Things learned from save hacking

I finally managed to hack save files!  It took a while, having to bootstrap the process on a console with which I was unfamiliar, and I'm really busy at work most of the time.

The hack that I'm using is to hack my save to load at Lorule Castle instead of where it was before.  Here are some random tidbits I've learned, and even some screenshots:

1. When in Lorule early, the music in is always the Dark World song with the extra intro that you normally only hear after a Hilda speech.

2. Portals are always open on the Lorule side.  However, they remain closed on the Hyrule side, even after you enter it, and even though they're added to the Hyrule map.  If you go through them from Lorule, you'll fall through the world in Hyrule.  Sometimes (e.g. outside Link's house), you can recover from falling forever using the Tornado Rod.

3. An exception is the Stylish Girl.  I believe that her portal is always open--going through it from early Lorule will give you the Piece of Heart as usual, and unlock her door for good.  This then becomes a permanent way to travel between worlds.

4. In general, I believe that portals have been specifically programmed to hide themselves when you see them before the Hilda message outside the Lorule blacksmith's shop.  Portals that you can't normally see prior to that mostly don't bother hiding themselves.  The Stylish Girl and the Lorule side of the portals, for example.  I ought to hack my way into Misery Mire and see how those portals behave.  (My preliminary guess is that they'll hide themselves, which I would assume would be because closing off the desert was a late decision.)

5. Rescuing a Sage causes you to go to an empty Sage room with no way out =(

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADMUKmHj3Rz2w

6. If you go to Hyrule Castle before you get the Captain's sword, at the beginning of the game, the guard there will provide this extremely useful dialogue:

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADMUKmHhPp8cA


Currently, because Hilda's message doesn't trigger, I'm messing with the Yuga 2 fight to see whether I can cause an early Yuganon battle.  Here are two other screenshots:

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADMUKmHj9KqFw
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADRUqGf4AZyTA

Nice set of info here.

So, now we're back at the whole "we need to clip to Stylish Lady for early Lorule" since that seems to be confirmed as a potential means for Early Lorule.

That Sage room thing worries me tho. Why isn't it working?

Wow, this is some amazing progress :D Good work!!

Now, is there no trigger in front of the blacksmith at all for Hilda's message to play? If not, you should go inside and out of the blacksmiths house to make the trigger potentially happen. If the trigger won't work at all....then we basically have to rely on an early Lorule Castle find for early Lorule to be even useful x_x

Another thing to think about is that if the cutscene after you press skip when you finish hyrule castle could also be a trigger, but what I would like to know is if any of the dungeons are connected or all in separate loading areas, cause if they do connect we could use an oob trick, maybe doorbell to reach these places, and another thing,  if you could get to yuganon with the little sword, can you see if the damage registers as 1 or 2 damage, cause I'm pretty sure the game does not expect you to have that sword still with you

I have a theory on why the sage room doesn't work, maybe its because there is a trigger to actually active that room,  maybe sashalalrlala or something in hyrule castle or maybe even the master sword :/ or pendants lol

I also assume you have access to the game's internal data files, so can you check where the loading zone for lorule castle is, or unless you only have a position modifier and not complete data :p

Ok some more theories:
is the blacksmith house in lorule right before the hilda text a cutscene room, cause if it is, then I don't think we can get access to the hilda text

Next if this doesn't work and we need to complete hyrule castle to allow the sage rooms to work, early lorule is basically dead, cause you will need all 3 pendants plus the master sword,  and the only way I think to activate the lorule castle loading zones is if you have all paintings in your inventory and this allows the hilda text box to trigger the loading zone, unless its hidden and its out of our knowledgeable reach.

Pls just edit your first post with the modify button :/

Oh woops sorry ill fix tommarow :(

Ahamplan wrote

Ok some more theories:
is the blacksmith house in lorule right before the hilda text a cutscene room, cause if it is, then I don't think we can get access to the hilda text

If you all could convince loopy to sell me a 3DS XL capture card, I could record things for you guys to see =^_^=

You are exactly right, Ahamplan.  I just confirmed earlier this morning that the Lorule availability flag is set by the mini-cutscene in the blacksmith's house.  This cutscene does not happen unless the major cutscene where Yuga becomes Yuganon has already played.  However, we were wrong about one thing: doing the Yuga to Yuganon cutscene with zero health *does* have an effect!

This sequence of steps leads to interesting, but ultimately useless, behavior:

1. Beat Yuga 2 in Hyrule Castle.
2. Go to Lorule the usual way via Zelda's office.
3. Drop to 1/2 heart (or 1/4 if you have the Blue Mail).
4. Stand in the Lorule Castle tower's entrance very close to where it will take you in.
5. Set a bomb while facing south, so that it takes the last of your life as it knocks you into the room.
6. Either let the Yuganon transformation plus Hilda introduction play through, or skip it.
7. You will die once the cutscene finishes.
8. Continue, which'll take you to your house.

