scawful / oracle-of-secrets

Custom Code for the Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Secrets ROM hack

Major Projects

• Oracle of Secrets - Complete overhaul of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Yet Another Zelda3 Editor - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Editor, Emulator, Debugger
• Premia - Quantitative market analysis program and trading client.

Websites

• https://zeniea.com/ - message board based on ZEN3MP repo
• https://halext.org/ - personal blog and smaller projects

oracle-of-secrets's Issues

Patch 0.103 bugs

BUGFIXES CONFIRMED :

• The persistent rain sound bug from the Dark World has been fixed.
• The Dark World portal despawn glitch has been fixed.

Here is what I found in patch 0.103 :

• The rain sound in the intro cave is briefly interrupted when Link uses a staircase (video 1) : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/59328d61-720f-48c7-a8f7-a3056a70194a

• NES link cannot read signs (consequence of Bunny Link's lack of action abilities).

• The new Dark World sections contain incorrect cliff tiles (see videos 2 and 3 for a location). It seems to happen every time a tree is placed, and the cliff tiles only seem to be at the right side of the trees.

bandicam.2023-09-08.21-00-38-759.mp4

bandicam.2023-09-08.21-01-34-320.mp4

• The Dark World portal from the intro (i.e. the temporary one spawning once you leave the DW as NES Link) is not shown on the map while you are in the Maku Tree Area (see video 4).

bandicam.2023-09-08.21-05-10-670.mp4

• The soldier called by the village ladies doesn't have a good collision and goes clean through some tiles (see screenshot 1).

-There are some tile priority errors in Wayward Village (see screenshot 2 for an example).

• The sole cave entrance in Wayward Village changes the music back to Toadstool Woods' theme when exited.

• The Octorok enemy graphics are garbled in the Hall of Secrets area (screenshot 3).

• The pillars in this part of the Dark World (screenshot 4) have no collision).

• The duders' sprites in Kalyxo Castle get partially hidden when Link goes downstairs (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1024727702957215794/1149793132251205753/bandicam_2023-09-08_21-46-59-217.mp4).

• The button underwater in screenshot 5 sometimes requires two button presses to actually do something. The first press will only make you release whatever you were carrying and make you resurface, the chest will only appear at the second attempt.

• Argii and Arrghus still hit for way too much damage.

Patch 0.102 bugs

Here is a list of all the bugs I found in v. 0.102 of the game:

• Roc's Feather doesn't prioritise Link over the things he jumps on, so he is drawn BEHIND them.

• The spiky rollers in Tail Palace deal 3 hearts per hit, rendering them extremely dangerous for a regular player (i.e. they can twoshot Link as he can only come in once he has 4 hearts, see screenshot 1)

• Opening the Big Key chest in Tail Palace assigns the Y button to the Zora Mask (even though you can't transform until actually getting the mask), see video 1 : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/84bc573d-45cd-4116-b8d5-730e905c40b0

• The aforementioned bug also happens when you open the chest containing the King's Sword in Kalyxo Castle, another chest on 3F containing a key and guarded by a white flail knight in Kalyxo Castle as well, and a 20-Rupee chest in the Zora Sanctuary.

• A similar bug happens when you open the Big Key chest in the Zora Sanctuary. Instead of the Zora Mask, the Magic Mirror is assigned to Y upon obtaining the item. If you try using the Mirror without opening the menu, the game will act as if you selected the Lamp instead.

• This cave in Wayward Village causes the music to change to the Toadstool Woods' theme once you go in and leave (screenshot 2)
  

• Kalyxo Castle's door graphics become corrupt during the intermediate "open" frame (screenshot 3)

• Upon coming into Kalyxo Castle from the garden portion requiring to go through the dungeon, all sprites despawn and the floor order becomes incorrect (e.g. B2 is marked as 1F and B3 becomes B1). Several graphics (such as the jail cell bars and jail table tiles, as well as the bone graphics) get corrupted until you come back into the actual dungeon. Everything returns to normal if you leave through one of the main entrances of the dungeon, which isn't possible unless you use a walk-through-walls cheat. (see screenshots 4 and 5 for corrupted graphics and the softlock cause respectively).

• Floor order sometimes also becomes incorrect if you try going upstairs from 1F, and the game will mark the upstairs floor as 1F and consider the actual 1F to be B1, All floor positions are kept so until you leave the dungeon.

