Zelda 1 Redux / The Legend of Zelda Redux

[tacoschip]

Dungeon 3: Perils of Darkness Dungeon Theme (similar to the original Zelda 1 Dungeon theme but with some changes in instrumentation I think)

They share the exact same music sheets but Perils shortens the note periods, so it has less "reverb" and gives it a .. harpsichord-type texture? I want to call it more plucky.

[tacoschip]

I'll need some ideas as to what optional patches to create for it.

Like the Diagonal Swing, you could opt for a default middle ground - Zelda + New Light.
- Purists can have Zelda only music.

- Modern adventurists can have the deluxe 4-pack (or 8-pack if someone becomes that clever). Track 4 (Triforce Power) is from a newer? entry in the series, and is sporty but "forward-futuristic" when compared to Zelda 2.


I wouldn't give more music options though. Limit everyone's choices - the more you tease, the higher people demand.

[tacoschip]

I am also not sure which flashcart might be the recommended one to play this hack, since this uses a certain quirk of MMC1 that I don't think any other game uses to create animation frames.

MMC1 requires CHR-RAM? So if the ones with crashing disable the overworld automap, their problems should go away?

But can't they use MMC5 as the easier backup option??

[Fuzzy_Dunlop]

But can't they use MMC5 as the easier backup option??

I haven't tried that yet, but I believe the MMC5 version is no longer being maintained and is outdated at this point.

[ShadowOne333]

Like the Diagonal Swing, you could opt for a default middle ground - Zelda + New Light.
- Purists can have Zelda only music.

- Modern adventurists can have the deluxe 4-pack (or 8-pack if someone becomes that clever). Track 4 (Triforce Power) is from a newer? entry in the series, and is sporty but "forward-futuristic" when compared to Zelda 2.


I wouldn't give more music options though. Limit everyone's choices - the more you tease, the higher people demand.

Yeah I do agree, I think having options for only Zelda 1 Theme and Zelda 1 + A New Light is good enough, and the main hack can have all 4 tracks.

MMC1 requires CHR-RAM? So if the ones with crashing disable the overworld automap, their problems should go away?

But can't they use MMC5 as the easier backup option??

From what I know, I think it does. Not precisely sure what kind of dark magic Fiskbit used for it, but I do believe it is based on CHR-RAM. Here's the code for it:
https://github.com/ShadowOne333/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Redux/blob/master/code/animation/animate.asm

The MMC5 I stopped maintaining because the amount of work to maintain both versions was just getting a bit hectic, so I opted to maintain only the MMC1 version instead.
MMC5 version might still be updated to be on pair, I believe the only hack which might have issues with MMC5 is the Dungeon Automap, since the MMC5 automap works differently from MMC1, but I still haven't tested it.

[ShadowOne333]

I have created the optional patches for the Dungeon music, they can be found in the GitHub repository:
https://github.com/ShadowOne333/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Redux

Main Redux has the 4 tracks ported by tacoschip as default now, with each one playing from Dungeons 1-4 in order (Zelda 1, New Light, Perils and then Triforce Power), and then they repeat for Dungeons 5-8, with 9 still having the same theme.
There's two optional patches I made related to the Dungeon music:

• Zelda 1 Dungeon Theme Only - Makes it so that the Dungeon music always plays the Zelda 1 Dungeon theme for all Dungeons (except 9)
• Zelda 1 & A New Light Dungeon Themes - Makes it so that the Dungeon music interchanges between Zelda 1's and A New Light's dungeon themes, with Zelda 1's taking the odd Dungeons (1, 3, 5, 7) and A New Light's taking the even Dungeons (2, 4, 6, 8 )

Test them out, and if nothing odd happens, I'll finally go ahead and push these changes to the RHDN page

[nanashi89]

Anyway you can implement playing as Zelda instead of Link?

[IndianaRoy]

Hi, I just finished a play trough of the first quest. I loved the changes although I would like to have an optional patch to restore the old way of arrows, with the hits to secrets, extra bombs and new rupees limit I ended up with way to much of them and feel like I could have the arrows use rupees with out issues
  And a quick question, I don't know if it was the optional patches or something else but when I entered dungeons 8 and 9 I started with the full map without picking it up. Is there some way to share the issue?

[tacoschip]

Do you have save or sram file before entering Dungeon 8 or 9? Which patches were used, and what order?

[kaine23]

Streamed this a few weeks ago and people loved it

[IndianaRoy]

Do you have save or sram file before entering Dungeon 8 or 9? Which patches were used, and what order?

Savefiles (Mesen2)

• Better Font
• Full Health at Start
• Full Health After Death
• Reworked Title Screen
• Recoloured Dungeons

[berrykite]

Suggest:
- Ganon has own boss music
- Dungeon pause screen shows unvisited rooms if automap collected


Question:
- Why does FDS sound fx are different than NES PCM? Door opening, Link die, Enemy hit, many others. I'd think they should sound all similar, like Secret door chime or Sword magic beam are close enough.

[SimplyDanny]

Suggest:
- Ganon has own boss music
- Dungeon pause screen shows unvisited rooms if automap collected


Question:
- Why does FDS sound fx are different than NES PCM? Door opening, Link die, Enemy hit, many others. I'd think they should sound all similar, like Secret door chime or Sword magic beam are close enough.

