I'm impressed by how much the creator managed to do without LALE. There are some very clever things in Nightmare Illusion. And for what it's worth, I only made about 11 or 12 changes.

It was a 1.0. I patched to a 1.2 version and the message no longer came up. Yet I don't seem to have any .rar archives that contain a 1.2 version of LA, which suggests I've been making edits on a 1.0 rom all along... but then, when I was making my hack, I noticed that the message never came up when I worked on my hack, but (I think) always came up when I opened other roms. Which would suggest all of my rom files were always 1.0, except for that one file which was 1.2, and I have no .rar archive indicating I ever used such a thing. Odd. But now I know how to avoid the problem. Thanks. I would never have considered trying that.

I keep getting the message about an "unintended exception" and "Index was outside the bounds of the array" for my files. I just lost the most recent version of my hack New Awakening due to fiddling with Kanalet Castle warps (I had no trouble adding extra ones, but changing the existing ones caused crashes) and when I used the patch on a new copy of the rom to get the second-most recent version back, it gave the "unintended exception" message right when I opened up LALE. I've had the message come up on other copies of the Link's Awakening rom, like on Hard Awakening and the unaltered rom, but never my own hack. I tried saving the hack after that message came up--without making any changes--but when I opened it in VisualBoy and tried to move down a screen, it went into an endless loop of scrolling down, screen after screen, to the south. I then pasted over that rom with a duplicate I created before, before opening and saving it on LALE, and it ran in VisualBoy fine.

So, the message never came up on the original hack, but when I tried to use it on a patched rom, it did come up, and I was unable to save anything on it with LALE without inducing that infinite scrolling bug. If I can't change this, I will not be able to modify that version of the hack, the version that came from the patch. I have earlier copies due to some paranoia after losing all my progress on level 6 due to tweaking Wind Fish's Egg warps, but ostensibly I should be able to create a patch from a hacked rom, use it to patch a different rom, and then tweak that second rom with LALE and eventually produce another patch. Otherwise I can only make patches from the original rom files, and if I ever lose those, I will hit a dead end and will not be able to modify my hack any further. I shouldn't have lost much progress, but I don't know what changes there are between the latest (and only) patch file, which dates back to the 8th, and the latest rom file, which dates back to the 6th.

I found the hack elsewhere--I forget where--but there were some game-breaking errors in it. It must be an old version; Marin and the walrus were still present. Since it's not posted here anymore and the one hack I found is outdated, I fixed what I found and made a patch.
These are the changes I remember making:

Changed the wall in the caves west of Goponga Swamp so the player could not get stuck there if he or she went through Crazy Tracy’s wall before getting the Feather.
Replaced a flower in Goponga Swamp with a bush that looks like a bombable wall so the player can get in without Bow-wow. Added a bomb in Bottle Grotto so the player would not miss the one hiding in Kanalet Castle.
Added a ladder tile to Bottle Grotto so the player could not get stuck in a spike pit before getting the feather, which resulted in an unavoidable death if the player fell into it.
Changed a warp in Angler’s Tunnel that got the player stuck every time (the coordinates were 0,0 before).
Removed one Thwomp and moved another Thwomp in Angler’s Tunnel so the player could not get stuck in either one.
Changed a tile in a side-scrolling screen in Angler’s Tunnel so the player could not get stuck in a wall.
Changed two tile puzzles in Angler’s Tunnel that would not respond to the player stepping on one or more tiles.
Moved a key in Angler’s Tunnel that wouldn’t spawn if you opened the chest in the same room.
Removed some sprites in map 94 of Catfish’s Maw because they could not be killed using any means and completely blocked the player from using the Hookshot to cross a gap.
Removed a wall in the miniboss section of Catfish’s Maw because the miniboss would get stuck in it and never open its eye.
Changed a trigger in Catfish’s Maw so a door would open; previously the trigger was a movable block that did not exist.
Deleted Marin from the beach and deleted the walrus.

Marin vanishes from Mabe Village at some point, so it's possible to miss the first song if you delay getting the Ocarina. But I don't know how to fix that. There are some graphical problems I did not correct, either. Otherwise I left the hack unchanged.

