Let's Make a Hoax!

[DeathBasket]

You can say stuff was found in a compressed format but lacking a header (someone mentioned this before I think), that way it's pretty difficult to find or identify anyway, especially when not being referenced by the file table or anything.

As for the triforce thing, perhaps have no effect on the start menu but have a weird visual effect that happens in normal gameplay.  I would guess that if you get if from a chest, the item has no model or text and it changes the object for Link's hand or something (because the triforce is supposed to appear on his hand).

[Kargaroc]

That sounds good to me.

 

I don't totally agree with that, since I don't know if the Triforce being on Link's hand would agree with the old pre-A+B+C 1997 story or not, since Link got the whole Triforce near the end of the game in that version.

 

But, it might be workable.  We could say that when the story was changed, they changed it so that Link only has a third of the Triforce on his hand like normal, and this was the "original" way.

[Jason777]

I said this a little eariler before, but... the less custom things we include, the less we have to explain.

 

I was leaning more towards obtaining a Triforce (using the actor from the goddess cutscene), blank text box comes up, Triforce added to status screen (between medallions), and freezing the game when the cursor moves over or tries to select it.

[Kargaroc]

I said this a little eariler before, but... the less custom things we include, the less we have to explain.I was leaning more towards obtaining a Triforce (using the actor from the goddess cutscene), blank text box comes up, Triforce added to status screen (between medallions), and freezing the game when the cursor moves over or tries to select it.

I was also originally leaning towards this.

 

I'd really suggest that, unless someone else comes up with a REALLY good idea, this should be the idea we go with.

[HeavyZ]

Eh' I don't know why everyone (including myself) have been thinking up new idea's to add on to the Triforce. If we do add too many cool things people will think it's a hoax

[Kargaroc]

Yep.  It'll seem too good to be true.

[Strati]

Before that, these suggestions should be plausible inside what we currently can do with the game.

 

Cool suggestions are cool, but is there at least a plan on how to actually implement the idea you are throwing out there?

[Kargaroc]

Before that, these suggestions should be plausible inside what we currently can do with the game.

 

Cool suggestions are cool, but is there at least a plan on how to actually implement the idea you are throwing out there?

 

I was pretty much about to say this.

 

My first thought is, can we modify the status screen to include a Triforce graphic that crashes (or maybe displays garbage where the text should be) when selected?

It seems to me that menu screen hacking has been one of the neglected areas of OoT hacking, though I could be wrong.

 

On another note, have we progressed in any way when it comes to dungeon layout?  Or anything to do at all with the dungeon itself?

Like puzzles?

 

I like the idea with the diamond shaped dungeon and the seven floors.  What will the individual floors look like?

 

I had an idea, building on that it would mostly retain the general style of the Light Temple, but would contain puzzles ranging from their respective dungeons.  That way, it would be similar to Ganon's castle, but wouldn't be boring as the dungeon would still have it's own style.  We would get something new out of that.

 

Also, we get to speculate what kind of puzzles the dungeons would of had at that point in development (Everything up until right after the A+B+C controls was originally introduced?).

 

At the same time, I really, REALLY don't like the segregation of the puzzle themes that going a Ganon's Castle-esque route would do.  I would really like to see this dungeon try and take full advantage of the Player's capabilities, at least in theory.

 

Edit:  Okay, I've decided to write a txt file about alpha dungeon design.  I'll post it when I'm done.

[Secant]

Dungeon design isn't exactly my forte, I can work off of a pretty good description but when it comes to formulating puzzles I hesitate to say I do justice to those canon to the series. If you can post that document, Kargaroc, I'll take a look at it and see what I can implement into the architecture.

[Kargaroc]

Okay, so me and Spire banged out a final boss room (complete with non-existent boss!), as well as a few major decisions regarding the time the dungeon  was supposedly started development, the time it was abandoned/cut, and the basic design of the dungeon.

 

Here's what we know:

 

The Triforce was originally planned to be obtainable, and there's a marker on the quest status for it (between the medallions), but selecting it crashes the game as later on it was changed to the game ending with Link getting the Triforce, thus making the quest status icon a relic of older coding.

But, since no ending was programmed, when Link gets the Triforce, only empty text boxes pop up, and then control is handed back to the player.

 

The dungeon started development during the early A+B development period (with no Navi).

 

The dungeon was cut/abandoned about a month after the A+B+C control scheme was introduced, as it was based around the old story which was on it's way out at the time, and the Mario 64-esque graphical style of the dungeon was severly outdated as they had decided on an art style by then.

 

As the old story lacks Child Link, none of the puzzles will involve Child Link, and any Child Link -only items are banned from being used.

