Currently unnamed Link's Awakening hack

[katage]

Wow. How did I miss this? I thought the only two major Link's Awakening hacks were Jeville's Hard Awakening and my New Awakening. This sounds really ambitious. But I can't download from the dropbox link. It might just be because I'm in China and things have been wonky here Internet-wise here for a while, but could you post a new download link?

[Tetrahedrus]

Well at least your hack and Jeville's are completed; I still have hope that mine can achieve that status someday, but I just don't know. I haven't tried your hack yet since I just haven't had much time for anything like that, but it sounds really cool and I would certainly like to play through it sometime. Maybe it'll even inspire me...

The link works fine for me, but I can replace it with a MediaFire link. That will even be preferable since I can actually see how many times my hack will be downloaded from this point on (probably a small number since just about anyone who has been interested has already gotten it by this point).

[katage]

New download link worked for me. I played through until I got the dead end signpost in the rapids.

I like the new dungeon, though the new item order confused me a little. I can't complain about lacking the sword, since my hack and Jeville's both withhold it for varying amounts of time. Replacing the Tail Cave boss was a sensible decision, considering the difficulty of the original and the new one. The apparently new coloration for the boss was a creepy-looking improvement over the last. The Flippers were an odd surprise.

One thing that needs to be done is to remove the Like-Like on map 31 of the overworld. It is placed directly in the player's way, the player has no means of recovering the shield from the Like-Like if the Like-Like should rush up and take it. Going back to town is something of a hassle, which I mostly avoided by saving and quitting in the nearby telephone house so I could reload nearby, before trying to get past the Like-Like. I think I lost the shield three times out of four tries.

For a moment I thought it was a game-breaking mistake, since I couldn't go to the castle to get a new shield. Then I remembered that in the normal game, that shop is in town. I've been testing my own hack so long I forgot the shopkeeper isn't at the castle.

I like the textual changes. Link's Awakening has always had some kooky and surreal dialogue, I exaggerated the effect in my own hack, and I like the new kookiness your changes introduce.

It's a pity it's still short. This has been here a really long time and it should be entirely possible to finish it, and do so rather quickly. I strongly encourage you to make a time investment in finishing the mod. I finished mine in two weeks, though it took a little while afterwards to sort out some mistakes. You should be able to churn out a new dungeon fairly quickly.

One thing I don't understand is how you managed to reorganize the first dungeon. The vanilla version's rooms are all shaped like a Moldorm, with a couple empty rooms that make up its eyes. I didn't know you could change that shape. I know you can change the appearance of the mini-map, but not the actual layout of the dungeon. All I knew I could do is reroute the place, changing the doors and the contents of a room. How did you restructure it?

Trying both my hack and Jeville's would probably give you an excellent sense of what you would want in your hack, and what would work. I took a lot of inspiration from Jeville's hack (although much of it was based on things I didn't like about Jeville's hack).

I've noticed a distinct stylistic difference between our respective hacks so far. Jeville has mostly preserved the basic structure of the dungeons while introducing a group of narrowly beatable, highly challenging puzzles, in between otherwise normal rooms. There are little bottlenecks where the player will get stuck for extended periods of time before figuring out how to move on. The place in Bottle Grotto where you need to get a Piece of Power to run against the current of one of those vortex enemies was an excellent example. Only after beating it twice or thrice was I able to do it without save states and not die from the falling damage (falling does half a heart of damage per fall, and with 5 hearts max and a potion to boot, you fall too often to survive). My hack reroutes the dungeons a little more than Jeville's, but also fails to reconstruct them as ULAH does. Like Jeville, I put in puzzles that operate on weird quirks of the game engine, which might be too obscure for the player, and I tend to throw in more of the nastiest enemies. My rooms tend to be very dense, and so they usually have straight walls, which might feel monotonous (I don't know), to maximize the amount of stuff I can cram in. There's also the recoloring thing. I would like to see another recoloring of the game, just to see how somebody else would design it. I don't think the original coloration was done very well. Contrast the colors of LADX with those of Oracle of Seasons, or even Oracle of Ages.

ULAH so far has done a lot to change the dialogue and feel of the early game. The puzzles do some things I haven't seen before--rooms 3 and 16 of Tail Cave are the two examples I would cite--which is very welcome. It also avoids the sudden difficulty spikes in Hard Awakening, nor is the overall level of difficulty really outrageous, like the Face Shrine in New Awakening. The rooms of ULAH's Tail Cave are of similar difficulty, and since none of them is an absolute nightmare, the dungeon plays well. Some previous posters seem to have been frustrated by the new item order, but if you resolve that and design the following dungeons the way you designed Tail Cave--but maybe without moving back and forth from the overworld--your hack would be very unlikely to cause great frustration when finished, and frustrating puzzles are probably the greatest weakness of hacks in general (an early version of my hack had FIVE minibosses in the same room in the Face Shrine!). The designer simply doesn't have the same perspective as the player, and so he or she is likely to design puzzles that players simply do not get.

Please keep up the good work. I've been thinking that in the future we might work together to create a merged hack that combines the best aspects of each one.