I didn't realize that. How do I remove this thread and how do I create a patch so I can repost the thing? I'm new here and I'm not sure how the process works.

I just finished testing a full hack of Link's Awakening. It revises the dungeons, and to a lesser extent the overworld, and changes some owl dialogue text. I intended to do a more heavy revising of the game text, but until I start learning how to use text pointers, the text is mostly as is in the game.

The new game is overall significantly more difficult than the original. I have strived to put tight limits on backtracking in dungeons (which is basically always a needless headache) and make sure the new puzzles and fights are fairly novel. The dungeon order has changed. Now we go from Tail Cave to Key Cavern to Bottle Grotto to Turtle Rock to Angler's Tunnel to Catfish's Maw, back to Angler's Tunnel with the Flippers (now in Catfish's Maw), then on to Eagle's Tower and finally the Face Shrine. The first four dungeons are structured pretty similarly to the originals, but as time goes on, especially in the last four dungeons, the player will find the dungeons to be very foreign and designed much differently from the originals. Many screens are completely unrecognizable. This should make the game a more novel experience for the returning player, without throwing a lot of new stuff at the player right at the beginning.

Like in Hard Awakening, the player does not get a sword at the beach. The sword is now at Turtle Rock. I have tweaked the enemies so that bombs and powder will be sufficient to take them down until then (Vires are still there, but they do not need to be defeated). The first three Nightmares are all optional now; you will not need to face Moldorm without a sword. To balance the increased difficulty of the game, I have moved Crazy Tracy into town to make her potions available earlier on; the shopkeeper with the Shovel and Bow is in the castle. Potions have also been added to most of the dungeons, and I have placed hearts and the like around tough encounters. To balance the player not getting the first three heart containers from the first three bosses, I have added about 7 pieces of heart to the dungeons. Note that getting too many hearts will crash the game; I would recommend not looking outside the dungeons for too many pieces of heart.

The plot sequence has been broken. Marin caused a crash, so she no longer appears at the beach. Kiki the monkey is no longer needed to access the castle, and in case you skip right to the Stick and never get the Bananas, I have tweaked Kiki's dialogue so he is no longer hungry all the time. Many owl dialogues do not occur, but if I've overlooked any, the original owl dialogues may appear, which should contrast with the tone of the new dialogues. Bow-wow is not necessary, nor does he have to be left at Mabe Village. I have also removed certain obstacles so the player can explore areas without certain items. You do not need the Bracelet to access Ukuku Prairie, nor do you need the Sword to get into the mountains, nor do you need the Flippers to reach Turtle Rock. Richard is missing entirely; the Golden Leaves are just collectibles and you just need the Shovel to get the Slime Key.

There are shortcuts and alternative pathways in many places in the new game. Aside from using magic potions to get past the fires guarding Turtle Rock, you can also find a shortcut to the western mountains just south of Key Cavern (though you will miss an opportunity for a bomb upgrade). Also, multiple dungeons have extra keys for the player to find, though some require early possession of the bow, which I believe is not truly needed until the Face Shrine. The new keys offer alternative pathways if something goes wrong, but the extra keys are especially difficult to obtain.

To balance the player's getting the Wand very early in the game, I have tweaked the enemies after Turtle Rock to be much tougher. They come in larger numbers and the more dangerous creatures are more common. The Face Shrine enemy that throws the big black ball at you is a recurring enemy because he is immune to the Wand; he will provide the most difficult boss fights. In one case, you fight two copies of that enemy at the same time (there used to be two such fights but I removed the first one because I kept dying). Again, potions and hearts are placed before and/or after the hardest encounters so the player is less likely to get caught off-guard and killed with little warning. Note that some encounters are optional; you may be able to find ways to avoid some of the enemies.

