The Legend of Link, Parallel Universes

Retro VS Future

SePH — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:33:28 +0000

Let’s take a brief walk down memory lane one more time… to a time where people started creating new title screens for their favorite game of the time, A Link To The Past. But first let’s have a look at the original trademark title screen we all have come to known and like:

We can say the title is very well made, you can see it matched Nintendo standards of the time. I’ve made countless titles attempts overtime and witness some made by others aswell and few match the same quality. Let’s look at some custom-made title screen.

^^ Here in Legend of Iced Hyrule, the author managed to add new tiles, removed the ”Zelda” altogether and make some colors changes. And that was in 2001… Something to be considered good considering this was the first real attempt at hacking Zelda 3 to be released.

^^ The first hack of Zelda 3 which caught my attention. The demo was great even though falling short. It’s a shame it vanished as it was only one of two hacks with serious potential, the other being Quest for Calatia which the wait has been eternal.

Feeling the world needed a second coming, I gave a shot at Hyrule Magic and see where it could lead me. On my own and with nowhere to go, I first started gathering information and notes on many forums, message boards compiling every bit of information I could come across and find useful in further HM uses and crammed the things into one big and handy file…. Orochimaru’s Perfect Guide to Hyrule Magic v1.3 Having created an immortal pdf file worth of good info of Hyrule Magic inner workings, bugs and what to avoid, it provided me with a good start at actually trying to make a hack myself..

^^ Previously named Gates of Time, Gates of Darkness can be considered my first real attempt at creating a full fledge hack of Zelda 3. Being abandoned and useless to my own purposes I decided to release it along two other unfinished hacks. It was picked up again as a project by PuzzleDude, a fellow Z3 romhacker who could be best described as a the best thing to have happened to the Zelda community since bread and butter. He’s a completionist I mean… having debugged two of my unfinished hacks already I wonder what he’ll come up with next and I sure hope it isn’t the last we see from him.

^^ Eventually while learning new tricks up my sleeve in terms of tweaking overworld graphics I decided it was about time to create another new Zelda 3 from scratch. And so, Lyra Islands was born. Consisting of multiple islands you could visit with much of the overworld map covered in water, a volcano and a splendid forest, it had all the needs for a successful and promising hack. Ghillie a fellow individual helped in the process with story, gave me a good map of where everything should be… with too many projects at once and with still barely any dungeons expertise under my sleeve, I simply abandoned it over time.

^^ Started as a hack for an old TEKHacks.Net romhacking contest, the project went into a beta phase which simply never ended. Having created the overworlds and some dungeon rooms, the hack also featured dungeons created by Dude Man that were meant to be used in Dark Prophecy at some point in time before they were removed in favor of much better dungeons. Omega45889 oversaw the whole project giving me a good detailed map of the locales in the game. Despite being severely unfinished I still decided to release it before it just fade away like the rest of my Zelda 3 hacks relics. To my surprise, someone actually took the time to actually finish it, expand the gameplay, fixed bugs and made the whole thing actually both playable and enjoyable. Re-dubbed as Goddess of Wisdom, PuzzleDude surely made sure the gameplay was as if we played an original Nintendo game… which can be a good way right?

^^ Because teamwork is the real key to complete a project of this sort and the fact I seem to have a never-ending craving to hack this game, I offered my services to Euclid… a deal to overhaul his overworld graphics of his then near complete hack he had released a demo off.. Tower Of The Triforce it was. With this gradually renewed partnership lasting years, many things were changed along the way. At one point it became too much different and we decided to change the name of the hack to a more suitable Parallel Worlds.

^^ With a new name now all we needed was a background change. It wasn’t until 2006 close to the release that I decided to create a new title screen showing a snowy landscape instead.

^^ The final title screen of Parallel Worlds from version 1.1 released in 2007. A much welcomed change to the barren mountains seen in the older betas.

^^ My take on a title screen I made for Omega45889 and Dude Man for their Dark Prophecy hack (Keep notice the picture is blurry because it comes from one of the two youtube vids they posted, as I no longer have access to any Dark Prophecy roms). I had the privilege to actually play the game, edit many graphics, play an almost complete version, but to avoid any leaks and according to Omega45889′s wishes I deleted all my ”Dark Prophecy work edits” a long time ago. Fortunately it resides in my memory and you can see two videos of the hack (minor the custom graphics by Bit-Blade) on youtube. At one point it was even the much advanced Zelda 3 you could find. Joining forces were the great uncontested king of documenting/understanding the ins and outs of the Zelda 3 with his out-of-this-world knowledge… MathOnNapkins! And on the other side none other than a very talented custom graphics spriter, Bit-Blade!

Just for nostalgia let’s look at some awesome pics of Bit-Blade’s custom graphics.

I’m seriously hopping Dark Prophecy gets released sometime as it was very close to playing an original sequel to Zelda 3.