This glitch has been known for a while.  (Was it you who found it, Ahamplan?)  It's known that Lorule has not activated doing this, and you can repeat the Yuganon cutscene to continue normally.  But it is not the case that this did nothing!

If at this point you go to Lorule by means other than Hyrule Castle again (I went through the Stylish Girl's house), the music is still playing the longer intro.  If you then go into the Lorule blacksmith's house, it triggers the cutscene!  The Yuganon transformation cutscene appears to set a flag that causes the blacksmith house cutscene to play if you go in there.

There is secondary evidence I've found that shows that the blacksmith cutscene is the master key.  This evidence can easily be tested without a hack, too.  Beat Yuga 2, play/skip the Yuganon transformation scene, then kill yourself using bombs within the blacksmith's house.  When you wake up at your house with Ravio and go outside, Sahasrahla will be there and the portal will be active.

From this point, just take the portal, then head for the Lorule blacksmith's house.  You'll notice that despite Lorule being active, the Dark World music is still playing its extended intro.  When you get right in front of the blacksmith, Hilda's message appears.  This fixes the music to skip the intro after that first time.  Here's a screenshot of me getting Hilda's message from the south rather than by exiting the blacksmith's house.  Despite this obviously coming from a hack (I'm wearing the Blue Mail I got by going to Swamp Palace early), I again believe that this is possible to do without a hack.  I haven't tested it, though.

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAAYUKltKvEcNQ

Sadly, it appears that the Lorule active flag that is set by the blacksmith's wife cutscene controls both the portals and the back wall in Yuga 2's room.  Therefore, I conclude these things:

1. The cutscene with Link waking up to the Lorule blacksmith's wife is the master Lorule trigger.
2. Yuga 2's back wall closure is the same flag or at least set simultaneously with the Lorule master flag.
3. Hilda's speech does nothing except apparently set a flag causing the Dark World music to not play the intro the next time that area loads.
4. We didn't notice #3 because the only place in which a Hilda message skip is currently possible is on Death Mountain, where the music has nothing special the first time it's played.  If I'm wrong about this being the only place, then this theory can be tested without hacks.
5. It does not appear that anything useful is gained so far by going through the Stylish Lady's house...unless for some reason you want the Blue Mail during the Hyrule part of the game.

I still need to somehow delete the north wall of Yuga 2 to see whether an early Yuganon is possible if we can clip through the wall or go out-of-bounds.  Deleting the wall is one way to test it; another is to reprogram Yuga 2 to spawn Armoses instead of soldiers.

I have no insight into the contents of data files in terms of models and loading areas.  Sure, I have access to the raw files, but they're in a format I don't know.

If there's anyone with a Gateway card and <= 4.5 3DS firmware on one of their 3DS's, I could set them up with tools to mess around with this themselves.

Melissa

Thanks for doing all this research :)

Damn, so by the sounds of it, early Lorule is completely useless without early Yuganon :/ As of now, there's no way for us to clip into the yuga2 door to even test if early Yuganon is possible. I hope you can figure out a way to get rid of the door or something similar! Then we could ultimately prove/disprove the A Link Between Castles theory :P

But overall, we should just be searching for an early Hyrule Castle. The door to the Hyrule Castle dungeon opens as soon as Eastern Palace is completed.

I know going OoB on the side of the castle has some interesting stuff to do, maybe we should be messing around there?

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There are gateway 3ds cards that are about 80-100 dollara but I don't know how to get a rom, but one thing I did find interesting is the data for this game, it can't really handle out of sequence stuff I.e hyrule castle and triforce of cutscene,  but I personally think that both hyrule castle and lorule castle are seperate,  cause even though they have similar rooms, I don't believe that they would just leave it covered up and instead make an entirely separate area

Ahamplan wrote

There are gateway 3ds cards that are about 80-100 dollara but I don't know how to get a rom, but one thing I did find interesting is the data for this game, it can't really handle out of sequence stuff I.e hyrule castle and triforce of cutscene,  but I personally think that both hyrule castle and lorule castle are seperate,  cause even though they have similar rooms, I don't believe that they would just leave it covered up and instead make an entirely separate area

You can get the ALBW ROM from your own cartridge--Gateway has a menu option to dump a physical cartridge to your SD card.  You can then copy it onto the Gateway's micro SD.  You don't need to go to illegal web sites since you own the game.  You'd need the cartridge version, though; Gateway doesn't work with downloaded titles.

Melissa

Another thing to consider is that it might not be possible to trigger the Yuganon fight unless you have all the paintings.

Other then fun, there is no point in trying to get into the sylish lady's house. Shame in a sence.

While there's still time. Maybe get the homebrew version? Hackers recently managed to do this for the 3DS.