[Coppermustache]

It has been a while since the last update, hasnt it? My progress on this project hasnt been very consisten in the last couple months, but now I`m picking up the paste a bit.

Copper and Steam (workingtitle) is a romhack of the legend of zelda for the NES. It will feature a completely new overworld, 9 new dungeons and new sprites for items and enemys that will put the game into a steampunk-ish setting.

The Overworld has already been finished and all of the overworld enemys received new sprites. The only issues are the warp whistle locations and a glitch that freezes the game when entering the warp stairs, maybe one of you could help me with that, Id be really gratefull for that.



6/9 dungeons have been redesigned with most enemys and 2 bosses were redesigned as well.



This whole hack has been very ambitious for a starter like me but I`m very satisfied with how far I have already come, I can`t wait to upload the finished project, until then I`ll do my best!

Its update time!

In the last 8 days I have been working hard on completing this project and the working is paying of, since I´m close to finishing it.
All dungeons have been redesigned, only 2 bosses remain to be changed and the warp whistle locations need to be swapped.
Unless more things come up (which is not unlikely) I will soon be able to go into the playtesting phase, which I wholeheartedly invite you all to.

I´ll keep my fingers crossed that things keep going as smooth until the end!

[xenophile]

Looks good! I've been working on a Legend of Zelda hack as well which is currently stalled out on dungeons 7 and 8.

I did play with the warp stairs a little bit, but all the documentation I could find on them was confusing. For now I've ignored them, but I would love a good explanation for how they work.

I am curious, when you say "bosses were redesigned" do you mean graphically, or have you figured out how to change any of the boss logic?

[Coppermustache]

yeah no, I just gave them a new look, I should have called it a visual redesign there.
Dungeons 7-9 seem really scary, they are so huge that I dont even dare to start working on them.
Ill let you know when I find out anything about the warpstairs, I already found their mechanic in trax`s dissasembly but I have no idea what to do with that.

[gzip]

Hi Coppermustache,

Glad to see you're making progress on your hack. I just changed the room locations based on Trax's disassembly and stepped through the code where the game freezes.

Basically it looks like the warp list must match the screens which have warp stairs.

This is from Trax's doc:

Code: [Select]

19334: Table for Shortcuts Screen Locations in Overworld (4 bytes)

1D 23 49 79
And here's the relevant code that freezes in an infinite loop. ($14F42 in ROM file)

Code: [Select]

8F44  LDY #$FF                 
8F46  LDA $EB     
8F48  INY                     
8F49  CMP $6BB2,Y             
8F4C  BNE $8F48   
The code loads in the current screen (stored at $EB in RAM) and runs through the 4 bytes list at $19334 until it finds a match. If there's no match then it will happily continue the loop and the game freezes.

So let's say you change 79 above to 7A but you don't actually make the screen changes to have warp stairs on screen 7A (and remove them from 79). Then the game will crash.

Just make sure there are actually warp stairs on the screens indicated by the 4 bytes, and nowhere else. If you're not sure which screen is which then you can look at $EB in RAM while in the game on the screen you want.

[Coppermustache]

you are a lifesaver gzip!
I had a hunch what could have caused this issue but I could not for the love of god find the spot in traxs dissasembly.
I already tried it out and it works perfectly now. I really owe you one for this.

[Trax]

Hi Coppermustache! This looks like a nice project so far. If you need any help interpreting data or code, don't hesiste to ask.