Zelda II Redux

[TheSkipper1995]

Hello! I just recently stumbled upon this project and I must say it's pretty fantastic. I'm loving the changes implemented thus far and am looking forward to your plans for future updates.

One suggestion I would have is in regards to EXP— Would it be possible to have it so that, instead of losing all of your EXP upon game over, you lose a fraction of it? Perhaps half? It would still be a punishment the player would want to avoid, just not quite as brutal as losing all of their EXP progress.

[EthansDreamLand]

The "Keep Exp At GameOver" optional patch causes the game to freeze whenever you try to save your game. Can you please fix this?

[SkyBlueFox]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this, but I think it speaks volumes that I made an account just to gush about this patch in here.

Anyway, over the past couple evenings I did a run of Redux to take my mind off of studying for my finals this semester, and... it was fantastic. I love Zelda 2 to bits as is (it's arguably in my top 3 Zeldas), but the little graphical touches, magic tweaks  and QoL updates really feel like the 'extra couple months of dev polish' the original game never got. That... might not be a fair comparison to make, granted, but it summarizes how I feel. I can't imagine playing Zelda 2 again any other way - legit, mere hours before a friend told me about it, I was just thinking to myself "I wish I could take the QoL that Z2 Randomizer makes and put them into vanilla". You can imagine how delighted I was to read through the list of Redux's updates. :U

The only critique I think I have is that, while I know you were sticking to the original as close as possible, I wish you'd gone a little further with the graphics. I appreciate the usage of the Zelda 2 Rev Link sprite, but I've got a bit of a soft spot for how that hack tweaked the translation and items to fit more with Zelda 1. Bombs instead of the hammer, the Power Bracelet for the handy glove, etc.

All that said, if I might be so bold... how difficult do you think it would be to get a no-music optional patch? Much as I love the soundtrack, until the day comes when someone finally manages to hack these albums into Z1/2, having the option to disable music would be nice. There were a couple times where I just disabled the emulator sound and played the song, but without the sound effects, it's not really the same, you know? :p

[Trax]

I wish no-music was a trivial task, but it happens to be harder than I thought. Some sound effects are "music-like" and use the Music Code RAM address $EB. Some examples of sounds that you may want to keep, but are treated as music by the game: sounds in the Selection Screens (letter entered, letter cursor moving, fairy cursor, game erased), item found/level up, spell learned. It's an interesting challenge.

[SkyBlueFox]

I guess I'm not surprised. I've always heard that messing with music in NES games can be a pain in the neck, so removing it entirely while preserving SFX sounds even more confusing.

...though now I have to wonder whether the Zelda 2 Randomizer's "no music" option actually disables music or if it just removes all sound entirely. In hindsight, I probably should have double-checked that before i even asked. ¦v

[Vanya]

Wouldn't it just be a matter of setting it to specifically not initiate the BGM in each area?
I can't imagine they programmed the game without making a BGM table.
So either track down the code that plays the BGM in each area and NOP it out, or find the data table that defines which song plays where and change all the entries to play nothing.
The fact that some sound effects are treated as music should have no bearing on this.
That is unless the game was very poorly coded.

[ShadowOne333]

Sorry for the long delay.
I'm back now

The "Keep Exp At GameOver" optional patch causes the game to freeze whenever you try to save your game. Can you please fix this?

Can anyone else replicate the issue with the "Keep Exp At Gameover" patch?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this, but I think it speaks volumes that I made an account just to gush about this patch in here.

Anyway, over the past couple evenings I did a run of Redux to take my mind off of studying for my finals this semester, and... it was fantastic. I love Zelda 2 to bits as is (it's arguably in my top 3 Zeldas), but the little graphical touches, magic tweaks  and QoL updates really feel like the 'extra couple months of dev polish' the original game never got. That... might not be a fair comparison to make, granted, but it summarizes how I feel. I can't imagine playing Zelda 2 again any other way - legit, mere hours before a friend told me about it, I was just thinking to myself "I wish I could take the QoL that Z2 Randomizer makes and put them into vanilla". You can imagine how delighted I was to read through the list of Redux's updates. :U

The only critique I think I have is that, while I know you were sticking to the original as close as possible, I wish you'd gone a little further with the graphics. I appreciate the usage of the Zelda 2 Rev Link sprite, but I've got a bit of a soft spot for how that hack tweaked the translation and items to fit more with Zelda 1. Bombs instead of the hammer, the Power Bracelet for the handy glove, etc.

