Ray's various questions...

Is Ganon's sprite palette accessible in HM & are those colors tied to anything else?

Is there a way to change this room's Y axis so that it's not at the top of the screen?



You know the room..

A couple questions here:
1- Is it ok to use the amazing Master Sword sprite used on the Parallel Worlds title screen? I think I've seen it on a couple other "in the works" hacks, but I want to be sure.
If it is ok,
2- What's the best method coping it into another hack?

I'll credit the original creator, of course. (think it's SePH?)

Ganon palette can be changed, dunno if used for anything else.

Y axis can probably be changed easily with some tweaks.

Master sword PW sprite gfx was made by GanonSpriter and to insert it, yy-chr/zcompress is all you need + change palette in HM.

SePH wrote:Y axis can probably be changed easily with some tweaks.

What program would you use? I figured it could be changed in HM, but I can't find that room...

SePH wrote:Master sword PW sprite gfx was made by GanonSpriter and to insert it, yy-chr/zcompress is all you need + change palette in HM.

Is there a guide to this kinda thing?
I've got both programs & can find the original sword gfx in yy-chr, but I'm not sure how to get the gfx from Parallel Worlds & I've never added gfx from one rom to another.
AFAIK, zcompress will only rip the gfx from the vanilla ALttP, right?

The room you want to change is room 112, but in order to have the entire room more downwards, you will need to adopt the location of staircases - if this is what you want. Thus you will also need to edit the staircases of 2 corresponding rooms, room 128 and room 113, to also move the staircases lower.

Zcompress can decompress the GFX from any Alttp rom as long as it is a rom compatible with Alttp and most are, including PW. To extract the gfx from PW, go to end of rom and add 80000 bytes in hex to bring the rom to 2MB, then also add 200 in hex at the beginning, if it doesn't yet have them, all with value 00, ie adding a header.

Then go to address 81C0 (if header) and retype the internal rom name from:
LOZ: PARALLEL WORLDS  
in hex:
4C 4F 5A 3A 20 50 41 52 41 4C 4C 45 4C 20 57 4F 52 4C 44 53 20 20

to: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA  
in hex:
54 48 45 20 4C 45 47 45 4E 44 20 4F 46 20 5A 45 4C 44 41 20 20 20

Now PW is compatible with zcompress, and you can extract the gfx from it with the regular command:
zcompress 0 pw.smc pw.bin, assuming your rom name is pw.smc
Then open the pw.bin with YYchr and find the hacked version of the Master sword GFX and copy paste them into your hack's bin file - on the same location. Recompress the gfx of your rom. Then change the palettes of your rom with Hyrule Magic under pals - you need to find which ones are for the sword - this info should be in the compendium - should be under title screen pals.

Thanks so much!
But something about this part isn't making sense to me:

Puzzledude wrote:Zcompress can decompress the GFX from any Alttp rom as long as it is a rom compatible with Alttp and most are, including PW. To extract the gfx from PW, go to end of rom and add 80000 bytes in hex

what program do I use to add these bytes? Sorry if I'm missing the obvious.

You use a hex editor such as HxD (recommendation for beginners).

Also the last version of zcompress no longer needs a rom header to work, so you don't need to add 0x200 00 bytes at the beginning of the rom.

To do a command with zcompress, find cmd.exe (usually in windows folders) and copy it in zompress directory. Then execute cmd and paste either the compression or decompression command lines.

Ray138 wrote:Thanks so much!
But something about this part isn't making sense to me:

Puzzledude wrote:Zcompress can decompress the GFX from any Alttp rom as long as it is a rom compatible with Alttp and most are, including PW. To extract the gfx from PW, go to end of rom and add 80000 bytes in hex

what program do I use to add these bytes? Sorry if I'm missing the obvious.

You add or remove or change all the bytes using a hex editor, usually we all use the freeware HxD hex editor for this job.

Got it all working!
Thanks so much!

Huzzah!
Centered the room so that HUD elements aren't blocking anything & it looks less awkward. Other stairs moved accordingly, of course.

Is there a way to change what items are sold in shops?
I'd like to remove the L2 shield from the Darkworld shop so that only the L1 shield is sold.
This way the only way to obtain the L2 shield is to take the L1 shield to the Fairy.
Is that possible?