 

The dungeon will not be split into separate mini-dungeons, but rather have varied elements based on the (alpha) dungeons to signify the differences.

 

The dungeon will include puzzles based around the medallions.  The puzzles involving the Fire, Ice, and Wind medallions will be doable but there will be other puzzles based around the removed spells; they will be impossible to complete.

 

Same with the Fire, Ice, and Light arrows, since they also used the medallions to power up in earlier versions of the game.

 

 

Okay, here's the fun part:

The boss room is shaped like a diamond, with a hexagonal platform in the center with smaller platforms beside it.  This is the final boss arena.  It's supposed to be an early version of the Chamber of Sages.

When you enter, you get to the platform (somehow), the actor for the ring of fire in the Ganon battle appears, and there's an invisible target in the center as a placeholder for the boss.  Strike it once, and the fire goes away.

 

Then, you enter the Triforce chamber, which we haven't designed yet (though I would imagine it would be an evolved, polished form of the original Triforce chamber in some of the earliest Zelda 64 screens).  You get the Triforce in which is supposed to be the ending, but since no ending exists, some placeholder textboxes pop up (empty of course), and then control is handed to the player again.

 

At this point, the player is trapped in, and the only way out is to use the warp songs, which the game didn't count on you being able to do at this point in development.  All the NPCs act normally, since they're not aware of the Triforce being in your inventory.

 

 

Note: if the invisible actor can't be done, then just entering the room and the door to the Triforce already being opened could work as an alternative.

[KamAlsh]

I was thinking that obtaining the triforce would immediately cause the game to bug out, like Horrible Internet lag on Xbox. So, walking makes you flicker and teleport, as if the game is confused as to where you're supposed to be, and textures flicker. Music and sounds randomly play. Essentially, you broke the game and can still play. After a bit of doing stuff, the game crashes. Not big on hacking, but I feel like that's what happens when the game tries to access code that doesn't exist. Glitch-Galore, and then crash.

[Kargaroc]

I was thinking that obtaining the triforce would immediately cause the game to bug out, like Horrible Internet lag on Xbox. So, walking makes you flicker and teleport, as if the game is confused as to where you're supposed to be, and textures flicker. Music and sounds randomly play. Essentially, you broke the game and can still play. After a bit of doing stuff, the game crashes. Not big on hacking, but I feel like that's what happens when the game tries to access code that doesn't exist. Glitch-Galore, and then crash.

I don't know how doable that would be.  Though if it is, I would expect to see something similar to cartridge tilting.

[KamAlsh]

 

I was thinking that obtaining the triforce would immediately cause the game to bug out, like Horrible Internet lag on Xbox. So, walking makes you flicker and teleport, as if the game is confused as to where you're supposed to be, and textures flicker. Music and sounds randomly play. Essentially, you broke the game and can still play. After a bit of doing stuff, the game crashes. Not big on hacking, but I feel like that's what happens when the game tries to access code that doesn't exist. Glitch-Galore, and then crash.

I don't know how doable that would be.  Though if it is, I would expect to see something similar to cartridge tilting.

 

I am not sure it's possible either, as I said, I have no idea how the general idea of 'hacking' works.

[Kargaroc]

Okay, I've finished almost all of my Alpha Dungeon Design document.

I'm pretty sure I've forgotten about something, if you could tell me that would be great

 

Designing an Alpha Dungeon (revision 0)

 

I know, the writing really declines later on, I admit I had to push myself to finish this, and plus, the final third of this deals with a phenomenon that is relatively easy to emulate (problems caused by the dungoen being abandoned for so long).

Making a dungeon is hard, making a dungeon that fits in with alpha screenshots is really hard, but breaking the dungeon to "account" for technical differences between the alpha and final is relatively easy.

 

Despite this, I'm pretty sure I go over all the main issues.

[SeithDarkwraith]

Perhaps one of the treasure chests for an item you were supposed to get, like keys, for example, could now yield something like a constant stream of Hero's Bows or something else since the item IDs would have been changed later in development?

[Jason777]

Wow, that's quite a bit of text! I'll make sure to give it a read when I'm done tutoring today

[Kargaroc]

Perhaps one of the treasure chests for an item you were supposed to get, like keys, for example, could now yield something like a constant stream of Hero's Bows or something else since the item IDs would have been changed later in development?

Exactly!

 

Though, I don't know if a key would be changed into a bow, and it wouldn't be a constant stream because chests are only opened once.

 

Maybe, if you open a chest (Maybe a switch turned into a chest?) You get whatever is inside the chest and it does what activating the switch would've originally done?

