[Trax]

Nice job on the Ghost spell, Njosro. However, I think this is the kind of spell that need strict limitations, to avoid abuse. I'd say the first thing that is obvious is that it should be disabled in Boss Battles, and possibly other major rooms, like item rooms. And then, the magic cost. It should cost not too much to make it prohibitive (and therefore useless), but enough to make the player think twice about the opportunity tradeoff. You could also make it last a specific amount of time, and that amount could increase with Magic Level. Another balancing idea would be that the Ghost spell also prevents you from hitting any enemy. This way, you are invulnerable, but as a tradeoff you can't milk the spell for easy experience points.

And like ItemDrop said, the possibility of going through certain walls with this spell is also interesting.

Keep working on that and let us know if you come up with new ideas.

[njosro]

Thanks Trax! I agree about the limitations. As it is right now, the spell is more of a cheat than anything else.

My first thought was what you mentioned about not being able to hit enemies. I think that could work nicely. The only problem would be that you could get stuck during an unwinnable boss battle. Can't win, can't die. Disabling it during a boss battle might be a bit strange.

But your idea about a time limit makes it a lot more interesting! With that sort of implementation, you can't abuse it, and you won't get stuck in a boss fight. Good idea! About the length of time increasing with magic level, it could be cool, but no other spell improves with magic level, so it might be a bit unexpected/out of place.

However, that could lead to VERY interesting gameplay change if we make ALL the spells yield better effects as magic level increases instead of costing less. Then we might be able to re-purpose the magic cost table to an "effectiveness" table...
Here's an idea:
Shield - decreases damage more and more
Jump - lets you jump higher and higher (You could level up your magic to access a treasure that's on a really high ledge)
Life - gives you more life
Fairy - time limited, lets you stay a fairy longer
Ghost - time limited, lets you stay a ghost longer
Reflect - can't think of anything, other than letting you reflect regular projectiles back at enemies (but that would be annoying to sift through the code)
Fire - Perhaps after a certain magic level is reached, fire (and I guess the flying blade as a side effect) can hurt the enemies that are initially immune
Thunder - Does more damage, though I'm aware it can glitch Thunderbird if you change this.

[ultimaweapon]

While I disagree with disabling the attack, I agree there should be some limitations on the GHOST spell such as time.Walking through walls would also be cool.

There are other magic spells that need some evolution as well, and it would be cool to see someone be able to make changes to them.

Fire - Of all the fire based spells Link has received over the years, this is by far the weakest looking one looking even weaker than Zelda 1's Wand attack. With all the skills all of you have, I'm sure 1 day we can get the FIRE spell to look like Terry Bogard's Power Wave or Wolfgang Krauser's Kaiser Wave or something powerful and cool.

While REFLECT spell serves its purpose, it would be cool to see REFLECT spell actually reflect projectiles other than the wizard's attacks. Or it can be like the Mirror Shield in Ocarina Of Time blocking the same type of attack 3 times straight and counterattacking with a powerful blast.

SPELL spell needs to just go and be replaced with something else like the GHOST spell or the DASH spell from Shadow Of Night.

Normally, I would agree with the FAIRY spell having a time, but since it's main purpose was to bypass a locked door and transverse over a long pit, a nice change would be for FAIRY spell to also increase your life some based on level.

SHIELD spell could add a parry effect for a perfect block of an attack to create an attack opening on an enemy.

Those are some of my thoughts.

[GTM604]

id love to see fire spell turned into ice spell and it freeze enemies and you can use them as platforms ala metroid i wish i could have that as a spell it would open up a different style of platforming and new ways to get into new rooms

[ultimaweapon]

I'd keep the FIRE spell and get rid of the SPELL spell for an ICE spell. It would make more sense to me to have both FIRE & ICE like A Link To The Past.

[GTM604]

I'd keep the FIRE spell and get rid of the SPELL spell for an ICE spell. It would make more sense to me to have both FIRE & ICE like A Link To The Past.

but spell spell is very handy turning moas and such into bots and it raises the tower from the ground to find a hidden item in hidden town :O

[ultimaweapon]

Who needs to Moas into Bots? LOL! Just upward thrust them! 

Getting the Magic Key from Kasuto is nice, but you technically don't have to. There are enough keys in palaces, and no keys are needed in the Great Palace. Plus you have FAIRY magic to help you bypass some locked doors. The SPELL spell is not a necessary spell IMO.

@Trax - You're the best when it comes to Zelda 2. Do you think it's possible to create some type of ICE spell?

[GTM604]

Who needs to Moas into Bots? LOL! Just upward thrust them! 

