Zelda II Redux

[mariosmentor]

I'm all for the first shield as well. It's (somewhat) consistent with Zelda 1 that way.

[Zanemato]

The first shield is awesome, and is it possible to keep the title screen in golden color? Like the New Link Sprites Title Screen?

Thanks for this amazing work !!! This is going to be the most beautiful Zelda II hack ever, the "remake" I've always desired !

[Shade Aurion]

Wow, I love that HUD and title screen. Well done!
As for sprite edits, i'm partial to #1 but i'd advise basing your edits on Rev editions, sprites as the sword and face look much nicer.
You're taking this places I really didn't expect. This is a really nice update ^_^

One thing Revility tried to do was tie the series in more cohesively, changing the hammer to bombs, the fireball spell to the boomerang, etc. It might be worth considering doing similar Til then, everyone can always patch Rev Edition with yours but the new title screen means the New Sprites hack is no longer necessary to stack on top (though great work of course)

[ShadowOne333]

Seems like Shield #1 wins then
That's the one I implemented as default too

Well, with that, I think only thing remaining before the next beta is to flip the Magic white bar (the one that keeps track of how much Magic has been used) to one row up, and keep the Life bar (red rectangle keeping track of life) to its current row, which is what Trax's info was for.
I am still looking around the game's code to see how to flip it, and also trying to RE Shadow of Night to see how that one did it.

Once that is done, only two things shall remain:

• Add PAUSE message on Overworld
• Change name of "Spell" spell... Maybe? I'm thinking of something like Enigma or something like that.

[Shade Aurion]

Enigma is good though, or straight up Polymorph XD

[jimstrom]

Reveal?

[ShadowOne333]

Reveal?

Can't be Reveal, because it also has a secondary effect, in which it changes enemies to other types of enemies when in battle.

The options I have right now are Enigma, Expose, Emerge, Rise and Sight.
Reveal and Unveil could work, but it's that secondary effect which somewhat kills those, unless you count Reveal/Unveil as "Revealing the true nature of the enemy" or some shit like that xD

[mariosmentor]

I got one. Presto! Complete with the exclamation point. Magicians say that all the time when pulling off various magic tricks. Think about it:

Watch me as I make a building appear from nowhere! Presto!

Watch me as I turn this monster into a Bot! Presto!

What do you think?

[Trax]

I have to show my opposition to "Reveal" only because it's exactly the name of one of my spells in my future hack. But hey, nothing personal.

[Shadic]

How about "Expose?"

It both exposes enemies, making them into Bots, and exposes the secret in New Kasuto with the Magic Key.

[ShadowOne333]

Current proposals for "Spell" spell's new name:

• Reveal
• Unveil
• Enigma
• Expose

Added a poll to the topic, so please vote!

For the name, we should take into consideration the official instruction manual description for the "Spell" spell:
"Magic to cast eerie spells.  Its effect is still not fully known.  It is also said that it'll make the enemy tremble in fear."

[ultimaweapon]

As far as the spell name, I like Expose.

I also like what you did with the Shield spell ShadowOne.

Here's an idea. How about changing the palette when the Reflect spell is cast? Change Link to either a whitish or golden color w/ red like the Mirror Shield from Ocarina Of Time.

[#]

Current proposals for "Spell" spell's new name:

• Reveal
• Unveil
• Enigma
• Expose

Added a poll to the topic, so please vote!

For the name, we should take into consideration the official instruction manual description for the "Spell" spell:
"Magic to cast eerie spells.  Its effect is still not fully known.  It is also said that it'll make the enemy tremble in fear."

Taking the manual into consideration only Enigma fits the bill. The other names don't fit for its other use either.

[ShadowOne333]

Thanks to all the people that have been voting so far!
I plan on closing the poll by Friday (my b-day ) to settle on a name.

Still though, I want to give people the option to rename the spell if they do want it to be something else.
I don't know if you guys noticed, but ALL of the names in the poll have exactly 6 letters each.
This will help a lot if any of you want to rename the spell.

I will explain how to do the edit in a hex editor. Should be as simple as going to the correct offset, and copy-pasting some bytes I will write.
But more details on that later this week.

In the meanwhile, I am still trying to switch the Magic tile which handles the magic meter.
Haven't been able to do much progress on that forefront yet, but I hope I can get it to work soon enough.

[ultimaweapon]

Does anyone know how to rip this game apart to its individual components? I would like to swap some of the music and sounds out and replace it with other Zelda music and sounds.

[GTM604]

Does anyone know how to rip this game apart to its individual components? I would like to swap some of the music and sounds out and replace it with other Zelda music and sounds.