• If you bought an Empty Bottle and assign it to the Y Button, the Book of Secrets appears in your inventory even though you can't use it nor select it, see video 2 : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/d3e4ddd7-56eb-467c-abab-e26ee238019d

• A remnant of the lamp light graphic (the little area allowing you to see your way through dark caves) appears in Zora Sanctuary in the 3rd video's circumstances: https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/19c049de-f799-4f99-bc29-ca9044f799dc

• Upon diving with the Zora Mask, you are slowed down. This speed restriction is lifted with a sword slash. If you remove the mask or return to Link's human form manually while underwater, you will stay underwater and will end up with a wrong layering. Everything, bar the layering, returns to normal once you leave water (see video 4) : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/61a19a38-ecdd-4fae-96c4-edd3791ef2ec

• If you messed up with said layering and attempt to go downstairs afterwards, Link will be stuck in his swimming state with nowhere to go towards. This effectively softlocks the player.

• With a precise button combo, you can initiate a slash and jump in place right afterwards (video 5) : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/d4eb6e7a-f90d-4ab0-8bb1-82333f1354ea

• You get set back to the swimming state upon pressing a button underwater. Anything you carry despawns as well (video 6) : https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/17881521-c706-4b58-b713-4989813f2689

• Stalfos are unaffected by water and can walk on it (likely because they weren't programmed to have any interaction with water).

• Item drops from enemies don't sink in deep water and don't interact with it at all (screenshot 6). Link cannot interact with them in his swimming state, but if he transforms into a Zora and dives underwater, he can still pick the items up.

• Zora Link doesn't properly interact with the hole in B3. Once you get in swimming state, you can return to normal by pressing Y. It won't work if you try it above the hole. This lasts even if you return to human Link using the mask again, you need to select another item after pressing Y. If you return to human Link with the R Button, you get softlocked in swimming state and break the dungeon camera. Everything returns to normal if you select another item in the menu as Zora Link, but if you attempt falling in the hole as human Link, the game will act as if you landed in water afterwards and may end up softlocked anyway. To avoid any potential softlocks, stay as Zora Link, go in the water, dive, resurface and leave using the warp after having returned to Human Link. (video 7) https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/assets/74463377/427d0e02-7585-4a65-b090-011f91a14083

• The slab here is unreadable due to the text scrolling before giving the player any chance to read it (screenshot 8).
  

• The shooters positioned on the outermost holes on the upper wall (see previous screenshot) cannot reach Zora Link while he is underwater, due to the balls stopping when hitting certain wall tiles. Since they only trigger when Zora Link is underwater, this means they can't reach Link at all.

• The key in the room affected by the softlock described with video 7 does not spawn. As a result, there are only three keys whereas the dungeon needs four keys in order to progress further. This means Zora Temple is not legitimately completable in this build.

• Fireballs are not stopped by key blocks.

• Green Jumping Pokeys go through walls.

• Enemies in the room shown in screenshot 9 have incorrect spawn positions and no collisions, i.e. they go through walls as well.
  

• If Zora Link dives underwater and lands on shallow water tiles, he cannot surface back up. Enemies will also adjust their layering to the shallow water and not the deep one, which means that some enemies are not reachable despite seeming so and the opposite is also true.

• Camera gets slightly broken in the section starting in the room shown in screenshot 9. Link will end up outside of the camera bounds if walking without stopping, but this doesn't break the dungeon. Everything returns to normal once Zora Link gets back in the room in screenshot 9 and goes far enough northwards.

• Arrghus deals 2 HPH, which leads to a threeshot situation. It's aggravated by the tightness of the arena, which makes it nigh-impossible to avoid the Argii-spin attack if the boss has many Argii left. Arrghus' fireballs don't spawn if Link goes behind it.

• The Tears of Time have no icon in the inventory. They currently use the Moon Pearl icon.

[Menu] Dungeon interior names text table

https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/blob/master/Menu/menu_map_names.asm

Inside of menu_map_names.asm there is a table DungeonLocationNames which contains all the location names of each dungeon room to be displayed in the map. Based on the contents of the dungeon these strings should be filled in with the proper dungeon name or house/cave the player is in.

Crystal Maiden sequence crash

Game crashes after Link speaks to the Crystal Maiden sprite and attempts to exit the dungeon. Does not complete spin animation.

Finish Kydrog Pirate King boss

Kydrog boss fight currently has a lot of good ideas which need refinement for a more enjoyable boss fight.

