Posts for avengah

Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
Thanks! The way I see it is this: entering a cave, staircase or entrance on the overworld does not count as a screen shift. However, leaving a labyrinth does count as a screen shift. This leads me to believe the following might be happening: If you enter Level 1 (original game, not using glitches), the last shift is to the west. Leave Level 1, and the last shift is now to the south. Re-enter Level 1, and since the game is programmed to be able to place you anywhere in a labyrinth (as seen in several levels in Outlands), it "assumes" that since the last screen shift was to the south, that you must therefore have come from the north. This means that if the north wall is set to either a locked door or bombable wall, its state is changed to unlocked or bombed. Otherwise, how could you have come in from the north? Obviously, you didn't actually come in from the north, but this could be what the game thinks. It's just a theory, though. About the game remembering previous screens, I always wondered why, if you left different numbers of enemies alive on different screens, saved and turned off the game, it would remember the numbers for each and every overworld screen. It actually annoys me a little; why should you have to kill every single enemy on an overworld screen for them to respawn - EVEN AFTER SAVING AND POWER OFF? It seems like an awful lot of pointless data to save, back in the days when every byte was precious.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
Update: Using the Game Genie code AAPNLO you can walk through scenery in the original game. This let me enter Quest 1 Level 6's area from the west. Entering the level for the first time, the west door is now unlocked. This definitely seems to hold! EDIT: Correction: EIONGPEP is the code. The mix-up was caused by JNES's faulty cheat system - codes can't be turned off without reloading the game (after unticking the box, you can simply repick the game from the Recent menu). So I was trying different codes that I found on different sites, and obviously that one didn't originally work for me since I'd tried a different one. Then I tried a third one and it worked. Of course, I didn't know that the previous codes were actually still active; EIONGPEP and AAPNLO together still works. So then, it's EIONGPEP. That definitely works.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
It's ridiculous but I now know exactly what's causing the doors in the first rooms of the labyrinths to act strangely. I don't know why, but at least I know exactly what causes it. Contrary to popular belief, the original Zelda's Level 1 glitch is NOT caused by leaving the level without unlocking the door. It's actually caused by ENTERING the level when the previous screen was exited to the south. This means that if you somehow glitched into the Level 1 part of the overworld from above, the north door would be unlocked on your very first visit to the level. Now, apply this to Outlands. Level D has a locked north door. You can enter Level D's overworld area from the north or the east to access the level. If you enter the area from the north, the north door will be unlocked on your first visit to the level. If, however, you come from the east and enter the level, the north door will still be locked. Moving on to Level S, you can enter its area from the west or the east. Since the west wall of the first room is completely solid, nothing happens if you enter from the west. If you enter from the east, however, the east door will unlock itself on entry to the level. If you exit the level, you exit via the north door. Then, if you re-enter the level, the previous movement was north, so the south wall is affected this time: as it's a bombable wall, it bombs itself open. In Baxter's second quest walkthrough, he enters Level S's area from the east. This causes the eastern door in Level S's first room to be unlocked when he enters the level. Again, I'm not sure why it happens, but I can state the conditions under which it does happen. It just occurred to me to test this for some reason, since I couldn't make any sense out of what I'd seen with the way the doors seemed to randomly either be locked or not. So anyway, since the quickest way to Level D's overworld coordinates from Level N is via the north entrance, the north door will usually be unlocked for most players. I've just tested this theory with the original game, and I've established that if you leave Level 1, go offscreen to the east, come back and go back in that the door is still locked. So there it is; an answer to the glitch. I wonder if I'm the first to actually work out why it happens?