All that said, if I might be so bold... how difficult do you think it would be to get a no-music optional patch? Much as I love the soundtrack, until the day comes when someone finally manages to hack these albums into Z1/2, having the option to disable music would be nice. There were a couple times where I just disabled the emulator sound and played the song, but without the sound effects, it's not really the same, you know? :p

Thanks for the feedback!
I might see later on about possibly adding an optional patch for other graphics.
I wanted to maintain the main feel of the overall graphics, only adding slight touches to make the sprites more like their official art.

As for the music question, sadly that's not planned.

Although, I think Mesen (The HD NES emulator) can help you there.
If I recall correctly, that emulator allows you to replace music with whatever from your own library, similar to MSU-1 on SNES, but as to how that is achieved or how to make it work with Zelda 2, I am not sure to be honest.

[Razieldemon]

Im always amazed at the work put into this project. I don't check it weekly but whenever I do so much nuanced stuff emerges and it has really shaped up to be a beautiful reimagining of Z2 as a better realized Zelda title.

[Trax]

Well, I did the best I could to remove music in Zelda II, and I couldn't find a way to remove the Intro music. I also left the Credits music because I thought it was more appropriate, but if someone thinks having slient credits is better (more dramatic, like in a TV series), you can change ROM offset 0x14C5B from 08 to 00. My patch has 10 changes in it (11 if you include Credits), which mostly consist of changing the value written to $EB to 00 instead of whatever non-zero music code. Sound effects and short fanfares (Demon Hit, Get Item, Crystal Placed, etc.) are still there and will also play.

Download the IPS patch here: www.bwass.org/romhack/zelda2/zelda2nomusic.ips

[lexluthermiester]

Can anyone else replicate the issue with the "Keep Exp At Gameover" patch?

Not having that problem here. Could they be having a potential ROM issue?

[ShadowOne333]

Couldn't replicate it neither, that's why I asked

All in all, this project is just one step away from being finished!
I've been focusing on Zelda 1 Redux mainly because right now the only thing left is out of my hands

DarkSamus disassembled all of the patches, reworked/optimized some of the ASM hacks, and he is currently adding the File Select menu revamp and also the fairy and jump spells reworks.

Once he is done with those hacks, the project will be finished!

[lexluthermiester]

Very cool.

[WebSlinger]

Couldn't replicate it neither, that's why I asked

All in all, this project is just one step away from being finished!
I've been focusing on Zelda 1 Redux mainly because right now the only thing left is out of my hands

DarkSamus disassembled all of the patches, reworked/optimized some of the ASM hacks, and he is currently adding the File Select menu revamp and also the fairy and jump spells reworks.

Once he is done with those hacks, the project will be finished!

:O SO freakin awesome! Its a shame you cannot change the magic meter to green though... The palette ruins everything, I tried.

[SkyLizardGirl]

This is all making my head spin, all these changes. Just how many things were changed again?

Wouldn't you do this all just to make a completely new game at this rate?

Are you making 'a Base' Rom so other hackers can make completely new hacks with all the features added in your project as the real end game?

Or is this a completely new game?

(Sorry to come in so late in the chat seeing 41 pages here.)

[ShadowOne333]

:O SO freakin awesome! Its a shame you cannot change the magic meter to green though... The palette ruins everything, I tried.

A true shame :/
Doing so would make the white in the HUD be green instead.

This is all making my head spin, all these changes. Just how many things were changed again?

Wouldn't you do this all just to make a completely new game at this rate?

Are you making 'a Base' Rom so other hackers can make completely new hacks with all the features added in your project as the real end game?

Or is this a completely new game?

(Sorry to come in so late in the chat seeing 41 pages here.)

Everything you need to know is in the OP.

This is basically a Quality of Life hack for Zelda II, which tackles many of the most annoying aspects considered by many players, and improves upon them, making Zelda II a much more enjoyable experience altogether.

Optional patches were made so that, if certain people don't like a specific change, they can either keep the original way Zelda 2 did it, or change to an in-between method. In other words, they can sort of customize everything to their liking.

[Vanya]

I can't wait to try the final version.

A true shame :/
Doing so would make the white in the HUD be green instead.

It can be done but at the cost of the orange/red palette that is used by many items.



PS found some bad grammar in one of the towns.
I can't remember which right now, but it was one of the middle-aged man NPCs with the purple palette.
I think it was the hammer dude in Rauru.
He says something along the lines of, "Only with a hammer, you can yada yada yada..."
Should be "can you" instead.

[King Luigi]

Can anyone else replicate the issue with the "Keep Exp At Gameover" patch?

Actually, this isn't the 1st time someone mentioned this...
(Seems like it got missed at the time.)

