Zelda - Link's Awakening Hack WIP (update thread)

[IcePenguin]

Hello!  Welcome to the project page for our Link's Awakening hack.  This game has been in development since 2014, with njosro joining in 2019, and has made tons of progress since then.  You'll discover many new things, which weren't found in the original LA, as well as some familiar things from the Oracle games.

The plan for this project is a two part adventure, kind like the Oracle games.  One game will follow the story of Link after leaving Koholint, and the other game will follow Marin as she deals with the loss of her newly found friend.  (Link)  What happened to the island, its residents, and the Wind Fish?

-New worlds.
-New dungeons.
-New music.  njosro has composed some excellent tunes to be enjoyed!
-New scenarios & side quests.
-20 hearts!  55 heart pieces to find!
-New items, improved items, more upgrades.
-New gameplay elements.
-Boss Labyrinth.  Kinda (a little bit) like the Savage Labyrinth in Wind Waker.
-Hero mode.  Select this in game when you create a new file!  Enemies deal x2 damage.
-All new warp system.  Travel to many places in an instant.
-Non-linear dungeon progression.  To a lesser extent in Marin's game.
-Save statues.  Like Majora's Mask, you must save using Owl Statues.
...and more!

(at a later time we will show Link's game, for now all screenshots are from Marin's game)


Some screenshots:

Title Screen:


Marin trying to leave the island:


Beginning cutscene with Marin:


Wetland area:


More rupee variety!  Enemies can drop all rupees up to the 50 rupee.


Complete overhaul of the inventory menu.  You can change pages (screenshot shows
page 1) to see more items and stats like number of enemies killed, % of rooms
explored, % of treasure chests opened, and total play time!


Shopping in town.  New items on display, with an expanded 5th item slot.


Mysterious Cave in the Mysterious Forest.  Go here early on!


A cave... The grass texture isn't square anymore... 


Inside the first dungeon.  Note the owl statue.  These allow you to save your game.
Each dungeon in the game will have a save statue at its entrance, and there will be
many more scattered throughout the land.

[CM30]

Sounds like an interesting hack, though I'm certainly not going to be one to attempt hard mode. Permadeath seems kind of crazy to me, especially in a Zelda game (and with no saving).

[IcePenguin]

Sounds like an interesting hack, though I'm certainly not going to be one to attempt hard mode. Permadeath seems kind of crazy to me, especially in a Zelda game (and with no saving).

It is crazy, I agree.  Haha.    But hopefully someone will enjoy it! 

I probably should have talked about this in the first post, but this hack isn't aimed to be a difficulty hack.  I recommend playing Normal mode.  Hero mode is for those that find Normal mode too easy.  I doubt anyone will play Hardcore mode, but it's there as an option.  (more options is good right?  haha)

Edit:  Just wanted to clarify something on this post, all these years later.  For those who are wondering about this "hard mode", at one point I was planning an optional hard mode where if you die, it's permanent.  I've long since scrapped that idea.  I am aiming to make this hack friendly and fair, and I am past my days of crazy Zelda II difficulty, ha ha.    For now, there is only one difficulty planned.

[PresidentLeever]

Sounds very cool, good luck with the rest of this.

[Bahamut ZERO]

If there were a smiley to depict how mindblowing your project sounds to me, I'd spam the hell out of it right now.

Seriously can't wait to try this! Is the original LA with hero mode it's own hack in itself?

[IcePenguin]

Sounds very cool, good luck with the rest of this.

Thank you!  I hope to finish it soon.

If there were a smiley to depict how mindblowing your project sounds to me, I'd spam the hell out of it right now.

Seriously can't wait to try this! Is the original LA with hero mode it's own hack in itself?

Yeah, it's separate.  I plan to release it alongside the hack. 

[Jigglysaint]

Sounds awesome.  I've tried in the past to make a Link's Awakening hack, and there is one that is complete up to 6 dungeons called Nightmare's Illusion I made a looong time ago when I was with Dragon Eye Studios(if you remember that, you are a hacking vet).  There was also a hack I made a couple years ago that used extra space to make dungeons more flexible.  Among the changes, I overhauled the dungeon events so that many new things could be accomplished.  Stairs and chests that appear after an event could be placed anywhere on screen.  Falling keys too, plus it could be other sprites not just keys that fall down.  Events can be set to read flags from other dungeon rooms, or set to read flags from any point in ram, allowing for all kinds of extra events to be implemented.  I changed it so the game doesn't read the floor tiles from level data, but from another byte, which means all bytes can be used, most especially spikes and pit warps.  The other thing I did was also allow up to 4 warps per screen in dungeons.  The first being included in level data, while the other 3 are enabled in the extra data tables.  Also, I also allowed for custom songs to be played on each screen as it's done in the overworld.  I also forgot that I enabled warps on the sides of the screen for all 4 sides, and for all rooms.  That means making side view mazes that are more than just one screen tall, or dungeon rooms that have exits anywhere along the sides of the screen.

