[Chicken Knife]

As far as i'm concerned, It's Erdrick until someone gets around to proper uncensored versions of the original Dragon Quest games. The remakes just don't cut it.

[ShadowOne333]

I love those suggestions by SCD. There are lots of advantages of the US localization but combining those with what was cut would make the perfect version of the game.

Also, I came across a bug. In the first temple boss battle, instead of the boss's life bar being divided into distinct sections as before, it all got mashed together into one vertical red bar. However when he loses life, the red bar is replaced by distinct white segments as per the original.

Can you post a pic of it?

[Chicken Knife]

I was having some difficulty posting the pic to the forum but hopefully this works:

https://imgur.com/mRA2fnx

[ShadowOne333]

I was having some difficulty posting the pic to the forum but hopefully this works:

https://imgur.com/mRA2fnx

Okay I think I know why that happens.
Remember the problem I mentioned with the health bar having a red rectangle as a background?
It's related to that.

It seems the boss' life meter uses the same graphic.
I had to fill the whole 8x8 tile with red so that we could have a full heart in the health meter, so that is why you see a full bar instead of a segmented one.

I will try to see what I can do about it this Tuesday.
I might end up either modifying Link's health bar again or making the Boss' life bar a full non-segmented bar, one of the two. The later most likely.

[SCD]

I love those suggestions by SCD. There are lots of advantages of the US localization but combining those with what was cut would make the perfect version of the game.

Thanks, I'm glad that you liked my suggestions.

As far as I'm concerned, It's Erdrick until someone gets around to proper uncensored versions of the original Dragon Quest games. The remakes just don't cut it.

I agree with you, I also think we should go with Erdrick as well.

[Chicken Knife]

Just finished the 2nd Palace. I really liked how the bubble enemy health was significantly reduced but I think the same thing should be done to the Ras (floating blue dragon heads). I was always one of those OCD players who couldn't help but kill everything no matter how long it took and eliminating the 12 or so required hits would be wonderful.

Btw, I think the cutting of magic consumption by 1/2 is working fine. I still find myself desperately looking for magic potions at times and overall it still feels balanced for the NES era. I wouldn't suggest increasing magic and xp drop rates as I believe it would only cheapen the experience. 

[PresidentLeever]

Making the skulls/bubbles go down that quick already is an increase in exp drops in practice.

[IAmCaptPlanet]

would this be doable? https://ibb.co/hGD1Nx

the green sword hilt doesnt really bother me, and i dont think the letters need the blue shadow really

also, the enemies that drain exp. are hella annoying, but maybe find a way to make them drain (much) less than they normally do would be better than completely taking away,

also, i think, the point of making the bubble such a "tank" to begin with was that they were such a exp. farm. idk, it might be too easy if they go down in a few hits though. maybe 1/3 would be good?

[Chicken Knife]

@IAmCaptPlanet

That's a great look and the green hilt is fine, if this all would work.

As far as Bubbles go, I can see the farming concern because they respawn easily unlike many of the other high xp enemies. I was gaining xp at such a rapid pace that I personally didn't feel the need to farm them, but I would be ok with taking their xp down to 20 to match the Ras.

[IAmCaptPlanet]

https://ibb.co/idgGNx actually something like this would look even better, and maybe if you implement a sword upgrade or 2, just add sword icons (or a sword that is hilt on the left and a growing blade as it gets powered up)

also, it would only be a visual thing, but the fireball spell could be changed to Bow and Arrow, it would still drain magic, but it might could work (bombs are "magic" items in BotW)

although this, looks good as well. but i think it uses too many colors? (because black has to count as a color, idk)   https://ibb.co/kKSO2x   this is actually what i would prefer. giving all 3 stats a uniform look. the little L under Life and the little M under Magic is so redundant anyways,

not sure if you can use something like that, but would look super cool

also, if you could add the message in text when pause "press Up + A to save" would be really cool!

[Spooniest]

I have a suggestion, which I'll write on this slip of paper and drop in your suggestion box.

Increase the striking range of Link's sword by one tile exactly, please. That isn't a sword, it's a kitchen knife. You'd have to extend the sprite as well, naturally.

Hope it's somehow doable, sometime

[PresidentLeever]

A whole tile? I think a couple of pixels is enough.

[wolpak]

Love these ideas.

Anyway to have experience levels go up to level 10 each?  Maybe balance that with more powerful end game enemies.

I mentioned in the other thread to rework lives.  Each extra life is added to the max total and not the current total.

Like the idea of extending his sword, though sword enemies should get the same benefit.

[IAmCaptPlanet]

agreed, lives would be perfect like that!

also, if the "double jump" (ability to jump again in midair) could replace the wierd floaty jump spell would be awesome

and fall in a pit or lava, instead of taking a life, should restart you at the beginning of the room with 1 less heart, and should only kill you (obviously) if you have 1 heart or less. that would be awesome

[Maximus]

Bagu retranslated as Bug. Yessss? 

