T H E L E G E N D O F ______ ______ ___ _____ __ / ___ / | ___ \ | / | ___\ / \ \/ // || \/ || || \\ / /\\ // |\___ || || || / / \\ // | ___| || || || / /____\\ // |/ || || || / ________\ // || || || || / / \\ \\___/\ ||___/\ ||___/\ ||___// / / \\ \____/ \_____/ \_____/ \____/ \_/ \\ D A R K L I N K Q U E S T Programmed by Kévin Ouellet. The Legend of Zelda and the Zelda logos are registered trademarks of Nintendo. Dark Link Quest is a property of Dream of Omnimaga, 2004. https://djomnimaga.music-2000.com 1) Introduction 2) Requirements 3) Installing the game 4) Story 5) How to play 6) Items 7) Monsters 8) Bugs and compatibility problems 9) Cool stuff I did in Zelda 10) Stuff excluded from the game 11) My opinion 12) Special thanks 13) Disclaimers 14) Contact 1) Introduction The Legend of Zelda: Dark Link Quest is my first *successful* attempt at Action-RPG programming. In 2002, I started making one, but my BASIC skills were not high enough to make such a game. Now, after more than 3 years of experience in TI-BASIC programming, I finally did it: a TRUE Zelda is finally available on your TI-83+!!!!!! It’s in BASIC, so it’s slow (not as slow as some other games I tested though) but it keeps most Zelda features, from the Hookshot item to the classic smooth scrolling when Link reaches the edge of the screen!!! It also features 180 rooms to explore, 3 swords from “Ocarina of Time”, a lot of side quests (heart containers and empty bottles), many GFX never seen before on the home screen and more! 2) Requirements Minimum requirements (very slow, ideal for novice player) -TI-83+ calculator -OS 1.19 to 2.43. MathPrint OSes are not recommended. -24 KB of RAM -160 KB of archive Ideal requirements (ultimate game performance, recommended for intermediate and expert players) -TI-83+ Silver Edition, TI-84 Plus or TI-84 Plus Silver Edition -OS 1.19 to 2.43 -24 KB of RAM -160 KB of archive 3) Installing the game The installation requires many steps and will take over 5 minutes, so make sure you follow them correctly. Since the original game was made for TI-Graph Link, the installation process had to be tweaked in order to make transferring this game using TI-Connect CE possible. A TI-Graph Link version of the game is also included in a zip file, but it lacks all updates made after version 1.00. 1) First of all, go into the RAM folder then go to the INSTALL Part 1 one. Send all the files to RAM then run prgmINSTALL1. Once finished, reset your RAM. 2) Repeat the above process with INSTALL Part 2, 3 and 4 folders one by one. 3) Go to the INSTALL Part 5 folder and send the 80 files to your RAM. 4) Go back to the main folder then into the Archive folder. Send all 119 files to your archive memory. 5) Now you should be ready to play the game. To do so press PRGM, then select DLQ and press ENTER twice. You will be asked to set the contrast the first time you run the game. If you want to change it later, just delete the list named CONT. You can also launch the game from Doors CS 7, but it hasn’t been fully tested through DCS7. 4) Story Ganon has infiltrated Hyrule Castle. Link, the hero of time, had to defeat him with the Master Sword, the only blade that can take him out. However, as Link was approaching the Master sword, Ganon appeared and cursed him with a dark spell. Now Link is known as Dark Link because his soul has been invaded by darkness. To hold the holy Master Sword again, the hero of time will have to find the three triforce shards hidden in three dungeons. 5) How to play When the title screen appears, press 2nd. You will be prompted to select a save file (with 2nd). If you want to start a new game you have to choose a name for your character. Press 2nd to input a letter and DEL to erase it. When finished select the End option and press 2nd. Unfortunately, I could not get a decent speed with character walking in 4 directions, so there are 4 action keys (attack pad) based on the attack/action direction: MODE: Attack up APPS: Attack down ALPHA: Attack left STAT: Attack right Contrast setup screen (delete list CONT to reset) -LEFT and RIGHT: Change contrast -2nd: Confirm During walking -Attack pad (MODE, APPS, ALPHA and STAT): Attack, open door, hit switch, talk to people and collect treasures -Directional pad (UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT arrows): Move around -DEL: Open the menu -2nd: Switch between hookshot (if available) and sword or use equipped item -CLEAR: Open the save menu then exit the game. During talking -2nd, DEL and Attack pad (MODE, APPS, ALPHA and STAT): Show the next part of the conversation Menu -Directional pad (UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT arrows): Select. -2nd: Equip the selected item. -DEL: Close the menu and unequip all items. -CLEAR: Open the save menu then exit the menu. Other controls are explained in the game. This is an extremely difficult game. It is recommended to find as many heart pieces as possible and to get the giant sword before attempting to beat any boss. On an emulator it is much harder, because keys have the tendency to stop responding when fighting monsters so it's recommended to use a real calculator. 