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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Legend of Zelda NES - 2nd Quest Screen Layout Changes

« on: May 19, 2022, 01:19:28 pm »

The $6A09 etc correspond to the screens data in memory. One or more of those values will need to change. The data that gets put into memory comes from ROM bank 6 (search for "Tables for Overworld Screens Attributes"). All 6 tables get stored in memory starting at $687E. The second quest just overwrites a few places to make the corresponding changes (screen id, cave destination, cave exit location, etc.)

According to the code snippet I posted before, it's overwriting data in tables 1, 3, and 5. Study the tables and then look at the bytes that are being overwritten to understand why they're being overwritten. Then make your changes based on what you learned.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Legend of Zelda NES - 2nd Quest Screen Layout Changes

« on: May 18, 2022, 06:33:06 pm »

It sounds like this is what you're looking for. It patches the attribute table directly in memory. You should be able to figure out which bytes you want to change.

Code: [Select]

Change Overworld for 2nd Quest

1812D: A0 07 LDY #$07 ; Y = 07

1812F: BE 5F81 LDX $815F,Y
18132: B9 6781 LDA $8167,Y
18135: 9D FE68 STA $68FE,X ; Screen Attributes Table 1
18138: 88 DEY
18139: 10 F4 BPL $1812F

1813B: A9 7B LDA #$7B ; A = 7B
1813D: 8D 096A STA $6A09 ; Screen Attributes Table 3
18140: A9 7B LDA #$7B ; A = 7B
18142: 8D 3A6A STA $6A3A ; Screen Attributes Table 3
18145: A9 5A LDA #$5A ; A = 5A
18147: 8D 726A STA $6A72 ; Screen Attributes Table 3
1814A: A9 72 LDA #$72 ; A = 72
1814C: 8D BA68 STA $68BA ; Screen Attributes Table 1
1814F: A9 72 LDA #$72 ; A = 72
18151: 8D F268 STA $68F2 ; Screen Attributes Table 1
18154: A9 01 LDA #$01 ; A = 01
18156: 8D 3A6B STA $6B3A ; Screen Attributes Table 5
18159: A9 00 LDA #$00 ; A = 00
1815B: 8D 726B STA $6B72 ; Screen Attributes Table 5

1815E: 60 RTS

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 17, 2022, 06:50:59 pm »

Here's the latest 3.0b4. Changes are as follows:

• A new dungeon boss in level 7 (inspired by Outlands). See screen below.
• A new optional patch full_health to start/continue with full health.
• Update the remove_automap patch. Thanks erpster2!

Thanks to everyone who continues to help with testing! It's getting close.


May 17, 2022, 07:04:07 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

on the other hand but unrelated, I'm happy to report that the updated reveal_secrets.ips patch works correctly ONLY when using the online patch tool from romhacking.net; Floating IPS {which is my usual patch tool} has problems applying the reveal_secrets.ips patch onto the Zelda A New Light game and generates error message "the patch was applied but appears scrambled or malformed." as that tool can't properly do it

I'll take a look at this as well.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 07, 2022, 07:19:47 pm »

I finally had a chance to test the hack on real hardware today!

That's an SNROM cartridge of Spot with the battery and related components added, along with an adapter board from MouseBiteLabs which replaces the PRG-ROM with flashable memory. The tiny black and white television is an old karaoke machine found at a thrift shop.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 07, 2022, 11:38:34 am »

Hey gzip, what is the level 9 secret patch for? Is this the same as reveal secrets or what is the difference? Thanks

Hey netux, many people have struggled to find level 9  so that patch replaces the hidden passage to level 9 with a normal, obvious passageway.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 09:45:55 pm »

Yay, it works, thanks for your dedication on this project 

Thanks for your diligence with testing.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 08:52:23 pm »

Doh! Let's try that again. Link above updated.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 07:35:08 pm »

Ok, we'll go with that then. Thanks for verifying the various patches!

Here's the latest 3.0b3. Other than the hang fix there's a text fix for the optional sword patch and it also replaces four of the duplicate overworld screens (south beach, east beach, death mountain, level 3 entrance).

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 05:53:09 pm »

Great, that's a start. I wish I could reproduce the hang though, let me know if you can think of anything else that could be at play.

This is a long shot but ignore the previous patch and try this one instead, after the others. And just to clarify, does the level_9_secret patch have to be applied as well to get the hang?

