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Adapting Link's Awaking: The concessions we make


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#1 Mani Kanina

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Posted 20 June 2020 - 09:42 PM

Link's Awaking is a pretty big fan favourite when it comes to the series, it's also a large part in why the gameboy tileset is so populare: It's a very inspiring work, and a desire to take after it is more than understandable.

The game is so popular that there have been numerous quest projects over the years to port or re-create it in zelda classic, or feature the same setting, as well as offering up a sequel to the ending; which leaves a lot of story threads hanging as to what happened to the cast. Return to Koholint adopted the game in somewhat unique way to the classic tileset a few years ago. Even before that though, the game saw a remake in Simple Link's Awakening, also in the classic tileset. Somewhat recently the game was yet again remade for zelda classic in the form of Link's Awakening (Zelda Classic Edition), this time using graphics closer the original's.

I find the attempts made to re-create LA to be quite fascinating to be honest, because one can't just take the original game wholesale and stuff it into Zelda Classic, that just doesn't work. You'd have to make changes, you'd have to make concessions to what the original work is in order for it to translate into ZC. This engine don't run at the same screen resolution as Link's awaking, it's way wider, that as well as other technical points facilitates that changes be made. That's what this thread is about, what I find intriguing to explore: What concessions did people make, and why?

This is especially an interesting topic because nintendo themselves decided to remake the original game just last year. Interestingly enough, the original director for LA was not brought back for the job (from what my research suggests anyway). And the concessions they decided to make, as well as not make, are very interesting. They had the technical capability to almost exactly copy over the level design of the world, tile by tile, and so they did. This would have been a ripe opportunity to re-imagine the entire world at modern fidelity and structure, yet it wasn't. The biggest changes to the level design was to facilitate new features or extra items added (like extra seashell spots). Yet the art style was dramatically altered to one that I suspect no one would have expected prior to the games announcement. Link's awakening started as a port of A Link to the Past to the gameboy, and the artistic modernization of that games' art style, as can be gleamed in the direct sequel A Link Between Worlds, is quite different.

None the less, I'm more interested in the several attempts of remaking the game in ZC, simply because the official remake is as faithful as it ended up being. Take for example, this iconic scene of the egg on top of the mountain:
LA_Wind_Fish27s_Egg.pngLADX_Wind_Fish27s_Egg.png

Contrast to how it was handled in Simple Link's Awakening and Link's Awakening (ZC Edition) respectively:
q260s1.gifq502s3.png

Neither of these two are direct or accurate recreations of the scene, LA (ZCE) especially stands out in it's departure despite using a similar art style, but they don't have to be. Simple LA still places the Egg dead center as the focus on the screen, but emphasizes the backdrop and open sea more.

The official remake, instead, decided to focus the attention away from the mountains as well as the backdrop (which you can barely see), and places it more fully on the egg itself, as well as incorporating the circle of clouds around the egg, previously only seen in other artwork of it:
320px-LANS_Wind_Fish27s_Egg_Exterior.png
(The ingame scene for this is a bit wider and taller than this, and showcases slightly more mountain range as well as the full egg and top of it)


While it's easy to look at changes and go "well, they didn't have to change that.", it's not so easy in practice. In Zelda classic the screen is way wider, those extra tiles have to go somewhere and do something. And that's kind of the crux of it, what do you do with those? Do you attempt to recreate the screens as accurately as possible? Do you aim more to retain the gameplay flow of the screen, while deviating from the visual? What additions do you add or not add to screens to make them not feel empty from all the added tiles? Everyone is going to have their own preferences and choices when it comes to these things.

For example sake, I'll bring up the beach stretch near the start of the game. I was interested in trying to make a remake of the LA map in ZC myself a good while back, but that project died, nonetheless, this is one part I did finish, so it works for example sake:

Spoiler


Nothing here is tile by tile exactly like the original, but because I made it myself I can more accurately talk about the concessions I made. The first and most obvious at a glance is that it's much wider than the original, but looking past that; I introduced grass as well as favored more the oracle style of handling trees, where they almost exclusively have white base around them. Another big thing is that the same mountain don't vary in height as it goes. It's one of my personal gripes with the GB zelda games, and as long as it does not affect other things to a detriment, I try my best to have them stay consistent. Drop down points on the mountains were also moved and offset, because of the limitations of the drop down script that I run, they have to be on the same screen as where you land. As a result of this, the design has to radically change to account for that, one drop down point (to the very left) was even cut. Extra angling to the mountains were also added in order for things to look less blocky, which they were as a result of the extra screen width.

There is also a lot of extra detailing added, from more objects in the sand, to more bushes littered about, to the occasional tree that isn't in the spots they were roughly in before. Because if you just extend the screens but keep the same number of detail objects? It looks rather plain. It's sometime easy to forget just how cramped the GB screen is.

Spoiler


Is this the perfect recreation of this area into Zelda Classic? No, in fact, no such thing could ever really be done. It is merely my take and interpretation of what the design was going for. There is no silver bullet when it comes to being forced to make changes to something, not because you mandate or desire changes to the design, but merely due to having to deal with different technical constraints in the medium you use. What would you do? How well do you think previous takes of adapting LA to ZC have gone? That is the fascinating part, and your answers would likely wildly vary from what I would choose to do.


Edited by Mani Kanina, 20 June 2020 - 09:52 PM.

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#2 Matthew

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Posted 20 June 2020 - 10:30 PM

This topic is actually a really interesting and pertinent one to me, because I recently made a re-imagined LA overworld in ZC.