I encountered a problem with one of the extra patches.
The "keep EXP at Game Over" patch will not allow you to save, either manually or at Game Over.

The results were slightly different depending on the emulator (none of them all that good):
Best case was QuickNES, where selecting Save did nothing. You could then choose to continue.
Most others, like FCEUX, it hung there forever.
Worst case, on the NES Classic, it threw up a C6 error and wiped my saves.

Picking Continue first works like it should.

I tried it myself and got the same results, it just freezes (with FCEUX at least, dunno about the others).

Clean ROM = OK
Redux = OK
Keep Exp = "Continue" works as expected (exp stays). Confirming a "Save" though, causes the game to stop responding.
Redux+Keep Exp = Same as above. Though if you open the "Manual Save Menu" and choose "Continue" the exp resets to 0.
Attempting a "Manual Save" is the same as a "Game Over Save", it just hangs after confirming it.

The "Restart Same Screen at Game Over" patch, coincidentally
has the "Keep Exp at Game Over" patch included & this patch
works perfectly fine (saving works as it should, too).
It's just the separate (Keep Exp) patch that seems to have a problem.

(Shadow, you said you'd add that detail to your readme, but you forgot to
mention it in the OP, which is the only thing people can see at the moment.
I only found that out by digging through this thread.)


Hopefully it's not too late to suggest this, but...
I've also got a bunch of text that I think could use some more tweaking.

For some reason that opening bit of story on the title screen still mentions "the power of the third Triforce of Courage".
(Leaving it like that kinda gives the impression that there's more than 1 "Triforce of Courage", which is obviously wrong.)
Due to lack of space to rewrite that, just removing "third" from that line and putting "Triforce" in its place should suffice.

[The BOLD CAPS are what's written in Redux, while the text/"italic quotes" below them are my thoughts/suggestions.]

"BALANCE THE THREE LEVELS AND TRUE POWER WILL BE YOURS!"

This was meant to be a hint for leveling up in the Japanese version.
Since we use a different system, he should probably say something else.
(Nothing immediately comes to mind though.. so I'll just repeat an earlier suggestion.)
Maybe have him mention that you can save with Up+A instead?


"ONLY WITH A HAMMER YOU CAN BREAK ROCKS BLOCKING THE WAY..."

"You'll need a hammer to break rocks blocking the way..."


"I DON'T HAVE MORE TO TEACH YOU. GO, AND TAKE CARE."

"I have nothing more to teach you. Go now and take care."


"GORIYA OF TANTARI DESERT STOLE THE GODDESS STATUE."

Change "the" to "our".
(Translations suggest that it belongs to the town,
but since we can't fit that, "our" sounds a bit better.)


"OH! THAT'S THE GODDESS STATUE! GO SEE GRANDPA!"

Same as above, change "the" to "our" (for consistency).
Should say "Come see my Grandpa". Sounds kinda odd otherwise.


"BEFORE LEAVING, COME TO MY HOUSE AND SEE GRANDPA."

Like the above, it should say "my" Grandpa.


"GANON'S MINIONS HAVE SLIPPED INTO TOWN CROWDS."

"Ganon's minions are hidden among the towns crowds."


"I LOST MY MIRROR."

Move "my" to the 1st line. (...honestly, I just think it'd look better, but I suppose either is fine.)
However, adding a little more detail to that would definitely be good, something like:
"It should be in town somewhere."

I mean, you never know how crazy they could get when hiding something back then.
It could be in a cave or another town, maybe you need to trade/talk with someone else?
I think a little hint suggesting that it can be found nearby is reasonable.
(Especially since it's under a random table you wouldn't think you'd be able to check.)


"I'LL TEACH YOU THE MAGIC TO RESTORE LIFE."

Should say "your" life.
It's a tad vague otherwise and could give the wrong idea as to what it can do.
(Like, maybe it "could" heal a sick person for example. Which we know it can't.)


"THE RAFT IS IN THE ISLE TEMPLE TO THE SOUTH."

"There's a raft in the temple on a small island to the south."

That just sounds a bit more natural to me.
The original line just feels like something you'd read in a walkthrough.
(Or maybe the kid that says that is just self-aware & felt like getting to the point.)


"SEE THE SAGE AT DARUNIA BEFORE YOU GO TO MAZE ISLAND."

Oh boy, this line. The text limitations really makes this 1 a pain.
The issue here is that it's a bit misleading, because the real thing
a player needs to be warned about isn't the island itself, but rather
the Temple on said island. As it is actually impossible to beat the
boss there without the spell that sage teaches you.
But you can't actually learn said spell without going to Maze Island at some point
(as you need to find a child there and bring them back to town first).

