Alttp bugs and their fixes

Hi fellow ALttP fans. I'm working on a translation of this game and I have a rather odd question that I hope you guys can help me out with. I hope I'm not posting this in the wrong place. Anyway, there's a signpost text in the game that reads,

"Danger! Beware of deep water and Zora!"

For some reason I cannot seem to find where this sign is in the game. Obviously it should be around the area of Zora's Waterfall, I specifically remember this sign being at the place when you first enter it. I've played through this game more times than I can count since its release and I clearly remember this sign being present in the game. But on my recent playthroughs through emulation I cannot find it. Am I going senile, or is there a specific event that trigger it or is there just a weird bug present that sometimes causes this sign to disappear? Tell me I'm not going crazy.

Talking about bugs... is there a comprehensive list of all known bugs in the game out there? I'm basically thinking about those bugs encountered during normal gameplay and not those odd glitches you will have to specifically seek out.

Off the top of my head, these are the ones I'm familiar with:
Disappearing gloves (palette)
Happens when:
* opening the overworld map
* opening the dungeon map (makes the glove palette to disappear from the moment you visit another room in the dungeon)
* being electrocuted
* using Ether
* being hit by a rabbit beam

Missing sound effect
The magic portal which is found on the small island of Lake Hylia which leads to the Ice Temple is missing the secret discovery chime the other seven portals have.

Camera problem
Two rooms in the Tower of Hera, fails to center the camera view correctly once you enter them, which causes you to see nearby rooms which shouldn't be visible. The view doesn't center correctly until you have moved in the opposite direction of the room.

I recall the same issue being present in Ganon's Tower in one of the rooms with many warp portals.

Immune Mothula
The boss Mothula is immune against the Golden Sword and the spin attack from
the Tempered Sword.

All probably well known to you, but it would be nice to compile a comprehensive list if there is none in order to try to come up with bugfix patches for some of these.

In the Area 0F (area where you enter into the Zora Domain), there is the default text message 062, which is "Danger. Beware of deep water and Zora." However the sign to read it is missing from the original game. So you must have seen this in a hack, maybe. If you want to have this in original Alttp, you need to insert the reading sign in that area and thus change the original.

Regarding the bugs. Not easy to fix those, since this is all ASM. Some are even not fixable: there is a Warping bug in dark world Death Mountain - if you warp with the Mirror from dark to light world and back again 3 times and always stand 1 pixel to the right, you can jump down into the pit and bug-out the game.

Camera scroll problems are not fixable either, accept if you edit the actual room so, that by walking centers it again (but the decenter will always appear). To stop this, the entire layout would have to be edited and thus the entire room needs to be changed.

Also not way to fix this bug: when having Zelda following you in the first dungeon, when you jump from bg1 to bg2 in the basement, if you press Select in the air and then save and quit, and start over, and get hit by Morning Star, you land in bg2. No way to fix this.

Puzzledude wrote:In the Area 0F (area where you enter into the Zora Domain), there is the default text message 062, which is "Danger. Beware of deep water and Zora." However the sign to read it is missing from the original game. So you must have seen this in a hack, maybe. If you want to have this in original Alttp, you need to insert the reading sign in that area and thus change the original.

Thanks for your answer, puzzledude! Huh? That is so weird, never played or seen a hack of this game. I thought for a second this sign could have been added for the European release as that is the version I played in my youth but after giving it a quick look, the sign is nowhere to be seen there either. Man, memories are weird sometimes...

Puzzledude wrote:Regarding the bugs. Not easy to fix those, since this is all ASM. Some are even not fixable: there is a Warping bug in dark world Death Mountain - if you warp with the Mirror from dark to light world and back again 3 times and always stand 1 pixel to the right, you can jump down into the pit and bug-out the game.

Camera scroll problems are not fixable either, accept if you edit the actual room so, that by walking centers it again (but the decenter will always appear). To stop this, the entire layout would have to be edited and thus the entire room needs to be changed.

Also not way to fix this bug: when having Zelda following you in the first dungeon, when you jump from bg1 to bg2 in the basement, if you press Select in the air and then save and quit, and start over, and get hit by Morning Star, you land in bg2. No way to fix this.

Interesting. Sad, to hear most of them are unfixable.

