Reshaper256's Thread of Stuff Going
- Thread starter Reshaper256
- Start date
May 17, 2009 at 11:14 PM
Hi, thanks for the update i decided to post to this thread instead of making a new one, so if Reshaper256 feels this needs to be on its own thread , please move where it belongs or say so , so i make a new thread. well anyways I have an suggestion for the lack of progression in the project that is obvious to all i recon. Maybe you could or someone could try to find more dungeon/owerworld builders that could just build up the missing pieces. I know when you have more people in the project it needs more managment and other issues may surface if not handled with care, but maybe someone who understands you vision about the project, knows how to distribute the pieces and knows where it should go. Could handle some of that at times when you dont have the time to do so. You could just supervice the project and guide it to the right path, while doing only the parts that you feel can be only done by you to reflect the original vision/plan for this incarnation of hyrule. I know its not the same as making it all by your own hands but if you feel that you dont have the time to do it all by yourself then its better to distribute the work while maintaining the original direction as best as possible rather than not finishing and reaping the fruits and work that has gone to it. I know this should be done with people that you can trust 100% or else things can go wrong also, and also the whole projects members should have a good working releationship and good understanding and co-opmanship with the project. I have not done this kind of hacking or project managment so im not sure if these ideas are viable or not for the kind of project you have in your end, but here there are for just food for thought. Hope this helps and i wish all the good for your project 
Jun 8, 2009 at 2:01 AM
Hi I just thought I would check back in with the forum since I haven’t posted anything recently. Well, where do I begin? I know the forum and the diary have been kind of quiet for the last six months which may have convinced people that progress has come to a halt but let me assure anyone who is following this project this is not the case. For the last six months I have actually been working on Zelda3C doing lots of groundbreaking work.
But before I say anything about my progress I would like to talk about how I even got started with this project in the first place. It all started when I was browsing through videos on youtube when I stumbled upon a video of someone playing Zelda Parallel Worlds. At first I really didn’t know what Parallel Worlds was but once I figured out that it was a homemade hack I got really pumped up and inspired. Zelda 3 alttp was one of my favorite video games growing up as a kid and if someone else made a complete rewrite then I could possibly do the same. So my goal at the time was to make my very own hack, a complete rewrite of Zelda 3. I started thinking of a story line and drawing the over world map and creating dungeon rooms for my hack and everything seemed to be coming together just fine except there was one major obstacle I had to overcome, I had never done a rom hack before and I had no hacking and ASM abilities.
I knew that if I wanted to complete my own Zelda 3 hack I would have to get good at hacking so I started reading everything I could about hex editing and assembly languages. Even though I tried really hard to understanding how to hack Zelda 3 I really didn’t fully grasp the material to actually accomplish the type of hacking I sought after. Lets just say I was pretty disappointed. But then one day while I was trying to look up hacking information on Zelda 3 I came across Gamemakr24’s site. That’s where it all changed after looking at all of the work Gamemakr24, Reshaper256, Josh Noullet and many others have done I decided to join forces with the crew forgetting my own hack and instead teaming up with some really talented people. I started sending Gamemakr24 some sprites that I carefully drew in paint and general ideas that could work in Zelda3C. I also sent him some dungeon rooms that I created in photoshop. Then I got hyrule magic and boy it is an amazing program! All this time I had been drawing out dungeon rooms only assuming that they would work in the actually game but now I could test out all my ideas with hyrule magic and make sure everything works exactly the way it should. This made me really happy and was the very beginning of a bunch of progress.