[Tetrahedrus]

First of all, thank you for trying out the trial version and giving me your feedback on it. While the new boss coloration wasn't intended as I previously stated, you think it's good the way it is? I guess it's not such a bad color scheme. Some bosses haven't had their colors messed up (the bosses I used for levels 2 and 3 are unchanged), but I think Evil Eagle's colors might be, since he is fought in a side-scrolling room just like Angler Fish.

That Like-Like problem is something that definitely should have been dealt with, but I am surprised no one had brought it up before since that was a pretty big problem. Thanks for the comments on my dialogue. Hopefully I can keep it up throughout the hack. As for how I restructured the dungeon, I'll show you a GIF in which I move Tail Cave's instrument room (Map 02) to the right of the entrance room.

Just click on an area in the minimap and change the "Map" value.

I've already played and beaten Hard Awakening and loved every map of it (except for a room in Bottle Grotto and a room in Key Cavern, grrr). I'm quite interested in your hack as well and I will definitely try it out sometime.

As for us collaborating, I do like that idea. It would be interesting to see what the result would be (especially if Jeville also wanted in), but I haven't exactly shown myself to have the utmost diligence. We'll just have to see. If I can get back into the swing of things and work on ULAH consistently and FINISH it, then maybe my interest in giving time to hacking will stay afloat and I'll be reliable enough to work with.

[katage]

Thanks for the minimap advice. I just used it to reconstruct Key Cavern in my own hack.

Unfortunately, Jeville apparently has no interest in a joint project, or even a new hack at all, so the joint thing may not work out.

[Tetrahedrus]

Well that's a shame about Jeville. What's not a shame however is the fact that I've made actual progress on my hack in which I finished up Level 4 and completed Level 5! I am more than halfway through with the dungeons, although the dungeons usually get longer as I go on, so that's a downer, but at least you know that I've been working on it again lately.

It's been 369 days since I last posted screenshots, which is totally uncool. How about we end that drought right now? Here are some not-too-terribly-exciting screenshots of the fourth and fifth dungeons:

   
   
   

I guess I'm not being totally honest. I am not actually 100% done with these dungeons; I do plan to give them new palettes and I would like to change the look of the floor tiles, but I'll worry about that later. The point is that as of now dungeons 1-5 are fully playable in the way I intended.

While I hope this is encouraging news to you guys, I am slow at making this hack (which should be obvious at this point). I don't believe that the amount of days until new screenshots of a completed (or near-completed) Level 6 will be in the triple digits, but who knows. Now to respond to a comment from January:

One annoyance was a room with two of those wall-hugging wisps (where the beak is found). It seems like it is impossible to get through without getting hit once.

The intent is for the player to walk close to the edge of the pits so they can avoid the sparks, although it may be easy to fall down the pit. If people find that extremely annoying, then I can alter that room no problem.

[Jeville]

Yeah, I'm not interested in collaborating. It's just a solo thing for me but I can agree to playtest which I will soon, so I can't comment on the hack now. Thanks for the gif, I too wondered and didn't know I can reconstruct dungeon layouts with the tool. It might drive me to do another LA hack someday, and your hack can help to inspire me. New Awakening too, of course.

Don't worry about taking too long. It's important to treat it as if it's going to be your last. It took me more than two years on and off, and that's without changing the dungeon layouts that your hack is doing.

[katage]

I can't wait to try out those new dungeons. They look very unfamiliar and interesting.

I don't think you can change the appearance of the floor tiles of the dungeons, aside from editing the colors. The pattern on tiles D and F are set by dungeon (Face Shrine and Key Cavern have identical patterns, but otherwise they're unique for each dungeon). The same goes for the block tiles, A6 and A7, and the bombable block, A9, which are the same everywhere but Key Cavern and Face Shrine, and C0, a one-eyed statue in most dungeons, but a helmet/soldier design in Key Cavern and Face Shrine, and an eagle's face in Eagle's Tower.

But I notice in the screenshots you have Angler's Tunnel's floor tiles with Catfish's Maw's miniboss. Did you move him to Angler's Tunnel?

[Tetrahedrus]

I understand, Jeville. It would be crazy awesome if you did create another hack (especially if ULAH and NA inspire you).

I don't think you can change the appearance of the floor tiles of the dungeons, aside from editing the colors.

It certainly can't be done from within LALE, although it would be very convenient. My currently preferred graphics editor is YY-CHR. Speaking of LALE, I sure would love to see Fatories make more improvements to that program (like fixing the OW warp system and implementing the things he mentioned in this video), but I'm sure he has more important things to worry about. LALE is still awesome and very useful as is. I don't know if I'll be able to design floor tiles more interesting than the already existing ones, but I'd like to try at least. Maybe I can solicit help on designing new tiles. Maybe I can have a contest! It'd be fun to sort through all zero of the entries. Anyway, yes, I moved Master Stalfos from Level 5 to Level 4.

The sixth dungeon is about 50% complete.

[Tetrahedrus]

How done is Level 6? Done enough. Might need some further decoration later.