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
OK, I've found three glitches but I can't be specific about the cause. Firstly, the north door as you enter Level D is supposed to be locked. I discovered this by going into Level D as early as possible (after only visiting Levels O and U). Visiting Level T would mak the door unlock itself. However, on another playthrough, repeating the exact same steps through levels O and U, it was unlocked without having to enter Level T. So normally, you'd have two spare keys after completing Level D, but you're only supposed to have one spare key (which was actually a mistake by the creator; he intended each level to have the right number of keys). The second glitch is the east door in the first room of Level S. This one is weird and I really don't understand it. On my most recent playthrough, I completed levels O, U, T and L, getting the Handy Glove. At this point, I pressed save state and entered Level S. The east door was unlocked. I reloaded state (so Level S had not been entered at all on this playthrough) and completed levels A and N. Then, on entering Level S, I saw that the east door was now locked! This really does not make any sense at all. (The correct state is that it should be locked; this makes sense regarding the key placements in the level.) The third glitch is also in the first room of Level S. If you leave the level via the north door, the east door is unaffected (it'll stay as it is), but the south wall will bomb itself open if it isn't already. This, I'm assuming, is similar to the Level 1 glitch of the original game - leaving Level 1 through the south door unlocks the north door, so leaving Level S through the north door "unlocks" (bombs open) the south door, or something. A possible explanation is that the game tries to move you one room further north / south, but because it can't, it tries to re-enter the same room from the opposite door, unlocking it in the process. Once it realises you would be in the same room, it takes you to the overworld so you don't actually see yourself re-entering the room from the opposite door. It's just a theory, though. I also found another couple of minor graphical glitches. From Ocarina destination 5 (above the Lost Hills), go through the One Way cave and go west once. The timing is tricky and I'm not even sure of the correct timing to do this, but activating one or both of the Iron Knuckle statues can make it glitch up so it looks like a Ganon's Eye (the rock's replacement) while it's moving upwards. Also, if you kill the statues at the right time (which I'm not sure about), sometimes one of the Ganon's Eyes falling from the top of the screen may change into a Wallmaster sprite (the replacement for the original game's Ghini). It'll stay that way until you leave the screen, so when it reappears at the top, it'll still be the hand. I don't remember being able to make the original game's rocks look like Ghinis... maybe if you killed a Zora at the exact right time? No idea. EDIT: It might be possible to discover exactly what causes the doors in question to unlock or lock themselves if the memory locations which store whether those doors are locked or not can be watched throughout the game. I'm not good with that sort of thing, but at least if it's possible, it'd give some idea of what it is that causes these changes.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
Yeah, you didn't leave and re-enter the level. It was already unlocked when you went in the first time, as I watched you push the rock and walk in. In any case, I'm replaying the game now (it's brilliant, isn't it!) and I'll let you know what happens when I reach that part. I'll try a few different things and see what happens. Apparently, the north door in Level D is supposed to be locked according to those maps, but it never is. Since the levels are stored in the order D A U N S T O L C in the game, that makes Level D equal to Level 1, even though you don't play it first. Since there's a lot of level swapping going on, I wonder if any of that could cause that locked door to unlock itself before even entering the level? I wonder if the maps were made by actually looking at the ROM to determine what type of connections the rooms have, or whether he actually went in and checked each room manually? I'll get back to you tomorrow when I've played up to that point; after getting the sword, raft and Bagu's Note, I saved up for the White [edit: Kokiri] Sword, Goron Shield, bow and arrow and have started fully clearing out the levels. I'm up to Level T now, so it shouldn't take me long, seeing as I've got everything I need to do each level in one go now. (On my first playthrough I actually found the Master Sword straight away, well before I needed it in both quests, and the note in the first quest, but I didn't get the second quest note until after getting the Handy Glove, but that's not really that much later than the earliest possible time...)
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
Yeah, it's interesting to note that the exit you come out of will stay open and can be used without the glove, but the other two exits still require the glove even once they've been opened. I was just watching your Walkthrough video of the second quest; I downloaded FCEUX to watch it and it told me I needed to convert from .fcm to .fm2 or something, but the program handled that for me. Anyway, when it got to the three Gleeoks in Level U, Link died at the start of the second one and it got stuck on the Continue / Save / Reset screen! So I started the video again in turbo mode and went to normal speed at that point, and it worked fine that time. Do you know why FCEUX might have caused that to happen, seeing as the rest of the video up to that point played fine? Sorry, I'm new to this. EDIT: Also, in your walkthrough of Level S, when you enter the level, the door on the right is unlocked. Did you do some sort of glitch to make it unlock itself? I'm sure it was locked when I played through the game...
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 8/16/2012
Posts: 7
I'm wondering if this would be any quicker. In the second quest, just as Baxter is glitching into the desert to get the +150 Rupees, he walks past the room with the gravestones near the southwest of the map. Maybe if he pushes the middle left gravestone in that room (he walks right past it!), then it would save time on the next restart - he could then immediately walk south from the start point, use that tunnel and come out right near the graveyard for Level T. Is that any help? Or has this option been tried and determined that it's not any quicker? EDIT: Just to add that this gravestone is the only one out of the four entrances to the warp zone that doesn't require the Handy Glove. Although without glitching, you do need the glove to even get to that part of the screen to push it. Looking at the video, a quick push of the grave in the previous "segment" would save having to walk across a good number of screens in the segment involving getting the sword, so I really do think it could save a considerable number of seconds.