Boy, do I have a lot of questions to ask...

So, I am working on a romhack with somebody, and I was looking around all the nifty little patches everyone made (10/10. thank you. I love you, whoever you are). All fine and dandy, but I have some few specific things that I can't find a solution for. I don't know asm (which means that I only vaguely know that it usually works and that some numbers can be edited for fun effects), however I am able to hex edit stuff (which is pretty rad).

So now you know where I come from, my questions are as followed:

1. I would like the lens of truth to only work in dungeons (to warp back to the entrance ofc.) but not in the overworld (this has to do with the two worlds being to different in structure for it to be beficial, if not for it sequence breaking everything). What do I need to do to accomplish this?
   Alternative: Is it possible to exchange the lens of truth with the shovel? It would be a bummer to let the quick warp to entrance thing go, but it would solve my issue too.
   
   
2. When the player gains the flute, I would like that the bird is activated by default (I am going to replace the graphics with a whirlwind (from SMB3). Where do I change this, and how?
   
   
3. Finaly, is there a way to disable the intro sequence. What I mean is, that it won't switch to it, it just needs to stay on the title screen. I feel like this already exists somewhere, couldn't find anything about it though.
   

And that's about it! I'll post some screenies of the hack once we've made some major progress with it.

When the player gains the flute, I would like that the bird is activated by default (I am going to replace the graphics with a whirlwind (from SMB3). Where do I change this, and how?

If you put the flute in a chest and use #74 instead of #20 your flute should work right out of the box, no bird activation needed. That's one way to do it anyway.

Finaly, is there a way to disable the intro sequence. What I mean is, that it won't switch to it, it just needs to stay on the title screen. I feel like this already exists somewhere, couldn't find anything about it though.

**disable intro story sequence**
642E3: D0 --> 80

I forget who found this but, yes it should be floating around this site somewhere. I keep a text file on my computer that just has a bunch of little things like this. I'd suggest doing the same and saving tidbits like this so you don't have to spend a bunch of time combing through the forums or trying search after search with no results.

1. with a bit asm you could make a check of $1b which is set in dungeons only and skip the code in case it is #$00 (overworld). If you need asm help, try to ask the original author.

Edit: checking XaserLE's code, he actually made that and disabled it to work on overworld, so I do not know your problem here:

Code:

LDA $1B ; load data that tells us whether we are in a building or not
AND #$01 ; are we in a building?
BEQ $1A ; if not, don't use the x-button-secret, edited from 12 to 1A
LDA $F2 ; load unfiltered joypad 1 register (AXLR|????)
CMP #$50 ; X and R buttons pressed?
BNE $06 ; if not, go to enable BG2
LDA $7EF353 ; load ram mirror slot, added
CMP #$02 ; compare to value 02 (have mirror is 02, no mirror is 00), added
BNE $06 ; if not value 02, go to enable BG2, added
LDA $1C ; load layer flags
AND #$FD ; disable BG2 (0xFD = 11111101)
BRA $04 ; go to store layer flags
LDA $1C ; load layer flags
ORA #$02 ; enable BG2 (0x02 = 00000010)
STA $1C ; store layer flags

Alternative: Is it possible to exchange the lens of truth with the shovel? It would be a bummer to let the quick warp to entrance thing go, but it would solve my issue too.

I think you can still using it with y-button since the LR code is independent. You also can turn it into the hammer, by adjusting that asm to make the check for hammer ram address except mirror.

If you put the flute in a chest and use #74 instead of #20 your flute should work right out of the box, no bird activation needed. That's one way to do it anyway.

Oh right, well silly me. Now I only need a nice area to place the flute chest. ^^

**disable intro story sequence**
642E3: D0 --> 80

I tried to do it, but there's an issue:


There's no D0 at this position (I have patched the game with several asm patches, I don't know if that affects the intro story or not). What do I do now? :/

1. with a bit asm you could make a check of $1b which is set in dungeons only and skip the code in case it is #$00 (overworld). If you need asm help, try to ask the original author.