[SeithDarkwraith]

 

Perhaps one of the treasure chests for an item you were supposed to get, like keys, for example, could now yield something like a constant stream of Hero's Bows or something else since the item IDs would have been changed later in development?

Exactly!

 

Though, I don't know if a key would be changed into a bow, and it wouldn't be a constant stream because chests are only opened once.

 

Maybe, if you open a chest (Maybe a switch turned into a chest?) You get whatever is inside the chest and it does what activating the switch would've originally done?

 

That seems like it would work well, a problem I can foresee is that it might be troublesome making a chest open a door like that, in which case the new chest actor ID would also have to have changed to something else, either something non-existant or something else entirely, like a Sheikah stone, rendering even more of the dungeon unplayable. So I don't think that would work very well in that aspect, as we would still want most of the dungeon playable to make the hoax more believable.

[Kargaroc]

<snip>

 

That seems like it would work well, a problem I can foresee is that it might be troublesome making a chest open a door like that, in which case the new chest actor ID would also have to have changed to something else, either something non-existant or something else entirely, like a Sheikah stone, rendering even more of the dungeon unplayable. So I don't think that would work very well in that aspect, as we would still want most of the dungeon playable to make the hoax more believable.

 

I can see that.

 

Though I don't think I mentioned how much actors would be switched around, I just said that some of them would be.

Maybe we could limit the amount of actors being switched?

Cause, to be honest, I really want to play a new epic dungeon as well.

 

And the chest-opening-a-door thing I mentioned was just a thought, I didn't expect it to go anywhere.

[SeithDarkwraith]

 

<snip>

 

That seems like it would work well, a problem I can foresee is that it might be troublesome making a chest open a door like that, in which case the new chest actor ID would also have to have changed to something else, either something non-existant or something else entirely, like a Sheikah stone, rendering even more of the dungeon unplayable. So I don't think that would work very well in that aspect, as we would still want most of the dungeon playable to make the hoax more believable.

 

I can see that.

 

Though I don't think I mentioned how much actors would be switched around, I just said that some of them would be.

Maybe we could limit the amount of actors being switched?

Cause, to be honest, I really want to play a new epic dungeon as well.

 

And the chest-opening-a-door thing I mentioned was just a thought, I didn't expect it to go anywhere.

 

Yeah it would be a good idea to limit the amount. At the very least, keep switches and chests within the group that don't get switched. Unless it would be weird to like, replace a diamond switch with an arrow switch just randomly, I think it would be funny to see a random floaty eye thing.

And yes I'm in complete agreement. It would be amazing to play a new dungeon in a game so old that no one actually has released a hack other than ZB with custom dungeons or released any custom dungeon patches.

[HeavyZ]

I live literally a 2 minute walk from an retro game store. I decided when this was done I was going to show a bunch of people their the video of the temple on my phone, and be like, "Yeah, it was in the game the whole time" Lol

[Kargaroc]

The 7 floor layout, with 6 of them being their own elements, and the warp points being at the ends of each segment would probably result in a very linear dungeon.  I don't know about that...

 

 

Also, there's a 32 map limit I believe.  That would impose a 4 room limit to each segment, and with each one needing an entrance and "miniboss" room that brings it down to 2 per segment.

 

The segments would have to be more closely interlinked somehow.

 

Maybe the portals between floors shouldn't be the only method of moving around the dungeon?

[SeithDarkwraith]

Would it be possible to use instead multiple sceness for this dungeon? That way there would be much less of a limit on the rooms that could be used.

[Kargaroc]

Would it be possible to use instead multiple sceness for this dungeon? That way there would be much less of a limit on the rooms that could be used.

 

I don't think we have to go that far.

I think that we shouldn't have minibosses after every floor.  Having a miniboss room every floor lessens the amount of rooms we can use for puzzles.  Also, it imposes a segregated design because each segment would be kinda like a minidungeon, with it's own boss.

 

Also, is a segmented design even the best way to go?

The last dungeon wasn't like that in ALTTP...

 

 

Also, I wrote a small roadmap, showing what needs to get done, design wise.

 

"

Decide on basic dungeon asthetics.  The graphical style (Zelda 64/Mario 64) is already known.Finalize basic layout for dungeon.  How will the player be able to move around the dungeon?Design basic/rough layout of the individual floorsDesign puzzles based on the basic layoutTweak the layout based on the puzzlesFinalize individial layoutsDesign layout for enemies and non-puzzle actors.  Abruptly stop when about 65% done.Implement the dungeon with instructions from my Alpha Dungeon Design document

"

[sairugoth]

So is this thing still being made?