6) Items Usable items Hookshot: Use this item to grab pillars and reach new areas. Note that you cannot use the sword when the hookshot is equipped. BE EXTRA CAREFUL: WHEN YOU GRAB A MONSTER YOU LOSE LIFE POINTS. Fairy Hookshot: An upgrade to the hookshot. 5 times longer. Bombos: A fire-based magic item that causes 1 life damage to many monsters. Cost 1 magic points (see your magic meter in the menu) Thor: A thunder-based magic that creates a thunder cross killing all monsters in its path. Cost 2 magic points (see your magic meter in the menu) Gaia: An earth-based magic that shakes all monsters and can cause a lot of damage. Cost 3 magic points (see your magic meter in the menu) Empty bottle: There are four in total in the game. Use them to stock one of the following items: Life Potion (50 rupees) Magic Potion (100 rupees) Restore your life points Restore your magic points Elixir (150 rupees) Fairy (found in the fairy fountain) Restore life and magic Restore life (can resurrect when you die) Piece of heart: find 4 of them and your max life will increase by one. (16 in total) Rupee: Collect them to buy things. This is a pack of 1, 5 and 20 rupees. Small hearts: Restore your life by one. Magic: Restore your magic by two points. Deku Sword: You start with this weapon Giant Sword: The treasure of Zora Cavern. Can destroy small rocks, which allow you to reach even more places. Master Sword: The legendary blade you need to defeat Ganon. Causes twice the normal amount of damage and destroys small rocks too. Triforce shards Courage: Found in the palace South-West of Kakariko Village. Wisdom: Found in Zora Cavern to the West of Kakariko Village. Power: Found in the Tower of Chaos at the top of the Death Mountain 7) Monsters There are a total of 9 enemies in the game. Here is the description of each one. Skeleton: A monster that moves anywhere. Just be careful when approaching him. Evil Bird: A very tough flying monster. Can be killed in one hit by anything but he can defeat you in 10 seconds. Octorok: A water-based monster. When he appear at the surface of water, stay clear because he shot rocks at you. The only real way to defeat him is to deflect its rocks with your sword. Warlock: Another tough monster. This one is very annoying and often guards heart container pieces. He tries to charge at you and smash you away. In most cases you get thrown outside of the area, making the area almost impossible to cross. Warlord: A super version of the Warlock. He has 4 times more life points. Vampire: A monster that drains your life. They are slow but make sure you defeat them quickly because they drain life very fast. Zombie: A super version of the Vampire. They are resistant so they are more dangerous because they move even when you strike with the sword. You will need to develop a strategy to defeat them. Beamos: A resistant monster that can shoot you a super high-powered laser. Be careful to not stay in its range. Its laser causes 3 points of damage. Snake: A super version of the Skeleton. He’s even more powerful because he causes twice more damage and he can smash you away. Also he’s twice faster and has a lot of life points. 8) Bugs and compatibility problems Zelda DLQ is the first Action-RPG I ever created so it may contain errors (most are display bugs). Also the game uses many ASM utilities that may cause compatibility problems. If you read this section carefully, you should avoid most of these bugs. -When you enter a place with no monsters or a place with the water monster shooting things at you (Octorok), if you use the hookshot item, there may be times where the hookshot seems to grab something even if there is nothing. Just use the hookshot again. It’s fixable, but it would slow down the game and I think it’s slow enough like that. Link might start flickering, though. -If you quit the game with the ON button in the middle of an animated cutscene, your calculator might crash, resulting in a RAM clear. -After the map has scrolled to the next room/area, the game will try to randomly place monsters on the map until it has found two open spots, so in very cramped rooms/areas there might be extra loading happening before you can perform any movement or attack. -Weird glitchy text appears at the top of the screen after NPC conversations but it quickly disappears and isn’t very noticeable. This is due to a bug in Zapi. -In WabbitEmu, during monster fighting, most calculator keys can randomly stop responding at the most crucial moments, so it's recommended to use a real calculator else it might be near impossible to beat most monsters. 