We still here

Jun 8, 2010 at 6:55 AM
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Hi again! It's beyond bedtime, but I wanted to write that I've made great progress since my last post.
I haven't been writing to the diary because my web page is stored locally on the old computer, as is the FTP client with my credentials.

With my next entry, there will be screenshots!

The cliffs west of the dam are coming along easier than ever -- I'm so glad I took the time to write extra code. Ciao for now!
 
Jun 8, 2010 at 9:07 AM
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Awesome. Can't wait.
 
Jun 13, 2010 at 6:38 AM
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Hey GameMkr, I thought I'd chime in once. I've been following Quest for Caltaia since 2003 or so; once every couple months or so I'll get to wondering how the hack has been progressing and check out the site.

Anyway, I'm always happy to hear that the project keeps on keeping on. Labor of love indie games tend to be my favorites; Cave Story, Legend of Princess, Hydorah, etc... I frequently anticipate playing your sequel to Outlands!
 
Jun 14, 2010 at 10:22 PM
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Great uppdate and great work! Keep it up. It feels so nice that you're getting back into it again!
 
Jun 15, 2010 at 7:42 AM
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those cliffs are looking epic, as always gm. cant wait to see them in game!
 
Jun 16, 2010 at 11:03 AM
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Hey GM. If you still need an FTP-client, FileZilla is a great free alternative.
 
Jun 18, 2010 at 12:12 PM
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Hi, I kind of wanted to make another post here. It is great to see a new post by Gamemakr. The right picture in the image really shows some improvements compared to the one on the left. I think it looks very good.

You know, I’ve always wondered why the flowers “bounce” while animating. It’s so funny because I’ve never seen a real flower do that in real life but I never question the bouncing flowers in Zelda3 because it looks natural and I just accept it.

This reminds me, there are tons of things that happen in video games which may seem illogical in the real world but in the game it’s perfectly ok. Like for instance, Link’s boomerang. In real life if you threw a boomerang at a rupee it would never pick up the jewel and bring it back to you but in the game it makes total sense. Ha funny huh?

One thing that I always thought was a contradiction in Zelda3 was the properties of the lantern. For example, it takes the use of magic to light a torch with the lantern in a room but if your in a completely dark room the lantern will work providing you with a little light to see in front of you but not use any magic at all. So if I can use the lantern in a dark room with no magic then what is the lantern running on? If the lantern works without magic then why does it take magic to light a torch?

And I’ve always wondered this. What is magic anyway? Of course I’m talking about the magic in Zelda3 here. That little green bar on the screen, is that green stuff a liquid or a solid or what? How does the magic work with the items? If Link wants to use the ice rod does he have to drink some magic or pour/rub some magic on the ice rod to get it to work? Or maybe the ice rod has some supernatural connection with Link’s supply of magic so that the ice rod automatically depletes it when he uses it.

One thing that always confused the heck out of me as a child playing this game was the part where you got the double magic or items use ½ what they normally did power up. I’m telling you, I never knew if getting this was a good or bad thing when I was a kid. Just to remind you guys check out the pic.


link.jpg



The bat or whatever is like two faced, you never really know if what he is saying is true or not. I mean what if I went to a hair salon to get a hair cut and said the following:

(Me Speaking)

“ Cut all of my hair off now.”
“I think blue is a nice color.”
“Keep my hair long please, because I hate you.”
“If you cut my hair the wrong way I will be very happy.”

I mean, seriously was this a translation error. I wasn’t smart enough as a kid to test out whether or not this “power up” was actually good by trying out various items and seeing if you really do get more magic out of the ½ container than a normal container. But still the way it is stated, you would think that your magic container is actually ½ less than normal instead of being doubled. It should read as 2X instead of ½! Actually…wait a minute…. I just got an idea, hack that into the game GameMakr. Change the “½” to “2X” lol. That way future kids who will one day play this game will understand what it means and not have to suffer the confusion that I went through.

Anyways, I could go on for hours and hours talking about this stuff. I guess the point is to not over analyze some of the details in a game and just play it and enjoy it.

I do want to kind of admit that when I wrote my last post I was kind of in a frustrated mood. It’s just that I think about working on and developing this game a lot of the time and school had ended for the summer and I had 3 weeks off with nothing to do and didn’t work on the game at all in those 3 weeks. It’s just I’m the type of person who doesn’t like having idle hands, if I have free time then I want to use it. But having free time and not using it, it is such a waste!