Getting the Magic Key from Kasuto is nice, but you technically don't have to. There are enough keys in palaces, and no keys are needed in the Great Palace. Plus you have FAIRY magic to help you bypass some locked doors. The SPELL spell is not a necessary spell IMO.

@Trax - You're the best when it comes to Zelda 2. Do you think it's possible to create some type of ICE spell?

obviously you've never speedrun zelda 2 XD turning stuff into bots not just moas is great plus. You have to think outside the box why does magic key have to be the only hidden item that can be hidden in the town you could put candle there flute etc. there's very little to do in towns as it is taking more away from them makes them worse again just my opinion. the only spell i can think which could be replaced with it is shield spell. Maybe tie shield to reflect making it easier to make early game a but more harder without the use of shield.

[ultimaweapon]

obviously you've never speedrun zelda 2 XD turning stuff into bots not just moas is great plus. You have to think outside the box why does magic key have to be the only hidden item that can be hidden in the town you could put candle there flute etc. there's very little to do in towns as it is taking more away from them makes them worse again just my opinion. the only spell i can think which could be replaced with it is shield spell. Maybe tie shield to reflect making it easier to make early game a but more harder without the use of shield.

You're right Itemdrop. I've never done a speed run and don't see the purpose in a speed run in most games especially RPGs. A game like Double Dragon... maybe.

I also agree with hiding other items outside of the Magic Key. Now, if that could be done in other towns and not just New Kasuto, then that would be awesome. Hiding some of the Heart or Magic containers or the Boots, etc would be cool. Or even hiding a old man to learn one of the other spells from would be cool too. If there's a way to have other towns hide items that require the SPELL spell, I'm all for it.

[Trax]

Well, lots of things are possible in theory. As long as you have enough ROM and RAM space, you can code things from scratch. It's the implications that are often hard to predict or assess. I can see the Ice spell as a variant of the Fire spell, and some of the code could be reused. Now, tweaking something that already exists is WAY easier than adding something to the game. Here's what comes to mind at first glance:

- Because it's a spell, you need new graphics that are available everywhere. It means almost every graphics bank must have the new graphics. A sacrifice could become necessary. Either that or you use the Fireball graphics and use a blue palette.
- You have to create a new type of projectile, other than flying blade and fire, with its own attributes and behavior.
- New sound effect?
- Every enemy that is vulnerable to the spell must be programmed to react to its collision. That's the hard part.

Having an enemy stop moving would be relatively trivial. There's already a routine that does something similar when an enemy is paralyzed temporarily after a hit. But then, it depends exactly what kind of effect you expect. Does the enemy simply stops moving? Does the enemy become "solid"? Does it change color? Are you blocked by it? Can you step on it? Does the enemy thaws after a while? All these things make the idea increasingly hard to produce.

Other than the technical requirements, you have to think about what it would bring to the game in terms of gameplay. Like suggested by ItemDrop, stepping on a frozen enemy may be cool on paper, but Zelda II is not exactly a platformer. Sure, you jump and you can fall, but Link is not Mario. There's no extended Y axis to the game. You are not constantly trying to reach new heights with your jumps. Zelda II is about fighting, mostly. If you freeze an enemy, the goal is likely to avoid it, or make it easy to kill. If a spell is not deemed useful enough by the player, it will be ignored. I think the Fire spell shows this symptom. It lets you kill a handful of enemies, but is not required whatsoever anywhere in the game. Having a boss that requires creative use of the Fire spell, now that's interesting.

[GTM604]

I am trying to work in a boss fight were fire is required to beat the boss. As I feel fire as you stated is almost unnecessary. some things in zelda 2 are barely used or needed but at the same time I feel like this was an intended mechanic of the developers. such as four tile jumps can be made without jump spell but jump makes them easier. I kind of appreciate this balance in z2 were choosing when and were to use magic plays into you're game play.

[ultimaweapon]

To all my hackers extraordinaires. Is it possible to swap enemies out for enemies from another game? For example, is it possible to swap out Horsehead for Abobo from Double Dragon? I was thinking another way to improve the gameplay for Zelda 2 is to introduce new enemies to the game.

Just reading Trax's response, that answer would probably be yes, but it would involve a lot of programming changes and graphic and palette swaps and changes to enemy's behavior. Well beyond my level of programming. I'm over 20 years removed from college and learning about programming. 
Yes I am old in the gaming world. LOL

I agree that some of the spells need to be used more. Like Itemdrop, I'm checking to see if there is a boss to where the FIRE spell must be used to defeat it.

