A Link to the Past - Master Quest v1.00 (Closed Beta)

I'd like to recruit at least three beta testers who might be interested in doing a playthrough.  If possible, I'd also like to recruit at least one beta tester with a flash cart.  As far as I can tell, this hack is complete.  However, I want to make sure I didn't miss anything.  If anyone is interested, please let me know in a post or via PM (whichever you prefer).

This hack is meant to emulate what Nintendo did with the Ocarina of Time Master Quest.  While the dungeons are the same, the routes you take throughout them are different.  Moreover, enemies are tougher, items have been switched around, and new challenges have been implemented that you won't find in the unhacked game.  Although the difficulty is higher; this hack is not meant to exclusively cater to the experts.  I'm more focused on entertainment.  However, I've also incorporated a version of the hack where enemies deal twice as much damage (much like the Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest and Hero Modes in recent Zelda games).

This is my third attempt at making a Master Quest hack, and it wouldn't have reached the state it's in now without Con's help with bug fixes, several ASM workarounds, and a polished Fast ROM patch.  As far as I can tell, the only bugs left in this game are a hand full of shutter doors that close improperly.  Moreover, there are a couple of pegswitches that disappear before being submerged by water in the Swamp Palace.  This is an ASM hack to address the fact that pegswitches will only appear on top of the water.


Thanks for looking!

I'd be interested. Sounds like it might be fun and I have a SNES Powerpak. Plus, I could use a break from working on my hack. It would be good to just "play" something rather than having to design it.

SunGodPortal wrote:I'd be interested. Sounds like it might be fun and I have a SNES Powerpak. Plus, I could use a break from working on my hack. It would be good to just "play" something rather than having to design it.

Thank you. I'll be sending you a copy shortly.

Received and proceeding to test.

I'm about to begin the Eastern Palace, just thought I would report in.

The first time I loaded the game, I left Link's house and the music stopped and did not return until I walked into the front door of the castle. I could not reproduce this, but I thought I wouldn't mention it.

As far as I can tell, up until the throne room the only changes were tougher enemies (which was a little refreshing since I've played this game about 10,000 times). As for the change in the throne room, I liked that. It was simple, subtle, clever. It was at that point that I thought "You know, this might actually end up being be pretty cool".

If it were me, just for the sake of variety I would change the bottom half of room 33 to be a "move block to open" room instead of another key door.

Some overworld changes would be nice, though not entirely necessary. I haven't noticed any so far.

I don't know what could cause this, but one time when I blew open a bombable cave this happened. Link has two heads. It went away once I went inside. Odd.



I haven't tested any of this on my cart yet, but I will later when I get home.

Well Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle Tower are both pretty linear which made it difficult for me to come up with ideas.  More changes were applied to the rest of the dungeons.  As for your "move block to open" idea; you have a point.  It would diversify things a bit more.  I didn't change the overworld because the overworld in Ocarina of Time Master Quest is unchanged.

As for the music bug you mentioned; that's something I've yet to experience.  What emulator are you using?  Although I'm pretty sure I did encounter the double head bug.  I wasn't sure because I had only noticed it as I was entering the cave (I probably hit the fast forward button, lol).  It might be related to the Fast ROM patch.  I'll have to see if I can replicate it on an unhacked ROM with the Fast ROM patch applied.

Update: Just managed to replicate the bug on the unhacked game. The Fast ROM patch is definitely the culprit.

Well Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle Tower are both pretty linear which made it difficult for me to come up with ideas.

I suppose it might be hard to mix it up. I wouldn't know. I kept fiddling with the idea of doing one of these or the remix type of hacks but felt both styles were too restrictive for me personally.

I didn't change the overworld because the overworld in Ocarina of Time Master Quest is unchanged.

Understandable. I'd be wanting a bunch of changes, but I'm guessing that's not what a Master Quest is. At this point I'm ready to grab the Master Sword. So far it's been nice. Different, but not too different. Slightly more difficult instead of cheap, insane difficulty. Good balance I guess.

I liked the room from the Eastern Palace with the Big Chest. What happens after opening it is much more fun in such a small space.

Haven't ran into any more issues other than this:



Some of the rooms in this dungeon place the screen a little too far up after coming up or down the stairs. Doesn't cause any serious problems though.

I don't know what could cause this, but one time when I blew open a bombable cave this happened. Link has two heads. It went away once I went inside. Odd.

