Alttp bugs and their fixes

Maybe this helps: I places spikes into the room, where Agahnim is. If you defeated him while he was pushed into the spike, the hit didn't count.

This basically means that the game doesn't know, what to do if certain enemies hit spikes. Some however take more damage, like Gibdo.

Again, awesome finding Puzz,

upon your finding I made the Experiment and removed all Spikes, and Mothula wasn't invulnerable anymore (without applied above patch of course). So it seems the bug occured when you hit him and he was bounced back into a spike - this way the hit doesn't Count since the game assumed the Boss was hit by a spike block.

So my hack above fixes native Zelda, or if you intend to have spike blocks in Mothula's room in your hack (and of course it fixes the swords). Nevertheless, you can of course apply above hack if you renounce on spike blocks in this Boss room, makes no difference. It's just hardcoded for this Boss, that if he touches a spike while the countdown is still active (delay countdown to make him Flash; which means he was hit by you), this hit will Count and the touch spike-no harm code is disabled.

Conn wrote:Great News for you, I think I was able to fix the 2nd invulnerability bug

(reapply mothula_l4 ips and Mothula should always be hit).

to be fair to the Player this patch should be applied to all hacks now, otherwise randomly a hit Counts or not (even if it is impossible to Encounter Mothula with L4 sword in your game).

That is awesome!

It is actually possible to encounter Mothula with a level 4 sword, if you go through dungeon 4, 5 and 6 before. The big bomb becomes available as soon as you have beaten 5 and 6. But it's a very rare example as I believe you at least need the Fire Rod from Skull Woods for a room in level 6, not sure. Anyway, that's the way I've done it on my save file to test out your patches. But of course, no one would ever have that sword in Skull Woods on a normal playthrough.

EDIT: Oh, I guess you referred to a hack.

oh, yes sorry. I was speaking generally. e.g., if there is a hack where all crystals are needed to get the l4 sword in the final dungeon. But also L3 spin wasn't possible so it's better to have it fixed in any case.

It works beautifully, Conn. The Mothula bug is smashed!

Being quite a major bug I wonder why Nintendo never bothered to fix it until the GBA version. Surely they must have been aware of it. Japan had two revisions made of the rom after all. And the NA release being the fourth version. Anyway, fantastic to finally have it fixed.

It works beautifully, Conn. The Mothula bug is smashed!

great, maybe you want to notify in that Forum you pointed to that it is fixed and give a link to the patch?

Being quite a major bug I wonder why Nintendo never bothered to fix it until the GBA version. Surely they must have been aware of it. Japan had two revisions made of the rom after all. And the NA release being the fourth version. Anyway, fantastic to finally have it fixed.

well, bug finding is to check ~all~ possibilities. The glove Thing surely was sloopy and should have been found, but I honestly admit, until you mentioned it, this never catched my eye as well ^^

Mothula is different. It is more than unusual to get there with a L4 sword, and also the L3 sword usually is found after one dungeon later (blind). It's the fault of the original coder to not taken into consideration to enable L3 and L4 sword. So don't blame the bug testers but the coders.
As for his invulnerability... Myself when beating a Boss I do not Count. And counting up to and beyond 8 is rather difficult (if you face a Boss, not generally of course ) - usually I'd say that 1 out of 3 or 4 hits do not Count... honestily do you really notice whether it takes 8 or 12 hits to defeat him? Especially while bug testing you usually defeat him only one time and continue playing then?

In the gba Version I think it was fixed after some coders read about the bugs in specific Forums and watched YouTube just as you did, so they knew about not found bugs.

here are more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FMyrW10KWw

This is unrelated but very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3CXQ23qvek

For me it is the best snes game ever made and taking the complexity of this 1MB gem of Software it is in the end astonishing that only These few and negligible bugs are in the game.

Conn wrote:great, maybe you want to notify in that Forum you pointed to that it is fixed and give a link to the patch?

A Link to the Patch... Sure, I would be happy to, only need to register first. Before I do, are links to rom hacks and patches allowed on gamefaqs?

