How to add regular people to overworld in Ages?

[BigTarantula99]

I am mostly a beginner with editing OoAges.  I know how to add custom enemies to overworlds and stuff like that, but how do I add people?  I want to place a person on an overworld (present or past) map that says something when you walk up to them and press A, same as the original game.  I'm assuming I have to use ZOSE but I don't know which commands or interaction color to use.  I cannot find a tutorial on this anywhere on the internet or included with ZOSE or anything.

And please don't link me to zeldahacking.ulmb.com.  I don't know if that site is down or what but I cannot access it no matter what web browser I use.  Thanks!

[Lin]

Fun fact - zeldahacking.ulmb.com is actually this site - zeldahacking.net. For all .ulmb.com links, change that to .net/forum and you should end up in the right place. I ended up switching webhosts from unlimitedmb to Godaddy and purchasing a domain. Sorry for the confusion.

Unfortunately, this is not an easy task. The only thing I can really tell you to do, since this is what Fatories and I did in Nature, is take an NPC that was in the original game, find their text using ZOTE, and just edit that. ZOSE has a rarely-working script finder for interactions, so if you're lucky you can use that to display and edit the NPC's script.

The good news is the Zelda Oracles Hacking Suite (aka ZOLE 6) is making good progress and will have macros to make things like this possible and easy. I hope you choose to stick around long enough to see it in action. In the mean time, if you have any further questions or want hands-on help, visit the IRC channel at irc.caffie.net #ZOLE

[BigTarantula99]

Thank you for the info!
I used the interaction ID 4101 with the old man who comments about "folk vanishin'" and I got him to appear on another map.  Yay!
Now I go to ZOTE and try to edit his text.  But when I'm done editing it, how do I save it back to the ROM?  If I go to File > Save in ZOTE, I get the Windows error message "Unhandled exception has occured..."

I'm hoping to make a small OoA hack and ZOHS looks like a fantastic program to do so.  I'll definitely be sticking around awaiting the release of ZOHS!

[Lin]

Hmm... You should be able to save without any issues. Can you paste the message and stack trace that comes along with it? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is maybe another program has the ROM open and won't let you save until it's closed. I'm not sure though until you post the full error information.

[BigTarantula99]

The only program I had the ROM open in besides ZOTE is ZOLE which is supposed to be.
Let me know when you don't need that error stuff anymore because I'd like to remove that post.

[Lin]

Oh. It's because ZOTE uses GBHL.DLL version 1.0, while ZOTE and ZOSE use version 1.1. It's a big flaw with the way the tools were released. Just make sure when you download ZOTE, you extract it and the GBHL.DLL file into its own folder. Sorry about that. ZOHS doesn't require any DLLs

[BigTarantula99]

Cool.
When I downloaded ZOLE, it came with ZOTE, ZOSE, ZOCF, and GBHL.dll version 1.1 only.  Where can I download ZOTE and GBHL.dll v1.0?  The only thing I found links back to zeldahacking.ulmb.com.  I tried changing the link but it didn't work.

[Lin]

Luckily, the almost-latest version of ZOLE and all my tools are on romhacking.net. It's version 1.26, so if you have the latest version of ZOLE you're good. It comes with ZOTE.zip, which contains GBHL.dll 1.0

[BigTarantula99]

Great!  It works!  Thanks!
Unfortunately, there's still one problem.  I edited the text in ZOTE and went back to the ROM to test it.  I talk to the guy and he does say what I programmed.  I assigned him three lines of text.  At the end of the first two lines, the game waits for me to press A to keep reading, as usual.  But at the end of the third line, the text window goes away without me pressing A.  Is there a way to keep it on the screen until I press A to close it?  This isn't the biggest deal because it's still readable, but I'm just curious.

[Lin]

It's been such a long time since I've edited text and scripts. When you say it goes away without you pressing A, I believe that's normal - it goes away when you push any button. If not, I think the text ends when it encounters byte 00, but I don't remember exactly how ZOTE deals with this. It probably writes the 00 automatically.

[BigTarantula99]

Not a problem at all, I'll live with it.  When I said "A button", I meant "any button", sorry.
I have one last question out of curiosity.  Is there any easy way to change what the people say after something happens, such as Link getting the sword or completing a dungeon?  Nothing all that complicated or I'm not interested.  Just wondering.

[Lin]

Unfortunately, the only way to do such a thing is to try and find the text's start location in ZOTE. The tools weren't really designed with simplicity and ease-of-use in mind looking back. Since the forums were in a sort of boom back in 2011, my main focus was to just get tools out that could edit stuff since people were actually demanding them. Now here I am, developing ZOHS that's ZOLE 4 but 10x better with nobody asking for it

[BigTarantula99]

I'm asking for it.  I've always wanted to make my own Zelda game after so many years of playing pre-made ones, and Oracle of Ages looked like one of the simplest places to start, maybe right after Zelda One.  The betas of ZOLE 6 already look so much better than ZOLE 4.  I'm doing what I can do with ZOLE 4 right now and when ZOLE 6 gets released, I'll be even happier.  I believe ZOLE 4 is the only Oracle of Ages editor out there, so one with more features and simplicity will definitely be a fantastic upgrade and will hopefully allow more people to make their own Zelda game.

I'm hoping to be the first downloader of ZOLE 6 when it's released.  Until then, thanks for the help, I'll try to check out the IRC channel, and good luck with ZOHS! 

BTW, do you need that error code I posted a few days ago anymore?  If not, I'd like to remove that post.

[Lin]

Well I'm glad you made that choice. The Oracles engine is incredibly flexible and object-oriented (since afterall, they wanted to make 3 games with it) that it's hard to make a solid editor because most of the game's content is dealt with using assembly pointers. And yeah, it is the only editor. A couple years ago, Dwedit released a map viewer and that's how ZOLE 3 got started and then ZOLE 4 took off. Here's some history on the subject if you're interested: http://zeldahacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=62.0

And I do not. Feel free to get rid of it.