Edit: checking XaserLE's code, he actually made that and disabled it to work on overworld, so I do not know your problem here:

I take that this means that the mirror won't work in the overworld, yes? I'll give it a shot, thank you. c:

You are in the correct location, change the B0D0 to B080 at offset 0x0642E2, its right next to the FEC6.

Haha, it seems to have worked. Thank you. At first it made the rom corrupt, but then I discovered that I still had insert mode on... Which changes a lot of the code for no reason.



At any rate, I still got another question... And it may sound a bit silly, but where is the worldmap graphics located? I have all the GFX dumped in a single file (zcompress) and I edit the graphics in yy-chr. The only issue is that I can't for my life find the graphics for the world map. Nintendo was really sneaky with that one, I'll tell ya.

Unfortunately, you can't use yy-chr to edit Overworld Map GFX because zcompress doesn't decompress that specific GFX, so using Hyrule Magic is your only option. Even worse is there is hardly any modern graphics manipulation programs (Like Photoshop and GIMP) that works with Hyrule Magics' GFX Export/Import tool that doesn't screw up your rom AFAIK...

Fortunately though there is iDraw3, an old program used for making sprites for RPG Maker 2003, which does work with Hyrule Magic. The only thing though is there is a bug that changes the palette for some reason (easy fix as it just messes up the palette, so just changing back to whatever it was before will fix it), but I don't think present when editing the Overworld Map GFX so just make backups of your hack before attempting to use Hyrule Magic.

I made a topic on how to use iDraw3 with Hyrule Magic: LINK TO TOPIC

I would like the lens of truth to only work in dungeons (to warp back to the entrance ofc.) but not in the overworld (this has to do with the two worlds being to different in structure for it to be beficial, if not for it sequence breaking everything). What do I need to do to accomplish this?

Lens of Truth actually doesn't warp you to the entrance. Conn programed the Lens though to be able to deactivate layer-2 if you have the Mirror in the inventory.

So basically what you want, is to change the gfx of the Mirror into the Lens. When you select the Lens, it will do what the Mirror is doing - warps you back to the entrance if indoors.

This is what you do to deactivate the Mirror/Lens in the overword:
Remove the header of the ROM (if it has one). Go to hex address 3A951. There should be values 29 40 D0 07 there.
Now change that to 9F 9F 9F 9F. Mirror/Lens will now not work in light and dark world. This is optimal specially if you want to create 2 different words and want to avoid bugs.
But you can still travel through worlds by placing warps (a warp in light world will bring you to dark world and vice versa).


Here the quote from my Vital Hex addresses Document

3.) Mirror warping (found by Euclid and SePH)

address (no header)  3A951
address (with heder) 3AB51

original values must be (search for this sequence of bytes)
29 40 D0 07 (mirror working in dark world only)


values
9F 9F 9F 9F (mirror NOT working in light and dark world)
Warping from light to dark world and from dark to light world is only
possible by placing warps. Warp placed in light world takes you to dark world.
Warp in dark world takes you to light world.

This is optimal, because the possibility of bugs is low and dark world can be
completely different from the light world, not just a copy.



value
EA 4C 5C A9 (mirror working in both worlds = not optimal) Ie mirror can be used to travel both ways, but this can result in bugs, since you can land on a false position and reach areas, where you should not be - and land in scrolling-bugs.


In all cases: in the dungeon, mirror warps to the beginning of the dungeon.

Edit: checking XaserLE's code, he actually made that and disabled it to work on overworld, so I do not know your problem here:

I think he is actually refering to the mirror repixeled into the Lens, rather than the "actual" bg layer disabling code, which in fact is also triggered by the mirror/lens (which then indeed has 2 separate functions).

Alternative: Is it possible to exchange the lens of truth with the shovel? It would be a bummer to let the quick warp to entrance thing go, but it would solve my issue too.