Over the next several months I almost became like a little scientist playing with hyrule magic and the Zelda 3 rom testing out every possible idea I ever had discarding the ones that didn’t work and keeping the ones that did. I studied in extreme detail how Zelda 3 works and almost became obsessed with creating puzzles and situations for Link to figure out. I also studied two other Zelda 3 hacks, Zelda 3 Master Quest and Zelda Parallel Worlds. Zelda 3 Master Quest was not impressive at all. Most of the game is the exact same as the original with only added spikes, floor nails and some more enemies. Zelda 3 Parallel Worlds in my opinion is probably the most impressive Zelda 3 hack that is available to date. I really admire all the hard work and effort the creators put into the hack but it is extremely hard and difficult. Sometimes it’s not fun at all like does there really have to be floor tiles flying at you in every single dungeon room? When I played it I tried going through the game without any save-states but I found this to be almost impossible. It took me almost three hours just to get the sword in the beginning of the game! Anyways by studying this game I learned a lot. It taught me lots of things that I should avoid while designing for Zelda3C but it also gave me an idea of what I need to accomplish to surpass Parallel Worlds and for Zelda3C to be the best Zelda 3 hack of all time.
The work that I have done with this game is truly revolutionary. The puzzles and room designs I’ve created are beyond any other Zelda 3 hack. I’m using the game in new ways that have never been done before. For months and months I’ve sat down and thought of new ideas for this game, drawing out my ideas on paper and then recreating them in hyrule magic and finally testing and retesting them so they work properly. I have hundreds of Zelda 3 room sketches all over my room on the floor, counters, in notebooks and on the wall attached with pushpins. I’ve been able to create some pretty amazing stuff and without any ASM hacking whatsoever. I really like being part of the Zelda3C team because if I were still going to do my own hack I probably wouldn’t have been able come up with so many dungeon ideas. Being part of a team I was able to focus just on one aspect of the game, dungeons and it really paid off. I think when it comes to making a complete rewrite of a snes game on this scale you really need an entire team of people working on it because there is so much to do. Creating the over world is a huge job but not only that you have to take into consideration the new music being added, new sprite graphics, all the ASM hacks, making sure the story is coherent, making sure the game is fun and well balanced and the list goes on. So in conclusion I’m very proud and honored to be a part of this hack. I’ll still be coming up with new ideas every now and then but I believe the majority of my work is finished. The reason I say this is because there are only so many things you can do with this game that doesn’t require ASM hacking and I think that I’ve pretty much done everything that can be done. Of course I’ll still be staying with this project until its completion and helping out with anything else that I can. I just wanted to write this to kind of sum up what I’ve been doing for the last half year. My thanks goes out to everyone following the project. Have a happy summer!
But before I say anything about my progress I would like to talk about how I even got started with this project in the first place. It all started when I was browsing through videos on youtube when I stumbled upon a video of someone playing Zelda Parallel Worlds. At first I really didn’t know what Parallel Worlds was but once I figured out that it was a homemade hack I got really pumped up and inspired. Zelda 3 alttp was one of my favorite video games growing up as a kid and if someone else made a complete rewrite then I could possibly do the same. So my goal at the time was to make my very own hack, a complete rewrite of Zelda 3. I started thinking of a story line and drawing the over world map and creating dungeon rooms for my hack and everything seemed to be coming together just fine except there was one major obstacle I had to overcome, I had never done a rom hack before and I had no hacking and ASM abilities.
I knew that if I wanted to complete my own Zelda 3 hack I would have to get good at hacking so I started reading everything I could about hex editing and assembly languages. Even though I tried really hard to understanding how to hack Zelda 3 I really didn’t fully grasp the material to actually accomplish the type of hacking I sought after. Lets just say I was pretty disappointed. But then one day while I was trying to look up hacking information on Zelda 3 I came across Gamemakr24’s site. That’s where it all changed after looking at all of the work Gamemakr24, Reshaper256, Josh Noullet and many others have done I decided to join forces with the crew forgetting my own hack and instead teaming up with some really talented people. I started sending Gamemakr24 some sprites that I carefully drew in paint and general ideas that could work in Zelda3C. I also sent him some dungeon rooms that I created in photoshop. Then I got hyrule magic and boy it is an amazing program! All this time I had been drawing out dungeon rooms only assuming that they would work in the actually game but now I could test out all my ideas with hyrule magic and make sure everything works exactly the way it should. This made me really happy and was the very beginning of a bunch of progress.
