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Personal Projects / Re: Link's Awakening hack: New Awakening
« on: June 23, 2014, 05:44:53 am »
I have been in China for a while and unable to access the Internet for quite some time. My apologies for the late reply. This is a long post.

Thank you for the feedback. I've been wondering how my hack was seen, and I see your points. I will go over the color dungeon and make sure it works, but I think one of the issues, which might explain your not finding any keys, is that there is a moving block puzzle and the sprite bank cannot be made quite right, the result being that the moving block isn't immediately recognizable. That puzzle releases a key, so you might have missed that. I think I will replace it with a different puzzle or something. I can see why the sprite might be a problem.

I have fixed the Tail Cave chest problem already, but the new version is not yet posted. I'll make more revisions before I post a new version.

I thought the midair jump in Turtle Rock was very interesting, but I think I will take it out. It's not worth it if it causes trouble or frustration for players.

I will need to think about changing the transition from Angler's Tunnel to Catfish's Maw. I based the idea on a shortcut I found with screen warping on the original game, in which you can fall from one to the other. I might preserve the drop, but find a more graceful way to do it. Maybe I'll replace the drop with a normal stairway. Or maybe I'll just reorder the dungeons so they don't connect at all.

I'll get rid of the bouncing blob in the side scrolling area you mentioned. Maybe I'll replace the sprite with a Goomba, just so the room isn't empty.

I thought falling down the multiple screens in level 6 was kind of cool since you get to see screwy tiles (it has to do with a screen being side-scrolling or top-down). I thought it would be interesting for the player to go through a weird tunnel, not knowing what's going or why, only to end up right where he or she needed to go. But I'll take it out anyway. I'll reorient the puzzle. Besides, people might think it was a bug and not like it.

As for getting stuck in walls in level 6, I think I removed the last of those already. But the revised versions with the fixes constitute the minority of the downloads of my hack, so I'm not sure if you're playing a fixed version. If you've downloaded it recently--or even if you haven't--please let me know exactly where you got stuck. I know there was one place where you could hop off a ledge and get stuck, so I replaced that tile with a bombable wall-type ledge (which you can't jump off of), but I'm sure I haven't posted that version yet.

Least favorite dungeon, Catfish's Maw: I've had lots of trouble trying to orient that level so it works okay. Thing is, I can't change the rooms where you fight the Master Skeleton, nor can I have the player enter them from a new direction, so I've had to build around a certain model I can't change, while still trying to make the structure new and unfamiliar (having that fourth boss room so close to the entrance was a pain even in the original, but I can't move it away). I might reorganize the whole dungeon, since I can imagine how it would get confusing. In trying to minimize backtracking, I may have made the structure too counterintuitive to navigate. And just in case that doesn't work, maybe I'll put the second bracelet in another dungeon, someplace where it's bound to be found, and add an elephant so the player doesn't finish the dungeon without it. And maybe I'll bring the Hookshot to Angler's Tunnel, and fix Catfish's Maw so you don't need it anymore. That way the Flippers won't be interpreted as Catfish's Maw's only treasure.

Let me know if there are any other things you didn't like. And tell me if there's anything I need to change about the text. And let me know if anyone is disappointed by the absence of Marin. I would need to more or less completely redesign the hack to keep her in the game without introducing a game-breaking bug, but I know Marin is fun.

Also, I'm curious about your reaction to some of the puzzles I thought might be too rough in the hack. For those who have not finished the game, the rest of this post contains spoilers.

Prologue: Is there enough powder to get to Tail Cave without too much hassle?

Tail Cave, Bottle Grotto, Key Cavern: Any concerns about not fighting the bosses to get the Instruments? You do lose a Heart Piece by forgoing them.

Key Cavern: Too many enemies? The player admittedly has to fight with Powder and Bombs, and I don't know how other people handle this. Having created and tested the mod, I can get through the dungeons without getting hurt more than once or twice, but the player has not fought these enemies ten times over, and I don't know if it's too dangerous or crowded in there for everybody else.

Turtle Rock: Any trouble getting through that room before the Wand? I've made it easier, but I thought I would ask.

Catfish's Maw: Trouble with the Cue Ball enemy, spike trap, and fireball room? There used to be 2 Cue Balls, but I might not have cut down the difficulty enough.
Trouble with the boss key chest?
Trouble with the way to the Flippers?

Eagle's Tower: I've made the side-scrolling section in Eagle's Tower a little easier, but did it cause problems in its un-nerfed form?
Trouble with the southwest corner room on the second floor? It requires a weird Hookshot trick in the most recent version, assuming I've posted that version.
Trouble around the northwestern rooms of the first floor?
Trouble with the crystal switch puzzle in the room two screens north of the entrance? It's optional if you do the Cue Ball room, but I thought I'd ask.
Trouble with that boss room with two Cue Balls and the laser? It's optional if you do the crystal switch room above.

Face Shrine: Trouble with the room three spaces south of the northwesternmost room? I'm not sure I've posted this version, but it's very wacky.
Did anyone find extra keys in the Face Shrine? I tweaked the version to remove an excess key or two, but I'm not sure if anybody else came across the issue.
What do you think of the room with the four moving blocks? I spent a lot of time designing the room, and thought it would be extremely difficult to solve it. It's supposed to be hard, but I wanted to know your thoughts.
Any trouble with the dungeon in general? A lot of the sprites, chests, and tiles in there are red herrings, so sometimes they require some outside the box thinking.

Personal Projects / Re: Paper Mario 64 - General Hacking Tool
« on: April 07, 2014, 04:44:58 pm »
Retriever's work appears to focus on viewing image files, not on editing stats. Being able to edit stats is a big innovation. I've looked at Retriever's files and it's not clear to me they enable hacking; only viewing.

Personal Projects / Link's Awakening hack: New Awakening
« on: March 31, 2014, 09:46:52 pm »
Since a lot of people have downloaded my hack New Awakening in the past month, I decided it might be wise to start up a thread to see if anyone had any questions or comments on the mod. I prefer to operate with lots of feedback and so far I've only gotten a couple of complaints, and it didn't take long to address them, leaving me on my own.

I've been updating the hack more or less regularly so far, so there are noticeable differences between different versions of the hack, but I've set up a walkthrough on Youtube that shows how various puzzles can be solved and where the player needs to go at this or that point in the game. The walkthrough isn't perfect, as it has some unnecessary backtracking when I stopped paying attention to what I was doing and played on autopilot, but it shows how everything can be done, and also shows how to get the extra keys available in the dungeons (I added in excess keys and key-saving tricks to reduce the chance the player might get stuck). I'll update it when the newest version requires different puzzles. Here is the link: (

Let me know what you think.

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