Luckily most bugs are not severe... I also had that "memory problem" once with a friend claiming he has found a L3 green boomerang. I was searching 4 weeks for it when I was young.
When grown up I was since that frustrated that I short-handed hacked it into :p

Speaking of lost texts, I also don't recall text 60 "Danger, do not enter death mountain without the king's permission". Which also raises the interesting question whether the king (zelda's father) was initially part of the game and not only seen in the ending as we experience in AST?

It would be also helpful if somebody can list unused monologues... my hacks only work with disabled fortune teller e.g...

Well, I think we found monologue 062, which is unused. But I think that Fortune teller monologue is fine, since this person is usually taken out of the game, because he is a sprite with to many different monologues for different events (probably different in any hack as in original).

Conn wrote:Luckily most bugs are not severe... I also had that "memory problem" once with a friend claiming he has found a L3 green boomerang. I was searching 4 weeks for it when I was young.
When grown up I was since that frustrated that I short-handed hacked it into :p

Yeah, I agree. The bugs in this game are nowhere near being anything too bad. I can definitely live with them. Funny how our memories can play tricks with us sometimes, this one was scary as I recall it so vividly.

Conn wrote:Speaking of lost texts, I also don't recall text 60 "Danger, do not enter death mountain without the king's permission". Which also raises the interesting question whether the king (zelda's father) was initially part of the game and not only seen in the ending as we experience in AST?

That line I do know is present though - the sign right before the big boulder at the entrance to the mountain.

The sign actually reads a bit different in the Japanese original where the light world equivalent of Death Mountain is known as Hebra Mountain. Literally it only says, "Danger! Entering Mount Hebra without permission is forbidden." So the stuff about the king was actually added in the English localization. But in the end I guess the message is about the same, because who do you get the permission from to enter this mountain where people keeps vanishing in their hunt for the Golden Power?

Regarding cut lines, there was a few removed in the localization from the Japanese original but I don't think there are any more lines present in the US rom that went unused?

What about these lines of text? Are they in the game.

Yes, they are used (Master Sword pedestal) read with the Book of Mudora.

A quite elegant solution to fix the glove Palette were to

pc
07/573c: e2 30 e6 15 -> 22 1d ee 1b

the e6 15 (inc 15) overwritten by the code is executed later by the new code. Can anybody test whether the glove Palette bugs are gone with this - (at least the map bug should be history, for the bunny shot I am not sure)?

Edit: but it seems like the tempbunny, ether and electroshock is fixed by this as well. Can anybody confirm?

This is great. I did notice that those hands go back to normal when electrified, just didn't know how to fix it.

Similar problem is in Parallel World/Remodel. Once you get the gloves, the same colour is loaded into Link's face, when he is pushing/lifting. But this surely is a gfx or false use of the Palette of the Armor problem.

Another problem in PW/PR. Once electroshoked or use ether or temp bunny or etc, Link goes to a global very dark Palette in Parallel Tower.

mh, this pushing bug can be avoided by repixeling Link's face with snesedit or yy-char to not use the 1 Colors preserved for the glove.

The other bug seems to be related with the fix I posted above (tempbunny/ether/electroshock). Also when using my warp away Palace guard with book mudora, Link also shortly Switches to global dark Palette. As far I remember a weird ram value is involved that prevents the Player e.g., getting translumescent with the flute guy.

I surely can look into it, but first you'd Need to check whether the face is solved by repixeling and if it is worth Fixing it... means if you are still updating PU/RM

That's awesome Conn! It seems to work flawlessly on all occasions, unfortunately there's a side effect - your tempbunny take on the same palette as your gloves when being hit by a rabbit beam in the dungeons. Don't know yet if the first rabbit sequence on Death Mountain is affected the same way.

Edit: to avoid confusion, was referring to your glove fix posted.

Puzzledude wrote:Camera scroll problems are not fixable either, accept if you edit the actual room so, that by walking centers it again (but the decenter will always appear). To stop this, the entire layout would have to be edited and thus the entire room needs to be changed.

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this. Sorry, I may be a little dense.

Just in case my description of the minor camera bugs in the Tower of Hera wasn't clear.
When you first enter the room, the camera is slightly off-center:


If you walk to the right, the off-center view causes you to see the other nearby rooms as well:


It's not until you have moved around in the room the camera view is correctly placed:


the same issue appears when you enter this room by the stairs:


Sorry if I just repeated myself, just wanted to make sure I made myself clear. Unfixable?