     

Threw in the Level 7 screenie there just to show that I am indeed working on it. I have only just begun on it though, so it'll be quite some time until I can show more of it off.

[CyberFox]

How about calling the hack "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Escape from Tomorrow"?

[ShadowOne333]

What about these titles"

*LoZ: Link's Re-awakening.
*LoZ: New Awakening

Might be poor concepts but I would give more names if you could give out more detailed about what the hack is focused on and what are the main changes that will be done by the end.

[katage]

New Awakening is taken already. It's the name of my hack, actually. So back off!

Just kidding. But Re-awakening could work, depending on what Tetrahedrus thinks. I've been wondering myself what a new title could be, since Hard Awakening and New Awakening are the most intuitive hack names, and both are already taken.

Or you could just call it ULAH, and never explain the acronym on the download page.

[dACE]

Why not call it 'Zelda - Inception' - a dream within another dream...

It would be like Link experiencing a dream while still on Koholint...

/dACE

[Tetrahedrus]

How about calling the hack "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Escape from Tomorrow"?

While deciding on a title for ULAH is the furthest thing from my mind right now, I cannot deny that I kinda like that one.

What about. . ."LoZ: Link's Re-awakening"

That's not a bad one either. Since the other major hacks that are completed (that I know of) are entitled Hard Awakening and New Awakening, a name like Re-awakening could sorta fit in alongside them perhaps.

Why not call it 'Zelda - Inception' - a dream within another dream...

It would be like Link experiencing a dream while still on Koholint...

That's a funny title. If a Link's Awakening hack had a title like that, I'd expect that the very first thing to happen is Link entering the Dream Shrine and falling asleep. After that, the overworld would have the music of the lower level of the Dream Shrine.

I've been wondering myself what a new title could be

Well, start wondering harder! Whose job is it to come up with a title? Mine? ..oh, right.

I've made little progress with the game since my last update, but it has everything to do with important life stuff and nothing to do with lack of ideas or lack of interest.

[Tetrahedrus]

Before it gets to be three whole months without an update, I thought I'd give a small one. I had been working on my seventh dungeon off and on for a while and it was even near completion, but towards the end I just wasn't feeling it. It seemed completely boring, so I'll start over with a new layout. There go my hopes for that 2019 release date.

[ShadowOne333]

Before it gets to be three whole months without an update, I thought I'd give a small one. I had been working on my seventh dungeon off and on for a while and it was even near completion, but towards the end I just wasn't feeling it. It seemed completely boring, so I'll start over with a new layout. There go my hopes for that 2019 release date.

Don't worry!
If you feel like the dungeon layout didn't fit or felt boring, it is entirely your decision to revamp it again.
It is for a better cause though, might lead to a much well designed dungeon.

Maybe we can all see this hack's release along with Avengers 4: Infinity Wars and the Justice League 2 movies.

[Jigglysaint]

That reminds me.  I should really get back to finishing up some of my hacks.  I got seriously burnt out with Oracles and kind of stopped hacking for a long time(must have been a few years since I touched a Zelda rom).  With the hacks I added, I really should finish it.  The idea is to have a game that's all dungeon that you have to go back and forth doing a whole bunch of things.  It features more flexible events that allow one event from one dungeon to affect other things in other places.  It also features customizable screen boundries that allow for more complex side scrolling areas as well as screen boundry warps.  Furthermore, it's possible to have multiple warps on one dungeon screen.  A few other features involve being able to set the floor type for each room to any of the 256 tiles instead of the first 16 and individual songs for each screen.

I should get back into hacking.

[Celice]

That reminds me.  I should really get back to finishing up some of my hacks.  I got seriously burnt out with Oracles and kind of stopped hacking for a long time(must have been a few years since I touched a Zelda rom).  With the hacks I added, I really should finish it.  The idea is to have a game that's all dungeon that you have to go back and forth doing a whole bunch of things.  It features more flexible events that allow one event from one dungeon to affect other things in other places.  It also features customizable screen boundries that allow for more complex side scrolling areas as well as screen boundry warps.  Furthermore, it's possible to have multiple warps on one dungeon screen.  A few other features involve being able to set the floor type for each room to any of the 256 tiles instead of the first 16 and individual songs for each screen.

I should get back into hacking.

After hearing all that?

fuck yes you should 

[Bahamut ZERO]

Woah, how have I not noticed this hack? I like those dungeon layouts. When it's done and ready I'll certainly play the hell out of it!

If you're still on the hunt for names for your hack, I came up with a couple off the top of my head:

Legend of Zelda: Dream of the Wind Fish

Legend of Zelda: Curse of the Wind Fish

Legend of Zelda: Koholint Returns

Legend of Zelda: Link's Nightmare

Legend of the Wind Fish: Koholint's Curse

Legend of Zelda: Insomnia

Legend of Zelda: Link's Koholint Island Chili Cookoff

Legend of Zelda: Maron Gone Wild!


Alright, that's more than a couple. Had some time to kill and was taking a break from reading through some hex tutorials. Those last two names are jokes of course, but if you or anyone else sees one they like, by all means feel free to use!