Download Layla: The Iris Missions ROM Hack

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                    *       Layla: The Iris Missions       *
                    *            v3 -- 02/02/17            *
                    *  by Supper ([email protected]) *
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Chinelkov Manitokha once again threatens the galaxy with his army of mutant 
Chimairan. This time, it's up to Iris to stop him! (Layla can come along too, I 
guess).

Layla: The Iris Missions is a thorough overhaul of the Famicom game Layla. It
features new levels, graphics, and a new, much-expanded soundtrack I wrote
specifically for this hack. The primary goal is to modernize the game to be
less frustrating without compromising the core gameplay. Though the most
fundamental aspects remain the same, there are many alterations to the design
and mechanics in the interest of making things more fun.

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                    *         Patching Instructions        *
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Apply "Layla - The Iris Missions (headered).ips" to a good dump of Layla 
containing a standard iNES header (e.g. "Layla (J) [!].nes") with your IPS 
patching tool of choice (perhaps Lunar IPS). The original file should be
131088 bytes long, and the patched file should be 262160 bytes long.

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                    *              Walkthrough             *
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This hack adds some elements of exploration and puzzle-solving. I hope the 
additions are intuitive enough that no one will need help, but here's a guide 
just in case:

* Mission 1: Proceed normally and you'll eventually reach the crate with the 
Machine Gun, then the boss.
* Mission 2: Go up at every elevator possible. You'll eventually reach the Axe.
* Mission 3: Go down at the first elevator, go right, then go up at the next one 
to get the Flamethrower. Go down the elevator you came up, then down again. Go 
right, pass the first elevator, and go up at the second one. Go right until you 
reach an elevator covered by destructible blocks, then use the Axe to destroy 
them. Take the elevator down to the boss.
* Mission 4: Starting from B4F, take the elevators labeled F, A, S, and T, in 
that order. Pick up the Skates. Starting again from B4F, take the elevators 
labeled E, X, I, and T to reach the boss.
* Before starting Mission 5, return to Mission 3. Go up at the first elevator, 
go right, then go up again at the next one. Run to the right and jump over the 
pit (requires the Skates). Continue on until you reach the elevator that leads 
to the Grenades. After collecting them, you can press Start+Select+A+B to exit 
the level.
* Mission 5: Use the Grenades to destroy the impassable block early in the 
level. The rest is linear, but make sure you don't jump down the high-walled 
pit: if you're paying attention, it should be obvious that it leads back to an 
earlier part of the level!
* Mission 6: Linear, but requires the Skates. You can optionally pick up the 
Bazooka in the first part of the level. After the second checkpoint, jump over 
the first two gaps. For the last one, make a jump of maximal height from the 
second-to-last vanishing block and you should make it into the alcove with the 
crate.
* Mission 7: Go up at the first three elevators you encounter. On floor 1F, run 
right, go past the first elevator you encounter, then go down at the next one. 
Follow the path and go down the next two elevators you see to reach the Saber. 
Go back up the elevator. The Saber can pass through walls, so use it to destroy 
the blocks in your path. Go up every elevator you see until you exit the cave 
area. Go right, pass the first elevator you encounter, then go up the next one 
to 2F. Go right until you reach a set of blocks you'll need the Saber to 
destroy. Do so, then take the uncovered passage to the elevator and go up. 
Proceed to the next elevator and go up.

This next part is conceptually tricky, but easy to do: You need to pass through 
the ceiling to reach the elevator. To do so, go right. If enemies don't spawn in 
the sealed-off area, keep going right until the level loops around. Pick off any 
enemies outside the sealed area, then stand on the glowing floor until your 
health is almost empty. Now, equip the Saber and use it to kill the enemies in 
the sealed area. While the food they drop is bouncing around, run to the glowing 
floor and intentionally kill yourself. If you do everything right, you'll pass 
through the ceiling during the death animation, then run into the good and 
return to life. From there, just take the elevator up to the boss.
* Mission 8: Follow the path until you reach the elevator guarded by force 
fields. You can do the three segments that follow in any order; personally, I'd 
recommend 3-1-2. Then take the elevator to the boss.
* Mission 9: Surely you can figure this one out yourself!