[DankPotato2600]

DO NOT change the 'I AM ERROR'

[ShadowOne333]

Man what a shit weekend I had.
Sorry about not posting.

Now back on track, wow you guys surely have some interesting points.
Let me get back to some of them:

Bagu retranslated as Bug. Yessss? 

This is one of the first re-translations I was gonna make
I want to keep both the Error guy and Bagu, but Bagu will have his proper english name of Bug.

I mentioned in the other thread to rework lives.  Each extra life is added to the max total and not the current total.

This is something I am thinking to implement, however from what I've seen, the game does not save the amount of lives into SRAM at any point, so I have to see if I could somehow make the game save the maximum amount of lives into SRAM and then add +1 to that lives counter for when you find a Link Doll at any point.
This might require some heavy ASM hacking, and SRAM hacking too, which I am a noob at, so it would be tackled down the road to see if I can do it. If someone could help here, it'd be greatly appreciated.

https://ibb.co/idgGNx actually something like this would look even better, and maybe if you implement a sword upgrade or 2, just add sword icons (or a sword that is hilt on the left and a growing blade as it gets powered up)

although this, looks good as well. but i think it uses too many colors? (because black has to count as a color, idk)   https://ibb.co/kKSO2x   this is actually what i would prefer. giving all 3 stats a uniform look. the little L under Life and the little M under Magic is so redundant anyways,

also, if you could add the message in text when pause "press Up + A to save" would be really cool!

That's a really good mockup!
But sadly I still need a colour to overlay the Health/Magic consumption bar.
So that means I need 3 colours for the HUD, one which should be white for the letters, one to mask the consumption effect, and another one for the hearts. So this really doesn't leave any room for the green colour at all.
Either I go for a whole black to cover up the red/white bars (consumption) or change the overlay from blue to green, but it doesn't look pretty. So I am stuck with either leaving the Blue overlay or either making it black completely, but the sword icon won't look good. xD
One more thing, is that I haven't tried to flip around or reorganize the order in which the Sword, Magic and Health are displayed/printed in the HUD.

@IAmCaptPlanet

That's a great look and the green hilt is fine, if this all would work.

As far as Bubbles go, I can see the farming concern because they respawn easily unlike many of the other high xp enemies. I was gaining xp at such a rapid pace that I personally didn't feel the need to farm them, but I would be ok with taking their xp down to 20 to match the Ras.

Well I didn't really see it that way to be honest.
In the first palace you encounter Red Stalfos, which are really easy to kill (go down in like 3 hits I believe) without any effort but simply ducking and stabbing their feet. They give out 30 Exp.
Now compare them with the Bubbles which require around 10~ or so stabs and they give 50 Exp, and I think the comparison is valid if you take into consideration other sword/shield based enemies in the 1st Palace.
I think the damage dealt to them is now way more in balance to how many hits they took to kill them, and at the end they just give out 50 Exp, which is kinda lame compared to the amount of stabs given out in the original to kill them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@SCD sorry I didn't get back to you before.
Let me address your suggestions:


1) Restore the roar sound effect from the FDS port.
Would this be for the Game Over screen or the bosses roar?
I kinda like the Game Over screen sound of the NES one.
Though I can't remember if the NES used any sound for the bosses at all.

2) Make the level system behave more like the one from the FDS port.
How exactly did the level system work for the FDS port?
For what I know, the Level system is way more user friendly in the NES, isn't it?

3) Rename the Trophy & Water of Life back to being called Goddess Statue & Holy Water once again.
This will be done for sure when I tackle rewriting the script.

4) Restore the Dragon Quest reference in the cemetery from the FDS port.
This is one I REALLY want to do, but the NES port completely disabled the text prompt in that particular place in Saria.
If someone knows a way to re-implement this into the NES port, please let me know, as I'd really love to see this one back in the NES one. The text I will be going for (if this gets implemented back) is "The hero Erdrick rests here"

5) Restore the water movement from the FDS port:
This is one I want to put back in as well, but I haven't really researched enough as if it is possible to achieve or not in the NES port. If someone has an insight or knows how to do it, please let me know as well.
I think this will require modifying the mapper of the ROM.

6) Restore the unused windows for both the Maze Palace & the Hidden Palace:
This I might do as well, the windows look neat enough to not have them there

7) Restore the FDS sprites of Carock, Kidnapped Child, River Devil & Volvagia:
I think that from all of these, I might only end up doing the River Devil.
Carock and Volvagia's sprites look better to me on the NES release, and the Kidnapped Child has a purpose.
In the original FDS game, the Child's sprite had some sort of multiple ropes which tied him up, and you had to stab it with the sword to free him. However, in the NES release, you can simply pick up the Child, which makes the need of the ropes useless anymore as you don't remove the ropes now.