The Face Shrine is by far the most difficult dungeon. You should not get lost in it, but the puzzles should confound your expectations, and the enemies should strain your resources. The Face Shrine has also received a cosmetic overhaul. I have recolored the whole dungeon and filled it with unlit torches to darken the atmosphere. I would replace the music with that of the Shadow Temple from Ocarina of Time, but I don't know how. The most difficult puzzle in the game should be a moving tile puzzle in the Face Shrine. It's the same type of puzzle as those blocks you would push in Turtle Rock to cover all of the holes in a room. The puzzle in the Face Shrine, however, has FOUR different blocks you need to use, each of which can each be pushed in multiple directions.

To my knowledge, I have fixed the text so it displays correctly, and I have designed the dungeons so that there is no way to get trapped in any of them, nor any way to break the dungeon. In fact, I'm fairly certain that even Manbo's Mambo, saving and quitting, and using miniboss warp portals will never be necessary unless you run out of bombs or powder or arrows in a dungeon that requires many of them. Note that a good supply of bombs and powder is pretty important early in the game. Note also that you don't need to buy the bombs; only the Shovel, and probably also the Bow if you can't get to the Bow I've put in one of the dungeons.

There are some sprites which are rendered incorrectly. Some of this is intentionally left uncorrected, either because correcting them is impossible (the sprites in a room can only be rendered correctly by two different sprite banks) or because the net result was interesting (seeing knights in Tail Cave instead of Stalfos). But usually, opening and closing the inventory will correct the sprites in a given room.

The end result is, I believe, quite strong. The game is challenging but does not require save states to be playable and should not force the player to retry puzzles incessantly outside the last dungeon. The game is new but the new challenges are not thrown at the player all at once. The only warning I have is that you will need to be able to bounce off of walls with the Boots, which I don't think is a well-known trick (it is needed only once or twice in Hard Awakening). If you jump at a wall with the Boots and the Feather, the ricochet off the wall can let you reach places that would otherwise be unreachable. You have to push in the right direction right after the impact. If you are in a top-down screen, you can use the ricochet to add some lateral distance. If you are in a side-scrolling screen, you can reach places a full tile higher than normal. Also note that, in side-scrolling screens, if you dash over an edge with the boots, you can use the Feather in midair, which can help your trajectory.

It took about two weeks to finish. I think you will enjoy it.

Thankfully I've fixed most of the damage. The rom is still broken but I had an earlier copy of the rom, before I wrote over the raft ride and revised the last dungeon. In the new rom I've restored most of the content, by hand. It took a few hours but the changes I've made are back, though I need to do more to fix up the owl dialogues. Other than that, it's basically finished.

More testing and I found that the error recurred even outside the context of the Wind Fish's Egg. Like when I loaded an earlier save from Eagle's Tower or the Face Shrine and it froze up with the same error message after trying to enter the former and press the start button in the latter.

Great! That helps a lot. Unfortunately, I just ran into a new problem a few minutes ago. I just finished the last dungeon for a hack of Link's Awakening and I seem to have broken the warp in the Wind Fish's Egg. Since I used the book in the library to give directions for a complex puzzle instead of directions through the egg maze, I wanted to rig the egg so that it would warp the player directly into the boss room, bypassing the maze entirely. When I changed the warps, the game crashed on entering the Egg. I've changed the warps back to their original settings, based on the settings I found on a clean rom I had for just that purpose, but the crash persists. I get the error message "Unknown opcode fd at 675a." Is there any way to reverse this? The project is already complete besides a few textual revisions; this is the last obstacle before I have a new game.

I started using LALE a few days ago and am about halfway through a revising of the eight dungeons. I have attempted to edit the owl dialogue for the sake of atmosphere and add some textual hints here and there (the new dungeon order is 12384576, which warrants some rerouting), but I'm having some trouble getting it to stick. I know that you need to click save as well as click "accept" in the text editor for any change to be saved, but when I pull up the game on VisualBoy, the new text does not appear. I've already had some success, getting some lines of text to change and get rendered correctly. In fact, the text I'm having trouble with, the Lanmola text, is the tail end of an owl dialogue I wrote. I think the problem might have something to do with me exceeding the original length of that owl dialogue, and the extra text overwriting other lines of text.
I know the traffic here is pretty light--which is surprising, considering how excellent this tool is--but I wanted to ask. Are there any ideas what might be the problem?