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 04:19:26 pm »

Try applying this patch after the others and let me know if it helps. I still can't reproduce the hang but that will help me narrow it down to a suspect piece of code.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 04, 2022, 10:33:33 am »

Hmm, I wonder what I'm missing to be able to reproduce this. There's no problem w/ reveal_secrets.ips in 3.0b?

Could the patcher make a difference? I've been using this:
https://www.romhacking.net/patch/
May 04, 2022, 02:52:42 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Tried on retroarch with the same cores, no go. Not sure what else to try...

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: May 03, 2022, 06:07:50 pm »

Hi erpster2,

I'm unable to reproduce that issue with the one optional patch or even with all of them applied. I even tried on the exact emulators that you mentioned. Are you sure something else isn't going on? The thing about that patch is that it's only a data change so I'm not sure how it could cause a hang.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: April 24, 2022, 05:03:52 pm »

Here's the latest, thanks to lexluthermiester for continuing to test and find glitches!

Changes include a fix for the overworld secret passage, rounded corners in dungeon item and passage screens as well as overworld caves, a new clue from the old lady, graphic tweaks to triforce in HUD and dungeons, a title screen corruption fix related to automap, and various fixes and refinements to dungeons and overworld.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Legend of Zelda NES - Fake Wall ROM Offset

« on: April 21, 2022, 08:59:41 pm »

Yeah, they include the 16 byte header offset.

I started out with FCEUX as well but found that Mesen is a much better emulator for hacking.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Legend of Zelda NES - Fake Wall ROM Offset

« on: April 20, 2022, 10:49:35 pm »

Hi WileyHacker,

There are a number of data points related to the secret passage in the northeast corner:

Code: [Select]

(headered addresses)
1EEAA Screen where the secret passage is found
1EEB5 X position of secret passage
1EEBB Y position of secret passage
1EA9C Screen where "found secret" chime plays
If you install my debug file in Mesen you can step though the code starting at memory location $EE99.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Zelda 1 tile mapping

« on: April 16, 2022, 02:50:49 pm »

Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can change that palette without affecting other things. It's not as easy as changing a single byte anyway. A bit of code seems to do the trick though, here's a patch (not thoroughly tested).

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: April 09, 2022, 01:41:29 pm »

Been playing through. Not finding any issues. Is there a second quest?

Thanks lex! The second quest is basically the same as the original with a few minor tweaks for compatibility. I'm pretty sure you played through it before and helped find a few bugs.

Here's the latest. Changes include an optional patch to show burnable bushes and bombable walls (very subtle 1 px change, and a brick pattern difference in dungeons), graphical refinement for the dungeon doors, a new skull block on dungeon entrance screens, and a fix for the walkability of new blocks.

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Personal Projects / Re: NES Games Disassembly (possible requests)

« on: March 28, 2022, 08:41:26 pm »

Hi Cyneprepou4uk,

What do you think about any of these?

• Super Bat Puncher
• Micro Mages
• Maniac Mansion

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A New Light

« on: March 28, 2022, 08:36:44 pm »

hope that dungeon 9 (the very last dungeon) will get remade in an upcoming version

Here it is folks, the long awaited dungeon 9. Enjoy this sneak peak as I continue working on a few things.

Feel free to PM me if you run into any problems in dungeon 9 or elsewhere.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Zelda 1 Bank Swapping?

« on: March 25, 2022, 10:42:55 pm »

Just wanted to add some final thoughts here.

I'm thinking about expanding the ROM, duplicating all the banks (except for the fixed bank) and adding a bit of logic to the bank switching routine which checks the quest number first. If it's the second quest then add 8 to the bank number before switching. This would allow a completely new set of assets for the second quest, including graphics, screens, and enemies, both in the overworld and dungeons. Essentially an entirely new game would be possible for the second quest. All the current second quest logic and data would also be removed to allow for a bigger overworld and/or dungeons (funny how the second quest was only added due to a design mistake which only used half of the available space).

I'd also like to revisit the idea of scrapping the preset columns in the overworld and allowing freeform screen creation similar to what you did for Infinite Hyrule, only adding RLE compression to the screen definitions to reduce the space required (compressing rows instead of columns). It shouldn't be too hard to modify my Zelda Map Generator to run an experiment of converting and compressing the screens to see what that would look like space-wise.

Anyway, I have a few other projects I should wrap up before getting into something new. Really this would be along the same lines of what's already in the works, but first things first. Not sure if I should even open this can of worms since these ideas would most likely require new editing tools to be really useful.