Let's Make a Hoax!

[Spire]

Precisely. IIRC there are beta screens of the Triforce. We should pay scrutinous attention to the architecture of alpha and beta OoT, and work to restore anything that looks like it could be part of the Temple of Light.

 

Naxy (Secant) and I spoke on skype earlier. We devised the concept of the Temple of Light being pyramidal in structure and floor layout, with the Pyramid of Power our inspiration. Furthermore, we imagined a diamond shape dungeon, mirrored pyramids pointing both upwards and downwards. The Chamber of the Sages would be located in the center, comprising a floor of its own, with three above and three below. Seven floors for seven sages.

 

A puzzle idea: using the mirror shield and golden gauntlets, Link must push grand hourglass-shaped prisms around in a massive maze-like room. These hourglasses, when shone upon, reflect light in four directions. The puzzle would involve lining up the hourglasses in a perfect order to refract light between one another and upon energy sconces built into varied walls. In doing so, the room fully energizes and the doors open. Maybe a treasure chest appears as well.

[Kargaroc]

That sounds really epic

But it's hard to decide if we shoul.  I'd stay away from just using items in puzzles all willy nilly.  If an item couldn't possibly exist at the time this is supposed to have been scrapped, then there should be no puzzles that make use of them.

 

Though I do have an idea to maximize the amount of items you could design for, which basically assumes that certain items could of possibly had different names, or implementations.  For instance, any puzzles that make use of the spells should refer to them as medallions.  Other items would probably have to have made up names but that's just fine.

 

By the way, if this would've been real, it would probably just been a broken mess of actors and object flags that don't exist anymore.

Of course, that would be fun to mess around with for the first fifteen minutes, and then you'd get bored.  We want something that's fun to play.  Certainly a very fine line to walk...

[xdaniel]

Random thought on a broken mess of actors: Let's have eye switches that just float in the room instead of being attached to walls, because "when that scene was made", the variables that now create an eye switch once created a crystal one, or some other kind of freestanding switch.

[Kargaroc]

Seems pretty good, as long as the switches still do what they should.

 

About music... Sticking to the Mario 64 music format limitations?  I guess there's not that much, similar to the Fast3D vs F3DEX thing with graphics, but still, if the music is too complex, it would possibly break the suspension of disbelief.  I'd assume the music was created pretty late in development, as with most games.

 

But we want music, so it would have to be simple music.  I mean, it would still be the theme of the dungeon but vastly simplified, possibly resembling an engine test.

 

If you don't know what I mean, then in TWW, there's a series of 32 (!) test rooms for testing the enemies.  31 of them are just a plain cubical room, but the last one is a very old, simplified version of the first room of the Earth temple.  It was used for testing the Miniblins because they can walk up walls, and that's difficult to test with a cube room.

I was thinking, this, except for music.

[Secant]

Perhaps we could use some recreation of the original Legend of Zelda dungeon theme? That's a popularly recurring song throughout the series and would have been suitable as a placeholder for a dungeon being worked on.

 

I'm also definitely in support of having free-floating eye switches; it's unlikely a work-in-progress dungeon would use the same actor values as the final build of the game, meaning there could easily be out-of-place actors present. Spire also mentioned in our conversation some rooms being unfinished and/or having deliberately broken puzzles, like having a mass of enemies to test population capacity of a specific room, or something that can only be traversed by using debug controls. Which also brings up another good question, we're claiming this is on the Debug ROM meaning usage of those controls are fair game, right? Otherwise I suppose bomb hovering or the like is also an option for navigating otherwise broken rooms, though that too might chip away at some of the credibility of the hoax.

[punk7890]

This all sounds like a really neat idea.

[Kargaroc]

I'd support debug mode being required to complete a few rooms, as long as the dungeon as a whole isn't fundamentally broken.

 

 

Like, for instance, puzzles that look like they could be completed, but require some item that was removed, or something.  I can think of very few items that actually got obliterated, so... I don't know.

But, considering this is a pretty high profile dungeon story wise, it would probably make sense for it to use all of the player's ablities.  It would be interesting to see, though.

 

One thing: Make sure that the effects of solving the puzzle can be activted in some way, or else the dungeon could be made completely unplayable.

 

Edit: Or maybe provide codes to get around the broken puzzles.  That might seem more realistic, since the abiity to get around every broken puzzle might tip people off unless it's the best puzzle design ever.

[Jason777]

My channel is mostly unknown to people. However, upon viewing what all videos I've uploaded, one quickly comes to the conclusion that I've dabbled in OoT modding. This can be both a good and bad thing. It has a positive effect because it shows that the uploader is probably capable of making a discovery such as this; it has a negative effect because it also shows that the uploader might be capable of making an elaborate hack disguised as a beta discovery. In the end-- and I'm not saying it has to be me-- the uploader must meet both requirements. Either way, if people find out it's a hoax... it's still a pretty damn cool hack.

 

Now concerning giving credit where it's due, I've had a couple of ideas that we could incorporate it into the hack:

 

We could make a square and randomly place it far away from any accessable area in the level and have a(n) texture(s) that has the names of the people who worked on this project. The only way to see this polygon is to go through a seemingly inaccessible "room-changing black plane" that'll load up the singular map file it belongs to. Of course, contributors would have to keep a record of the XYZ coordinates of this transition actor.