But for all the neat stuff I've done, I am happy to see a full fledged hack of the game come to light.  I was always kind of sad that for all the work I've done to find data on this game, that not many have made or released hacks with re-arranged dungeons and stuff.

[IcePenguin]

Hi Jigglysaint!  Those are some pretty cool things you've done!     Are all these things in your Nightmare's Illusion hack?  I really like the idea of having more than four warps in a given room in dungeons.  There've been many times while making my hack that I've wanted to place more than one warp.  Would you be willing to help out with this?  I've already been able to do a couple of the things you mentioned, but not all of them.  The warp one really sounds amazing, though. 

[Jigglysaint]

Hi Jigglysaint!  Those are some pretty cool things you've done!     Are all these things in your Nightmare's Illusion hack?  I really like the idea of having more than four warps in a given room in dungeons.  There've been many times while making my hack that I've wanted to place more than one warp.  Would you be willing to help out with this?  I've already been able to do a couple of the things you mentioned, but not all of them.  The warp one really sounds amazing, though. 

It's not in my Nightmare's Illusion hack unfortunately.  Also it's been quite a few years since I played with the rom so I need to get re-aquainted with my hacks and figure out how everything works.

[IcePenguin]

Update: I'm gonna release the original LA with hero mode soon.  Originally it was going to be released with this project, but I guess it could be its own thing.  So I was doing some testing with it, since I have a bit of free time this weekend, and found an issue that I didn't notice before.  Boss heart containers don't save like a normal item would.  They act as an enemy sprite, so they always respawn.  I looked at the code for it, but couldn't find a solution.  (yet)

So for now, I'm gonna leave boss heart containers in, but increase enemy damage from 2x to 4x damage.

After I finish another play through of it, I will release it.  (the original LA w/ hero mode)

[njosro]

First off, let me just say that I'm a huge fan of your zelda 2 hacks! Link's Awakening is one of my favourites. I can't wait to try this out!!

Out of curiosity, are you using LALE?

[Jigglysaint]

Update: I'm gonna release the original LA with hero mode soon.  Originally it was going to be released with this project, but I guess it could be its own thing.  So I was doing some testing with it, since I have a bit of free time this weekend, and found an issue that I didn't notice before.  Boss heart containers don't save like a normal item would.  They act as an enemy sprite, so they always respawn.  I looked at the code for it, but couldn't find a solution.  (yet)

So for now, I'm gonna leave boss heart containers in, but increase enemy damage from 2x to 4x damage.

After I finish another play through of it, I will release it.  (the original LA w/ hero mode)

Edit:  Okay I figured it out.  At D9D2, the code for the heart container starts.  Now the fun part.  If you look at the code, there are several opcodes beginning with 21.  Now the screen flags in ram start at D800 for the overworld, D900 for Dungeons 1 to 6, and DA00 for Dungeons 7 and 8.  No entry for Color Dungeon since it has no heart container.  The first one, 21 06 D9, is set so that boss flag($20) at room 06 will let you start with one extra heart container whenever you save and continue the game.  What follows are similar opcodes with similar addresses that each represent a boss room.  Basically, if you want to make the heart container not respawn, you need to ensure the room with the boss matches the rooms defined in the code.  If you are eliminating heart containers altogether, I would just abridge the code to the part where it opens the doors.  Also, you might want to look at the heart piece code as well since I believe it works on the same principle.

Edit 2:  Okay scratch that, I was looking at things wrong.  The only values I see are for 2EDA, which is the room in Eagle's Tower that has the door that opens after beating the boss, and 66 DA which is the same but for Angler's Tunnel.  Of course those are exceptions since those values are set specially since those bosses are in side view areas.  Also, 5B DB is the ram location of how many hearts you have.  Perhaps the easiest solution is to just not let the game add hearts to your counter at all.

It shouldn't be too difficult to find the heart container ASM and change it.  When most bosses and minibosses are spawned, a bit is set that locks the player in the playing field.  That is why you can hide in shutter doors in a regular room, but are forced in during a boss.  It's also why Smasher and Dodongo Snakes allow you to escape before defeating that boss.  They don't have the bit set since both have non-shutter exits.  Anyway, the heart container unsets this bit, sets the boss flag in the current room, and cues the dungeon clear music.  A possible solution could be to find the spot in the heart container spawn and disable it from actually adding a heart container  That could be as easy as finding where the start of the data is, finding the part that unsets the boundry bit, and then abridging the code to skip the part where the item is drawn and added into your inventory.  The other option, and this might be more tricky, is to find where the boss ASM is and find a common routine that is used for all bosses, and add code in that unsets the boundry and sets the boss flag.