This is a FastRom problem. Personally the FastRom is interesting, however Quite untested and problematic. It is much safer to use standard slow rom and rather limit the number of sprites per room/screen, specially in a master quest, which doesn't have radical changes. The trigger to this bug is cutting long grass (cutting with sword was fixed, cutting long grass with the bomb blast apparently is separate).

Some of the rooms in this dungeon place the screen a little too far up after coming up or down the stairs. Doesn't cause any serious problems though.

This is a problem of the original game as well. Long story short - you can not fix this without some heavy edits to the dungeon rooms and their layouts.

This is a problem of the original game as well. Long story short - you can not fix this without some heavy edits to the dungeon rooms and their layouts.

Yeah I kept wondering if that was in the original. I knew I had ran into that somewhere but I wasn't sure where.

It's very difficult for me to truly grade the designs since I'm not someone who would play a Master Quest, but I suppose I could still be useful for identifying bugs.

SunGodPortal wrote:It's very difficult for me to truly grade the designs since I'm not someone who would play a Master Quest, but I suppose I could still be useful for identifying bugs.

Yeah, I can see this hack being uninteresting to a lot of people, lol.  A second quest in general is far less interesting than a new game.  It was just something I had to get off my chest.  To be honest, I don't find second quest's in general that interesting, but there was something about the Master Quest for Ocarina of Time that really caught my attention.  Perhaps because I had never experienced anything quite like it, but I really enjoyed the tougher enemies, the rearranged items, and the detours.  Therefore, I really wanted something similar for A Link to the Past.

I am in the early stages of developing a Zelda 3 hack with a new story and dungeons.  However, whether anything comes to fruition would depend on what kind of time I have.

Picking up Link's head with a bomb placed in tall grass was a fastrom bug:

0d/c1cb: 86 ->06
fixes this. It's good that somebody is playing through the rom and discovers remaining bugs

If you need another tester, I can be of some use. I've got nothing better to do ATM, lol.

Conn wrote:Picking up Link's head with a bomb placed in tall grass was a fastrom bug:

0d/c1cb: 86 ->06
fixes this. It's good that somebody is playing through the rom and discovers remaining bugs

Nice for you to fix this so fast. I also wonder how much bugs will still be found on FastRom.

I hope not so much. I know in the meanwhile why this happens and easily can trace this:



06/xxxx changed to-> 86/xxxx for fastrom

So, if you push a fastrom bank (beyond 80), and pull it afterwards the 86 will set the negative flag - since 00-7f is binary positive and 80-ff is negative.

So it happens at some rare places that after you pull a bank (>80) and have a bmi (branch on minus) directly thereafter, another code is executed leading to the bugs we discover.

But the benefits of fastrom still outweight these rare and easy to fix bugs. I only need to change that 86-> 06 back to lorom for a small code snipplet, which makes no experience-able difference.

Played on my Powerpak for a while last night. No issues. I'm guessing I'll probably be at least 1/2 oe 3/4 of the way through the game before the night is over.

Despite not really being interested in a MQ I have actually been enjoying this more than I thought I would.

SunGodPortal wrote:Played on my Powerpak for a while last night. No issues. I'm guessing I'll probably be at least 1/2 oe 3/4 of the way through the game before the night is over.

Despite not really being interested in a MQ I have actually been enjoying this more than I thought I would.

I appreciate you testing it on your Powerpak.  I didn't know what kind of effect HM would have on the rom so it's nice to know that it works on real hardware thus far.

I appreciate you testing it on your Powerpak.  I didn't know what kind of effect HM would have on the rom so it's nice to know that it works on real hardware thus far.

So far, every ALttP hack has worked on a real console except for the one that was specifically designed not to. Having said that, there aren't that many that I would WANT to play on a real console, out of reach of savestates. The hacks so far have tended to be either unfair or bordering on it.

Anyway, just finished Dark World dungeons 1 and 4, since the sequence break is still intact. I'll go back and do 2 and 3 with the tempered sword, extra bottle, Cane of Bryna and Magic Cape I just got.


I think these DW dungeons are better than the LW ones. Their changes are a little more imaginative and consequential, barring pendant dungeon 3, which was very different.