 

Another idea would be to randomly place a sign actor that contains text which lists the names of the contributors. Loading it up would work the same as the previous idea concerning textures.

 

The final idea would be to simply say that you helped point the uploader in the right direction in making this discovery. For example, "XDaniel gave me the idea that the room header might be broken", "Spire suggested that I see if some of the files were compressed", "Secant/Naxylldritt hypothesized that if I enabled the event flag that I could load up the scene", etc

 

Concerning Spire's and Naxy's temple concept, I have to say it sounds quite magnificent. I especially like how you plan to incorporate the Chamber of Sages into the design, too. If anything, something you might have to let go of is the hourglass puzzle; speaking from personal experience from programming actors, it seems like it would be beyond my capabilities to implement. I would recommend you stick to actors that are already in the game. You can probably accomplish a similar puzzle design using mirror and sun actors from the spirit temple. Besides, the less custom stuff the less we have to explain how it got there. For now, the overall idea seems like the temple concept that I will go with. Don't start just yet, as I am interested in what others might have in mind.

 

To address ideas concerning broken puzzles and out-of-place actors, that sounds great. It'll help to pull of the whole "work-in-progress" feel of the temple.

 

Finally, I was planning on having this be done on the Debug ROM. It is known for having a few extra beta levels and for the majority of modders to consider it a "decompressed ROM". This'll help to explain why a compressed file had been overlooked in the ROM and will also allow for the discovery of a beta or Ura zelda level to be somewhat plausible.

 

If we wanted people to believe it was a part of Ura zelda then we wouldn't have to try to think up of what technical limitations OoT may have had before the final product. But then again... the whole beta Zelda 64 vibe would be pretty cool to capture.

[Spire]

As for music, we should simply use the Chamber of the Sages theme. The chamber is literally part of the Temple of Light and that's what plays. There's no reason not to. The only alternative should be the Temple of Time. I honestly think a custom piece of music would hurt the believability of this mod.

 

Here's a mockup of the Hourglass Prism. I've been informed by Sakura that this custom actor is [most likely] doable. Textures are not final by any means.

 

 

If we are going with the Prism structure of the dungeon (two mirrored pyramids), with 7 levels: three upper, three lower, and the Chamber of the Sages in the center, then the outlying six floors should be devoted to the six sage elements.

 

4F: Light

3F: Forest

2F: Fire

1F: Entrance & Chamber of the Sages

B1: Water

B2: Spirit

B3: Shadow

 

This way, the Prism is a gradient of the six sacred elements from Light (the peak) to Shadow (the nadir). Incidentally, Water is the floor right beneath the Chamber of Sages, where sacred fountains pour into the darkness below.

 

This is similar in structure to Ganon's Castle. As such, this "Beta" Temple of Light could be a predecessor in concept to his castle. With the sage medallions represented, we could justify why this dungeon was cut in favor of Ganon's Castle. The concept of this layout could have been appropriated into the final OoT dungeon midway during development, which is why this was never finished. We could give the impression that Nintendo intended the final dungeon to be the Temple of Light during Beta developoment, but opted for Ganon's Castle instead.

 

I know my hourglass may look too refined for a "Zelda 64" looking component. Just wanted to share what I made. And again, this hourglass prism would require two characteristics:

• Pushability with Golden Gauntlets
• When light is shone in its core, it refracts the light in four directions.

[punk7890]

Yeah. I'd most definitly keep music as is. Since we all know the music quite well in the ROM.

[Kargaroc]

That will be fine

[Secant]

There's also always the option of removing music altogether and purporting the claim that it referenced an invalid song index number resulting in no background music. Not sure how well that would play into believability, so I'll agree that Chamber of Sages is likely the most fitting.

[HeavyZ]

Well the beta rooms in the debug have no music so I say Secants idea is probably best for that in terms of believability. Less cool, but more believable.

[Agnostic Priest]

You just want to take credit. Whoever posts it needs to have formidable knowledge of Zelda hacking. I currently nominate Jason if he is not known on youtube for modding Zelda.

Thats really not my motivation at all. I just enjoy fucking with people sometimes, and i haven't in a while

[Your Local Cultist]

I love making people look for stuff that's not real... but that might just be me being an ass hole.

[Kargaroc]

What will the entrance look like? Similar to the Chamber of Sages?

I made a little warp pedestal for possibly where the player spawns when first arriving.

Untextured, though I said I wasn't amazing at texturing.
OBJ file here incase anyone wants to improve it.

 

I imagined it as having small lights (orbs?) in the small holes in the pillars.

[Spire]

I think that could be improved if the towers tapered a bit more, forming obelisks instead. The presence of four towers is concerning though. A tower containing light signifies something important, especially when cornering the very entrance. As such, I would suggest remaking this in a hexagon shape to accommodate for the six core elements. Each orb of light could reflect the colors thereof, being yellow, green, red, blue, orange, and purple.

[Kargaroc]

Ah!  I will fix it!

 

 

Hmm...