I have requested GameMakr to give me something to work on regarding Zelda3C but I think that I have come to the understanding that GameMakr’s primary duties right now are all focused on creating the overworld, since so much depends on it and only until that’s completed will he know what his needs are so that then I will be able to help him with those needs. Now I also understand why I can’t really co-create the overworld with him, he might use one block for a tree and I use that same block as part of a house and then when we combine our efforts together everything is all messed up.

I’m still trying to learn the whole asm hacking thing, but let me tell ya, it’s not as easy as I thought. Maybe it might get easier as I understand it better. Sometimes I have a hard time when I first learn something new but after I get it I really excel in it. For years I went through school never understanding math and did very poorly in math in high school. Well now I’m a math major and I got it down now!

I also wanted to say that what GameMakr is doing is truly amazing. He has worked very hard to accomplish what he has so far. Many other people out there would have long ago quit. To make a hack on this scale and on this level requires incredible dedication, focus and patients. I don’t even think I could do it all on my own even if I had the skills. You can really tell that this game is a labor of love and he is truly passionate while working on it. I give him tons of credit for starting it and chipping away at it day by day. Just remember, never give up!


I do want to close this post with two trivia questions regarding the original Zelda3 game. Anyone can give an answer to these. The answers to these questions may actually be of importance to GameMakr while designing Zelda3C. Explain your answer if you give one.


Question 1

Is it possible for Link to obtain the red boomerang by opening up a small chest instead of receiving it from the fairy in the waterfall cave?

Question 2

Is it possible for Link to obtain the blue boomerang in another location besides the inside of the 1st dungeon at the beginning of the game?
 
Jun 18, 2010 at 7:07 PM
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I’m still trying to learn the whole asm hacking thing, but let me tell ya, it’s not as easy as I thought. Maybe it might get easier as I understand it better. Sometimes I have a hard time when I first learn something new but after I get it I really excel in it. For years I went through school never understanding math and did very poorly in math in high school. Well now I’m a math major and I got it down now!
mathonnapkins has started writing a detalied asm guide on www.arc-nova.org forums but for some reason the site is down...

and congrats on the update gamemakr!
 
Jun 18, 2010 at 10:30 PM
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I haven't posted on these forums but i've been following since before blog was even up. I still remember the old chats on ICQ with GM before you stopped using it when you were almost local resident in my state. There aren't many emulation sets i still track these days. Just yours and sephs. Seph looks like he could use a little of your encouragement to rub off on him. :)
 
Jun 20, 2010 at 11:46 PM
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Erockbrox: For you questions:

1. Yes. You can get it in Villages of Outcast, by blasting the house at the south. Can only be obtained if you haven't got the blue boomerang, or else it will be 300 rupees.

2. No, that is the only place to my knowledge.
 
Jun 20, 2010 at 11:47 PM
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Nice to see things coming along again. I'm still lurking about as well, and I'm as excited as ever to lend a helping hand, should you need it.

Like many of the fans of the project, I click on my Quest for Calatia link a few times a week in the hopes that I'll see a new post. So, it's nice to see the "June 13th" update. A pleasant surprise.

Keep up the good work sir. :)
 
Jun 21, 2010 at 6:53 AM
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Thanks for responding to my trivia questions Tompa. One day back in 2008 I started a new Zelda 3 game on the SNES. It was a special challenge I thought up called the “Bare Bones Challenge”. The challenge was to beat the Zelda 3 game with the bare minimum of items, heats, and so on. This means if there is a weapon/item in the game that is not required to beat the game with, I’m not allowed to get it. I’ll have to take a screen shot of all the items that I got/didn’t get and post it later but I did manage to beat the game without getting many items. The only part where I kind of messed up was when I got to Trinex (I think that is what he is called) the last boss before Gannon I realized that I couldn’t beat him without any bottles of extra magic potion. In my challenge I’m not allowed to even get 1 bottle and no ½ magic either, so using the ice/fire rod on that boss used up too much magic and I couldn’t beat that boss without having to (cheat) and get 1 bottle so that I would then have enough magic. But then when I got to Gannon I realized something else, the blue master sword (not upgraded to red) will NOT deal damage to Gannon. The red master sword is required to do that. So now that I know this I can redo my “Bare Bones Challenge” getting the red master sword so that then when I get to Trinex I will be able to beat him without any bottles because once you use the ice rod/fire rod on the red/blue heads then you can use your sword to deal more damage. Since I was using the blue master sword it didn’t do much damage but now with the red one I’m sure I can beat him!