9) Cool stuff I did in Zelda -Added shutdown detector, which fixes the game when you exit with ON. It’s not perfect but at least it helps. -Totally eliminated the use of Lbl/Goto command so there is a significantly lower risk of ERR:MEMORY!!!! -Added fast scrolling effects like in the old Zelda games. -Some monsters have artificial intelligence -With the help of Zapi, I copied the home screen directly on the graph screen, which allowed me to do unbelievable things with ASCII based graphics. -With the help of Devpic and Zpic, made a really cool flickerless animation like in Flash movies with over 30 pictures!!!! 10) Stuff excluded from the game The following stuff and features were excluded from this game. Sorry for not adding them, but I ran out of RAM ? And it’s slow enough like that on the black TI-83+ model. Anyway, I think it’s complete enough for a TI-83+(SE). I beat it in 8 hours even though I know all the secrets. -Bombs -More monsters -More items -More dungeons -Hammer item -Grabbing rocks and plants and throws them to the monsters -Rupees in rocks and plants -Time passing (day and night effect) -Gold Skulltulas (remember this sub-quest in Ocarina of Time) 11) My opinion from 2004 Well, if you want my opinion about “The Legend of Zelda: Dark Link Quest”, here we go. I cannot say it’s the best calculator game ever. Surely, this is Zelda, it has LOTS of features (for a calc) and it’s the most complete Zelda ever released on the 83+/SE (yet), but this is the first Action-RPG I ever programmed and it’s not perfect (I’m specialized in turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy). Programming a BASIC or ASM Action-RPG by yourself is even more challenging than building one with the ARPG Construction Set and you’ll often get a better result by coding one by yourself. What I wanted to do by programming this game is to show what can be done in BASIC (again) and finally release a complete version of a hand-coded Zelda game (what I mean by hand-coded here is without the use of ARPGCS), which has never happened before. All I found at ticalc.org was unfinished ARPGs, a demo of a project that will never be finished and a turn-based Zelda in TI-82 BASIC. I tried my game on a normal 83+ and it’s slow (although it’s almost playable), but on the SE it really rocks. If you have this calc, Zelda: DLQ may act as an alternative to most dead projects around here ?. In 2022, it can still be enjoyed as the only completed Zelda game for TI-84 Plus series, but it takes by far the longest time to install than any other existing TI-84 Plus softwares due to very dated programming practices combined with being ahead of its respective time by being released long before the xLIB and Celtic III apps came out. 12) Special Thanks -Justin Whales for CODEX program -KammutierSpule for Zapi -Kevtiva Interactive for Zpic, Flash Gordon and Devpic -BAPG because they contributed in the making of Devpic -Michael Vincent for BASIC tools -Nintendo for making these awesome games -Teoryn for having suggested that I speed up the intro, write a complete strategy guide, make the game easier at the beginning and change the installation procedure. -LogicalJoe for helping me in 2022 to save this game from being lost to time at the mercy of Texas Instruments. 13) Disclaimers -Your calc blew, imploded, disintegrated or anything lik’ that? Sorry, I won’t hold responsible. -Well, if your calc still exists, don't steal my code!!! The only code you can steal is the "password" thing when you run the game for the first time and I encourage people to spread it across the entire TI community and put them in their games to force n00bs to read readme files when they download games. -No animals, including walruses were harmed during the making of this game ?. 14) Contact All comments, suggestions and bug reports can be posted on Omnimaga, CodeWalrus, Cemetech or TI-Planet forums, which I regularly check. Their respective Discord servers also help. A walkthrough is also hidden somewhere on both Omnimaga (requires an account) and CodeWalrus forums (available as guest). My main URL is https://djomnimaga.music-2000.com