I would like to have seen more changes to the basement floor of DW dungeon 1 and at first I thought the 4th was gonna suck (because it looked so similar), but it ended up being pretty cool. I loved the pegswitch placement. That room was useless in the original.

Overall, good job so far. I've played the original so much that I can't play anything but the last few dungeons without getting bored. I haven't been bored playing this.

Hmm, I feel like I saw this hack before. Did you make a youtube video about it earlier this year or something?

SunGodPortal wrote:I would like to have seen more changes to the basement floor of DW dungeon 1 and at first I thought the 4th was gonna suck (because it looked so similar), but it ended up being pretty cool. I loved the pegswitch placement. That room was useless in the original.

Overall, good job so far. I've played the original so much that I can't play anything but the last few dungeons without getting bored. I haven't been bored playing this.

Yeah, I can think of one room in the dark palace where I could have done more, but for the most part it's due to blockset limitations. Moreover, there are some enemies that appear on top of the dark room layer. Hardhat beetles are one of numerous enemies that have that problem. I wanted to insert some into atleast one dark room.

Linkmon99 wrote:Hmm, I feel like I saw this hack before. Did you make a youtube video about it earlier this year or something?

I did release a 0.9 version back in 2009, but I never released a youtube video. However, someone else made a let's play video of it over a year ago.

Update:

I'm in Turtle Rock. Had to take a break earlier because the room with the somaria ride, torches that open the door and the 4 shooters was insane. I believe this room is possible, but I'm not sure if it's fair. Unless you come loaded with fairies and can grasp the most efficient route to light the torches and break for the door quickly, you have no chance. That room is an extreme challenge. It wouldn't be so bad without so many shooters. Or maybe none, since the track is so chaotic/complex. Luckily you are moving around the whole time so you don't get hit by every fireball, but since you don't have complete control over which direction you are going there are A LOT of unavoidable hits you will take.

I'll study the correct path in HM before I try it again and see if that helps, but if I can't do it I'm just going to cheat so I can move on and test the rest of the game.

Additional notes:
***The Big Key placement in the 2nd Dark World dungeon is VERY cryptic (even if it's the same as a secret from the original). I didn't remember that secret from the original (because now when I play it I automatially know where to go) so it didn't come to mind and since there is so much going on (coming at you) in that room you don't really think about stopping to do anything.
***The room with the Big Key in the 3rd Dark world dungeon: I stepped on the button to blow up the wall and accidentally fell down the hole. This left me back at the door with a hole blocking my only route to the chest. At first I thought this was a mistake, but after trying everything I could think of I went into the next room and as a last resort said "I wonder if one of these star tiles will fix it". It did, but that was the last thing that I would have ever thought of since it was not in the same room.
***I couldn't figure out how to get the pegswitch set how I wanted it near the bottom of the Ice Palace so that I could push the block into the room below. I had to leave, do the 6th dungeon and come back with the cane. The only nearby switches that I remembered always required me to flip them how I didn't need them (blue up instead of down) and if the pegswitch was in the room next to the switch that needed a block on top of it, I had no idea where the key was since I had already went through the dungeon multiple times. I got pissed off and left. LOL
***After running up and down floors and using the warp in the Ice Palace the floor numbers got WAY off. At one point I was on B6 but it said B9, etc. I think this might have something to do with using the warp to move between floors. I'm assuming there is a right way and a wrong way to do this since I don't recall the floor numbers getting off in the Tower of Hera in the original. I've also had this problem in my current hack and the checkpoints I've put in my dungeons, but because I could do whatever I wanted with the dungeons (not having to stick with the original plans) I found clever ways around it.

I still pretty much feel like I did before. It's fun and refreshing (for the most part). My only complaints would be related to those things mentioned above and still wishing there were more drastic changes in the Eastern and Desert palaces.

Hmm, the last thing I want is an unfair challenge. To be honest, I was worried it might be less of a challenge than the unhacked room was because you can see the tracks once you light the first torch. For me, the key to conquering this room is to take out the stalfos heads first. You also want to make sure you're facing the fireballs in order to deflect them with your shield.

As for the holes in level 3; they're exactly as they were in the unhacked game. I'm pretty sure those holes are actually hard coded. I can't just move them around. I would have to change the room header to a different "Holes" tag, but they're generally designed around particular rooms that they reside in.

The pegswitch near the end of level 5 is also more or less how it was in the unhacked game.