Now, what did all that have to do with my trivia questions? Well I didn’t get blue boomerang in the first dungeon and to my surprise I found it elsewhere! I found the boomerang in the village in the light world in a chest, which should contain 10 arrows.

You did in fact get the first question correct. Good job!

Here are the screenshots that I took proving the answers.


dkfbfence012.jpg



dkfbfence011.jpg



I hope GameMakr reads this because it might have an impact on Zelda3C from what I understand those chests are special. The items in them change. If GameMakr puts an item in one of those chests that is mandatory to beat the game and some player somehow ends up skipping a item like the blue boomerang then that mandatory item may be overwritten in the game code making the game unbeatable. Anyways just looking out for the game as always.
 
Jun 21, 2010 at 7:51 AM
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Quick update.

I just wanted to show the differences here. The contents can change. Also the lantern does this as well. Just make sure this is accounted for in the final game.


chestswitch2.jpg



chestswitch1.jpg



chestswitch3.jpg
 
Jun 21, 2010 at 8:28 PM
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But then when I got to Gannon I realized something else, the blue master sword (not upgraded to red) will NOT deal damage to Gannon. The red master sword is required to do that.

Normally I wouldn't reply, but I really don't want you to go through the game again and then find this out:

You can charge your L1 master sword to damage Ganon. (E.g.: spin attack).

I have beaten the entire game with just the L1 master sword. (I'm fairly sure I did this on the SNES version, not the GBA one ---you might want to load your old game and try this just to be sure.) Spinning to strike Ganon is a pain, but it only gets challenging near the final part of the battle (where you have to turn on the lights and then spin-strike him). But it's totally doable.

Which brings us back to Trinex! You might try charging your sword and then hitting him a few times with regular sword strikes.... or using the hammer... or using bombs+sword. What I mean is, I think you might be able to do just enough damage to not require a blue potion, although I have no real proof for this.
 
Jun 22, 2010 at 8:15 AM
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L1 Master Sword is really a bad name for that sword... Say either L2 sword or Master Sword, the red one is called Tempered Sword. But yeah, you can damage Ganon with spinattacks using the Master Sword. 28 spinattacks required to get him to his last phase, and if you fight him without the Silver Arrows, that would be another 24 hits.

Erockbrox: Now I remember reading that you could get the Blue Boomerang in Kakariko Village, thanks for reminding me. In a 100% speedrun it's faster to get the Red one from the chest instead of upgrading the blue. As it's only the last fully upgraded item that counts, you won't need the blue boomerang or the red shield.

I do wonder if it was intentional that you could ge the boomerangs in those chests instead of where they are supposed to be obtained from. I have also been thinking if there are other chets like this in the game, I haven't found any at least.
 
Jun 22, 2010 at 11:35 PM
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sorlok_reaves:

Wow, I didn't realize that. I just figured that since the normal swing of the sword didn't do it nothing would.

Tompa:

I also didn't know that you could beat Gannon without silver arrows.

Thanks for letting me know guys.
 
Jun 23, 2010 at 10:55 AM
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FMyrW10KWw

Here's a video I made showing a few speedtricks for speedrunning, it also shows how to kill Ganon (Which is spelled with ONE n, NOT two.) without having the Silver Arrows

Could mention some other things that could be interesting for you to know:

Usually when you have bought the Super Bomb, you are unable to use your A button. Here's a way to do it though: Use the hookshot to grab onto a bush (Or anything) that's a bit further away. The bomb won't follow you until you have arrived at the bush. Just when you arrive at the bush you are able to use the A button before the bomb comes back to you.

In the Japanese version only, if you use the mirror while a block is pushed, the block will completely disappear.
Also Japanese only, if you start running at the same frame that you are using an item, you'll run with this item.

There's a lot more of weird glitches and such in the game, here's just a few that you may not know about.
 
Jun 24, 2010 at 1:22 AM
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Hi again! I'm going to post several replies now, this time without typing names of people. You know who you all are. :)

The flowers bounce because there's a constant flow of wind in Hyrule. Or maybe they're dancing, like the plants in SMB3. Although I like the flowers' movement, I'm considering stopping their animation by switching them to a non-animating tile. This would free up one that does animate, for a cool, secret purpose. What do you guys think?

Link's boomerang picks things up because it's magical. The magic also makes sure it returns to whomever threw it, no matter what. *I've* always wondered why arrows can pick up items in Zelda 1. It's like there's this special connection between Link and his items. They even shrink when not in use, as seen in the Zelda cartoon series...

The lantern in Zelda 3 makes perfect sense. It takes so little magic to shine ahead that it's negligible; you replenish it naturally as fast as it's consumed. But if you want to conjure up a huge flame for a torch, that's going to cost you a little. In Zelda3C, btw, it's a candle. The light still shines the same way due to a cover that directs the light away from Link's eyes.

As far as magic usage in general, Link activates certain items with his mind, like a spell, so that ice shoots out of the ice rod without any buttons or levers, and the medallions create chaos just by his lifting his sword. Incidentally, the ability to shoot beams from the sword must also require magic, but not so much that any measurable amount is used. Part of the wonder of the Master Sword!

The half-magic bat has a split personality. The world was better off with this schitzo asleep, but since Link revived him, his gratitude outweighed his evil. And yes, I've always planned to change the 1/2 to 2X to fit with a new character that gives you "double the magic"... Although Nintendo intended for 1/2 to mean "half off"...

I like over-analyzing games, especially when you can come up with answers! I remember that Nintendo Power responded to one question, "Why does Link use the other hand when heading the opposite direction (east vs. west)?" Although the true answer is that the game simply mirrors the sprite graphics instead of providing new ones, they responded that Link is superstitious about the powers of Death Mountain, and thus always keeps his shield facing north when possible.

Erock, I've actually thought of a great task for you to undertake. I'm sorry it didn't occur to me until after your 3 week break, but I'll email you with the details. When completed, you will have saved me a lot of time.

I don't *think* you can get the red boomerang from a chest, but it does feel like I've heard that somewhere...

I'm pretty sure certain chests are programmed to push the blue boomerang on you if you don't already have it, instead of its default contents. And most people probably know that if you don't take the lantern from the chest in your house, there are multiple chests along the way (including the Throne Room) where you will find it.

Hey, MysticalOS, long time no chat! You and I became friends ages ago. These days my wife and kids prevent such luxuries as chatting. ;)

Hey, Josh! One of these days I'll get back into monsters and other sprites. You've provided some great graphics in the past!

I also played Zelda 3 years ago by only getting the required items and *nothing* else. (I've also done this for Zelda 2, complete with restricting leveling Link.) I had all the rules written down and called it "Zelda Challenge". Imagine my surprise when I discovered "Zelda 2 Challenge" one day! (This discovery is what led to my creating ZeldaC Outlands.)

As far as the Zelda 3 "Bare-Bones Challenge", I think you can hurt Ganon with the Lvl 2 sword, but ONLY when using the whirlwind attack. And, since at least one bottle is required to beat Trinexx, it is considered a required item.

Interesting that both boomerangs can be found in villages. The townfolk obviously know how to use 'em! As far as usefulness of this knowledge, each of the chests in the game can be set to any contents, and some of the options are the conditional combos we've described. You can even put a Pendant in a chest! (Too bad it locks up the game.)

I see that later posts give answers to things I've just addressed. (I'm replying while reading.) No point going back and editing. You can beat Ganon *without* the Silver Arrows? What??

Next time I go looking through the Indoors in HM, I'll take note of all the special, conditional chests in play, and post my findings.

I was always proud of myself for beating Agahnim with the bug-catching net. (Story says you need the Master Sword, but I proved otherwise!) Just sayin'.

It's acceptable to spell Ganon with two n's only because it occurs in Zelda 1's opening story, but all future spellings are with one 'n'. But then, we would have to accept the spelling of Hyrule's currency as rubies...

Interesting glitches -- glad I'm not using the Japanese version!

I've been wondering if I'll include the Super Bomb and the Golden (lvl 4) Sword in Zelda3C. The Super Bomb will be there in some form if I can make it work elsewhere. The Golden Sword will probablly be there too, even if the game is meant to be more challenging, but good luck finding it!!! lol

I guess I could post a new update while I have this window open. It has been very liberating to create new areas wherever fancy takes me, rather than restricting myself to new buildings, new graphics, new tile uses, etc. Instead of working westward, like I'd planned, I headed north to the river's source. There I've created a great waterfall you can walk behind. I don't mean, "walk into a secret door", I mean "walk alongside its length and hold your sword through different streams if you so desire." Can anyone imagine how this would look, in-game, without appearing strange?
 
Jun 29, 2010 at 12:37 AM
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One question:
Will this hack be for the european, american, or japanese version of Zelda 3?
 
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