• Tracking the offspring sprites spawned and limiting as to not lag the game with too many sprites
• More unique movement and different stages for the fight
• Cinematic opening and ending sequence

Deku Link float camera adjustments and collision detection

The current deku link hovering ability leverages quake animation code to create the spin and jump animation, however once link is hovering the camera does not adjust according to his movement in the overworld or dungeons. This allows Link to move across the bounds of the screen to the opposite side and potentially get stuck in a wall. This needs to be fixed to adjust the camera and stop Link from flying out of bounds.

Create minecart track switch object

Custom sprite which has two states: on and off. There will be two kinds of switches

• One which controls the rotation of a specific custom track object
• One which controls the speed of the cart when Link boards

[HUD] Horizontal magic meter draw

Create minecart track object

Minecart track objects use custom object handler under the object ID 0x31.

https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/blob/master/Dungeons/Objects/object_handler.asm

Custom collision is provided for the blockset here

https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/blob/master/Dungeons/Objects/Collision/CollisionTablesExpanded.asm

Crash after defeating any boss, no heart container drop

For patch v0.105-v0.106

Kalyxo Castle

Shrine of Wisdom

Fix Ice Rod overworld ice tiles transition

Currently, when the player uses the Ice Rod in an area where the water leads to a transition without the flippers they get stuck in a drown and refresh loop.

Potential solutions:

• Block off access to transitions before the flippers are obtained.
• Make drowning hurt the player, leading to a death loop on transition.
• Prevent the Ice Rod from creating a walkable ice tile at the edges of an overworld map.
• Remove the Ice Rod walking ability entirely.

Mushroom Grotto

[HUD] Draw dungeon key icon

The key icon is drawn on the hud tilemap and is blanked out in the hud update code, but the location of the blank is currently wrong so the key icon always displays.

Item count (arrows/bombs) disappear from HUD when getting item from chest

Add snow overlay to mountain maps

Some maps in the snow mountain will have an overlay for snow weather, while the maps which represent the peak will have a background overlay like death mountain from vanilla Link to the Past.

[HUD] Fix current item draw

Outdated: Currently there are some errors with the proper icon being drawn in the HUD for the Wolf Mask and Bunny Hood that need to be investigated based on their current SRM values.

Update: Current item draw graphics have been fixed as apart of #50 however there are still issues with the item icon updating when an item is pulled from a chest or given by a sprite.

Improve Minecart Sprite tile collision detection

Currently the tile collision for the Minecart is done using the Sprite_GetTileAttr function here

https://github.com/scawful/Oracle-of-Secrets/blob/master/Sprites/minecart.asm#L331

And it is currently not adjusted based on the direction the cart is going which leads to inconsistencies with the placement of collision tiles for corner movement and stopping. This should be changed so the coordinates of the tile detection are directly under the cart in a very clear area and don't change states too soon.

Village game/shop music stops playing

Reported in chat by ScurvyX

Encountered a bug where playing the 5 arrow shooting gallery game made the game audio stop entirely

Thinking it has to do with a minigame music soundfile, as This same sound glitch happens when I enter the building for either of the 3 chest mini games in the minish woods too. Soon after entering the building the music ends and all sound including sound effects stop. I'm playing on raspberry pi in retropie using lr-snes9x if it matters

Goron Mineshaft

Improve Goldstar usage as weapon

The goldstar currently works the same as the hookshot, albeit with the additional animation.

This should be changed to meet the following requirements:

• Deals fatal damage to enemies instead of stun
• No longer grapples like a hookshot

Stretch goal would be to control the ball and chain rotation with the Y button while moving.

Fix exits which play different music than overworld area

Music/entrance_music_fix.asm is a template for hardcoding the music that plays when exiting certain overworld doors. This should be changed so that all the current entrance/exit combos that mismatch the music are correct. Notably there are a few doors in the toadstool forest that still need fixing.

Yellow background color during game startup

When the game starts, the background color is a yellow-green thing which should be black. Not sure how this color got inserted but it has been a problem for a long time.

GBC Link graphical errors

GBC Link loses his palette when opening and closing the world map

GBC Link does not retain his form when entering dungeons from the dark world

Mothula boss chamber and damage values

Mothula boss does 2 hearts of damage which is too high for a first dungeon.

The spikes also need to be removed.

Spriteset mismatch in Mushroom Grotto

Spriteset ID $19 was modified for use in Tail Palace which had a side effect of changing some enemies graphics in the Mushroom Grotto. A new spriteset should be picked out from the available ones so both dungeons have proper sheets.

Finish Twinrova boss

Twinrova boss can be defeated in its current state but needs a variety of fixes.

