Re: Parallel Worlds 1.3 Progress Thread

by wizzrobemaster Thu 1 Mar 2018 - 21:14

other suggestions i have for the pw updates are less back tracking when it comes to attacking enemies with bushes and jars, and i would remove some of the item gating. currently playing pw 1.2.

by fsg Fri 2 Mar 2018 - 2:54

what places in particular do you have in mind wizzrobemaster? for the removed item gating and backtracking.

by wizzrobemaster Fri 2 Mar 2018 - 3:48

so i have not gotten that far but i got the zora's sapphire. i noticed there are several spots where you need to use the power glove or the hammer. even ajinah's room is gated where you can get a heart piece. i used the game genie code to get the ocarina and the hammer from the start. also some of the knights move too fast that you cannot outrun them. i would also remove any spots that force the player to take damage without the cane of byrna or magic cape.

by wizzrobemaster Fri 2 Mar 2018 - 3:53

the kakariko npc that runs away from you should be moved. it looks out of place for him to run on tiles that are impassable. i would also redistribute some of the enemies where they are positioned. the endless ocean has too many river zoras that get in the way and there are beamos statues in the desert oasis that are impossible to dodge when entering a cave.

by wizzrobemaster Fri 2 Mar 2018 - 22:48

here is one asm i would add: the roc's feather so that way bomb jumps are no longer necessary.

also i would remove the heart piece from the treasure chest mini-game. luck based quests are the bane of game design.

by fsg Sat 3 Mar 2018 - 9:34

wizzrobemaster wrote:here is one asm i would add: the roc's feather so that way bomb jumps are no longer necessary.

i am very skeptical towards this. it is clear that bomb jumps is a mechanic which was intended by the designer to be used in the hack and completely removing them from the hack mean removing a conscious design element from the game. self damage from bombs have already been removed from the hack, which negates the punishing part of the bomb jumps, and which as far as i know changed the dynamics of the hall of pain, where byrna wasn't supposed to be reachable until after you got hookshot (not entirely sure about this though).

furthermore, parallel remodel, to my knowledge, removed the bomb jumps from the game (i may be wrong on this, as i havent actually played it). it does not seem right to let the philosophy of remodel spill onto the real hack.

by fsg Sat 3 Mar 2018 - 9:43

i have one bug to report which causes the game to softlock, but which is probably a bug present the original game as well. there is however no way for it to occur in the original game (that i know of), but there is in pw

in ruto there is a lever you pull to blow up a wall. if you charge up a dash while pulling the lever (this is a mechanic which probably not everyone knows about) and dash right out of the door as fast as possible after the explosion, the start and select button becomes completely unusable and you have to hard reset the game to continue playing (maybe i death can fix it too, i didnt test that).

the easiest way to prevent this is likely a small redesign of the room, which moves the lever to a spot such that you cannot dash right out the door after pulling it

by wizzrobemaster Sat 3 Mar 2018 - 18:33

I did not realize that 1.1. is the remodel while 1.23 is the original PW but with improvements. i suggest the remodel adds the asm's that were in the 1.23. anyway bomb jumping is too punishing because it requires precision and was not intended by the developers of zelda3.

by wizzrobemaster Wed 7 Mar 2018 - 20:50

So I encountered an issue when getting grabbed by a fallmaster in din's catcombs. the entrance is dark and you lose the cone of light should this occur. either remove the dark room in the main entrance or do not have any fallmasters in the dungeon.

by MikeRL Wed 5 Sep 2018 - 9:31

Some of the punishment from bomb jumping is negated since as of recent updates your own bombs don't damage the player. I also noticed a strange bug I've noticed on previous playthroughs - the mysterious tablets that are used for clues in the Parallel Tower have their clues shuffled up when you read the grey slates on the wall. I don't know the cause of this - be it a side effect of an update to the ROM, playing the dungeons in a certain order, or not completing all the dungeons (I tend to complete the Parade Tower before completing all dungeons.