Over the next several months I almost became like a little scientist playing with hyrule magic and the Zelda 3 rom testing out every possible idea I ever had discarding the ones that didn’t work and keeping the ones that did. I studied in extreme detail how Zelda 3 works and almost became obsessed with creating puzzles and situations for Link to figure out. I also studied two other Zelda 3 hacks, Zelda 3 Master Quest and Zelda Parallel Worlds. Zelda 3 Master Quest was not impressive at all. Most of the game is the exact same as the original with only added spikes, floor nails and some more enemies. Zelda 3 Parallel Worlds in my opinion is probably the most impressive Zelda 3 hack that is available to date. I really admire all the hard work and effort the creators put into the hack but it is extremely hard and difficult. Sometimes it’s not fun at all like does there really have to be floor tiles flying at you in every single dungeon room? When I played it I tried going through the game without any save-states but I found this to be almost impossible. It took me almost three hours just to get the sword in the beginning of the game! Anyways by studying this game I learned a lot. It taught me lots of things that I should avoid while designing for Zelda3C but it also gave me an idea of what I need to accomplish to surpass Parallel Worlds and for Zelda3C to be the best Zelda 3 hack of all time.
The work that I have done with this game is truly revolutionary. The puzzles and room designs I’ve created are beyond any other Zelda 3 hack. I’m using the game in new ways that have never been done before. For months and months I’ve sat down and thought of new ideas for this game, drawing out my ideas on paper and then recreating them in hyrule magic and finally testing and retesting them so they work properly. I have hundreds of Zelda 3 room sketches all over my room on the floor, counters, in notebooks and on the wall attached with pushpins. I’ve been able to create some pretty amazing stuff and without any ASM hacking whatsoever. I really like being part of the Zelda3C team because if I were still going to do my own hack I probably wouldn’t have been able come up with so many dungeon ideas. Being part of a team I was able to focus just on one aspect of the game, dungeons and it really paid off. I think when it comes to making a complete rewrite of a snes game on this scale you really need an entire team of people working on it because there is so much to do. Creating the over world is a huge job but not only that you have to take into consideration the new music being added, new sprite graphics, all the ASM hacks, making sure the story is coherent, making sure the game is fun and well balanced and the list goes on. So in conclusion I’m very proud and honored to be a part of this hack. I’ll still be coming up with new ideas every now and then but I believe the majority of my work is finished. The reason I say this is because there are only so many things you can do with this game that doesn’t require ASM hacking and I think that I’ve pretty much done everything that can be done. Of course I’ll still be staying with this project until its completion and helping out with anything else that I can. I just wanted to write this to kind of sum up what I’ve been doing for the last half year. My thanks goes out to everyone following the project. Have a happy summer!
Jun 10, 2009 at 12:53 AM
Thanks for sharing all that it was interesting read. It was great to hear that you have done such a breakthrough progress and the hack is progressing in these critical parts of its design. As a Lttp fan , thank you for this inspiring insight. Im hopefull again for this hack coming into completion and i can feel that there is a lot of talent and passion behind this. Also im wondering how is the overworld and the hacking part of the Zelda3c coming together. Is the hacking holding much of the progress of this hack overall, or the massive task of fully realized overworld?. Could gamemaker share some of that massive overworld chores with you so that you could implement some of those puzzles on to the overworld and lessen the burder for him doing the overworld all by himself?. good summer for you to.
Jun 20, 2009 at 5:01 PM
Join Date: Jun 15, 2004
Location: Georgia
Posts: 367
Age: 44
Pronouns: he/him
Thanks for the write up about your part in the Zelda 3C project Erockbrox. Sounds like you really enjoy the level design aspects of the project. I can't wait to see what you have in store for us and I'm happy to hear that progress is still being made on the project. I may not always post that frequently on the forums, but I do still follow the updates. : )
-Thomas
-Thomas