I'd like to see Dark Link replaced with the final boss of The Battle Of Olympus. With some facial changes, he can be made to look more like Ganon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJwEYMk2TBc

[Trax]

UltimaWeapon. What you say is, again, theoretically possible, but you are talking about creating something from nothing. You'd have to program everything. Unless you see some common ground between a Zelda II boss and the enemy you want to insert into the game, you start from nothing, except the basic building blocks that the game engine provides. In Banks 1 and 2, which correspond to the 4 Overworld regions, there are enemies type 08 and 09 that are unused. In Bank 1, there's also Enemy 23, and in Bank 2, there's 1E to 23. Take one of these slots and go with it.

Here's a broad picture of what you need to consider (again, from the top of my head):

- Init routine. This one is what happens just as the enemy is spawned into existence. Most of the time, nothing happens here, other than the game's engine doing something that is common to all enemies, like setting the X/Y coordinates according to enemy data.
- Main routine. That's where you have to code everything your enemy does. Move there, accelerate, disappear, attack, wait, generate projectile, react to Link's movements, apply gravity (or not), collide with ground, ceiling and walls, etc.
- Display routine. This one sets how the enemy appears on screen, i.e., how the various sprites that compose the enemy are configured.

These 3 pieces are the main part of your puzzle. After that, you setup other details, like HP, enemy size, vulnerability, collision parameters, damage code, etc. For the sprites, you also need tile mappings offsets, and tile mapping codes, that must be inserted in specific tables along with other enemies' codes. And, that's it.

Some time ago, I tried to take the Fokka and make it Enemy 08 in West Hyrule. It almost works. I had to sacrifice some tiles, and I still need to copy the code for the Flying Blade projectile. But it's feasible. What you could do is to start with something very basic, like an enemy made of two sprites (2x2 tiles) that simply moves left at the rate of 1 pixel/frame.

[ultimaweapon]

@Trax - Thanks for explaining it. I know it's something I definitely won't try right now. Maybe after I get a few years under my belt in hacking. I think I'll focus more on learning hex editing and ASM, leave that other stuff to you specialists! 

@Trax - Did you happen to get that email I sent to your email address?

@Itemdrop - I did find one boss that the FIRE spell can be used to defeat.

[GTM604]

@Itemdrop - I did find one boss that the FIRE spell can be used to defeat.

interesting if i had to guess. you get fire in east hyrule so making horsehead or helmethead or rebo wouldnt make much sense although horsehead is in the fds version in palace 5 so if it was to be any of west hyrule bosses it would be him. i know it doesnt work on dark link and carock so it's either gooma or barba ?

[ultimaweapon]

interesting if i had to guess. you get fire in east hyrule so making horsehead or helmethead or rebo wouldnt make much sense although horsehead is in the fds version in palace 5 so if it was to be any of west hyrule bosses it would be him. i know it doesnt work on dark link and carock so it's either gooma or barba ?

Oddly enough, it was Horsehead. It had zero effect on Carock which is the one I truly wanted it to work on. I haven't had time to test it on Rebonack, Gooma or Barba yet. It had no effect on Helmethead when I tried him. I'll try the others once I get home from work. If it doesn't work on the others, then I will look to see if there's a way to change the requirement needed to get the FIRE spell. Your Magic level has to be at least 4 to get the FIRE spell, and I would see if that could be changed to level 2. If it can be changed, then creating a path to get FIRE magic before beating Palace 1 would be a simple task.

[GTM604]

is there anyway to un hidden hidden town and just make it a regular town

[njosro]

If you want to make the town accessible by just walking over the forest tile (instead of hammering it), change the value at offset 8660 from 00 to D1.
00 is off the map (and the hammer changes it to D1.) By forcing it to D1 from the start you make it accessible.

If you want to see the town tile, use an overworld editor and put a town tile on the spot. If you use mine, you'll see an exclamation point on the hidden spot.

[GTM604]

If you want to make the town accessible by just walking over the forest tile (instead of hammering it), change the value at offset 8660 from 00 to D1.
00 is off the map (and the hammer changes it to D1.) By forcing it to D1 from the start you make it accessible.

If you want to see the town tile, use an overworld editor and put a town tile on the spot. If you use mine, you'll see an exclamation point on the hidden spot.

thanks njosro 

[ultimaweapon]

@Itemdrop - The 1st past of the battle with Rebonack(on the horse) and Barba can also be fought with the FIRE with some tinkering. The spell does not work on any other bosses except Horsehead. This revelation does add for some new boss fighting mechanics.

@Njosro - That's good to know about New Kasuto. I was also curious about that. Can you move the Hidden Palace (Palace 6) to a new location, and keep it hidden in the new location, so that the flute is used to reveal it?

This is for everyone knowledgeable about ASM. I disassembled Zelda 2, modified some code, but I can't find anything that would aloow me to assemble it together. Any ideas on how to get this done?