by **qwertymodo** Tue 1 Jan 2019 - 16:34

After a long hiatus from working on this, I have finished going through PuzzleDude's v1.23 changes, and have incorporated all of them that I intend to back into my source except for the Sky Isles/Icy Church tile changes. It's been awhile since I've touched the OW tile data, so I need to reacquaint myself with the data format before I mess around with those any further. Since I don't have work today, I intend to work my way through as many of the outstanding bugs as possible. The work on v1.2 really burned me out on this game, but after some time away and a bunch more experience with both the game's code (thanks to work I've done on the Z3 Randomizer) and SNES assembly in general, as well as a significant upgrade in my workflow and toolchain, I'm ready to finally tackle the issues in 1.2 and try to polish this game up as much as possible (or at least squash all of the known bugs that I can...)

by **qwertymodo** Tue 1 Jan 2019 - 19:01

I've figured out the first half of the Vitreous graphics bug. There are two separate issues. The first one (which I figured out) is that the slime on the floor is using the wrong palette. This problem corrects itself after Vitreous uses a lightning attack. This problem is because although the room Vitreous is in is using the correct palette, the room you ENTER the battle from is NOT using the same palette, so it has to switch palettes as you walk through the door, causing the bug. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I can fix this, as the room outside of Vitreous is using that different palette in order to force the otherwise hidden pathway to be visible. If I switch to the correct palette (palette 18), that path will be invisible, with no way to show it. Maybe that's not a problem, you can use bombs or the Cane of Somaria to find the path...

The second bug is the fact that it's using the wrong set of tiles in the slime. I've posted notes on this before, but I still don't know what's causing it. ~~The correct tiles ARE loaded into VRAM, it's just using the wrong ones to render the sprite.~~ Nevermind, it looks like the wrong tiles are getting uploaded into VRAM. I need to find my older notes...

by **qwertymodo** Tue 1 Jan 2019 - 20:03

Woooo, I fixed Vitreous. There is a per-dungeon table at $02811E that gets read at $028274. In order to load the correct animation tiles for Vitreous, you need the entry for that particular dungeon to contain the value $5F. In the case of Parallel Worlds, that means offset 0x010126, $5D => $5F.

by **qwertymodo** Wed 2 Jan 2019 - 0:08

I believe I have managed to implement the Icy Church OOB fix the same way I did in v1.2, but with actually unused tiles this time. I have a more robust check in place to be sure that the tiles really aren't being used anywhere else, but I'm also going to manually check every overworld area with data breakpoints set to be absolutely sure. This time around, I'm using:

#592
#595
#2898
~~#5819~~ Woops... forgot to check the waterfall cave. >_<
#5788

by **Letterbomb** Tue 27 Apr 2021 - 18:58

I know this thread has been gone for a while, but any chances of v1.3 being released?

by **Puzzledude** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 1:15

Letterbomb9689 wrote:I know this thread has been gone for a while, but any chances of v1.3 being released?

I doubt it is going to be anytime soon. Also, if this version is released, it would not be much different from the current latest version (1.23), which I released a while back, fixing all the bugs that came along with the version 1.2. Not sure what actually is planed for the 1.3. Main problem of PW still is dungeon design, so instead of us fixing all the small suff, it would be better to just overhaul the dungeons and that of course is not planed for 1.3.

by **Letterbomb** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 7:09

Puzzledude wrote:
Letterbomb9689 wrote:I know this thread has been gone for a while, but any chances of v1.3 being released?
I doubt it is going to be anytime soon. Also, if this version is released, it would not be much different from the current latest version (1.23), which I released a while back, fixing all the bugs that came along with the version 1.2. Not sure what actually is planed for the 1.3. Main problem of PW still is dungeon design, so instead of us fixing all the small suff, it would be better to just overhaul the dungeons and that of course is not planed for 1.3.