FDS sounds different due to the fact that FDS has a wavetable sound channel instead of a triangle, which allows it to produce more dynamic notes. Because of this, a lot of the wavetable sounds had to be adapted to the triangle/noise/DCPM channels when transferring over the game onto a Famicom/NES cartridge

[berrykite]

I thought the FDS door opening sound was terrible, compared to the NES PCM one. Unless it's an emulator bug, it doesn't sound the same at all to me so I was wondering if they invented a new one. But I do like some of the FDS ones; maybe someone can rip the FDS sound code and port it to NES.


Another idea. Instead of visible hints which takes away some of the excitement of finding a secret, play a sfx if Link hits the tile with the sword.

[ifightdragons]

Another idea. Instead of visible hints which takes away some of the excitement of finding a secret, play a sfx if Link hits the tile with the sword.

That means a new player will have to hit almost every tile in the game to find secrets... That's just poor and not fun game design.

[erpster2]

Anyway you can implement playing as Zelda instead of Link?

try using this (use "player only" patches and not the "full" patches)

[berrykite]

That means a new player will have to hit almost every tile in the game to find secrets... That's just poor and not fun game design.

Dungeons are small. And when it's an optional patch, 99.99999% people won't use it (at least 2 players).


LTTP you have to poke walls and cut bushes to find hidden holes. Many people won't find it fun anymore. Or Wizardry IV to be fun. Or Castlevania II English vanilla's confusing riddles.


EDIT:
A few Zelda secrets are hidden behind riddles. And Zelda fan pocket didn't want visible secrets either.

Maybe a different blinking color map cursor for unfound overworld hidden secret rooms could work, if you collected enough Triforce pieces.

One of the ports has a white flash fade effect after picking up triforce piece. Possible on NES?


EDIT2:
Dungeon map pickup could show room with treasure.

[Creature667]

Legend of Link .. likely uses a custom music driver. I was really surprised at how the basic channels could produce those tunes, without PCM. I'm unsure if the original engine can handle that many sequences in one dungeon track.



Otherwise .. I'm going to try making a test with New Light alone. Would be interesting to see if extra music can be easily ported to other Zelda hacks. New tracks would require those homebrew Fami composers floating around on Discord or such.
https://github.com/camthesaxman/zeldasource/raw/master/songs.asm

That would be fantastic if it's that simple to place new dungeon music into LoZ1. My one point of contention about this whole line of inquiry is that, while the author gave it their best shot I'm sure, the replacement dungeon music in New Light is how you say in ze Eeeenglish?.... Not Good.

I'm not here to trash on it or be a jerk to that hack's author, because I'm sure it was a valuable learning experience and the rest of that hack is quality, but I wish they had more of a background in music theory and a little more practice on famitracker because it's pretty clearly just the original dungeon music but with the note resonance or timing or something all hepped up on goof balls or fetty or Jenkem or whatever the kids are doing these days for kicks.

Which brings me to my next thing I want to interject into this thread for no good reason, which is that it's a damn shame that not more people are versed in making music for the NES, SNES or Genesis. Because music seems to be the number one thing that nobody knows how to do and that gets left unaltered in even some of the best hacks. But who can blame anyone from being alienated trying to learn NES music composition? Look at how unintuitive writing in famitracker is? How does one learn that E-5 02 A A00 400 is even a note? Who plays that instrument? Daleks? Terminators? This is why I absolutely love the idea behind Famistudio. Because it uses a traditional piano roll style layout for composing your songs just like the megapopular Frooty Loops, Reason or many other electronic music programs. Speaking of, I need to dabble around in Famistudio more just so I CAN step up and fill the demand for new compositions around here... But I digress. I have several amazing projects I'm working with people on currently... But soon...

Apologies for ranting here, gentlemen... and Ladies... And non binary they/them folk alike... Shadow, what you have here is one of my favorite hacks ever in that I find most all of the standard QoL changes (and like half the optional ones) to be excellent. And I know that after hearing the same Zelda1 dungeon loop played over and over for 40 years all of our earballs are yearning for something different. But I implore you that if you are going to get extra music involved in this hack, Choose the best of the best available to you and don't settle for whatever gets your hack released. Check out the Bad Muhfuggas around here for new stuff and implement that. Not just New Light's quaint little diddy because it's there and not the OG dungeon theme. Like, see what Amilgi is doing... They seem to be prolific with exactly this kind of stuff. Hopefully they arent'too busy.

[ifightdragons]

Agreed on the music in New Light being pretty bad.

Just sounds like a broken, messed up version of the original dungeon theme.

[gzip]

Well, just gotta say, the goal was to hack the existing music to make it slower and deeper. It's supposed to sound similar to the original, and it's not trying to be anything more than that. Not great, but for me, it was good enough. Music theory? Famitracker? Right. This is just raw byte hacking. While I can hold my own on the guitar, I'm no composer.

It would be awesome to have an environment where music could be composed using the Zelda engine. Obviously it's not that easy since not much has been done there. Come to think of it, I've never heard anything original, it's all just variations of existing music from the series. So for all the critics out there, if you can produce something better that can be dropped in, I'm all ears.

In the meantime, great job on hacking together what's out there @tacoschip and @ShadowOne333. Who's going to make the NSF?