Restore the FDS version of the King's Tomb, but add the unique statues from the NES version on both sides of the grave like this edit that I did:

The mockup looks really cool. Though I'm still unsure about this.
I don't know if this will affect something in-game or not. Is visiting the King's Tomb necessary for progression in the game? I can't recall right now, it's been quite a while since I last did a full playthrough of Zelda 2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So right now this is in the TODO list:

• More common enemy drops (in general)
• Reduce beeping noise to make it less annoying
• Change in-game text to something better translated/localized. This is a good base to work with for that: http://www.glitterberri.com/adventure-of-link/retranslation/
• Rebalance enemies. This might take a while to do since I need to know WHAT enemies and HOW to balance them properly to give a proper balanced experience and not a too easy/too hard one.
• Try to add a PAUSE message on the overworld (this is really hopeful lol)
• Try to restore the Dragon Quest reference
• Try to restore the moving water animation on the Overworld

[SCD]

It's alright, it's no big deal.

1.The roar sound effect for the two bosses, Mazura & Volvagia.

2.It was easier to level up in the Japanese version: https://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link/Regional_Differences#Level_System

3.Cool, that's great to hear that you're going restore their original names.

4.Alright, hopefully someone will help you on that.

5.Alright, hopefully someone will help you on that as well.

6.Cool, that's great to hear that you're going to restore the unused windows back to those two palaces.

7.Alright, I'm cool with you restoring only the FDS River Devil sprite, it's no big deal.

Alright, it's no big deal on the child's sprite, it's fine on how it is.

8.Alright, I just thought it would be cooler for the King of Hyrule to have his FDS tomb than the one they made in the NES port, but you don't have to restore it if you don't want to, it's no big deal.

There's no reason to visit his tomb, the one thing to fix in his NES tomb is change the text "THIS IS KINGS TOMB" to "THIS IS THE KING'S TOMB".

[ultimaweapon]

ShadowOne333,


   In IcePenguin's Shadow Of Night hack, he has the water movement from the FDS version, but I don't know how he did that. I wish he was around to ask. Trax did help him a lot with that hack, so Trax might know.

IamCaptPlanet

   Now that I've completed my hack, A Double Jump is something I'm going to look into as well. I think that would be so much better than the current JUMP spell.


The game currently caps the level progression to 8 and enemy HP to a max of 255. If someone could create a way to go pact those caps,  I'd love to see it. Or at least for attack, include the Master Sword and increase the emeny hp cap to go beyond 255 to 300-350.

[ShadowOne333]

It's alright, it's no big deal.

1.The roar sound effect for the two bosses, Mazura & Volvagia.

2.It was easier to level up in the Japanese version: https://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link/Regional_Differences#Level_System

3.Cool, that's great to hear that you're going restore their original names.

4.Alright, hopefully someone will help you on that.

5.Alright, hopefully someone will help you on that as well.

6.Cool, that's great to hear that you're going to restore the unused windows back to those two palaces.

7.Alright, I'm cool with you restoring only the FDS River Devil sprite, it's no big deal.

Alright, it's no big deal on the child's sprite, it's fine on how it is.

8.Alright, I just thought it would be cooler for the King of Hyrule to have his FDS tomb than the one they made in the NES port, but you don't have to restore it if you don't want to, it's no big deal.

There's no reason to visit his tomb, the one thing to fix in his NES tomb is change the text "THIS IS KINGS TOMB" to "THIS IS THE KING'S TOMB".

I'll have to take a look and see what I can do about the bosses' roars.
I hope they don't rely on the FDS extra sound channels, or else I'd be screwed.

I'll give the level system a look too once I am out of the Enemy balancing, I want to start focusing on that and in the HUD just to have that settled down and then I'll move into other stuff.

As for the King's Tomb place, I might change it out IF I find out how to bring up the NPC and the same message in the unused area.

   In IcePenguin's Shadow Of Night hack, he has the water movement from the FDS version, but I don't know how he did that. I wish he was around to ask. Trax did help him a lot with that hack, so Trax might know.

So it is possible then, interesting. Good to know. Thanks for the heads up!
I might have to take a peek at IcePenguin's hack and try to track down how he did it.
If Trax could help out in this regard, that would be even better, I'd be really grateful.

----------------------------------------------

Oh also, for the people that are trying the latest patch, please try the following:

Open up the patched ROM in a hex editor, and go to the following address:
0x00F756

Once you do, you should see the following bytes [A9 60].
Try to change the 60 in there for a 00, and reload the ROM in your emulator.

Now try to load up any text and compare them.
This effectively removes the typewriter sound for when text is being printed out.

Let me know what do you guys think of it, if you like it more with the noise of the typewriter being fast, or if I should remove it altogether.