[Ok Impala!]

Hi all,

The last 6 months I have been working on a new project. When Super Mario Kart - Epic Racers neared completion, I was already making the outlines for my next project. Today I would like to reveal what I'm working on:

Zelda II - Amida
One day Link finds a portal to a strange land. Curious he starts exploring the magical land of Amida. Little does he know, that he's on a brand new adventure that will take him to places he couldn't have imagined. Amida has a deep emotional link to our hero. Can Link unravel the secrets of Amida and return to his own world?

Planned Changes:
- New Overworld design
- New Temples designs
- New Dungeons designs
- New Town designs
- New Story
- New Graphics and FDS animations (Thanks to Zelda 2 Redux)
- All gameplay changes of Zelda 2 Redux
- Static Exp at the Palace Crystals
- Highly reduced encounter rate
- Focus on exploration above battles
- Difficulty just below original Zelda 2 (definitely aiming at a hack that is accessible for everyone)

Progress:
- Graphics: 100%
- Gameplay changes: 90%
- Overworld: 80%
- Temples: 40%
- Dungeons: 30%
- Detail management: 20%

Special Thanks:
- Njosro (for all the help to get started on this hack)
- ShadowOne333 (for Zelda 2 Redux)
- Revility (for the new graphics)
- Falchion22 (For the new graphics)

Screenshots:

Link is ready for a new adventure!


A new Overworld awaits


The town of Tomis


A grand building in the town of Berge


The first temple looms


Elevator into a mysterious temple


Inside a new temple


High stakes fight


Desert Overworld


The desert town of Nysa


The second Temple

[DragonAtma]

Aha! I spent far too many hours on Zelda 2, so I'll have to give it a try when I get the chance.

[Shadic]

This is exciting! I look forward to trying it whenever it comes out. 

[RomHam]

Awesome, I like the change in difficulty and also the focus on exploration!

[GTM604]

Very cool looking great glad to always see a new zelda 2 hack being worked on.

[Trax]

If you need a good beta-tester, PM me.

[Ok Impala!]

If you need a good beta-tester, PM me.

Thanks for the offer. I will definitely contact you when I get to a playable state. 
December 18, 2020, 03:27:48 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)I was stuck on a bug that made the game crash after leaving the first temple. After testing several ifferent theories I still couldn't pinpoint the exact cause of this problem. It had something to do with placing the crystal in the pedestal, but what?

After a good night sleep I finally figured it out. It was all caused by giving the player the candle before temple 1 and placing the power glove in temple 1. That way the game got completely confused when I placed the crystal in the pedestal while having the items of the first 2 temples from the original game. Using the function "change palace item" in the sideview editor of NJOSRO should solve the problem. Though it turned out my version of the editor was bugged too, so it didn't set the palace item correctly. So, using an older version of the editor finally solved this issue. Link can now leave the first temple and continue his quest! 

[wmacmonagle]

Add me on Beta tester list.

Pretty Please.

Many thank you,

William

[Ok Impala!]

I made a lot of progress in the last few weeks and adjusted the % points on the original post accordingly. The second area gave me a hard time with lots of unexpected behavior and bugs. Zelda II is a very picky game, so it easy to mess things up and get the player stuck. For example, I was having a lot of trouble with the boss of Temple 2 that kept re-appearing after you defeated him. There was also a door in this castle that kept disappearing, even when I moved it to a whole different screen.

Guess what, changes made to spawn bytes get only reset when you erase all save files from the game, so just creating a new file isn't enough. At least it didn't in my emulator. Thanks to NJOSRO for the final clue to solve this problem. Area two (the desert world) is now completed, and the game is completely playable up until temple 2. I hope to start beta testing on the first two areas soon. That way I can use the feedback directly to improve upcoming areas too! 

The Zelda II - Amida website is up and running. Check it out at: (https://www.okimpala.net/zelda-ii-amida).

Next I first would like to experiment a bit with reducing the encounter rates on different area types. If anyone has some data on that, would be great!

To close this update, some new screenshots of area 1 & 2. Have a nice day you all!

[Trax]

If you want to dig into the game's inner workings, check out my disassemblies of Zelda II, and the RAM Map :

http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank0.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank1.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank2.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank3.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank4.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank5.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank6.txt
http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank7.txt

http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2rammap.txt

It's ASM, so it may be a bit daunting, but there are lots of comments in there.

For Overworld Demons, check in Bank 0, roughly from 0229 to 04AA. The data tables of interest are at 0229 :

0229: Table for Initial X/Y Positions of Demons (8 bytes)

58 76 98 7A 38 74 B8 7C

xxxx ....   Y Location of Demon * 16
.... xxxx   X Location of Demon * 16

11 = Top-Left of Screen
CC = Bottom-Right of Screen

----

0231: 00 05 04 06 07 08 0A   Index according to Terrain Type (7 bytes)
0238: 00 01 01 00 01 00 00   Index in table at 0229 (close or far) (7 bytes)
023F: 00 20 18 18 20 09 03   Delay before next wave (7 bytes)
0246: 00 0A 0A 18 18 30 30   Delay before Demon wave disappears (7 bytes)

04 = Desert
05 = Grass
06 = Forest
07 = Swamp
08 = Graveyard
09 = Road
0A = Lava

This is what I know so far. Table 231 associates Terrain Type with the indexes in the other 3 tables. They are not exactly in numerical order, and 09 is not there because it's the code for Path Tiles, and they make Demons act differently. Table 238 sets the possible coordinates of Demons when they appear. Value of 0 means "close" and value of 1 means "far". That's what it represents in the original game, but it actually just means what half of the table at 0229 to choose from. Table 23F represents the delay before the next wave of Demons appears. Table 246 is the time before a Demon disappears by itself.