I would like to do something with the music with my hack id be interested as well if anyone knows

most i want to do something simple such as add LoZ nes dungeon music to 3 out of 6 of the palaces

and maybe add one sound effect from z2 some place else in z2

[ShadowOne333]

Well guys!
It's December 14th, and today we wrap up the poll voting for the "Spell" spell's name!
And the winner is...

Enigma spell!

Thank you for all of those that voted and gave their ideas for the name.
Enigma will be the final name used for the spell in Redux

But fear not!
I will not leave those that want a different name in the dark!
If you want to change the name to something else, here's how to do it:

• Open a clean (or the Redux beta) Zelda 2 ROM in any hex editor (I recommend HxD)
• Go directly to address/offset 0x1C8E. In HxD, you can do so by doing the key shortcut "Ctrl+G", and then type "1c8e" in the text box.
• Once you are in the correct address, you should see the following bytes: EC E9 DE E5 E5 CF. This corresponds to the hex values for the letters S P E L L (CF is a dot). In the case of Redux, this should be DE E7 E2 E0 E6 DA (E N I G M A)
• Now depending on what name you want, you have to replace those bytes for one of the following:

• Reveal: EB DE EF DE DA E5
• Unveil: EE E7 EF DE E2 E5
• Expose: DE F1 E9 E8 EC DE

And that's it!
That's all you have to do to rename Spell to whatever name you want.
Just take into consideration that you should only replace 6 bytes, no more!
You can have a bit more letters for the spell name, but if you are not really adept in hacking, I recommend you not to add more than 6 letters, 7 tops.

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So with this, I believe this will be my last update for 2018.
I will go on vacations this Monday, so I won't be able to work on Redux until January 2019.

Here's the latest beta of Zelda 2 Redux!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uvdifz01ub13ywz/Zelda2ReduxBeta2.ips?dl=0

You can see the new Link sprites I made in action, as well as the new HUD, new title screen sword!
Only thing is that I still haven't figured out how to move the white square which moves when you consume magic to the above row where the Magic meter is located, but out of that everything else should be working

If anyone does manage to find a fix to move the white square to the top, please let me know!

ENJOY!

[Trax]

Here are my observations so far:

- The JUMP spell in the Pause pane has a bad tile mapping.
- I think spells should never have odd numbers for magic consumption. Ex.: LIFE spell at 25 magic cost. My rationale is, we should be able to tell the difference on screen.
- A Bot in the first palace deals a whole heart of damage at Life level 2. Is that intentional? I think it's excessive.
- Bubbles (flashing skull heads in palaces) should definitely be worth less than 50 points, especially when they can be killed with very few hits. I suggest 20. Maybe a bit more for Fast Bubbles?

- Correct the White Magic Square in the HUD, but that's already acknowledged by ShadowOne.

Other than that, it's very good. The Intro story makes sense, the dialogs are WAY better. The Overworld animations are a nice touch. I don't really like the longer sword, not because I think the sword shouldn't be lengthened, but because the hitboxes are the same (as far as I know), so it's basically a visual illusion.

And to answer UltimaWeapon and ItemDrop on the subject of music, you could do it by studying how the music is coded. Most likely, you'd have to do it by hand. Music is in Bank 6. I think Bank 6 is entirely dedicated to music, and it has unused space left. I already decoded the basic processes for music, even though I didn't disassemble the entire bank. Check out my diassembly of Bank 6 (http://www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2bank6.txt) and look for offset 1853F. This is where the Intro song notes are stored. At least, part of it.

The code is very simple, however the tedious part is the process of converting notes from, say, sheet music to these codes. You also have to convert offsets if you intend to add or delete notes from certain music tracks. Here's the basic rules:

- Bit 7 set means it's a note length change. Bits 0-6 set the new length code. I presume there is a limited number of note lengths to choose from.
- Bit 7 clear means bits 0-6 set the note pitch. For example, value 42 is note A4.
- Odd numbers for note pitch don't seem to work.
- 02 is a silence, with current length value.
- 00 denotes the end of the part.

[ultimaweapon]

@Trax - This looks like for adjusting the songs tones and pitch that are already there making them higher or lower or faster, etc. While this is good info, I want to be able to completely remove some songs and replace them with others. For example replacing the current palace music with Super Mario Bros 2 dungeon music.


After further discussion, with NES files, everything is basically hard coded into the one file. So to my further understanding, not only will the coding have to be modified in hex, but some ASM(which I completely don't know) would also have to be used if I want to change some of the music and sounds?

[darthvaderx]

I don't really like the longer sword, not because I think the sword shouldn't be lengthened, but because the hitboxes are the same (as far as I know), so it's basically a visual illusion.

I find the New Link Sprites hack version much better: