The Legend of Zelda: Return to Koholint

[Darkness]

Wowie.  When I look at the picture, my mind got hit me.  Like light blub lit on.  Since you show the past version, seem they are waiting for Link to return but he never did.   So that mean he need use Flute (Harp of Age) to travel back to time.  Also he need to find where is Malon and Tarin in the past and make successful in the present.  I feel like this might will be storyline. 

When he arrive the island, everything is changing and he need to find out how to fix the time.  Only one way he can use is find the flute.  He went to check the dream house but find out the rock is still blocking same last time he came first time.  In order to get flute, he need go to first dungeon, but in his thought.  "What if the level and boss are same as before in my dream?"   (I am not going say what is look like in level 1.)  After he get item, Power Bracelet to allow pick up the rock.  He went back to the Dream House and he get in the bed...but nothing happen.  Suddenly, the floor start open as floor door and there is stair.  Link heard the voice.  "Come and receive your needs.  Complete the challenge of dungeon."  (My small idea of level 2.) He went go down-stair and complete the level.  He have only one song he is remember that Nayru gave his first song of time travel, Tune of Echoes. 

And the rest of level require time travel or up to you.   So I hope you like idea of mine for beginning part.  You can give some support of my idea for your hack in story line.

[Radz]

No story spoilers (other than introductory information like would be found in the manual of a full game).  I can say that I'm batting around some ideas regarding Link and how to give him his sword.  I have one idea I just came up with and I think it will work really well and will give you that sense of mystery that Link's Awakening had.

What's really going on and who or what can you trust?

[Darkness]

No story spoilers (other than introductory information like would be found in the manual of a full game).  I can say that I'm batting around some ideas regarding Link and how to give him his sword.  I have one idea I just came up with and I think it will work really well and will give you that sense of mystery that Link's Awakening had.

What's really going on and who or what can you trust?

Aww ok.  I do want really know what kind mystery and secret.

Hmm...I agree with that.

Can I PM you for some idea for storyline?

[Radz]

Any suggestions from anyone are welcome whether they be story or mapping related.

...but I cannot make any promises about whether I will use said suggestions.  If you point out something with my mapping that makes sense, yeah, I'll probably take that suggestion and roll with it.  If something you suggest expressly goes against the intent of the game (i.e. it would cause a sequence break...which I have noticed I've allowed for an inescapable trap in the present I will need to fix), it might influence me to make a change while still maintaining the sequence I intended but it may just not happen.

That being said, it is pretty set in stone in regards to the sequence and location of the first three dungeons and the necessary bits between them.  I might still dabble in some cryptic messages here and there as filler between those points, but the points are set.

Also, the ultimate goal and story are decided on.  I know where I am starting and where I am going, but the details along the way are still somewhat fluid.

[Lin]

Wow, you map really fast. Looking pretty sweet.

[Darkness]

Any suggestions from anyone are welcome whether they be story or mapping related.

Oh ok.  But I don't know anything about mapping and stuff.  Only I can do is storyline and add some idea.

[Radz]

Wow, you map really fast. Looking pretty sweet.

To be fair, I had been working on both maps simultaneously for the first two weeks doing the present screen and then the past of the same screen.  I decided I wanted a completed work though so decided to forgo the past for a while.  This is what I had as of starting this topic a couple days ago.  Though I did finish Mabe Village, portions of the prairie, and the signpost maze (which isn't a maze yet in the past).

[Radz]

OMG!  TEH FOREMZ ES BAK!

Well, in the interim I finished very little work on Return to Koholint actually.  I blame it on the long Memorial Day weekend.

I did however finish the past overworld Tuesday, but I had stuff come up today that kept me from working today.  I also do not have an image update since I don't have access to my assets currently, but I'll upload the finished product tomorrow.  Now to work on the underwater portions.

Here is my basic triage plan for Return to Koholint:
1. Overworld (done aside from minor changes that might be necessary after testing)
2. Underwater
3. Underground areas which connect two places on the overworld (I plan to do this to make the overworld playable as a standalone demo/test build)
4. All remaining underground areas
5. Dungeons
6. Interaction placement (including enemies, NPCs, and things like time portals as well as any necessary scripting)

Now, technically, any of these could change places, but currently that's what I'm looking at.  Frankly, I much prefer mapping to dealing with interaction placement.  I do not mind the scripting that much, but since I program for a living, being limited to such a small toolset is a less than ideal way of doing things for me. :001_tongue:

I am just hoping I can regain and then maintain the momentum I had prior to the long weekend and really hammer some mapping out and then maybe start drudging through the interaction adding process.

[Lin]

You're going to have underwater too? I don't necessarily like the idea of that because I personally didn't like those sections in the original game Sounds good nonetheless though. Keep up the good work.