Conn wrote:Mothula is different. It is more than unusual to get there with a L4 sword, and also the L3 sword usually is found after one dungeon later (blind). It's the fault of the original coder to not taken into consideration to enable L3 and L4 sword. So don't blame the bug testers but the coders.
As for his invulnerability... Myself when beating a Boss I do not Count. And counting up to and beyond 8 is rather difficult (if you face a Boss, not generally of course ) - usually I'd say that 1 out of 3 or 4 hits do not Count... honestily do you really notice whether it takes 8 or 12 hits to defeat him? Especially while bug testing you usually defeat him only one time and continue playing then?

Well, I'm not blaming anyone, my thoughts behind it came from reading that gamefaqs thread where that guy mentioned that the SNES coders probably had good reasons to make Mothula immune to the L3 & L4 sword as the spike invulnerability seemed to be related with it. So, I interpreted it as the coders were perhaps aware of it and were forced to leave it as is (for the time being) to make it in time for a scheduled release date. But I guess that wasn't the case. Anyway, like I said, fantastic to finally have it fixed.

Conn wrote:This is unrelated but very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3CXQ23qvek

Great stuff. Most of it comes from: http://tcrf.net/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_A_Link_to_the_Past
Check it out if you haven't.

Conn wrote:For me it is the best snes game ever made and taking the complexity of this 1MB gem of Software it is in the end astonishing that only These few and negligible bugs are in the game.

Well, I certainly don't know the games code nowhere near as well as you or anyone else here does but yes, I definitely agree. A true masterpiece.

When I'm at it with my nitpicking crusade, I recently noticed another minor audio glitch/bug (if it even can be considered that, perhaps just a limitation) If you open the overworld map before you swim into a warp-whirlpool, the overworld music resets when you reach your new destination. Happens in both the light and dark worlds. It only seems to be triggered once, which means that if you take the same whirlpool back again without opening the map before that, everything is fine.

Sure, I would be happy to, only need to register first. Before I do, are links to rom hacks and patches allowed on gamefaqs?

No Roms or links to Roms are allowed.
But you can post a link to any patch (IPS, UPS, Xdelta).

I will make another topic with all the rules, since the gamefaqs doesn't really cover this subject.

When I'm at it with my nitpicking crusade, I recently noticed another minor audio glitch/bug (if it even can be considered that, perhaps just a limitation) If you open the overworld map before you swim into a warp-whirlpool, the overworld music resets when you reach your new destination. Happens in both the light and dark worlds. It only seems to be triggered once, which means that if you take the same whirlpool back again without opening the map before that, everything is fine.

Sorry, I decline, this is way too Little.

H) Don't capitalize the beginning of all words (This Is So Great), since this looks awkward.

really sorry for my capitalized words all the time ^^. This is not due the lack of English but due to my IE always wanting to autocorrect to German, where nouns and such are capitalized

Conn wrote:

H) Don't capitalize the beginning of all words (This Is So Great), since this looks awkward.

really sorry for my capitalized words all the time ^^. This is not due the lack of English but due to my IE always wanting to autocorrect to German, where nouns and such are capitalized

I actually haven't realized that in your posts, Conn. Yes, I know that german has all the nouns capitalized, which is interesting. So this really isn't the problem, if we assume, that your Asm works saved a lot of projects and made features in Alttp, which were for a long time considered as impossible or a mirage (and there is a great lack of Asm inclined modders). Also the H) is under rules of thomb, which falls under additional (so it falls more under guidelines than actual rules).

Also, I will replace those 2 links on your MSU-1, which link to media fire shortly. Since 200MB is a long time to download.

Just noticed now that you replied, sometimes new Posts are not signed properly... then I would have known why the links were gone for a short while...

As you see in this post, post in the first line and Music (<- like this) is auto-capitalized. Dunno why MS doesn't let me Switch the autocorrect Feature off...

anyways, good News for Agunim, I fixed the Music restart bug when using a Whirlpool after visited the map:

https://www.zeldix.net/t385-original-alttp-bug-fixes#1545

(whirlfix.ips in that Folder)

Ha-ha... you're awesome Conn!

