 38 40 40 40 48 48 48 50


In short, it means, "If the player has 0-4 heart containers, start them with $18 health (3 full hearts). If the player has 5-6 hearts, start them with $20 health (4 full hearts)..." and so on. There are values all the way up to 20 heart containers.

There are 2 ways to edit this. If you want to create a custom table, edit the values at x4F4AC. Full hearts will end in a an 8 or 0 digit. Half hearts will end in a 4 or C digit.

If you just want full health at startup, you have 2 options.

The first option is to make the lookup table equal to full health at that heart value. At x4F4AC, paste in this table:

Code:

18 18 18 18 20 28 30 38 40 48 50 58 60 68 70 78 80 88 90 98 A0

The second option is to remove all the complicated lookups entirely.

Code:


x4F53E and x73CC3
AF 6C F3 7E     ;LDA $7E/F36C (Load "a" with the player's Max Health)
80 06          ;BRA +$06 (Branch forward 6 bytes)
EA EA EA     ;NOP (do nothing)
EA EA EA     ;NOP (do nothing)
8F 6D F3 7E     ;STA $7E/f36D (Save "a" as the player's Current Health)


Either solution will work.