[Jason777]

Well it seems that everybody is leaning over to Spire's and Naxy's concept more-or-less. I'm all for it so I guess there isn't anything else keeping you all from working on it.

 

I have an idea for puzzles: perhaps we could implement designs that utilize the differences in child and adult? Strati made a hack that allowed for the Mastersword to transform Link from young to old and vice versa without being transported back to the Temple of Time.

 

Also, I would imagine that the Chamber of Sages music would work well with the surreal atmosphere that one might feel when exploring the "lost" temple.

[sairugoth]

I want to be part of this. It sounds awsome!

I'm acually almost done whith modeling my first dungeon for my mod. I'm still having trouble trying to iinsert it into SharpOcarina, something about out of boundary of the axis. so, its just a scaling problem. But I'm still willing to make a dungeon!

[Kargaroc]

The fixed version?

 

Here's the OBJ

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16672629/Player_NewS.7z

 

I also made an alternate version that was a triangle instead of a hexagon, but it didn't get very far.  Nonetheless, I included it's obj as well.

[Jason777]

That looks pretty impressive, Kargaroc. You should get into contact with Spire and Secant (Naxy) concerning how you might implement it into the dungeon.

 

Sairugoth, we could use all the help we can get. Ideally, the whole forum would be involved by thinking up puzzle designs, theorizing on how the temple might have been, making the discovery more believable, and helping to sell this thing off as the truth once we have it all done.

 

The only help that I am picky on is designing the actual temple model. Spire and Secant have already proved their worth by showcasing various products of their talent on different threads in this forum. I have complete trust in their design as well as their ability in 3D modelling. The only way that I would allow more modellers to join is if they demonstrated prowess that is on par with OoT objects in maps and that their style and designs did not clash with other modellers working on the temple.

 

One thing I should say is that this project is pretty much leader-less. I am more of a coordinator who checks in and sees how things are coming along. Once the temple model is done is where I come into the picture: I import the map into the game, follow specific puzzle designs made by the modellers in order to make actor placements, modify the Temple of Time to have an exit which leads to the map, modify entries in the exit table to link the maps up together, make assembly hacks to allow for specific new things, etc. That being said, I would wish for all modellers to get into contact with one another in order to avoid confusion.

 

I would like for content and progress to be displayed in this thread for the whole forum to see so that they may offer some input as well. I would also like for people who wish to contribute to contact me through this thread too.

[HeavyZ]

I can't wait for this to be finished. I'm actually looking forward to just going in and wondering through the dungeon. I would like to ask, since the rest of the world will be believing it is real, is there a chance that we may do a "Restoration" of the temple later down the road? If any one of you guys don't want to do it, I would definitely be game for "restoring" the puzzles, and actors. With all of your permission of course. I would totally understand if that's something you guys want to do yourselves though.

[Kargaroc]

I can't wait for this to be finished. I'm actually looking forward to just going in and wondering through the dungeon. I would like to ask, since the rest of the world will be believing it is real, is there a chance that we may do a "Restoration" of the temple later down the road? If any one of you guys don't want to do it, I would definitely be game for "restoring" the puzzles, and actors. With all of your permission of course. I would totally understand if that's something you guys want to do yourselves though.

That would be pretty cool actually

though I would wait until it's almost been released to do any planing.  Gotta keep the reaction spontaneous and such.

 

On another thought, it would allow us to break the dungeon a lot more than before.

Maybe we could make a fully functional dungeon, and then break it, and offer the original design as the "restoration"?

 

 

 

Also, some things I've noticed about the Zelda 64 style

I've noticed that, there's not much detail.  Most polygons are kept large, any detail usually being through (quite low resolution) textures.  The textures themselves look a lot like the final textures, except they too lack small details that the final ones have.  For instance, the dead grass on Hyrule Field which wasn't there in early versions.

They also seem to be stretched a lot, giving an iconic blurry look, in adition to the lack of detail.

 

Also... Everything's a lot more colorful.  Bright oranges and reds and browns and blues abound, where as in the final game, everything's quite muted.

 

The dungeon design seems a bit more labyrinthine than the final.  The rooms also seem more compact (though not necesarrily dense), despite being less detailed.

For instance, the amount of hallways is much higher, and they seem a bit more integrated into the dungeon archatecture.  Ceilings also tend to be lower.

 

 

This style actually shares much in common with Mario 64, in particular the blurry textures on large polygons.  It's quite iconic.

Though where as Mario 64 is almost exclusively cartoony, Zelda 64 tries to be more realistic with the same archatecture.  Almost industrial.

[HeavyZ]

Glad you think so and that sounds reasonable. I do have one other suggestion though. Could you all make it like Level (9) from Zelda 1 in only this one way?... I got the idea that since you can obtain the Triforce in it that maybe you could make different boss rooms for each of the bosses that are in OoT.. maybe without any boss rooms for Ganon. I would say that the original game designers of OoT would have planned the dungeon to be beaten after the Spirit Temple and before Ganon's Castle. It would be cool to see newly designed boss rooms as well for each of the bosses.

 

Edited: I agree that the textures used should be more simple to resemble the style of the original Zelda 64 teasers.