Lens of Truth Improvement

I just thought of this.

I remember seeing this used in Parallel Worlds and thinking it was okay, but I have an idea on how to make it much better.

Basically use a transition an order to reveal the hidden layer. That's it.

For example in Super Mario World when you enter a pipe and go to another area the screen transitions in a pixelated way or like in Zelda 3 when you enter a house the screen transitions with that circle which expands outward.

I feel as it the current version of lens of truth by only having the ON and OFF modes could be improved by a transition such a mentioned above.

Is there anyway to implement this?

The lens of truth is an excellent idea, but removing a bg layer often results in an ugly, messed up Screen; therefore we do not see it in most new Projects like PU - I think.

Maybe XaserLE or Euclid may fulfill your request, but I think that the main concept of the lens needs to be improved. An idea is maybe working with invisible tiles that appear when you enable the lens; this would be possible through transparenct tiles or such.
I do not know however whether the code allows this as the Background is loaded already when you enter the Screen. A permanent refreshment might use lots of cpu working time.

I have an idea for this. Instead of working with the plains such as bg and fg, why not put a transparent circle around link and have it move with link rather than focus on working with bg/fg data? Of course us a edge color fit for the mirror, and whatever is changed while the mirror is active, would be slightly transparent with 'mixing' the palette with the spot that is 'different'. I don't know how much data would be needed for a unique 'bend' in the ground for a neat view. Would be cool to see such ever implemented in a SNES game.

I now miss seeing the lens of truth in 3D Zelda games now... Time to go back to MM and OoT once more just because of that reason. =/

I think easiest was to check the code what happens to make the floors visible when using the lamp/ether and port this to an item and other tiles. A good item possibly is the book mudora as it is of Little use only (but I already mapped a warping sprites away on it)... or better the flute when using it indoors (as invisible tiles surely will only be made in dungeons). But I think, this will work only on specific tiles like those floor tiles - (and These can be made visible with ether/lightning a torch (so you already have sort of a "lens of truth").

However I have currently no Motivation to hack such stuff.

If anybody is interested:
0545: 05->85 (enable show invisible floor tiles)
04f0: countdown timer

tiles are located at vram 4260, 4800, 4820, 4860.

What Nintendo did was to simply set 2 Colors in the cgram (Palette):



This is quite easy but I think not the way anybody should implement it, since, if you want to hide a chest this way, you will have a black square then instead.

I think I will map this feature to the flute use in dungeons in all-in/complete items.
When you keep the Y-button pressed with equipped flute it will add under small magic drain these colors into cgram - this is not so much necessary as the ether also resembles this, but this way you have a "sort of lens of truth" which can also be used for dungeon design

Right now I have not so much time to hack but I will do that soon also with a PU version.

Edit: ups, already done:
https://www.zeldix.net/t219p140-patch-update#7096

Perhaps it is able to restrict the effect of the lens of trutgh to specific rooms. Only in this rooms the lens of truth will disable the bg2 layer. In the other rooms the layers are untouched. The pink circle still appears in all rooms.
So you can work this specific rooms out so they don't look ugly.

Yes, however this new feature doesn't disable the BG, but rather makes those tiles visible, which you can see, after you lit the torch.

Yes, it works via Palette, look at the pic I posted above how the tiles are made visible. My patch doesn't touch the bg layers. Only the Palette. If it is black you don't see it. The flute will add replace now These 2 black Colors with green so they become visible (resembles the torch lighting).
This is the easiest way of accomplish the lens of truth... the bg layer Thing is for my taste too ugly. But yes, it could also be restricted to specific rooms, which you set up in advance to net look ugly... but I will not go for this...