That's awesome Conn! It seems to work flawlessly on all occasions, unfortunately there's a side effect - your tempbunny take on the same palette as your gloves when being hit by a rabbit beam in the dungeons. Don't know yet if the first rabbit sequence on Death Mountain is affected the same way.

ah, ok in this case nothing helps and you Need to apply this small hack:

http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/bunny-glove-fix.zip

I surely can look into it, but first you'd Need to check whether the face is solved by repixeling and if it is worth Fixing it... means if you are still updating PU/RM.

No need to fix this, since I regard Parallel Worlds and Parallel Remodel as finished projects, who also have their own problems, like any big project. I think it is better to learn from this and fix it in the future projects. For instance like your Shovel fix, to finally close that big gap in the center of the menu.

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this. Sorry, I may be a little dense.

Just in case my description of the minor camera bugs in the Tower of Hera wasn't clear.
When you first enter the room, the camera is slightly off-center.
Sorry if I just repeated myself, just wanted to make sure I made myself clear. Unfixable?

Yes it is fixable. But like I said above, you need to edit the room. You see the problem is that the room from which you came is Layout 7 (one big room), and the room to arrive is Layout 0 (4 small rooms= quarters).

In this case you have to move the stairs more to the left and more down, which changes the room/walls of the global room with Layout 0 (on your pictures). You thus need to also change the position of the round walls which have the stairs in the previous room to be more left and more down. The same for the other wall, which must be more right and more down.

Or in other words, this is (minor) mistake of the author of the rooms, who made the whole thing slightly false and incompatible with the camera-engine.

One way of fixing it.


But now the side effect.


This position of the door is impossible. This room must be completely changed to be able to place the door there. Since this room is entirely on bg2 Normal. So you need to make it to bg1, and thus change all transitions into this room to bg1 (entrance and all the staircases and pits). All this needs to go from Plane2 to Plane0. This is so, because you can not put the staircase so far left and down with bg2 which requires the "second" wall.

So you can fix this, but the game needs to be edited (so this basically no longer is Alttp). Since one single edit in Hyrule Magic would change the code. So this would then be more like a small hack of Alttp with the purpose of bug fixing.

One way of fixing the problem in the inital room.

This room might look worse than the original, but it can give you an idea where the transition staircases need to be in order that the camera is not misplaced after transit.

And it may have been that the authors knew that this was a problem and they simply remedied it as best as they could.

They were probably going off of some drawing for the dungeon and the game and camera simply didn't work with the existing dungeon designs.

Also are we going to like make a fixed version of the game or something and release it as a patch.

Fix all the mistakes in the original zelda 3?

Conn wrote:ah, ok in this case nothing helps and you Need to apply this small hack:

http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/bunny-glove-fix.zip

You sir, are a genius! That is simply awesome. If you lived nearby I would buy you a beer right away. I had not even started to look into this. Was it tough to implement? It's such a minor bug but it always irritated me to no end. Btw, unheadered rom is what you need, am I right?

Puzzledude, thank you so much for going through the trouble explaining the camera issue so thoroughly, had no idea it would be that complicated. Will definitely not touch this.

Erockbrox wrote:Also are we going to like make a fixed version of the game or something and release it as a patch.

Fix all the mistakes in the original zelda 3?

Not a bad idea to make a bugfixed version but I wonder what would such a fixed version actually be? Besides Con's awesome bunny-glove-fix, I guess you could maybe fix the missing sound effect and Mothula bug I mentioned (they were apparently fixed in the GBA remake/port) but I think separate patches is the way most people like it, maybe I'm wrong.

dont forget the ice disappearing around that one boss.

also you can break the magic meter with the red cane by spamming the hell out of the magic button

there is also something about turning links sheild blue if you use the ether on the pumkin who eats your middle level shield.

No need to fix this, since I regard Parallel Worlds and Parallel Remodel as finished projects, who also have their own problems, like any big project. I think it is better to learn from this and fix it in the future projects. For instance like your Shovel fix, to finally close that big gap in the center of the menu.