Now that I think of it, I think that is exactly how it works.  Either the game checks to see if the boss flag has been checked in the room flag data, or it checks the dungeon clear flags.  The reason is because in my hack, I have set memory values for the first boss to be defeated so a door can open, but when I die and continue, I notice I have an extra heart.  This means that somewhere in the rom is a list of hearts and heart pieces that check certain room values and give you those hearts based on what is set.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Really looking forward to this, although I too will not be playing on the difficult mode. Too many rom hacks focus on making games absurdly tough for some reason. I just want a new Zelda adventure with a new overworld and new, well designed dungeons. There's a Zelda DX Master Quest hack out there already that's completely garbage as it's nearly impossible to play, even with the aid of savestates because the puzzles require clipping and abusing the game engine. Please don't do anything like that. 

I watched the trailer on youtube. Very cool stuff.
Will Link be playable at all? I don't mind the idea of Marin, but Zelda without Link is like a Megaman rom hack without Megaman.

[Midna]

Wouldn't it be weirder to have a Zelda game without... you know, Zelda? Which the original Link's Awakening already was.

[Jigglysaint]

Okay I already had it bookmarked.  0hx5EA2 is the offset where all the boss flags start.  From the looks of it it deals with more than just the 8 Nightmare bosses.  If any of those defined rooms have the boss flag set, then the game will assume you've picked up the heart the next time you save and quit and return.

[IcePenguin]

Really looking forward to this, although I too will not be playing on the difficult mode. Too many rom hacks focus on making games absurdly tough for some reason. I just want a new Zelda adventure with a new overworld and new, well designed dungeons. There's a Zelda DX Master Quest hack out there already that's completely garbage as it's nearly impossible to play, even with the aid of savestates because the puzzles require clipping and abusing the game engine. Please don't do anything like that. 

I watched the trailer on youtube. Very cool stuff.
Will Link be playable at all? I don't mind the idea of Marin, but Zelda without Link is like a Megaman rom hack without Megaman.

I won't do anything like that, I promise.  I'm designing the world and dungeons with the intention of keeping it fair, and if it were something Nintendo would do.  (not saying what I've done is amazing, but I'm using "guidelines" that I feel Nintendo would use in designing levels)  This won't be a difficulty hack.  And hero mode will only increase enemy stats, and such, like hero mode for Wind Waker, etc.

@Jigglysaint, thanks for the great info!  I've already found a way to prevent heart containers from dropping, basically by replacing the part in the code with playing the heart container music instead, so having them not add to the counter wouldn't be the best solution.  I will look at the addresses you mentioned.  I recall seeing that data, but didn't know what it was.  I do some testing with it and let you know how it goes! 

Regarding the Eagle Tower boss, that's one of the issues that I have in my main hack.  I've found a solution for the 4th dungeon boss, but currently since I removed boss heart containers, there is no flag set when you defeat the Eagle boss.  Hopefully, what you provided will help me fix it.

First off, let me just say that I'm a huge fan of your zelda 2 hacks! Link's Awakening is one of my favourites. I can't wait to try this out!!

Out of curiosity, are you using LALE?

Thanks!    Yeah, I use LALE.

[Jigglysaint]

Glad my info is helpful.  Right now I am trying to figure out why stepping on grass crashes the game.  Before it was getting the sword that crashed the game, and earlier still was a problem with warps that turned out to be using 2 seperate instances of dungeon maps that was some sort of attempt to do something fancy.

It's been a long time since I hacked this game.

[Grimlock]

I must be the only one that would be interested in the difficult mode, it actually sounds pretty intense! 

[IcePenguin]

I haven't dabbled with heart container stuff, yet, but I will eventually!  (trying to finish other things first)

Almost done with the final testing of original Link's Awakening hero mode.  After increasing the damage of enemies from 2x to 4x, I must say that doing a 3 heart challenge would be brutal, and not in a good way.  (everything would kill you in 1 hit lol)  Even with full hearts you can die very quickly.  This is mostly due to the reduced invincibility time after taking damage.  It's very intense, ha ha. 

I have a question for whoever can answer.  Should I refrain from making edits to the original level design?  There are a couple areas in dungeons I feel could use some slight adjustments, to prevent skipping ahead, or to prevent exploiting clipping glitches.  I've made a few already, but I don't want to change it TOO much.  Any feedback on this would most helpful! 

I must be the only one that would be interested in the difficult mode, it actually sounds pretty intense! 

I knew there had to be somebody!  Haha.   

[RetroRain]

Aside from playing as Marin, I think all of the changes you did thus far sound really neat!  I'm just not thrilled with playing as Marin, but I'll still play the hack.  Maybe my mind will change as I play it.

How many years has this hack been in production?

And if you don't mind me asking, what emulator/debugger did you use to help you ASM hack this game?

I was thinking about hacking this game as well.  I'd love to get rid of the introduction scene where Link wakes up with Marin and Tarin over him.