ALTTP Prequel - Link's Uncle - Community project

ALTTP Hack - Legend of Uncle Alfonse


Hey everyone, I'm The Bootleg Bandit. Ive worked on a few projects for various games/platforms including Grandfather Mario, Super Dr.Mario (you can find on romhacking.com) and currently working on a Mario's Cement Factory Platformer project.

I thought it would be a fun idea to see if any group of individuals in the Zeldix community wanted to come together and work on a fun side project.

The Game would be ALTTP hacked to feature Link's Uncle as the protagonist. This would serve as a prequel with events taking place right before ALTTP.

Although we have limited information on this character, we know Uncle Alphonse was very loyal to the royal family and there are many other things we can expand upon. By taking what we know and expanding upon it, we're essentially breathing life into this forgotten character. (This is something I like to do in my rom hacks.) I always pay close attention to the character, what the character's creator would have intended, and I ensure that focus is kept the entire project.

I have many ideas for this already, but I'm hoping others would want to come together and be involved to brainstorm and discuss these ideas and add many more as we go.

The result would be a fun side story romhack that would be extremely unique and capture the hearts of many die-hard zelda fans.


If there's any interest in this project, let me know! I wasn't planning on working on any more games at the moment but if we get the right group with the right attitude, I think this could be fun.

If you think this is an interesting concept, let's hear your thoughts!

If you think you might like to work on something like this or know someone who would, let me know as well, and send a DM!

If there's enough interest, I will make another post and begin assembling the team based on everyone's preferences.

Last call before I remove the previous post due to inadequate response. If you’re interested in this project or would like to see this game, speak now or forever hold your peace!

Would love to hear any feedback.

Is this an interesting and different enough concept for a Zelda hack? Or is link’s uncle basically regarded as a douchebag who doesn’t deserve the light of day?

Any/all opinions are welcome and encouraged.

Castela wrote:Last call before I remove the previous post due to inadequate response. If you’re interested in this project or would like to see this game, speak now or forever hold your peace!  

Would love to hear any feedback.

Is this an interesting and different enough concept for a Zelda hack? Or is link’s uncle basically regarded as a douchebag who doesn’t deserve the light of day?

Any/all opinions are welcome and encouraged.

Hello...

This would really be beautiful to see, I would love a parallel story about LINK's uncle, telling his deeds, his battles and even a little of his life, even if it is not the official story, that would be wonderful anyway; I don't have "any" HACKER skills for this, but I encourage you on this path, as well as I do, I'm sure there are many other people out there with the same feeling, big hug!!!

Interested, but also zero game hacking skills here.

We need some experience guys on this too.,

VVV18 wrote:

Castela wrote:Last call before I remove the previous post due to inadequate response. If you’re interested in this project or would like to see this game, speak now or forever hold your peace!  

Would love to hear any feedback.

Is this an interesting and different enough concept for a Zelda hack? Or is link’s uncle basically regarded as a douchebag who doesn’t deserve the light of day?

Any/all opinions are welcome and encouraged.

Hello...

This would really be beautiful to see, I would love a parallel story about LINK's uncle, telling his deeds, his battles and even a little of his life, even if it is not the official story, that would be wonderful anyway; I don't have "any" HACKER skills for this, but I encourage you on this path, as well as I do, I'm sure there are many other people out there with the same feeling, big hug!!!

Glad to hear you think so. Rom Hacking skill will be required for this project, but the building of the story, character, and ideas for gameplay (mechanics, repurposed assets, etc) are equally as important if we want this game to stand out.

feel free to post some ideas. The more fun ideas we have floating around the more support the project will have from the community.

sinistra wrote:Interested, but also zero game hacking skills here.

We need some experience guys on this too.,

That's ok. Each person who took the time to find this forum and is engaged enough to follow these hacks has unique valuable skill, whether that be in hacking experience, insight, opinion, ideas, etc.

if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

TheBootlegBandit wrote:

sinistra wrote:Interested, but also zero game hacking skills here.

We need some experience guys on this too.,

That's ok. Each person who took the time to find this forum and is engaged enough to follow these hacks has unique valuable skill, whether that be in hacking experience, insight, opinion, ideas, etc.

if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

PuzzleDude, SePH, Omega45889, Euclid, Conn, Erockbrox, Qwertymodo and many more!