Posted your fixes over at: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/588436-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past/70449337

Thanks for posting and - you're welcome

But more fixes are hardly possible, at least not compatible with my main Project, the all-in. The reason is that I do not want People to have the original Rom expanded to have more place for code. And all available place in the native Rom is now more or less taken ^^

Puzzledude wrote:The death count is not really a bug. You have choosen to quit. This is regarded as death. But it is true, getting a 0 deaths is then close to impossible.

It's not exactly intuitive, though. Back as a kid I used to think that the extra counts come from resetting your HP by any means; not just continues but also red/blue potions, fairy queens, fairy revivals etc. So I grinded my way up to "beat the game on one sitting without using healing devices other than free-flying fairies". Sure enough, that did do the trick…

Incidentally I seem to recall that the play count still allows some save-and-quitting, possibly even deaths, as the second Hyryle Castle sequence with Agahnim has no death counter of its own.

nice to see also the original programmers had their bugs (Japanese 1.0 version)

I actually preferred if that bug still existed as it would have made items more useful. in link's awakening items can be simultaneously used with the Pegasus boots (i.e. the roc's feather, bow and magic rod).

I can retrace that wish, but out of my experience, this would mean a hell of asm!
Also I see no Advantage for it. Digging game is obsolete and hammer barriers are kind of stupid. In LA the Advantage was that you could jump farther with the feather if I am right, but such a Thing is (regarding my skills) pretty much impossible.

the purpose of the combined items was to allow further jump due to increased speed. the hammer if you ask me is indeed an annoying barrier and personally i think it should be obtained in that shrine before dark palace. i think it should have been meant for opening it instead of that stupid monkey demanding for rupees. i place the titan's mitt in the dark palace and rearrange the key patterns. as for the digging game, that is the most obnoxious mini-game because of that one heart piece (the treasure minigame is prett bad, but at least you can manipulate the rng)

Unfortunately, this request would also issue thousands of other bugs as I pointed out here in my last post:
https://www.zeldix.net/t401p20-pots-destroyed-by-l2-l4-sword

one problem I see with the hammer is its poor hit detection. is there any way to make it that frozen enemies will always drop a magic bottle when shattered with the hammer? unless this is a program limitation, I wonder if it was a design error.

Conn wrote:nice to see also the original programmers had their bugs (Japanese 1.0 version)

There are actually a lot of various glitches than only work in the JP 1.0 version. Swimming without flippers, remove pushable blocks with the mirror, use items (Filled bottle and Magic Mirror) in screen transitions etc.

Most of them are used in various speedrun categories.

Just a note on the Item Dash with shovel... It does not work with the digging game. You are unable to get any items this way and they won't count as you have been digging at all.

haha, yeah that's cool:


here are more bugs of that sort:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+link+to+the+past+version+differences

the GBA version has its fair share of bugs and glitches. the mirror glitch is probably the most well known, but that I find to be a "good" bad bug (although you have to be careful as going out of bounds could permanently corrupt your save data if you save the game afterwards).

Tropylium wrote:It's not exactly intuitive, though. Back as a kid I used to think that the extra counts come from resetting your HP by any means; not just continues but also red/blue potions, fairy queens, fairy revivals etc. So I grinded my way up to "beat the game on one sitting without using healing devices other than free-flying fairies". Sure enough, that did do the trick…

I agree that it's a bit odd if it was intentional. I don't know, perhaps the developers had a different mindset - just simply a counter to keep track of how many times you've played, not necessarily put there in order for players to make an achievement. Zelda II and Metroid (FDS) treats the counter in the same way. I prefer the way it is in the original Zelda though. Fortunately, Conn had a cure for it.

Tropylium wrote:Incidentally I seem to recall that the play count still allows some save-and-quitting, possibly even deaths, as the second Hyryle Castle sequence with Agahnim has no death counter of its own.

Hmm... weird. Looking at the Quest History at the end, I assume Castle Dungeon is the beginning of the game up to the church and Hyrule Castle is the first encounter with Agahnim. But that place them strangely out of order as the first on the list is Hyrule Castle.