Bad idea. You don't "exchange" main items of the inventory without some heavy ASM.
Actually I'm not exactly sure what you want to do here. Remove the shovel completely and bring Lens on its place? Like said, bad idea.

At any rate, I still got another question... And it may sound a bit silly, but where is the worldmap graphics located? I have all the GFX dumped in a single file (zcompress) and I edit the graphics in yy-chr.

This should be in the BIN file (ie extracted gfx), but you might change the decoding from 4BPP to 2BPP, since this might be 8bit instead of 16bit. All gfx should however be in the BIN file (including the map-overworld tiles).

Thanks, it works splendidly! ^^

About the mirror, I thought it was called the lens of truth, which is why I was a little confused when Conn showed me the code of a layer-2 disabler. It had nothing to do with spriting (although I am going to change it to something else). Also, ignore the shovel thing, that is just there when plan A didn't work.

Also, for the GFX of the map, the world map uses 16-bit graphics. So yeah... It's simply not in there for some reason. :l

Okay, another question, which might not have a solution. I changed some of the sprite GFX and pallette settings on a certain map, and I switched from "beginning" mode to "first part" mode, and now when I swing a sword in link's house it soft-locks. It throws me in a black screen where the bunny music is playing on a loop. Has this happened to anyone before?

BlackStone187 wrote:Okay, another question, which might not have a solution. I changed some of the sprite GFX and pallette settings on a certain map, and I switched from "beginning" mode to "first part" mode, and now when I swing a sword in link's house it soft-locks. It throws me in a black screen where the bunny music is playing on a loop. Has this happened to anyone before?

That sounds serious. The worst that should occur from the changes you mentioned are GFX that look jumbled or use the wrong palette.

I do remember encountering a bug like this but I actually don't recall what caused it. It might have been the first time I tried to make some ASM mods, but I don't remember any more details.

Well, I kinda guessed this would be the case. So I started re-doing the map I was working on and this time I'll be making even more back-ups than I already did.

I discovered the cause of the corruption. It's Hyrule Magic. Apperently, the moment I open the overworld editor and I save, it causes the game to crash when a sword is swung in a dungeon. Well... I can't fix this...

BlackStone187 wrote:I discovered the cause of the corruption. It's Hyrule Magic. Apperently, the moment I open the overworld editor and I save, it causes the game to crash when a sword is swung in a dungeon. Well... I can't fix this...

That's strange. I've never had any bugs this serious from using the overworld editor except for times that I've tried to edit things while the item data was corrupted.

You have to remember only one thing when editing this game.

Hyrule Magic isn't your friend.

Rom backups are!

The overworld editor crashed about three times for me while I was doing random things in the past three months. Every time while attempting to save the hack, the editor crashed and as a result I lost hours of work in the process each time and rage quitting for a few days.

That's sadly the downfall of editing this game.

The half-assed editor we have to build the game of our dreams is far from perfect, even if we try to be careful editing things!

So...each time you edit something else, a new overworld area, a new dungeon room, the title screen or edit the graphics, it is recommended to make a new rom backup and also testing every new feature you added. That's the only way to build something good with this devil incarnate editor!

So...each time you edit something else, a new overworld area, a new dungeon room, the title screen or edit the graphics, it is recommended to make a new rom backup and also testing every new feature you added. That's the only way to build something good with this devil incarnate editor!

Yes, you unfortunately need to have an insight on the actual code in hex, only then can you use the editor without any major problems.
What happens is that usually users load Alttp in Hyrule Magic - a very logical statement, isn't it, but this is actually fatal. The original is alredy "packed-up". Any edit of the Alttp will surely result in game crash bugs.
You need to re-hack Alttp first by knowing how to reduce the data it uses and presumably restructure it. You irronically do this with HM, but also in hex. Once you have one such "data reduced" file, you are good to go.
Funny part, when I was making the IQ hack, I forgot the editor makes bugs. I practically had no bugs at all (since as you might know the game is a lot shorter than Alttp - specially data wise).