[Klavice]

I've been lurking these forums and came across this project. It certainly looks promising judging from the maps you have there and that story looks really good.

What program did you use to make the maps? ZOLE or a different program? They look surprisingly like official Nintendo maps.

[Radz]

I simply used ZOLE.  They look like official Nintendo maps because they essentially are.  I took the basic layout of Koholint Island from Link's Awakening and then tweaked it to show what it might look like before Link showed up and after several years of disaster. 

You can see in the past, the island is generally more forested, green, and overall safer, but you can also see some areas of development like Kanalent Castle, the quarry (which becomes the rapids), and the picture shop.  The swamp is still a lake, Eagle Tower has yet to be built, Turtle Rock has no turtle features yet, and there is even a small (man-made) island in the bay that hasn't been made yet and the bay has not been closed off yet either. 

In the future on the other hand, most of the plant life has suffered, the Tal Tal Mountains have become volcanically active which has in turn dried up the springs of water that fed the river system of the island.  The swamp has completely dried up, the rapids have become little more than a trickle, and the entire island is sinking into the ocean.  The graveyard has overflowed into the Koholint Prairie, the lakes and ponds are dry, and the sinkholes have only gotten larger over time.

[Radz]

New update!

Uploaded a picture of a small portion of the underwater map to signify that I am now done with the past underwater (which is obviously the easier one since most of the map is not water).  I can copy/paste certain portions of the past underwater to the present, but I will have to do a lot more mapping from scratch relative to the past time period.

Honestly, I love the story creation and the mapping portion of hacking, but I am getting more and more worried as I get closer to the point where the only thing left is interactions, scripting, and text editing.  I'm a programmer, but the way things are structured in the ROM are not exactly how I would have done it if I coded from scratch so I'm not thrilled at the prospect of learning that system. :blink:

[Lin]

Well, I'd like to tell you not to worry, but the truth of the matter is if you don't have experience messing around with VBA, memory addresses, and various data in the ROM, you might struggle a bit. Nature abuses ZOSE's power in which it hardcodes a lot of memory values and does what should be done using assembly or something already built into the game. There are a few assembly hacks here and there as well, but those are really only needed if you want pure quality and really custom things (eg. tiles being set because of a flag before the map transitions vs afterwards if you were to use a script, or how I copied Pokemon Red's third gym garbage bin puzzle in our level 3 ). Text editing is really easy, but it's really messy as well. Before ZOTE 1.2 I think, there was no auto-compressing. It made text editing really difficult. Basically the method we go by is to place a random NPC with text and search for that text using ZOTE and edit that. It's pretty rigged.

But anyway, it always helps to be able to hack games without tools. ZOLE and the other tools are only so powerful, so you're limited by what they can do and what's documented. Nature was done using mostly the tools, but like I said, it had a couple of assembly hacks (actually like 3 or 4 in the 3rd dungeon) and regular hex edits for some overworld stuff. Remember, you can always ask me or Fatories for help. ZOHS will also be a lot better in terms of power and documentation, so you can count on that in the future as well.

[Radz]

Yeah, it's really a trial-and-error thing with the text editing and the interactions are mostly just tedious.  There are a few minor things, but I imagine aside from story related things there really won't be a lot of scripting (aside from all the ghini I still have to script for...though I noticed they did what I'm looking for in Seasons...likely a script unique to Seasons, but I am going to look into it to be sure) or memory hacking (though I've already created a startup script to fix issues with some flags for animals, linked games, etc.).

I don't really see a lot of opportunities to change things based on one time period or another.  I will be checking for essences of course to trigger certain events, but I don't think I'll be doing any "change the past to advance in the future" gimmicks.  Return to Koholint is a time travel story, but the game is really almost a game of two worlds rather than a linked and changing one.  Am I making any sense? :001_huh:

Anyhow, I've completed a large chunk of the present underwater and will probably start working on the cave system next just so I can get an overworld alpha build ready for local and open testing.

[Radz]

Decided that I am going to update the first post as well as include pictures in new posts so that you can see any new material without sorting through the main post.

Here is what I have completed of the present underwater.


As you can see, the ruins of the island are still down there along with some new aquatic houses.  Obviously, as I completed the underwater portions, I've had to update the overworld map as well in order to prevent diving into a solid wall and things like that, but I am keeping the original overworld image on the main post because that is the conceptual map I intended and the debris has been added simply due to gameplay necessity.

I have roughly another 20-25 screens of underwater areas to create.  Next, I'll start work on the cavern system and then I will start on the updated and time changed dungeons.  I'm going to have to figure out a way to get the different sized dungeon rooms to translate without wasting a lot of space or having a lot of hallways.