Okay cool, was just wondering if it were to happen because of how long it has been in development. That being said, I think 1.23 is a really solid build of the game, so if 1.3 is not released, there's at least 1.23 Smile

by **Puzzledude** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 18:10

Yes, I decided to go for 1.23 specially because seeing the 1.2 introduced new bugs into the game, even gamebreaking ones, which were not there in 1.0 or 1.1. And that of course was a problem since the old versions were replaced by 1.2 and players could no longer get them. Main problem of 1.2 was the Darunia room with Armos, where the door was not opening, and the fix for that was released in a haste additionally. Then the overlay in Ice world ruins was not working due to the new Master sword code (which ends the snowing once you get it) etc.

I thought 1.23 would be a lot more shortlived, but it seems Qwerty moved on to MSU hacking of other games, and since 1.23 already debugs most problems in the game, the 1.3 is really not needed. Like said, some dungeons should be remade instead of us fixing ASM things.

by **Letterbomb** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 19:36

I remember this, I actually had v1.21 on my hacked SNES Classic that I got, when I got there I was wondering why the door was not opening at all. That's when I got v1.23.

But yeah, I get what you mean by v1.3 not being needed. I definitely still enjoy v1.23 though, playing through the game was very fun for me and I greatly appreciate the work that was put into this game. It's definitely one of my favorite Zelda hacks I have played. I'm hoping one day to eventually play v1.0 of Parallel Worlds to see the differences and other things changed about the game compared to v1.23.

by **Puzzledude** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 20:12

The difference between 1.0 and 1.1 were better grammar in all the texts/monologues. However the diffrence between 1.1 and 1.2 are all the new ASM. While this does not seem like much, it actually changes the problematic first part - Guardhouse, which had a long section with no sword and was now enhaced with boxing ASM. This tunned down the difficulty a lot. At the same time the Shovel ASM was added. A very complex ASM which allowed Shovel and Flute to be in menu at once, finally filling out that blank space in the middle of the menu in 1.0 and 1.1, which was considered one of the main glitches of version 1.0 and 1.1. Lots of other ASM was added as well.

But again not really that much, that would bring the game any higher than 1.2. For instance all the overhauled dungeons could bring it to 2.0, which was canceled by SePH a while back. I still consider 1.1 the "original" version, since this is what I first played. And when boxing was added, this changed the difficulty. PW was not only considered the most extensive ALTTP hack, it was also considered one of the most difficult ones, specially the first swordless section of the game. But irronically the game becomes a lot easier once you get the cane of byrna and half magic.

by **Letterbomb** Wed 28 Apr 2021 - 20:26

Guardhouse, which had a long section with no sword and was now enhaced with boxing ASM. This tunned down the difficulty a lot. wrote:

Yeah I have heard about this, I think the game also doesn't save until you either get the sword and shield or you exit the Guardhouse, which is brutal. I think the boxing asm was a great addition in this dungeon. While the dungeon isn't too hard for me, it's nice to be able to actually do something against the enemies in the dungeon.

If I remember correctly too, didn't 1.0/1.1 have two extra heart pieces? Not exactly sure if this is accurate or not, but I know v1.23 has only one extra heart piece.

For instance all the overhauled dungeons could bring it to 2.0, which was canceled by SePH a while back. wrote:

I still would love to see what the dungeons would be like remodeled. A lot of the dungeons in PW range from good, to meh, and to bad design. For the ones that have bad design, (Mainly Nabooru and Impa's dungeon) I would love to see the concepts reworked in a more playable/more fun way. But alas, a v2.0 is probably almost never going to happen any time soon.

But irronically the game becomes a lot easier once you get the cane of byrna and half magic. wrote:

Yeah probably the hardest part of the game is the early game. Mainly Din's dungeon was the hardest thing to get by for me early into the game. After you get the Cane and Half Magic the game becomes a joke. There's still some tough parts in it, but the Cane is super overpowered.