Disclaimer:
"**[The author] assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this list. The information contained in this list is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness..."**

TheBootlegBandit wrote:

sinistra wrote:Interested, but also zero game hacking skills here.

We need some experience guys on this too.,

That's ok. Each person who took the time to find this forum and is engaged enough to follow these hacks has unique valuable skill, whether that be in hacking experience, insight, opinion, ideas, etc.

if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

sinistra wrote:
PuzzleDude, SePH, Omega45889, Euclid, Conn, Erockbrox, Qwertymodo and many more!

Thing is, these guys are pretty much retired from hacking this game lol.
Currently the experienced guys of Zelda 3 hacking are Jared_Brian_, Zarby89, Scawful, Jeimuzu, GweiloGopher, Spane and myself.

TheBootlegBandit wrote: if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

sinistra wrote: PuzzleDude, SePH, Omega45889, Euclid, Conn, Erockbrox, Qwertymodo and many more!

Letterbomb wrote: Thing is, these guys are pretty much retired from hacking this game lol. Currently the experienced guys of Zelda 3 hacking are Jared Brian, Zarby89, Scawful, Jeimuzu, GweiloGopher, Spane and myself.

What he said. You pretty much listed the "old generation". Omega is definitely gone, SePH seems to be as well, Conn and Euclid are coders and they were doing an ASM code or two a while back or some debug (which does not take a lot of work), but both are not accepting any "new requests" as far as I know.

I also moved on to other projects, and if I ever again do anything related to ALTTP, I'll probably do it on those 3 hacks which are the newest addition in the "abandoned hacks" section, but probably won't even bother to release anything due to potential carting/piracy and other reasons. Also note that it is easy to have ideas, (as you can see due to the amount of abandoned hacks). The "supervisor" of the hack should at least be able to hack the game himself, while the "lion's share" of modding this game is not an idea or a story at all, it's making new overworld and dungeons, everything else is secondary (GFX, ASM, monologues/story, Sprites, Music etc). The problem is also that all those listed hackers (new generation) are pretty much stuck with their projects, maybe even more than one project per person, so it is not necessary that they will join a brand new project. You might also try the ALTTP Discord which seems to be more active than this site.

All good info. Will post on the discord also, thanks for the suggestion.

Now to your point, this would absolutely be a huge project for everything redesigned from the ground up. But what if- one of the abandoned games could be utilized as the basis for the hack. Sprites swapped, tweaks made, and some text manipulation obviously.

I’ve noticed that abandoned hacks have been repurposed in this fashion in the past with success.

This could be one way to cut down on the from scratch dungeon design. Yes they all have their share of problems. But this could open up some potential doors as far as making the project manageable for those involved.

TheBootlegBandit wrote: if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

sinistra wrote:PuzzleDude, SePH, Omega45889, Euclid, Conn, Erockbrox, Qwertymodo and many more!

Letterbomb wrote:Thing is, these guys are pretty much retired from hacking this game lol. Currently the experienced guys of Zelda 3 hacking are Jared Brian, Zarby89, Scawful, Jeimuzu, GweiloGopher, Spane and myself.

Always read the tiny letters too.  

Disclaimer:
"**[The author] assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this list. The information contained in this list is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness..."**

sinistra wrote:

TheBootlegBandit wrote: if you had to choose, who are some of the "experienced guys" here in your opinion?

sinistra wrote:PuzzleDude, SePH, Omega45889, Euclid, Conn, Erockbrox, Qwertymodo and many more!

Letterbomb wrote:Thing is, these guys are pretty much retired from hacking this game lol. Currently the experienced guys of Zelda 3 hacking are Jared Brian, Zarby89, Scawful, Jeimuzu, GweiloGopher, Spane and myself.

Always read the tiny letters too.  