So I came up with 2 different lines for this, use whichever you think sounds better.
"Learn from the sage in Darunia, then go to Maze Island Temple."
"Don't go to Maze Island Temple till you've met the sage in Darunia."

(I'd rather not have used "till", but it was all I could think of to fit that message in there.)


"EVERYONE FLED FROM KASUTO WHEN THE MINIONS OF GANON ATTACKED."

"Everyone fled from Kasuto when the fire nation Ganon's Minions attacked."

Sounds like less of a mouthful.


"I WON'T TEACH YOU UNTIL YOU ARE READY."

Ah yes, how can we forget about the "Super Vague Old Man Statements"™.
I really think this should be changed, might as well be up front about the details.
Otherwise you'd just end up with someone thinking:
"So.. what? Do I need to level up more? Get some new item? TALK TO ME OLD MAN!".

That's why I suggest taking the direct approach:
"You'll need more magic containers for me to teach you."

(Some people do mention "magic containers" elsewhere, so it's not like it'd be out of place either.)

I suppose there's also this alternate version I thought of:
"You don't have enough magic power to learn this spell."

But I feel like that could be mistaken to mean "level up your magic stat",
which isn't true. ...but that's up to you I suppose.


"THE MAGIC KEY, IT READS... TREASURE OF KASUTO."

Now this is a strange one. As it's written on a wall, in a random empty house,
identical to every other empty house, fairly deep into the destroyed Kasuto.
The only other thing in Kasuto is the sage and he's in the 1st house in town,
you also likely won't have the Cross yet, so you'd be pelted by a bunch of
invisible enemies giving you no incentive to go any further into town anyway.

If you wanna keep it close to the original, try this slight rewrite:
"A message? It says... "The Magic Key is Kasuto's Treasure"."

If you don't mind changing it to something else, how about this?
"Kasuto's Treasure: The Magic Key. It can open any door."
Or maybe end it with: "It can be used endlessly." instead.

Since it originally doesn't say anything that warrants it being so well hidden,
I figure making it a hint as to what it actually does would be reasonable.


Lastly, yes, everything I've written here should fit within the dialogue limit.
(It was... "6 rows with 11 characters each" right?)

Also I've got some questions/ideas/thoughts about this that I wanna toss out there.

Of course, some of this might be considered "outside the scope" for this project,
but I figured I'd just keep all my thoughts together & see if they'd go anywhere.

So rather than having all this be "Could you add this to Redux?", maybe think
of it as me asking "Is this idea reasonable/possible, in general?" instead
and figure things out from there.

   
• Would it be possible to create/add some kind of map system?
  
  I think this is the only Zelda game that doesn't have a map of some kind.
  Even Zelda 1 & Link's Awakening (Gameboy) were able to show us maps...
  and they were much more limited than Zelda 2 was.
  At the very least, it'd be great for dealing with the Temples.

   
• ...what about a World Map though?
  
  Or at least some way to help identify different places (other than towns).
  Throughout the game people will mention specific areas, like the
  "XXX Desert", "XXX Swamp" or "XXX Temple", etc. It's usually more of
  a guess if you found the right place, but you're never really sure.
  Is it possible to add a sign to the start of each temple for example?
  Maybe edit the signs in some towns to mention nearby areas?
  Perhaps you could use the 2nd signs at the opposite end
  of said towns for these extra directions instead?
  (Unless they both point to the same message, rather than 2 separate ones...)

   
• Can you give some short invincibility to Link when opening doors/picking up items?
  
  You're briefly unable to do anything while a door is being unlocked
  (or picking up, say, a Heart Container or a major item)
  and since enemies can just phase through doors in this world,
  it basically gives them a free attack on you in these situations.
  
  Now, sure, you could say "just don't push them back/open it yet",
  but you really only have 2 choices in a fight: Move Forward or Back Off.
  The problem is, when you're fighting something like an Iron Knuckle
  or a Fokka (anything fast or with a projectile really), you really don't
  want to Back Off, as you'd be completely open then.
  If you could walk backward without turning around that would be something...
  but I figure having a small amount of invincibility in those moments would be simpler.

   
• Would it be possible to disable random encounters?
  
  This 1 is more of a "for fun/out of curiosity" kinda question.
  Certain areas already seem to have it disabled (like Death Mountain or Maze Island),
  so I was wondering if that could just be applied globally as well?
  