Ray138 wrote:Is there a way to change what items are sold in shops?
I'd like to remove the L2 shield from the Darkworld shop so that only the L1 shield is sold.
This way the only way to obtain the L2 shield is to take the L1 shield to the Fairy.
Is that possible?

Yes, but you see, this is a debug. What if your L2 shield gets eaten by that enemy which eats shields. If L2 shield is not in the shop, you can never again have it, after it gets eaten. You could seek out this enemy though and remove all of them from the overworld. To change the shield from L2 to L1 in the shop you will need an ASM person to trace the seller sprite's code, since the merchant and all 3 items to sell are actually one sprite.

If L2 gets eaten, could you not buy an L1 (provided an ASM hack that keeps only the L1 shield in the shop) & give it to the Fairy to upgrade to an L2 again?

I really just need to know how to change the colors of the L2 shield in the shield shop. This would solve all my problems with it.
Is that an ASM thing, or something I can do?

Ray138 wrote:If L2 gets eaten, could you not buy an L1 (provided an ASM hack that keeps only the L1 shield in the shop) & give it to the Fairy to upgrade to an L2 again?

Yes, you could. I guess it is a shortcut to buy it then. Your method of repetition should work as well.

Ray138 wrote:I really just need to know how to change the colors of the L2 shield in the shield shop. This would solve all my problems with it.
Is that an ASM thing, or something I can do?

It's more like a hex edit. But I remember having severe problems with these palettes, since you have 3 states of the shield: displayed in the shop, lifted above your head after purchase and in-game in front of Link. Matching all 3 is problematic. If I remember correctly I could never make it so that the hacked second shield (ie Hylia shield) would match all 3 states: in shop, above head after purchase, in-game in front of Link. And to make things worse there is also the 4th state - in the inventory (where you can only make an 8 bit approximation).

Ok, thanks for all the info.
I've altered the L1 shield palette as well, so now neither shield will match what's sold in the shop.
My workaround is that this is the Darkworld, so you can't really trust what you see. When either shield is purchased, the shop owner denies "different colors" or "false advertising" & declares "All sales final!"
It's a fun interaction & I kinda like it this way.

Can I change the background image on the title screen, or is that an ASM thing?
I've painted the background black, like the Japanese version, using HM. But, now I'd kinda like to add a different image...

Ray138 wrote:Can I change the background image on the title screen, or is that an ASM thing?
I've painted the background black, like the Japanese version, using HM. But, now I'd kinda like to add a different image...

Well you can add what you want according to the limitations to the original game, and you are quite limited, since you have only a handful of gfx small squares, which then need to repeat to form the image, while those squares are in 2 gfx sets.

However Jared Brian who recently joined the hacking community made a revolutionary new way of adding custom images to title screen with "unlimited" possible unique small squares, using a special custom ASM written by Zarby.
https://www.zeldix.net/t2329-custom-title-screen

I would recomend the first approach, but both are considered quite advance GFX editing.

Need some big help here..
I'm play testing my hack (for the 100th time) & I've come across a new error...
When getting a Heart Piece, the text should say:
You found a piece of Heart!
But instead it just says:
t!
The correct Heart gfx do display.

Here's the text copied straight from Monologue line 342:
You found a piece of Heart![2]                 [2HeartL][1HeartR]
As you can see, I haven't even altered it.

Anyone know what could be causing this?

One issue would be using a savestate. Text changes require you to start the game from a saved game. Text changes wont display correctly otherwise.

WHEW....
Thanks, SePH. That's it.

Ugh, another weird issue...
When pulling the lever to drain the water in the swamp, the "you did it" sound plays twice (kinda over itself) and the entire screen & the adjacent screen, fills with water. I can move through the rooms like normal, & when re-entering the building, it's all as it should be.
I haven't messed with anything in this area.
Anybody have any idea what could be causing this?

edit- my last graphical change was to the layout of Library. Is there a connection there?

edit- my last graphical change was to the layout of Library. Is there a connection there?

No, it's just Hyrule Magic messing up the rom after multiple edits and this is a well known bug. You can however debug it, if the bug is still in its 1st phase using a hex edit debug. If that doesn't fix it, you are in the 2nd phase and there's nothing you can do but to remove the pull switch and this effect all together. I don't remember where I have my notes on this hex debug though.

Ah, ok. I was able to remake my most recent changes as an all-in-one save to an older version. All is well.
Thanks!