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Need help deciding if this is worth my time; I'm a noob wanting to make a gameplay improvement hack
Topic Started: Jul 21 2016, 10:51 AM (690 Views)
alianger

I'd like to make/see made a gameplay improvement hack and I'm wondering what can be done with the current tools and what else I need to learn to pull these features off. If you have any comments on the features then that's welcome too. I'm pretty much a noob to hacking and coding, only having made a couple of hacks with very nice tools before.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - Improvement hack
-All cutscenes are skippable
-All dialogue can be sped up on a paragraph/text box basis instead of the inconsistent system the game uses now
-No bomb requirement to enter Zora's domain to open up the early game a bit
-FP targeting works more like walking and running; nudging=slow speed, fullt tilt=current speed
-The owl either appears as a travel aid in more places or you can call on it with for example Saria's song and pick from places you've visited to go to (kakariko, hyrule castle, lake hylia, fenced area outside gerudo valley, zora's fountain, outside lost woods, lon lon ranch)
-^OR Farore's Wind works outside of dungeons, maybe with some limitations to avoid problems
-Faster block pushing/dragging
-Changed scaling of the skulltula rewards; 5=wallet 1, 10=stone of agony, 15=wallet 2, etc.
-The iron boots can be mapped to a c-button
-Low HP beeping stops after a few beeps
-Navi stops bothering you after reminding you of the next quest once
-Link's and Navi's voices don't trigger as often
-Less picky positioning requirements for interacting with ladders, opening chests, talking to NPCs etc.
-The "knocked down" animation is a bit faster
-Targeting an enemy makes link pull out his sword (so you don't have to clumsily attack to pull it out before being able to jump attack)
-Tokens drop to the ground so you don't have to wait until you have the boomerang to get some of them (there might be situations where this could be bad though?)
-You can travel back in time before finishing the forest temple
-More zoomed in camera when diving
-Selling bugs gives you 25 rupees while selling normal poes gives you 40. This scales better difficulty-wise considering the ease of getting more bugs and selling them over and over in the market.
-Fixed hit detection when grabbing heart pieces with the boomerang so Link can't drop them in the water
-No invisible wall above the Gerudo fortress cell
-Getting caught in Gerudo's fortress doesn't immediately put you back in the cell; instead the guards near you turn into the swordwielding cell guards. Guards will also see you and transform if you shoot one of them with the bow.
-Wooden boxes can be cut with the sword
-To speed up farming you won't keep getting more of an item from pots etc. that you've already fully stocked, so at for example max rupees you'll only get other kinds of items.

Thanks.
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Three Pendants
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alianger
Jul 21 2016, 10:51 AM
I'd like to make/see made a gameplay improvement hack and I'm wondering what can be done with the current tools and what else I need to learn to pull these features off. If you have any comments on the features then that's welcome too. I'm pretty much a noob to hacking and coding, only having made a couple of hacks with very nice tools before.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - Improvement hack
-All cutscenes are skippable
-All dialogue can be sped up on a paragraph/text box basis instead of the inconsistent system the game uses now
-No bomb requirement to enter Zora's domain to open up the early game a bit
-FP targeting works more like walking and running; nudging=slow speed, fullt tilt=current speed
-The owl either appears as a travel aid in more places or you can call on it with for example Saria's song and pick from places you've visited to go to (kakariko, hyrule castle, lake hylia, fenced area outside gerudo valley, zora's fountain, outside lost woods, lon lon ranch)
-^OR Farore's Wind works outside of dungeons, maybe with some limitations to avoid problems
-Faster block pushing/dragging
-Changed scaling of the skulltula rewards; 5=wallet 1, 10=stone of agony, 15=wallet 2, etc.
-The iron boots can be mapped to a c-button
-Low HP beeping stops after a few beeps
-Navi stops bothering you after reminding you of the next quest once
-Link's and Navi's voices don't trigger as often
-Less picky positioning requirements for interacting with ladders, opening chests, talking to NPCs etc.
-The "knocked down" animation is a bit faster
-Targeting an enemy makes link pull out his sword (so you don't have to clumsily attack to pull it out before being able to jump attack)
-Tokens drop to the ground so you don't have to wait until you have the boomerang to get some of them (there might be situations where this could be bad though?)
-You can travel back in time before finishing the forest temple
-More zoomed in camera when diving
-Selling bugs gives you 25 rupees while selling normal poes gives you 40. This scales better difficulty-wise considering the ease of getting more bugs and selling them over and over in the market.
-Fixed hit detection when grabbing heart pieces with the boomerang so Link can't drop them in the water
-No invisible wall above the Gerudo fortress cell
-Getting caught in Gerudo's fortress doesn't immediately put you back in the cell; instead the guards near you turn into the swordwielding cell guards. Guards will also see you and transform if you shoot one of them with the bow.
-Wooden boxes can be cut with the sword
-To speed up farming you won't keep getting more of an item from pots etc. that you've already fully stocked, so at for example max rupees you'll only get other kinds of items.

Thanks.
Hello, let's start from the beginning and I'll tell you the ease of doing such a thing...

1. That is already implemented in OoT's Debug Rom, this comes with an issue with the Light Medallion, where you won't actually get the Light Medallion. But this is the only instance of not getting the quest item proper from a cutsceme as I recall.

2. The game uses a Draw Instant - Draw Character commands to decide the "speed" most of the time, the rest of the time it uses an actual "Speed" command which slows down the text for dramatic effect. There's a hack made by Airikita to speed up all text drawing, akin to OoT 3D.

3. A simple matter.

4. Last I checked first person targeting already works like that...?

5. I implemented something a little different, but the same general idea, but trying to make the Owl's actor do this would be highly complicated since it would require new Entrance specifications as well as new spawn points added, neither of which can be easily added without shifting around data. You'd also need to add a fair bit of custom ASM to make this work on a song basis.