• Intro: The Twinrova boss sprite sheet is dynamically loaded into the game when the room is entered. Current attempt to work around this is to fall into the room, but the hook used does not refresh the graphics until the player has landed. These graphics should be updated before the player enters the boss chamber. The boss should not immediately be present, but be a result of the maiden follower sprite. A separate issue should be opened for that cutscene.
• Movement: Twinrova boss currently makes use of a BounceTowardsPlayer macro for its movement. The fire and ice attacks are lifted from the Trinexx boss fight, and they currently use the same speed values as the sprite, which leads to erratic movements and sometimes the boss can go off screen.
• Aggro Mode: Boss goes into an aggro mode when it gets below a certain amount of health which needs more work on the AI since it is too aggressive.

Add Jumping State to improve Roc's Feather

Fortress of Secrets

[Menu] Add current time to status screen

Update Book of Secrets item

The book of secrets was previously modified to use X+R to reveal secrets by hiding the BG2 layer. This has been modified to use the L button to free up the X button again. One thing I've thought about adding to the book is the ability to cast spells when you aren't standing in front of an entity you need to translate. Considering the medallions were removed to make way for the transformation masks, allowing the user to cast medallion spells from the book would be interesting.

Few points to consider for this:

• The quake medallion code in bank07 has been modified for the deku hover, so recreating it would require copying the vanilla code to expanded space and evaluating other hooks which were changed for deku hover.
• To have multiple spells we may need to implement a dialogue box or an L/R feature to scroll between them, but the latter would require changing how the reveal secrets ability works or cutting it entirely. The former may slow down gameplay too much.

Please give your thoughts on the book of secrets item and how it should be implemented. Is the reveal secrets with BG2 ability still worth keeping?

Combine Cane of Byrna with Cane of Somaria Slot

To accommodate the new fishing rod, the cane of byrna should be moved to the cane of somaria slot with the option to switch between the two with the L and R buttons.

Draw 8-bit world tilemap

Remove "hole" effect from minecart tile properties

Link currently falls into the $B6 tile ID which is used for intersecting minecart track pieces, where the player can press any directional button on the cart and the cart will move that direction. If Link is not on the cart, he falls into the track as if it were a hole or a somaria platform.

This should be fixed to be the same behavior as tile type $00 or a new tile type should be picked out (If we plan on using somaria platforms elsewhere in the game)

Change Minish stump to activate with R button

Minish stump currently immediately changes Link into minish form whenever he hits the special tile. This should be changed to only activate when the R button is pressed, and include a delay.

Add ice floor sliding block puzzle sprite

Create a block/rock sprite which slides on icy floors when link pushes against it and can activate floor switches

[Menu] Incorrect item loads after game over

Glacia Estate

Glitched music inside houses

Entering certain houses in the Mushroom Grotto triggers a lot sound effect and does not properly load the music.

Tail Palace

Keyblock dungeon object does not work on certain snes9x cores

Reported by ScurvyX

Playing on lr-snes9x, cannot proceed past this point as I can't push the sliding block after unlocking the key block. Switched to lr-bsnes and am able to proceed. Will be playing with bsnes from here out.

Lanmolas mini-boss minecart fight

Modify the behavior of the lanmolas boss sprite to only begin the boss fight once the player has boarded the minecart in the room.

Restrict exit from the cart until the player has completed the fight or dies to the lanmolas.

Create Zora Princess sprite

During the Zora Temple, the player will get the Big Key and gain access to a room in the same large map as the temple. Inside this separate building the Zora Princess will be waiting for Link to play the Song of Healing and receive the Zora Mask to complete the Zora Temple dungeon.

Roc's Feather takes damage jumping over spike tiles

Make it so the Roc's feather doesn't take damage when jumping over dungeon object spike tiles.

Dragon Ship

Zora Temple

Fix Poltergeist sprites

Poltergeist sprites from Allhallows Eve do not consistently appear when placed in game in the Glacia Estate in Oracle of Secrets. This could be a result of the entrance or an issue with the sprite code interacting with the Oracle codebase. More investigation should be done.

Link gets stuck after capturing fairy/bee in a bottle

When using the bug catching net as bottle + bottle item to capture a fairy/bee, Link gets stuck after dismissing the dialogue.

After pausing the game and unpausing, Link releases into an undefined state of various submodule behaviors rather than resuming LinkState_Default

Day & Night system overrides forest canopy overworld overlay

When the day & night system changes the color palette in areas with a forest canopy overlay, the overlay is removed entirely. Likely a color math operation being performed which would need to be skipped in forest areas or math adjusted for the color of the canopy.