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                    *                Secrets               *
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* In addition to the codes listed above for Mission 4, there are four extra
  codes. The first three don't do anything useful, but you can enter them
  anyway if you're bored:
    * HASH
    * CASH
    * CEST
  The last code is "ERICC!!". Enter the first four letters, then enter the
  "C" elevator on B4F and the "!!" elevator on B3F. This gives you immediate
  access to all the power-ups in the game.
* If you're so inclined, it's possible to skip picking up Layla by entering
  the "ERICC!!" password given above, then using the Saber to shoot out the
  blocks over her head so you can detour around her. You won't get anything
  for it, but it makes the game significantly harder. (Originally, you were
  going to have to do this to access Mission 9.)

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                    *    Changes From the Original Game    *
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Basic stuff:
* Replaced all levels with new ones, and added an extra stage.
* Redid the soundtrack.
* Managed to scrape together a new title screen that's hopefully passable.
* Swapped out Layla's and Iris' graphics, so you now play as Iris.
* The new music has quieter pulse channels than the original in order to make 
the basslines more prominent, so the volume of the sound effects has been 
slightly lowered to match.

New features:
* Added a checkpoint system. Dying no longer kicks you back to the title screen; 
instead, you'll go back to the last checkpoint.
* Added a shortcut to exit a level: Press Start, Select, A, and B 
simultaneously. Not needed to beat the game, but useful in a couple places (or 
if I screwed up the level design and you get stuck somewhere).
* Hacked up the credits code to create a little intro sequence if you wait at 
the title screen.
* Rewrote the ending, added a new one for the extra stage, and altered the 
credits.

Weapons:
* All weapons except the Shield now have infinite ammo; the challenge is finding 
them in the first place!
*** To compensate for this, the damage and refire rate of some of the higher-end 
weapons has been toned down.
* The Shield no longer protects against pit damage.
* Shields do not have infinite ammo, and are collected throughout the level as 
in the original game. Restarting from a checkpoint makes you lose all your 
shields.
* Shield pick-ups grant a smaller number of shields (2 instead of 5).
* The special weapon from the original game is no longer available, mostly 
because I couldn't figure out anything interesting to do with it.
* Related to the above, the ? pickup now always restore life. I also removed the 
obscure feature where, after picking one up when the tens digit of the score is 
zero, running into enemies would damage them.
* Weapon cooldowns are now absolute, i.e. you can't mash the button to fire 
faster than you would be holding it down. Removed because I hate games that do 
this.
*** To compensate, the refire rate for the pistol is higher, not that you'll 
need to use it much.
* Bumped up the range of the Flamethrower's shots.
* Slightly increased the initial y-velocity of the Axe, giving it a higher 
trajectory.
* Made the Saber able to penetrate walls.

Mechanical tweaks:
* Removed the keycards that were originally required to beat the game, because 
they didn't add anything except frustration.
* Removed the bonus stages between levels because they were pointless.
* Removed all stat/ammo penalties for falling in a pit or repeating a level. 
You'll still lose health if you fall in a pit.
* Disabled the tornado that harassed you if you failed to scroll the screen for 
~30 seconds.
* The mechanic where your maximum velocity can go up or down under certain 
circumstances has been ditched; it was too frustrating, and difficult to design 
around. There's instead a fixed speed cap, with a collectible upgrade to 
permanently increase it.
* Increased invulnerability time after getting hit; the original game's is 
absurdly low.
* Enemy projectiles no longer hit through post-damage invulnerability.
* In the original game, touching an enemy damages you by an amount that is 
based, oddly, on the enemy's current HP (which means it can vary substantially 
between hits). In LTIM, enemies instead deal a constant amount of damage that 
increases linearly with each level to create a smooth difficulty curve.
* For balance, the cake and ice cream pick-ups now both restore 2 HP 
(originally, cake restored 4).
* Fixed a serious bug that can crash the original game. There was no check for 
overflow when the game assigned sprites to OAM slots from its internal table, 
which meant that if the game tried to show more than 64 sprites, it would 
overwrite sprite 0 and usually die. (This can be achieved e.g. on the original 
level 5, by running right at a high speed while firing the machine gun on a 
screen with multiple Usumiil enemies.)
* The original game rapidly flashes the background color when your HP is low. 
The effect is very unpleasant, so I've changed it to flash the white used for 
the text in the HUD. This unfortunately conflicts with a few other things (e.g. 
item icons), but it's still a substantial improvement over the original.
* Disabled the low HP beeping sound because it annoyed me.
* When you discover a new item, it uses its real icon instead of being replaced 
with a question mark.