Well I was editing backup 105 and I believe I hex edited a couple things, which may or may not makes HM a little bit confused. That might be why HM forces that bug in to the game. I'll try and see which version of the hack I made started to f-up things.

104 works, so that means after I moved the exits from link's house to map 18 the game was like "nnnope". Maybe I should remove all exits and entrances first before moving on. ^^"

EDIT: And that seemed to not cause the sword glitch. Hooray!

Sure, however do Not use the command "remove all exits". This will destroy some mandatory exits, which really are not exits, like the exit/entrance to Triforce shrine. End sequence "exits" etc. You need to remove them manually, while leaving the ending sequence exits.

Removing all entrances might also not be a good idea, since when you then start adding them, the program will get confused and will sometimes add all of them back in, flooding the dark world with entrances. However entrances tend to be more stable.

I never heard/had the sword-crash glitch.

Well... Crap, I already pressed these buttons... Now I have to re-do the whole map again. :l

Or I could manually add the exits again, if it works anyways.

BlackStone187 wrote:Well... Crap, I already pressed these buttons... Now I have to re-do the whole map again. :l

Or I could manually add the exits again, if it works anyways.

My strategy so far hasn't caused any bugs during my edits. I go to the map with the entrance and/or exit I want to move, remove only those specific entance/exits from that map, save, go to the map where I want them, place them, fix the exit coordinates (if necessary)* and then save.

The only time I've ever had any problems with entrance/exits was when I used the "remove all" functions, removed a bunch of entrances manually (in both cases the editor goofed and said that it didn't have room for any more entrances/exit, which was a lie) or when I forgot to remove an exit before placing the same exit somewhere else which would cause the game to crash upon exiting (because it didn't know where to go).

*If you need to fix your door coordinates (so the open door shows up in the right place) I believe each 32x32 overworld block is equal to 2 when trying to factor the coordinates. If there is another exit on the same X or Y it saves you a little math.

I used both commands to remove the entrances and exits and haven't run into any problems.

The ending sequence exits are already documented in the compendium and you can add them in any place you want. The only thing you need to take into consideration is that you cannot move the ending sprites positions in HM, this has to be done manually... like what Euclid did when we made Parallel Worlds.

Code:

Special exits
(this is not related to door exits but the location of the frames of the ending)
01.) EXIT 1000 (place it in big area, lower middle position of the exit, picture travels up, place it so that the sprites are not
seen)
02.) Room 18 (automatic)
03.) EXIT 1002 (place it in big area, upper right, travels down and left)
04.) EXIT 1012 (big area, lower middle, travels up)
05.) EXIT 1004 (big area, middle up, travels down)
06.) EXIT 1006 (small area, upper right, travels down left)
07.) EXIT 1010 (big area = Zora domain, upper left, travels right)
08.) EXIT 1014 (small area, upper middle, travels down)
09.) EXIT 100A (small area, middle right, travels left)
10.) EXIT 1016 (big area, middle low, travels up)
11.) Room 277 (must be fountain, automatic)
12.) Room 289 (must be smith, automatic)
13.) EXIT 100E (big area, upper left, travels right)
14.) EXIT 1008 (big area, upper right, travels left)
15.) EXIT 1018 (big area, upper left, travels down right)
16.) EXIT 0180 (master sword, automatic)
PS = exit of the small area can be placed in a big area to avoid the sprites


