An Idea I had for one of the Biggest Zelda Games

[Lin]

I took a break from working on ZOHS to play some Seasons to get back in the groove of things and I realized I think I prefer Nature's dungeons more than Seasons'. Whether it's because they're fresher or more action-packed, I'm not sure, but I also realized something the Oracles lack - space. No, I'm not talking byte space, I'm talking world space. Link's Awakening did well with its world space, and by that I mean there's more traveling and space making areas seem stretched apart. I don't feel that with the Oracles. It's all so cramped and there aren't many screens that you just travel through. Some might think it's a good thing, but when you're good at the game you just brush through it all and it's hard to get attached again. When I realized this, I wanted to make a hack that fixed it. This is what I came up with.

The Oracles have 4 areas for overworlds, but they all are variations of the same original place. Why not make them completely different? Different regions of a world. A regular/foresty area, a snowy/water area, a lava/ashy area, and a desert/dry area. This allows for large travels, many uses for weapons, a cooler transportation system, multiple larger towns, bigger dungeons, and large-scale scenery. Of course, mapping would be very difficult in comparison due to the huge amount of unique maps that need to be created, but I think it's doable. We could make places bigger than ones in LTTP, OoT, and other Zelda games.

I'd have to figure out more details as to what could go in all of the space, but I think that depends on the storyline and how the dungeons work. But that's all for now.

~Lin

[felmet]

How would it be possible with bigger dungeons? I've looked in the editor and found only 2x256 screens of indoor/dungeon in seasons. I know that both ages and seasons only use like 2-400, but are you saying its possible to increase that?

[Radz]

I have to tell you, I had a similar idea.  Not that all four maps would be different areas of the same world, but that (using a Seasons ROM and mechanics) each "season" would be much, MUCH different than the others.  Obviously the "stump" would be in the same location, but other than that, the worlds would be similar in the sense of large landmarks (mountains for instance), but the forests and beaches and plains would all be different.  There would be unique towns for each and NPCs would talk about their town or local area.

If you're interested, maybe we could talk about my idea (I've got a rough story for it, but I'm going to keep hush on that until I've actually started working on it and have some mapping done).

[Lin]

How would it be possible with bigger dungeons? I've looked in the editor and found only 2x256 screens of indoor/dungeon in seasons. I know that both ages and seasons only use like 2-400, but are you saying its possible to increase that?

Assembly hacking and table expanding. Things that would be hard to implement with ZOHS but easier done manually. I'll see what I can do. It's possible to increase anything, but you have to have assembly knowledge to reconfigure the code to load the table at a different location and maybe differently. ZOLE and ZOSE applied patches that did this a lot.

I have to tell you, I had a similar idea.  Not that all four maps would be different areas of the same world, but that (using a Seasons ROM and mechanics) each "season" would be much, MUCH different than the others.  Obviously the "stump" would be in the same location, but other than that, the worlds would be similar in the sense of large landmarks (mountains for instance), but the forests and beaches and plains would all be different.  There would be unique towns for each and NPCs would talk about their town or local area.

If you're interested, maybe we could talk about my idea (I've got a rough story for it, but I'm going to keep hush on that until I've actually started working on it and have some mapping done).

Perhaps, perhaps. I wouldn't be able to map stuff alone and from what I've seen you're great at it

[Klavice]

I like this idea! Perhaps we could use ZOHS/ZOLE Live to all work on it at once and make it a community collaborative project.

I'm certain we could all come up with some unique dungeon ideas.