Update Book of Secrets item

[scawful]

The book of secrets was previously modified to use X+R to reveal secrets by hiding the BG2 layer. This has been modified to use the L button to free up the X button again. One thing I've thought about adding to the book is the ability to cast spells when you aren't standing in front of an entity you need to translate. Considering the medallions were removed to make way for the transformation masks, allowing the user to cast medallion spells from the book would be interesting.

Few points to consider for this:

• The quake medallion code in bank07 has been modified for the deku hover, so recreating it would require copying the vanilla code to expanded space and evaluating other hooks which were changed for deku hover.
• To have multiple spells we may need to implement a dialogue box or an L/R feature to scroll between them, but the latter would require changing how the reveal secrets ability works or cutting it entirely. The former may slow down gameplay too much.

Please give your thoughts on the book of secrets item and how it should be implemented. Is the reveal secrets with BG2 ability still worth keeping?

[JaredBrian]

I think the BG2 reveal secrets ability would be cool but probably would take way more work than its worth. The way I see it you have 2 options.

1. Have to build every room/OW area with this feature in mind and build something that looks nice on every BG2 or just risk the possibility of the player just seeing the typical random garbage that appears under most layers.

2. Or to avoid having to build stuff on every BG2, have a table that specifies which rooms/OW areas you can use the book on to reveal secrets so you only have to build select BG2 layers. At that point it just becomes this arbitrary thing that the player just has to brute force using the book on every room to see whether it can have a secret or not. And then that also gives away the game, like if you are trying to hide something with the book and most rooms you can't use the book in, once you find one that you can use it in you know for certain there is something there.

Either way to me sounds like a lot of design work that probably isn't worth it. Although maybe making only one dungeon where it worked fits a good middle ground 🤔 idk depends on how you want it to work though.

[Jeimuzu277]

I like the idea of selecting spells from a dialogue box. You could also do that for the ocarina.

I'm not sure what you have in mind for a secret reveal feature, but I do have an idea. Let's say you have a series of custom objects assigned to an unused object id. Perhaps you could just have said object id disabled when you engage the secret reveal feature. Thereby disabling all custom objects tied to that id regardless of subtype to reveal hidden passages, chests, etc.

[scawful]

I think that idea of making an object which is reactive to a secrets reveal feature would make a lot more sense. That way it's kind of like Zelda's lullaby in Ocarina of Time which would remove those rocks with the special emblem on them. That'll avoid seeing garbage or making a table while also making the use cases a lot more clear, as a progression block and potentially something to stall you in an area with enemies. Biggest issues with that is finding the space to fit the graphics. Alternatively they could be sprites if they are going to be used in frequently and then they can be placed in dungeons similar to what is being planned for the deku flower.

To get the book the player will need to follow these steps

1. Get a bottle
2. Complete Mushroom Grotto and Tail Palace
3. Go to the Potion Shop in the mountains which requires Rocs Feather
4. Heal the sick boy in the village for the Running Boots
5. Retrieve the Book from the library

So the new object/sprite could be introduced in the Kalyxo castle dungeon and then used throughout the game, alongside granting the player these additional spells as a stretch goal.

[Jeimuzu277]

Well you wouldn't necessarily need new graphics. You could just use vanilla graphics to make custom clone objects such as walls, statues, etc. In other words, you could have a 32x32 statue blocking a hole/warp tile, or a wall blocking a secret passage.

[scawful]

Oh that's a good point. It would probably require including hints to these objects since they are the same as normal objects though. One of the nice things about the Lullaby in OoT is you usually knew when to use it by the royal family emblem. But I could also see that as hand holding so maybe leaving hints to a specific statue or hidden wall situation would make for more dynamic gameplay.

[scawful]

Potential idea which could be activated using the Book of Secrets

Evolvingfetus — Today at 10:59 PM
Oh speaking of ancient stuff, you could definitely implement hylian language in puzzles, as there are hylian language translators for every game that have hylian language in it and its slightly different in each of those titles, botw, skyward sword are 2 games that comes to mind
https://www.dcode.fr/hylian-language-a-link-between-worlds heres the complete deciphering of all the games for those wanting to learn the languages