  (...oh wait, new idea!)
  Could you edit an item to, say, temporarily disable random encounters?
  For example: Maybe the effect could last like 10 seconds, then have a cooldown that's
  either time based (like 30 seconds) or location based (get to a town to 'recharge' it).
  Perhaps you could use the flute? I mean, it already gets rid of that giant.. spider.. thing,
  so having it "repel" random enemies doesn't seem like that big of a logic stretch does it?

   
• Get rid of "road encounters"?
  
  Since I'm on the topic of enemy encounters...
  Could you just have it skip an enemy encounter when you're on the road?
  As it just gives you a single, empty screen anyway, it feels unnecessary.
  
  Possibly get rid of/change the pure bubble/fireball screens too.
  As far as the "bubble screen" is concerned, it just feels like a cheap way
  to get some "knock you into a pit" deaths early on. I mean, they cover the
  entire screen while you're in the area & go through the floor, all you can do
  is try to move between them and pray you don't get hit weirdly.
  
  With the pure fireball screen, my only real issue with it is that you sometimes
  get hit by them when you're at the end of the screen and trying to leave.
  Simply because it decided it wanted to randomly spawn right on the border where
  you can't see/react to them. Unlike the bubbles, at least you can block these.. usually.
  (Though you probably can't do much about that... I thought I'd mention it anyway.)

   
• Make lives not permanent, but re-spawn after a game over instead?
  
  I recall there being a discussion over the "Life Doll" change a while back, so I did some thinking.
  The original issue people had with the "Life Dolls" was that they vanished after you collected
  them and if when you got a Game Over you couldn't go back and get them again.
  This led to the Redux Solution™, which was to just let you keep the lives after a game over.
  But what if you went in the other direction? Keep them as temporary additions, but make it
  so they come back after a Game Over.. is that possible?
  I actually like them being a permanent boost, so this is more of an "alternate" suggestion, if you will.
  Even if you don't use it here, options are always good to have.. right?

   
• Is it possible to use the left side of the textbox for another (12'th) letter?
  
  Simple question really. I can't help but notice how textboxes always have that clean.. empty.. space.. on the left.
  Is it just, like, inaccessible for some reason? Or does it cause some weird glitches when stuff is written there?
  I'm sure you looked into to this ages ago, so I'm just curious is all.

   
• Can your exp be permanently saved?
  
  Obviously you can "continue" with it, with an optional patch,
  but could it also carry over into a save file as well, as a different patch?
  Again... just curious if that can be a thing at all, or not.

   
• Can you use a different sound when picking up keys/smaller items?
  
  Okay, yeah, I'm being rather nitpicky with this last one.
  But it's kinda hard to ignore now that I've heard it so much.
  As far as I can tell when you grab a key (or a small item drop)
  it uses the same sound as the Sword Beam (or maybe it's just similar).
  Considering just how much you end up attacking in this game
  (or, hell, just trying to inspect things/talk to people in towns)
  could you find a different sound to replace item grabbing with?
  
  I was initially gonna also suggest "could you disable the sword beam while in towns?"
  but then I remembered the possibility that some people could be fakes in later towns...
  So, hmm... I dunno what to do here. (I just feel like that sound gets used far too much.)

Heh... sorry for the super long post, I wasn't expecting to have this much to say myself.
But this mod looked promising when I heard about it, so I wanted to try to be thorough... 

[Trax]

Red Lad in the second part of Rauru. The original text is "ONLY THE HAMMER CAN DESTROY A ROADBLOCK." Seems correct to me.

[Dasha-Supa]

I encountered a strange bug when playing this on the NES Classic. In the title screen the rock ledge is a strange green color. This occurs with Kachikachi and well as FCEUmm, Nestopia and the other cores available for the NES Classic. Can this bug be fixed?

[devonhg]

I'll do you one better. Heres a quick test video via Mesen - https://youtu.be/374YeNbGdL4
It has worse results with Nestopia and I patched this to the same rom I patched everything else with using flips. This is plain Redux beta without the optional patches though ideally, i'd like to get them working too. Although the fairy file select would be nice, i'm itching to do another playthrough haha

This issue seems to have crept up again. I'm getting this described bug on my retropie and on fceux using the dropbox link in the OP. I checked out the OPs response and patch link but it looks like that file is no longer available.

I'm looking forward to this hopefully getting patched.
February 16, 2020, 12:15:49 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

This issue seems to have crept up again. I'm getting this described bug on my retropie and on fceux using the dropbox link in the OP. I checked out the OPs response and patch link but it looks like that file is no longer available.

I'm looking forward to this hopefully getting patched.

Update: tried patching a different rom ( a [!] Rom) and it works great now.