I'll have to look into the floor number issue as well as the placement of the master key in level 2. Thanks for pointing those out.

For me, the key to conquering this room is to take out the stalfos heads first. You also want to make sure you're facing the fireballs in order to deflect them with your shield.

I didn't have much trouble from the stalfos. 4 fireballs is a bit much though. In some spots you have them coming from more directions than you can point your shield.

As for the holes in level 3; they're exactly as they were in the unhacked game. I'm pretty sure those holes are actually hard coded. I can't just move them around.

Hmm. Strange. I never got locked out of the room before though. Dunno. When the wall blew, a hole appeared a few blocks away from the door. There was no way to get in or out of the room once blowing the wall other than using the mirror or falling down a hole to return me to the door.

As for editing them, isn't that what some of the overlays in HM are for? I've never edited them, but I assume that's what purpose they serve. I have no idea which ones go to what rooms though. I've never really paid that much attention to them in my editing experience.

The pegswitch near the end of level 5 is also more or less how it was in the unhacked game.

Hmm. Maybe I'm just so used to cheating by going to the 6th dungeon first. Since I knew that made this particular dungeon much easier I first tried it without the sequence break. I failed.

The room with the Big Key in the 3rd Dark world dungeon: I stepped on the button to blow up the wall and accidentally fell down the hole. This left me back at the door with a hole blocking my only route to the chest. At first I thought this was a mistake, but after trying everything I could think of I went into the next room and as a last resort said "I wonder if one of these star tiles will fix it". It did, but that was the last thing that I would have ever thought of since it was not in the same room.

That's the same as in the original. If you fall down, the path is closed and you need to reset the floor with the star tile.

I couldn't figure out how to get the pegswitch set how I wanted it near the bottom of the Ice Palace so that I could push the block into the room below. I had to leave, do the 6th dungeon and come back with the cane. The only nearby switches that I remembered always required me to flip them how I didn't need them (blue up instead of down) and if the pegswitch was in the room next to the switch that needed a block on top of it, I had no idea where the key was since I had already went through the dungeon multiple times.

This is also similar as in the original, since when the blue is down, you needed to go "all around" to come to the correct side to push the block to the lower floor, and the beginning of the entire process was to get the small key and unlock that door on the bottom floor, where the pegswitch is. Not sure, if this has been remodeled.

After running up and down floors and using the warp in the Ice Palace the floor numbers got WAY off. At one point I was on B6 but it said B9, etc. I think this might have something to do with using the warp to move between floors. I'm assuming there is a right way and a wrong way to do this since I don't recall the floor numbers getting off in the Tower of Hera in the original. I've also had this problem in my current hack and the checkpoints I've put in my dungeons, but because I could do whatever I wanted with the dungeons (not having to stick with the original plans) I found clever ways around it.

If Link is warping between floors, the floor counter will be broken. This can not be fixed, other than remodel the dungeon so, that warps don't warp between floors, but this would surely break the gameplay of the current design. I solved this in GoT with turning off the floor counter all together.

That's the same as in the original. If you fall down, the path is closed and you need to reset the floor with the star tile.

But then how do you get back out? Did I just use the mirror all this time and forget? I've played the original like 1 million times, but I must admit that within the past year I have only played hacks because I can play the original in my sleep, so it's boring now.

This is also similar as in the original, since when the blue is down, you needed to go "all around" to come to the correct side to push the block to the lower floor, and the beginning of the entire process was to get the small key and unlock that door on the bottom floor, where the pegswitch is. Not sure, if this has been remodeled.

That sounds about right. I probably just screwed it up because I hated the original dungeon so much that I ALWAYS played it after number 6. I just wasn't used to the ridiculous back-tracking required without the cane.

I solved this in GoT with turning off the floor counter all together.

Does anything else use those numbers? A cheap fix would be to just black them out in the bin file.

But then how do you get back out?

In the original you can not get in, if the holes are there. So you need to change the floor with the star to get to the big chest and then change the floor again to come out. Basically - you can not get trapped and are not required to use the mirror in the original (as far as I know); not sure how things are here.

A cheap fix would be to just black them out in the bin file.

Yes, I had this done also, but had to bring the numbers back due to the timer-dungeon= special ASM to not allow advancement in the dungeon if you don't have certain items, which is a "crystal barrirer" substitute.