The values in tables 23F and 246 are not frames (that would be too fast), but they are not seconds, either. It's something in between, likely blocks of 16 frames. This would make the second Demon wave in Lava appear after 48 frames, or about 3/4 second, which seems ballpark in testing.

So, here it is. You can control how far Demons appear from Link, how long they stay on screen, and how long it takes for the next wave. You can fully cancel Demons for a specific Terrain Type by having 0 in table 246 at the corresponding index. Also, the first wave of Demons always take a minimum of 8 units of time (8 * 16 = 128 / 60 = about 2 seconds) regardless of Terrain Type. This value is at 087A. Setting this value to 0 makes Demons appear instantly, while a value of FF represents a delay of 68 seconds.

[Ok Impala!]

Wow Trax! Thank you so much! This is extremely helpful! I will surely dig deeper into your other notes as well. 

Thanks to a Game Genie code created by Tony Hedstrom I was already able to turn off encounters completely for all terrain types. For people interested:

Address 349, change F0 -> D0

But I'd rather turn them off for specific terrain types, and on for other types. With your information I could just do that. This is really cool!

I'm currently experimenting to increase the amount of towns in the game by have two different area indexes warp to the same town, but with different scenes and people. Making it look like it's a completely new town. Problem is that there seems to be a really limited amount of area indexes to use. So, now I've tried to use lower digit area indexes for towns.

For example, when I use area index 5 in east Hyrule. That would result in:

(5-44)/2)+4 = -15 . Since there are 8 town slots available, you'd have to divide that outcome by 8. Resulting in -1 . And since we're in East, you'd end up in Nabooru. For now, that seems to be the case, as the sign at the beginning says I'm in Nabooru. Though, the wise man plainly refuses to give me any magic now...

So, this might work for towns in which only information is given. Maybe I should reserve the magic for the "real" area indexes of the original game? I'll see what I can find! 

[Fox Cunning]

This is looking great! I wasn't a big fan of Zelda II, but I'd definitely play this hack.

[lexluthermiester]

Yeah, this does look good!

[Ok Impala!]

I'm making progress week by week and adjusted the OP accordingly. Area 3 is completed. This area will mainly revolve around a prison town underground. Link gets stuck there, and the only way out is through the Prison Temple. Will he be able to escape this horrible place?

Some screenshots of the underground town of Pylos, the Prison Caves and Prison Temple. And a swampy overworld right before the imprisonment.

[Trax]

I like what I see, Impala. Nice graphics.

However, important note, you can't have 3 locked doors back to back like that, it won't work. The game engine only allocates one bit per screen (4 screens per area) for whatever object is in that screen. By item, I mean anything that should disappear permanently when taken, even after leaving the world. Items (Candle, etc.), experience bags, keys, Heart and Magic containers, defeated bosses, crystal placements. Red Jars are allowed to regenerate. If you did that, unlocking one door would make all the others disappear as well, assuming they are in the same screen.

Also, the locked door with the Kidnapped Child is nice, but you should make sure it doesn't break any logic in palaces, for example, like having a palace key used for such a door. You don't want to create an unwinnable situation.

Also, the Chandeliers in North Palace (Area 0) can be moved vertically or horizontally, or removed altogether, if you prefer that. The code and data tables are right at the beginning of Bank 0, starting at 00D5.

[Ok Impala!]

Thanks for highlighting that door problem, it made me realize that I should've know this couldn't work.

Doors are pretty nasty, as they behave just like elevators. When you try to add more than 1 to a scene, only the rightmost door will appear. So, technically my screenshots wasn't even feasible. Until I found out I could change an enemy into a door. So two of the doors you see are enemies. That's also why I didn't notice the effect you described. If you open these doors, no spawn bit will trigger. So, you can open one door and leave the room. After you re-enter that one door is still gone and the others are still there.

But you can guess what the problem is with this. When you leave the temple, and re-enter, all monsters will respawn. And these doors will respawn too... So this doesn't work either.

Only solution is moving two doors to other scenes. Too bad... since I liked the "maximum security" idea with three locks. Oh well... that's Zelda II with all it's limitations for you. 

There is no way to skip the child and enter the next temple. I made sure there is a guardian at the entrance, which you can only defeat if you've saved the child first. 

[Trax]

Yes, it's weird that you can place a Locked Door as both an enemy or a map Object. Maybe it's something that went on in development and they changed their programming structure, but they left the Locked Door Enemy in the game.

One thing I said that was not exactly true. I said you can have only one Locked Door per screen, but it's actually one Locked Door per area. Same for Elevators, one per area.

[Ok Impala!]

The game is full of these weird things, especially with things like pitfalls and elevators. I had this one bug where Link would instantly die when he took an elevator to a scene above him. The alignment was good, there was no lava or something. I tried moving the other screen items in the room one by one. Turns out it was caused by the position of a bridge. Placing it one row lower solved the problem. Maybe there were too many objects on that specific line? But why wasn't it a problem when I would enter this screen from the left or right and took the elevator down? This was only a problem when entering the scene from below.  These little tings take up a lot of time while testing the game. Anyway, bridge a row lower, and moving on! 

Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it. It helps me to find flaws and game breaking stuff!