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                    *             Known Issues             *
                    ****************************************

* The music hangs noticeably when switching between areas (e.g. from "cave" to 
"fortress" areas). I think it's caused by the game synchronously loading the new 
graphics. Probably more trouble than it's worth to fix.
* When restarting from a checkpoint, any weapons you fired before dying aren't 
destroyed, which can lead to e.g. destroying a crate with a grenade you fired 
before dying.
* Some of the strings in the credits get miscolored as they scroll off-screen, 
because fuck attribute tables.
* Score isn't reset after dying, which makes it rather meaningless since you can 
restart from a checkpoint repeatedly to increase it indefinitely. Frankly I've 
never cared about scores, so hopefully no one else does either.
* It's possible to use the "exit level" code (Start+Select+A+B) before 
completing Mission 1. This just restarts the level immediately without causing 
further problems, so I'm leaving it as-is.
* Using passwords generated after unlocking Mission 9 will start you at the 
beginning of the game as if you hadn't completed anything (though you'll keep 
your items and Layla).
* It's possible to get stuck in at least one area of Mission 9 (by scrolling 
the screen to the right, then jumping into a narrow hole on the left side 
that's too high to get out of without a running jump). There's not a lot I
can do about this without compromising the layouts, though...

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                    *               Changelog              *
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**Version 3 (2/2/17):

  Very minor touchups. Barring unforeseen events, this is the final release.
  
  * Added a few extra details to some backgrounds.
  * Changed a small arrow to a medium one in Mission 6.
  * Fixed the Mission 9 "semi-final boss" so it won't wander off in the
    wrong direction.
  * Added "Secrets" and "Special Thanks" sections to readme.

**Version 2 (1/1/17):

  Many changes in this revision are due to ArstanNeckbeard's diligent testing. 
Thank you!

  General changes:
  * Swapped the locations of the Machine Gun and Flamethrower pick-ups.
  * Due to the above, made the Flamethrower very, very slighly weaker (it does 
the same amount of damage per hit, but refires a frame slower and has a 
slightly smaller range).
  * Also due to the above, modified a few enemy statistics on Missions 1-3 (to 
make sure enemies are vulnerable to the Flamethrower when they need to be, and 
die about as quickly with it as they used to with the Machine Gun).
  * Improved the Bazooka's refire rate.
  * Made it possible to pick up food during post-damage invulnerability. 
(Considering you can pick up food while you're dead, I figured this was only 
logical.)
  * Overhauled the HUD:
    * Ammo counts are no longer displayed for weapons that don't use ammo.
    * The special weapon has been deleted from the pause menu, since it's no 
longer used. The border around the pause menu has been resized accordingly (and 
actually looks a bit nicer than the original, since the right edge no longer 
gets cut off).
    * The Skate icon now functions in a more intuitive fashion.
    * Moved the weapon icon/ammo display slightly to the right, since the 
keycard count no longer exists.
  * Changed the health-restoring power-ups hidden in boxes from question marks 
to hearts.
  * Changed the speed of some sweep effects in the Mission 2 music. Previously, 
they only sounded as intended in FCEUX. (This was already fixed for the NSFe.)
  * Changed a single note of the percussion in the boss music. (This isn't in 
the NSFe.)
  * Fixed a bug where dying after killing one part of a multi-part boss (e.g. 
in Missions 5 and 8) would let you avoid fighting the later parts of the boss.
  * The special hardcoded passwords no longer give you special weapon ammo 
(since it no longer exists).
  * Updated the credits sequences.