6. Farore's Wind is a bit of a mess outside of dungeons, as you alluded to.

7. That would be nice. We've yet found nothing in that dealing, then again I don't think we've ever really looked.

8. A simple matter, I have notes on the subject as well as the rewards they can give you.

9. I did this for my hack, but instead I had it be a button combination for the Boots to make sure that there was no need for it to take up extra item slots.

10. I was recently told how to accomplish something on either to change the noise or get rid of it all together.
800F738C - Sound Effect Function
Playtendo - 80079C6C should be the argument you need to modify

11. That can be arranged... I think. The first time it looks to see if 200 frames have passed and if so to alert you with Navi, after that it's programmed to look for every 600 frames I think. If that 600 frame check is disabled that *might* make it a one time thing. I'm not fully sure on that though.

12. A bit trickier in all respects.

13. That precision is already pretty loose as it stands, to make it any more loose would no doubt cause further glitches.

14. That I don't believe has ever really been looked into.

15. Neat idea, but I assume a bit tricky. It would require forcing the game into thinking that the B-Button has been pressed and that it was the 3rd or 4th (Giant's Knife, Broken Giant's Knife respectively) that was drawn to not swing it automatically.

16. As you mentioned, that could be bad. Also I don't think the specifics of gravity have ever been pinpointed in a given actor, as it stands the Skulltula Tokens have none.

17. Quite simple. I did such a thing for Voyager of Time way back when.

18. An odd request. I imagine a bit trickier than one may assume.

19. Another simple matter, my notes have all of that information already.

20. Good luck... that Boomerang hit detection is all over the place, I swear...

21. Never noticed that. With a map editor or something it shouldn't be too difficult to remove.

22. That's... a very skilled hacker at work. Because that would mean that you'd despawn the current guard for the Gerudo Fighter and have her not drop a key upon defeat. There is, in theory, an unused attack mode for the Gerudo Guards, but we've never found a way to activate it, if it exists.

23. An interesting premise... one I neve thought about before... Could the Roll be a damage identifier? I somewhat doubt it, but the game must be able to tell when Link is rolling in order to break crates, I might take a look into that.

24. The game already does this with Hearts, but that's it. Trying to further that system though could be difficult would no doubt require custom ASM.
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alianger

Thanks for the detailed reply! I'll have a look at the mentioned hacks and have a go at some of the simpler ones soon. Is the community open to using other people's hacks freely (giving credit of course)?

I actually beat the game for the first time today; I'd decided I didn't like 3D Zelda that much before but recently wanted to give this game a shot and ended up really liking it overall. Anyway, on to the feature list:
1. If I understood correctly this is a Master Quest rom, which has other differences too? I suppose I'd want to use the standard N64 rom (1.1 or 1.2?) for this hack.

4. Are you sure? I played in Project 64 2.2 and FP targeting is definitely more stiff than walking/running is, though it was changed in the 3DS game from what I can tell. Could be the controller settings though.

5. What did you implement?

11. Do you think there would be an issue when loading a saved game, where it would actually be helpful that the message repeats if the player spent some time away from the game, or does the timer reset?

12. How about cutting their volume by 40% or so instead?

13. A shame, though I think I'd like to fiddle around with some of them anyway.

14. It's something that kind of annoyed me compared to the 2D games, which rarely take control away from the player like that.

15. Yes and the other thing is that you'd not always want it to happen, like when carrying the hookshot and targeting something you want to stun, so there would have to be an exception too.

16. Yeah, didn't quite think this one through. Maybe they could have gravity right until you get the boomerang, or something. Could be tricky though.

18. I suppose so; I just thought it was odd how the camera works differently when diving and that it could occasionally make it hard to see what you were doing.

20. Hehe, I know right.

21. If I'm not mistaken (some of) the low fences outside Gerudo Valley also can't be jumped over by Epona, maybe due to invisible walls being there too?

22. I knew this one would be too advanced for me when I thought of it earlier, but I thought I'd mention it at least.

Edited by alianger, Jul 21 2016, 04:11 PM.
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GodsTurf
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Uhh...
Making this an "improvement hack" in that context is a bit silly, however if you did each of these separately as patches that could be applied at a modder's expense, I think you'd be doing the community a huge favor.
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mzxrules

1) Skipping all cutscenes won't be an easy hack to do. A few cutscenes trigger events during the cutscene. For example, the cutscene where the Lake Hylia water rises triggers an event that causes the water to rise both in and outside the cutscene. You also have complex cutscenes like the one where you Meet Zelda for the first time, where the entire sequence shifts between events that are hardcoded into the Child Princess Zelda actor and those driven by the much more moddable cutscene engine, not to mention you get an item at the tail end of that cutscene as well.

2) IIRC, faster dialog runs the risk of softlocking the game. In the Water Temple, there's a dialog between Link and Princess Ruto, where the camera angle changes as you talk to her. If the dialog runs too fast, the camera changes won't happen like they should, locking the game up.

11) I took notes on Navi once, and posted 'm on ZSR:

It takes 600 frames for Navi to appear (30 seconds).
It takes 3000 frames for the Navi Icon to disappear (2.5 minutes).
It takes 25800 frames for the Navi Icon to roll over to 0 (21.5 minutes). This means that it will take 19.5 minutes for Navi to re-appear without resetting the game, unless you talk to Navi.

The timer pauses whenever the Start Menu is open, or on touching an exit from the current scene.
If the timer is less than 3000 frames, it will reset to 0 on entering the next scene.
If you talk to Navi, the timer advances to 3000. If you do not leave the scene, the timer will freeze when it hits 25800 frames.
The timer continues to count up even while in a scene that the Navi Icon will not normally pop up in.
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