Yes, therefore I asked. I also made a PW Version of the shovel hack but it will never be applied and updated so I spare my time Fixing this bug... hope you don't mind, I will probably fix it once somebody wants to update it, but there are plenty new Projects taking your time like GoT, PU, etc. I think there's nothing to learn from since this bug doesn't appear in the other hacks, so something must have been bugged coded; I guess the palette.

You sir, are a genius! That is simply awesome. If you lived nearby I would buy you a beer right away. Smile I had not even started to look into this. Was it tough to implement? It's such a minor bug but it always irritated me to no end. Btw, unheadered rom is what you need, am I right?

Thanks for the compliment... but it wasn't genuine, took me only 10 minutes to fix. Other work, like e.g., the morning star was (without wanting to praise myself too much ^^) - a masterpiece (e.g., take the circulating code). That code took me at least 3 months. and is still Buggy... Puzz, if you Encounter more bugs with it (like the last with the ball vanishing with a peg in the vincinity, let me know).

you Need to apply the hack on unheadered Rom using lunarIPS; I Chose the code address so that it is compatible with all my other hacks.

Not a bad idea to make a bugfixed version but I wonder what would such a fixed version actually be?

I may look at the one or other bug as well. But we Need to differentiate whether it's a bug that affects native Zelda only or also all other hacks.
The gloves affect all hacks but the chime missing only native Zelda I think.

The main Problem I have though is to read out of the bug description what you mean, e.g., for the gloves I first thougth the menu Palette is vanishing.
So if you like you can make a list with detailed description what you like to have a fix for (also with Erock's findings where I also have Problems to know what he means (e.g., ice, which Boss? Kholdstare? What happens?). I also tried and cannot confirm the ether bug with the shield-eating Monsters... how did you exactly get this bug appear (which shield did you wear and such?)?

Also only list really annoying bugs like the glove thing- no normal Player would press the red cane button as mad; so this one I will not fix. Also don't list HM issues like the Tower of Hera camera bug - this cannot be fixed by asm. However, I will most likely take a look at MottZilla and the chime.

Puzz, if you Encounter more bugs with it (like the last with the ball vanishing with a peg in the vincinity, let me know).

I found this out.

If you do this:
at 115A14,
20 F0 DA EA EA

at 115AF0
AD 36 08 C9 0E F0 01 60 A9 F0 8D 35 08 60

the pegswitch is debugged, but the static chain you described comes on screen if the Shooter-bullet is on screen.

Ironically this can be fixed without the code.


If you do this:
at 115A14,
A9 F0 EA EA EA

then everything is debugged (without the new code even being in): if the peg switch is on screen (ball still visible) and if shooter-bullet on screen (no static chain visible).

I can not explain it though.

yeah but then the static chain appears on a Screen without the peg Switch, e.g., hera Tower entrance screen.

Ah well I think I fix this with another code, I already have one in my mind. I will make a Loop checking for the ball and as soon it is present somewhere I will disable the next chain part. Can you tell me where I easily can find a shooter (dungeon, room) so I can retrace what happens there?

Conn wrote:
you Need to apply the hack on unheadered Rom using lunarIPS; I Chose the code address so that it is compatible with all my other hacks.

That's great. Thanks!

Conn wrote:
I may look at the one or other bug as well. But we Need to differentiate whether it's a bug that affects native Zelda only or also all other hacks.
The gloves affect all hacks but the chime missing only native Zelda I think.

The main Problem I have though is to read out of the bug description what you mean, e.g., for the gloves I first thougth the menu Palette is vanishing.
So if you like you can make a list with detailed description what you like to have a fix for...

Ah, sorry. Will try to be more detailed in my descriptions.

Regarding the Mothula bug, the boss apparently takes damage from just a drawn level 4 sword. That I wasn't aware of. Found this old thread on gamefaqs where a user named assassin17 went into great detail regarding this bug: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/588436-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past/43959744
After reading that thread it looks like it's quite a complicated issue.

Glitches

break the magic meter



this boss originally had a transition from its ice shield. i believe it was fixed my mathonnapkins.



blue shield


Also pulling on statues doesn't decrease magic meter with cape.

Also yes the goldstar weapon is a masterpiece! thank you Conn!

ok, I'll check that list asap, which is a bit long. I right now have some real life Business, so I dunno when I get time to implement This or parts of this list.

I'll update whenever I was able to fix something.