  Level-specific changes:

  Mission 1:
    * Minor structural changes so that crouch-jumps will never be necessary 
until you've reached the hint room explaining how to do them.
    * Fixed an elevator that incorrectly led to the hint room.
    
  Mission 2:
    * Minor tweaks to prevent getting stuck (though you'd pretty much have to 
be trying to do it).
    * Fixed an elevator that incorrectly led to the start of the level.
    
  Mission 3:
    * Fixed two boxes that displayed the wrong background tile when destroyed.
    * Fixed a broken elevator that made it possible to get stuck.
    
  Mission 4:
    * Enhanced the background decor. (I started on this and honestly forgot to 
finish before the initial release!)
    * Placed a checkpoint at the boss chamber. (Previously, you got thrown back 
to the start of the level if you died there.)
    
  Mission 5:
    * Changed a tile in the first section to hopefully make it more obvious how 
to proceed.
    * Fixed a power-up placement that wasn't properly flipped.
    * Changed the boss's palette.
    
  Mission 6:
    * Fixed a checkpoint that sent you back farther than it was supposed to.
    * It was sometimes possible to bump into the wall and fall into the pit 
during the descending-ceiling sections of the level. Added some extra space so 
that hopefully won't happen anymore.
    
  Mission 7:
    * Added some health/shield crates in the cave area, and moved some that 
were probably unreachable, to try to make that section less frustrating.
    * Fixed some decor that was supposed to flash, but wasn't actually assigned 
to the cycling palette.
    
  Mission 8:
    * In the first part of the level, added extra headroom to a couple of jumps 
that were difficult if not impossible to clear without taking damage.
    * Added some health crates at the end of each force-field section.
    * Minor aesthetic enhancements to the boss chamber.
    * The boss is now weak to axes. This may or may not have been the case in 
the previous version, but it was definitely supposed to be this way.
    
  Mission 9:
    * Made many improvements and finishing touches that I didn't have time for 
in the initial release: a proper background, more sensible checkpoints, enemies 
that don't immediately fall in pits and die, etc.
    * Enemies no longer drop food (or rather, you'd have to kill 128 in a row 
to get a drop), which was actually my original intention.
    * Fixed an issue where destroying certain enemies and blocks would cause 
the score to go haywire.
    * Fixed a minor palette conflict with the low HP flashing effect.
    * Made some alterations to the final boss that should be readily apparent.

**Version 1 (12/20/16):

  Initial release.

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                    *             Miscellaneous            *
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I'm flattering myself here, but if you're interested in the OST, you can 
download it here as of this writing:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ainp6rqa6u1chz9/Layla+-+The+Iris+Missions+OST.zip
(Includes NSFe, MP3 renders, and the original .it files used to prototype the 
tracks. Real rippers will guffaw at my 256 kb NSFe, but I say whatever works...)

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                    *            Special Thanks            *
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I'd like to thank the following people and organizations for making this hack
possible:

* A round of applause to ArstanNeckbeard for taking the time to play through
  this obscure ROM hack of an obscure game from obscure start to obscure
  finish and give me feedback on it. Honestly, I was afraid I wouldn't get any
  replies at all!
* Thanks to everyone else on ROMhacking.net who voiced support, and anyone
  who tried this out but didn't comment.
* Extra special thanks to the webmaster of Asteria no Layla, who maintains one
  of the finest and most informative fansites I've ever seen:
  http://laylairis.web.fc2.com/
* General thanks to all of the following:
  * Nesdev
  * Bluechip's 6502 reference
  * TCRF
  * Game Center CX
* And of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to dB-SOFT for making Layla
  in the first place.
* Finally, if you've actually downloaded this, thank you! Hope you enjoy it!