^^ Coming relatively out of nowhere, Spane sure knows how to edit Zelda 3 graphics the right way! Some custom graphics were ripped straight from Parallel Worlds and the new added ones change the gameplay to an extend that even I like it. His pyramid entrance is ingenious, I mean it! It fits the style perfectly. Let’s hope he doesn’t abandon it because there’s serious potential in that project!

^^ 2009, with the yet similar yearly idea to go back working on yet another Zelda 3 hack I cooked this mockup in order to get a better idea at what it could actually look like.

However… now were in 2012 right? I still wasn’t happy enough. Why should it take you three years to insert a title screen? Other then the fact you know you will eventually change it? Well I had to do something about it… rules have changed, those black bars at the top and bottom of the screen had to go or at least change in any way possible. And so this new title screen below was born… one I actually took the time to edit, insert and even change my resolution to 800×600 due to the crappy title screen editor HyruleMagic gave birth to, but yeah managed to cook something much more satisfying for a ”Parallel Universes: Chapter I of II.

^^ The start of a new Era. 20XX because we obviously never truly know when a Zelda 3 hack is done to satisfaction. Also I haven’t taken the time to fix the glitched triforce in background and have yet to fix the green ”Link” overlay as it’s missing some tiles on the edges and HM won’t let me add new BG2 tiles… but I’ll get around those glitches another day.. with a good part of yesterday and today figuring out how to get so much custom gfx in one space is enough work for one week! …next up I’ll go back to the overworlds for some serious glitches fixing and also the rift remains to be done (the blueprints have been created, all it remains is for me to actually get up on my feet and do some more work)… but hey! Title screen is done! One thing less to think >_>

Happy 5th anniversary release of Parallel Worlds!

SePH — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:58:15 +0000

Five years ago Euclid and I unleashed a hack of Zelda 3 to everyone’s own pleasure and enjoyment. Perceived by few as a masterpiece, the hack also received plenty of harsh critics ranging from having a too much hard learning curve for newbie players along with some things like the failure to include the dungeon maps and the fact that there were two big keys was too much for some. A very small fraction of the population of this good ol’ planet Earth still seem to have liked the harder challenging gameplay which in part forced players to use all the tricks and exploits they knew from Zelda 3 along the inclusion of bomb jumping (getting damaged in order to ”jump” small gaps of holes).

To ease with the multiple complaints received, in 2007 I originally planned out to recreate Euclid’s dungeons to comply with the majority of people who didn’t progressed through the hack due to not being able to even finish the guardhouse (the very first mini dungeon that takes place during the rainy sequence…). After a few months of creative and constructive work, all hopes of ever releasing a Parallel Worlds version 2.0 vanished when my life turned upside down and many life related issues arose at the same time at which point it was too much for my own sanity… sunk into depression, made some bad life choices and even went along and deleted my old ”Parallel Worlds 2.0 updates” blog in which I deeply regret ever since since I really liked the progress that was being done… 2008 goes by relatively quiet with life going back on track as slowly as it can possibly get with some minor recurrent depression symptoms.

During a relatively quiet and lonely day in January 2009 with nothing else to do, out of boredom, my life once again had a pivotal role (in a good way this time I suppose… I had these backups cds laying around… went through several of them until I found my old Zelda 3 hacking folders of 2004-2006.. I looked back at all the fun I had hacking the game back then that and triggered a one time concept which went into full developement, this very hack or so to say!

With another vision in mind then the one to barely recreate Euclid’s dungeons, I set myself a broader and proper role for someone who spent the third of his life romhacking the same game over and over until proper satisfaction: to create a brand new hack with the words ”Zelda” and ”Modern worlds” in it. I haven’t shown any work or announce anything officially until August of that same year at which point I created this blog (which I won’t delete this time!! depression or not!!), shown a few pics/info in various message boards and spread the word that SePH was back, alive and still kickin’! … You can pretty much sum up what happened next (minor life related concerns which I’m usually silent about) by going back to my very first diary entry!

Looking back at the progress made between December of last year and now, I can safely say that despite four months of inactivity, the progress made this year was very good, in part due to the dungeon graphics which received a nice overhaul. Finally managed to have the same visual perspective as seen in the overworlds preserved in-tact in it’s underworld counterparts …Euclid had his money right on focusing my work on ”Parallel Universes: Part one” instead of going along and start work on part two… It’s really easy to lost track/focus with these kind of never-ending projects…

So for everyone that was wondering where the hell SePH spends his precious limited hacking time these days?! Well… playing games, DAMN you World of Warcraft for stealing all my time and money ever since I returned to your worlds since January 2011! *GOD-ONLY KNOWS* when Ill have more time for romhacking… and whose idea was it anyway to suck more life force juice out of me already by buying me Star Wars: The Old Republic for christmas! …it’s not like I have a very fundamental hack to finish, do extensive beta testing, release… then create a second parter to it.. no no nothing like that!/SARCASM

I also know finishing this new hack, provided I’d have 120% motivation and confidence in it (since more work done then there actually remains) could be finished in overall a year or so minor the tweaks, ASM work and the *EXTENSIVE* beta testing phase that will be done much more seriously then what happened with Parallel Worlds..