 

Spoiler

 

As you might immediately notice, it's... rather small. For this project, I sought to downscale Koholint into an 8x8 world rather than retain it as something 16x16. The process was specific; pick four screens (each set of four screens was functionally a 2x2 matrix), identify key features of those screens, and decompose them into a singular screen such that the key feature is preserved. That logic guided the map-making process and made what seems like a difficult task into something more palatable. 

Of course, concessions were made. Some areas were scarified in order to preserve gameplay flow, or were changed due to my own vision. However, I also expanded smaller areas, or re-contextualized certain locations. While my space to do this was limited, that kind of artistic liberty could certainly be employed in a 16x16 map adaptation to much greater effect, as you alluded to in your post.

 

The last thing I want to note is that many places in the Koholint overworld fit into very convenient 2x2 blocks. This made decomposing the map much easier than I originally thought it would be. Have a look at the overworld map from google, and you may notice that many areas are even in nature.


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#3 Mani Kanina

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Posted 20 June 2020 - 10:40 PM

Oh, this is a super nice adaptation. Is this quest project finished and playable? It looks really nice.


Edited by Mani Kanina, 20 June 2020 - 10:41 PM.

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#4 Matthew

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Posted 20 June 2020 - 10:50 PM

Thanks! It's currently in progress, and not dead...  yet


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#5 ywkls

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Posted 21 June 2020 - 06:50 AM

In addition to that first scriptless nightmare of a quest, I've also been working on a new LA project (or two).
  
LA (ZC Remake)
 
Remembrance of Shadows

 

While I'm trying to stick to the original as much as possible in the first, the second is a complete reimagining.

That means new dungeons, new bosses and a new plot.

 

I plan to release a demo for it in the not to distant future; which uses a highly modified Vintage Dreams tileset.



#6 Mani Kanina

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Posted 21 June 2020 - 08:34 AM

Another interesting thing of note is that while people often speak of the GB games broadly as using the same aesthetics, this is actually far from the truth. The graphics are very similar in structure and LA was definitively used as base for the oracle games, how they use those graphics vary wildly. 

For example: Staircases up mountains are pasted somewhat right on top of the mountains in LA, in the oracle games they instead used inward curling to make it more look like the staircase is embedded in the mountain side:

unknown.pngunknown.png
Same aesthetic mantra was also applied to waterfalls:

unknown.pngunknown.png

And since there isn't a perfect unified "GB Zelda" look, you'd have to pick and choose what you'd prefer as a designer.
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#7 ShadowTiger

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Posted 21 June 2020 - 03:57 PM

Great topic!  I mostly have a single point of visual contention to add or address.

 

In the first post of the thread, there's a spoiler box with a screenshot of Link on a beach scene.  Look a little to the lower-right of Link at the corner of the mountain tile.  See how there's a visual difference between the upper left corner of that mountain tile and the terrain around it?

 

That visual blip is all over the place in the GBA visuals when it comes to matching terrain.  It happens when cliffs meet water too, or when mountain bases meet grass.  Does this bother anyone else?  Does anyone try to make multiple iterations of tiles just to have the graphics blend seamlessly?  Or is it just me...


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#8 Matthew

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Posted 21 June 2020 - 04:07 PM

That kind of imprecision with the GB graphics is something I've noticed, and have tried to remedy in the past. It's not too hard to make slight edits to tiles so that they go together better, either. I guess those kinds of tiles aren't packaged with GB due to them being more specialized, so a concession of the GB tileset itself is simplicity and user-friendliness over high detail accuracy. 


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#9 Mani Kanina

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Posted 21 June 2020 - 07:25 PM

Those kind of details are interesting because they exist due to limitations. A GB tile (8x8 pixels) can only have 4 colours across all of it, and the amount of different palettes used at once is also limited. So they exist in the shape they are due to limitations. So the smoothing of corners, as seen with the mountains, would have to necessitate using the same palette as the mountain itself. Using sprites for corners would be excessively bad use of system resources. It might also not even be feasible to have redrawn tiles that better smooth into all sorts of terrain due to the palette, but aside from that there is also how much room in the ROM was dedicated to graphics.

For example, these bushes would actually have to be entirely different tiles in the ROM, most likely (unless there are reasons to believe they are sprites, but nothing suggests that, until you cut them):
unknown.pngunknown.png

Another factor is that Link's Awakening was designed and it's graphics were drawn for a monochrome system. In such a setting you can actually achieve more details than in a coloured setting. Because you don't need to consider the interplay between different colours, just how bright things are, extra details can be added to things, and corner smoothing will always match the colour of the tiles around the mountains, even if it might be slightly brighter in some scenarios. I'd link some comparison images but most places on the internet seem to not care to host the GB version of LA's world, only the GBC. Anyway, everyone remembers this object (and how to tackle it! :V) from Link's Awakening, I assume?:
unknown.png

Top is the LA version and bottom is the LA DX version. The object got redrawn a bit and has less shading and detailing in order to actually be used as it was in the original game (aka: in caves and dungeons). Because the ground around it was not seen as being the same colour as the object (to make sure it sticks out), they had to make some change to it. Conversely back porting the DX tiles into LA would be easy but result in a less detailed object, attempting to port the graphics whole sale from LA to LA DX without reducing colour depth (or exceeding the systems' graphical limitations) would end up with a very ugly result:
 
unknown.png
(The plausible possible variations)


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