Disclaimer:
"**[The author] assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this list. The information contained in this list is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness..."**

I saw those yeah, just needed to correct it though because like PD and I said those guys are retired. It's good to give a more accurate list too since the Zelda 3 hacking scene is so small lol

The idea of making a collaborative hack is very interesting really but i can kinda tell from experience this is much harder to set up than what it looks like and have very high risk of failure  

plus everyone is already working on their own project it's hard to find time or ideas to work on a new hack

what i'd suggest you to do personally is start working on it, have something you can show, present and then try to get peoples to work on dungeons and stuff for it afterward because having multiple peoples trying to do everything at the same time is just gonna cause you lots of troubles imo  

i wish you good luck for this project  

i'm not willing to "join" that project personally not because it doesn't interest me but because i would not have time or ideas to work on it however if you eventually need help on "small" asm i can probably help but i won't do big systems like custom sprites/items/etc...

zarby89 wrote:The idea of making a collaborative hack is very interesting really but i can kinda tell from experience this is much harder to set up than what it looks like and have very high risk of failure  

plus everyone is already working on their own project it's hard to find time or ideas to work on a new hack

what i'd suggest you to do personally is start working on it, have something you can show, present and then try to get peoples to work on dungeons and stuff for it afterward because having multiple peoples trying to do everything at the same time is just gonna cause you lots of troubles imo  

Agreed, also it's much harder to do a group project for this game than you'd think but it can be done.

zarby89 wrote:The idea of making a collaborative hack is very interesting really but i can kinda tell from experience this is much harder to set up than what it looks like and have very high risk of failure  

plus everyone is already working on their own project it's hard to find time or ideas to work on a new hack

what i'd suggest you to do personally is start working on it, have something you can show, present and then try to get peoples to work on dungeons and stuff for it afterward because having multiple peoples trying to do everything at the same time is just gonna cause you lots of troubles imo  

i wish you good luck for this project  

i'm not willing to "join" that project personally not because it doesn't interest me but because i would not have time or ideas to work on it however if you eventually need help on "small" asm i can probably help but i won't do big systems like custom sprites/items/etc...

Have Faith. With The Bootleg Bandit, failure is not an option.

Thank you, and absolutely I was definitely planning on having something tangible to show in the near future as long as there was at least some level of interest. I assumed all of those with the practical skill and experience with hacking this game in particular were already working on their own projects and had very little time if any. But considering how long some of these abandoned hacks have been sitting dormant, or how long some hacks take, that maybe a handful would consider taking a small task to chip away at when they hit burnout with their other game.

yeah with many people working on the project there would certainly be a lot of "moving parts" but I'd ensure we have a way to stay quite organized. I have some experience with this and i'm confident everything would go relatively smooth.

Letterbomb wrote:

zarby89 wrote:The idea of making a collaborative hack is very interesting really but i can kinda tell from experience this is much harder to set up than what it looks like and have very high risk of failure  

plus everyone is already working on their own project it's hard to find time or ideas to work on a new hack

what i'd suggest you to do personally is start working on it, have something you can show, present and then try to get peoples to work on dungeons and stuff for it afterward because having multiple peoples trying to do everything at the same time is just gonna cause you lots of troubles imo  

Agreed, also it's much harder to do a group project for this game than you'd think but it can be done.

Hey that's the spirit! If there is a will, there is a way. And as long as things stay organized and transparent for all involved there should be no pressure and hopefully everyone can feed off of each other's enthusiasm and excitement as the project progresses- as quickly or slowly as it may be.

To start a little group brainstorming:

I wanted to outline first the information about Link's Uncle. From there, we can see all the information and then we can start to think of clever ways to implement these things into the game in (hopefully) the easiest fashion.

What we know about Links Uncle:
-His name is Alphonse
-A former knight to the royal Family of Hyrule
-Link's Guardian (no parents)
-He's very brave (This must be where Link learns this behavior)
-In the A Link to the Past comic: Link's Uncle adopted Link because his parents stumbled into the Dark World, shielding him from the intrigues of the Royal Family
-In the A Link to the Past manga, Link's Uncle owns an apple orchard. (Link's Uncle speaks to Link briefly before passing away, telling him that parents might be alive, and that he wished he could have seen his nephew's apple farm.)

*I believe there is more information to be found. Possibly there may be some scenes in the CD-i cutscenes? Also, I own most of the Zelda cartoon series on VHS. Ill need to watch those soon to see if the uncle appears in them also. Any extra data we can extract about this character will give us more things we can exploit to make the unique tweaks.

If anyone has any additional info to add, please add.

Once we have a completed info list on Uncle Alphonse, we'll start brainstorming ideas for ways these can be implemented into the game.
(for example: He throws apples instead of pots...or arrows. etc)

Concept Art of Uncle Alphons’ Apple Orchard

Ah yes, the apple orchard as seen in the Manga.

How would you integrate the apples into the gameplay? Red Apple/pot swap? Green Apple/Bushes swap? What else