Texts (editable in hex):
01.) The return of the king, HYRULE CASTLE
02.) The loyal sage, SANCTUARY
03.) Sahasrahla's homecoming, KAKARIKO TOWN
04.) Vultures rule the desert, DESERT PALACE
05.) The bully makes a friend, DEATH MOUNTAIN
06.) Your uncle recovers, YOUR HOUSE
1
07.) Flippers for sale, ZORA'S WATERFALL
08.) The witch and assistant, MAGIC SHOP
09.) Twin lumberjacks, WOODSMEN'S HUT
10.) Flute boy plays again, HUNTED GROVE
11.) Venus. queen of faeries, WISHING WELL
12.) The dwarven swordsmiths, SMITHERY
13.) The bug-catching kid, KAKARIKO TOWN
14.) The lost old man, DEATH MOUNTAIN
15.) The forest thief, LOST WOODS
16.) And the master sword, sleeps again..., FOREVER

You can also edit the special ending sequence exits properties in hex *advanced stuff*

Code:

$15D8A-$164A2 - Exit Data (Note that some of these are fake exits used in the ending sequence.)
This is not the complete listing of exit data that HM gives access to in its dialog. See _____
$15D8A-$15E27 - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Rooms that exit to overworld Areas ("Room" in HM)
$15E28-$15E76 - (0x4F entries, 1 byte each) - Overworld area that the exit leads to. ("Map" in HM)
$15E77-$15F14 - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - VRAM locations to place Link at. Gets fed to $7E0084 (???? in HM)
$15F15-$15FB2 - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Y Scroll Data
$15FB3-$16050 - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - X Scroll Data
$16051-$160EE - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Link's Y Coordinate
$160EF-$1618C - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Link's X Coordinate
$1618D-$1622A - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Camera Y Coordinate
$1622B-$162C8 - (0x4F entries, 2 bytes each) - Camera X Coordinate
$162C9-$16317 - (0x4F entries, 1 byte each) - I assume these are sequencing variables to tell the camera where
to go? Writes to $0624 and $0625 (Ukn1 in HM)
$16318-$16366 - (0x4F entries, 1 byte each) - I assume these are sequencing variables to tell the camera where
to go? Writes to $0628 and $0629 (Ukn2 in HM)


$16AE5 - $16C38
Size = 154h
Ending Sequence (again?)
Each entry in all arrays is 1 word long.
$16AE5 - $16B06
Ending Sequence Overworld Areas to load.
$16B07 - $16B28
Ending Sequence VRAM locations for link.
$16B29 - $16B4A
Ending Sequence Y Scroll Data
$16B4B - $16B6C
Ending Sequence X Scroll Data
$16B6D - $16B8E
Ending Sequence Link Y Coordinate
$16B8F - $16BB0
Ending Sequence Link X Coordinate
$16BB1 - $16BD2
Ending Sequence Camera Y Coordinate
1
$16BD3 - $16BF4
Ending Sequence Camera X Coordinate
$16BF5 - $16C16
Ending Sequence ?????
Gets stored to $0624
$16C17 - $16C38
Ending Sequence ?????
Gets stored to $0628

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Removing all entrances isn't an issue either. All is does basically is that eventually all unused entrances will be copied all over area 7F (the bottom right dark world area). When this happens, you can simply place them to the bottom of the screen like so:



And they will never move again.

If you don't want to fix your entrance door openings coordinates (instead of fixing each one manually and saving time), enter any entrance and click on ''more'' at the bottom and under ''House exit door'' select None instead of wooden!



Then edit the house door graphics so that all doors look open by default and you will never have to deal with these ever again.



Upon exiting you won't hear that sound fx of doors opening/closing. The house exit door trick has to be done manually for each entrance, but not much of an issue compared to fixing the X and Y properties each time. Saves a lot of time!

Here's some bugs I encountered during my fantastic Zelda 3 editing travels ;-)

Most of them were asm related, but gives you an idea how hard it can be to make a full hack of this game without bugs, they happen all the time!



I'm sure Conn and Euclid can remember fixing them too!

That's a lot to take in, but now I know I needn't worry about it too much. So thank you for that. ^^

Also, wouldn't it be easier to just skip the creditsroll and roomscroll and cut to an ending screen? That theoretically should save time trying to fix any credits related bugs by just not showing the ending credits and cutscenes.