The year following the release of the hack, I stumbled onto ”Let’s Play: Zelda Parallel Worlds”-by Zomodok and Diabetus. While most romhackers would be in furious rage after hearing some of their comments/thoughts on the hack, I still think to this day it’s the funniest ”Let’s Play Parallel Worlds” I’ve come by! Let’s end today’s entry with some *fanwork* the hack got on the ”let’s play” link above!

by Kszchroink

by Mr.Swoon

by Chuuurls

by Prime92

by Kyrosiris

by CherryDoom

You can pretty much tell how people felt when they played the game… One can but wonder what people will come up next should I release a sequel!

Another month… another dungeon in the works!

SePH — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 02:05:35 +0000

Tis’ teh rule. At least that way I’m keeping my motivation on top!
(Don’t worry about the other dungeons I started, they won’t run away!)

I’ve been working on the first dungeon you’ll visit in the game which lies in the wastelands.. an old abandoned metro station! My inspiration for creating this was ”The Darkness” which some might have heard of.. was a nice game back then and seeing that there was a sequel in the works.. hey why not recreate a similar layout to the subways you could visit.. and then here’s what happened:

And since it’s in the wastelands I’m probably going to tweak the palettes a bit more, add more details as well. But so far so good.

A closer look at some ‘mostly’ finished mansion rooms

SePH — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:04:47 +0000

With the exception of the blue statue room which is missing many wall details, but otherwise everything is starting to look real nice!

Re-Creating the mansion in 2D… one room at a time!

SePH — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:24:22 +0000

I’ve extracted the resident evil 1 background files (the rooms themselves) from the PC game and made a good map of the rooms I’m going to end up using. While I could easily reproduce the whole mansion including the guardhouse and laboratories in the Zelda 3 engine.. it would take up much of the graphics to do so. In resident evil 1 there are many different wall patterns. In Zelda 3 the dungeons are made of:

6 wall sets
8 floor sets
8 object sets
12 blocksets

And that’s for all the dungeons in the game! Hopefully I’ll find a way to expand the number of wall sets sometime but in the meantime, some progress!

I hope this is not CHRIS’ blood!

SePH — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:32:54 +0000

Been working on remaking the mansion of Resident Evil 1 in Zelda 3… It’ll act as one of the dungeons you’ll visit. The puzzles will differ from that of the original game but the original room layouts will be kept in-tact… a sure treat for anyone who once ventured in that mansion!

???

SePH — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:25:37 +0000

Enter… the casino!

SePH — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:43:14 +0000

More work has been done. See for yourselves!

A mix of old and new

SePH — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:49:13 +0000

This is the casino lobby! Took me about 24+hours to complete. Even through its only one room, it’s highly detailed and it’s graphics can easily be ported into other rooms now that there done. I had to change the perspective of my dungeons again through. You’ll notice that there are no longer side and bottom walls. This is due to using these tiles for other things so we get this hybrid earthbound/mario rpg style, where the bottom of the room is flat and at the top the walls are higher. I also fixed all my doors by simply blanking out their graphics. Now due to this I can build custom doors and still make them useable even through their tiles are invisible. Simply by adding an overlay with the second layer. Works with stairways, entrances, side doors etc… That also means that I’ll have to redraw all my other dungeon tilesets to work like this one.

At first I wanted to keep it simple, like a traditional casino we find nowadays, but then I thought about giving it a twist. Since it’s located in the same location as the pyramid ruins in the Parallel Worlds hack and it’s a sequel, I though about giving some continuity by reusing the same graphics that area originally used. I also wanted to have a nice custom tree that I didn’t already used and there you go, you get this very nice casino lobby. The top stairs lead to the black jack tables, slot machines, craps etc.. room which isn’t done yet. But its blueprints are already done. The top right door leads to the underground parking garage which is also undone, but should be by the end of the week. I added some friendly npcs in the main hall and some unfriendly cats that are replacing monsters.

Just in case I forgot to tell…

SePH — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:11:20 +0000

I’ve started working on yet another dungeon. This time it’s a casino located in a pyramid in the modern world. With at least two stories high and an underground parking lot, I expect it to be as badass as the sky temple turned out to be… in fact I expect all my dungeons to be outstanding graphically unlike link to the past where every dungeon looked the same with different colors. I might also add cars in the underground parking lot should it be feasible! Really, I can’t wait to be in vacation in one week, again!