For this part the Ghost Hut has been closed down. The Ghost Hut scene has been replaced by the Ikana Crucible, a Cave of Ordeals clone, instead. Just like in the real Cave of Ordeals some dungeon items are required in order to progress farther or the player will have to leave. The Crucible has a total of 30 Floors where every tenth floor is a great fairy with a message. Naturally I placed in the Great Bay Great Fairy to keep to the whole Ice theme. To enter the Crucible the player must enter the closet which Pamela's Father is hiding in.

Originally the Crucible was much more difficult. An example is Floor 9. Instead of there being a Wallmaster and a Peahat, there were three Peahats. I ended up feeling it was too difficult overall and so I dumbed down a lot of the enemies.

With this part I finally got a grasp on how the 0x1B scene command works. I don't know why I never really understood or figured it out (there's even some documentation on it) but I just didn't. This allowed me to get the "Playing Ocarina", "Got new Item", "Opening Chest", etc mini cutscenes working which was aesthetically nice. In combination with it the 0x02 scene command can be used to place the camera in certain locations for things as well.

Cutscenes, cutscenes, cutscenes. So for this part I added some cutscenes. I will say that initially I was thinking pretty ambitiously. But again I dumbed down what I wanted to do. I basically took the "Returning to the Great Fairy" cutscene and used it for all three cutscenes on every tenth floor. For the little intro that one was pretty simple since it's just a static camera position and just have Link walk forward. I think it turned out pretty well for what I ended up wanting.

Obviously the Crucible is a completely custom map I made, and with 30 rooms at that. The 3D model I actually made quite some time before and then I put this part on hold while I worked on other things such as ZC and Faster Quest. Some of the textures ended up not looking how I wanted and I had to go back and edit them. The process at which I make edits to the mesh then export it, then use a fixing program (SketchUp creates issues with vertexes and what not), then export the data from SharpOcarina, then import it into the ROM is kind of annoying. Especially when I ended up having to do it multiple times. If I've learned anything it's make sure to the best of my ability to get stuff right the first time. I don't really know of any way to more stream line the process. SharpOcarina does have Inject to ROM functionality but every time I've tried to use it, it fails and I don't know why. My guess is because it's Majora's Mask though. There is MM support in the program but it's more designed for Ocarina of Time instead.

Updated Version Information

Ikana Crucible Entry

Entering the Crucible still works the same as the player must enter the closet in the Music Box House. However there is now a cutscene that takes care of this. When the player is near the closet the cutscene will trigger and take the player into it. With this change the player can now leave the Crucible and return and re-enter without having to use the Song of Time to reset Pamela's Father.

I'm still not sure how the closet doors actually open. I even tried re-using the cutscene commands in the normal cutscene where they open and they still don't open after the fact when Pamela's Father is healed and just standing around and will tell you about the Garo's and Gibdo's. So the cutscene kind of does look a little weird when re-entering as the doors on it are closed, but it still works.

Masks in the Crucible

In the original any and all masks could be used in the Crucible. Not anymore! Instead I chose to disable them. Some enemies, for example the Iron Knuckle, can be easily defeated using strategies with the different forms of Link. I decided that I wanted this to be Child Link form only to make it a little more difficult so upon entry if the player is in any other form they will be changed to Child form instead.

Now I know what you might be thinking. The Spirit Guy as well as the Garo Ninja within the Crucible require a mask to be worn and you would be correct. For this I specifically allowed only Garo and Gibdo Mask to be used within the Crucible and no others. Many people know that using Gibdo works on the Spirit Guy and although the player doesn't have to get it they most likely will when trying to enter. By allowing it the player can use it to get in however if they didn't bring the Garo Mask they will be stopped when they reach the Garo Ninja.

The Garo Ninja actually provides an extra clue to the player by telling them they will need the Light Arrow. This is meant to help the player a bit by having them realize it before going any farther into the Crucible. However I ended up discovering something about the Garo Ninja's I didn't know before. When a Garo Ninja is defeated they normally provide a tip about what the player can do. Like going to Spring Water Cave if they want to restore the river and that they will need the Song of Storms which is in the Graveyard. However once the Elegy of Emptiness is collected these hints are overridden with a single message telling them that they can use Elegy to pass Stone Tower. This can obviously cause a problem with my extra clue. If the player gets Elegy of Emptiness before ever even going to the Crucible then when they reach the Garo Ninja it won't show my clue. I fixed this so that it will now always show my clue when the player defeats the Garo Ninja.

In the original version the Crucible lacks several features that the Cave of Ordeals has that I would have liked to add but didn't know how to. That's no longer the case in the updated version!

Floor Enemies

If at any point the player dies, voids out, or simply has to leave because they don't have what's needed to complete the Crucible then they will find all the enemies will have reset. Even if they don't use Song of Time! This definitely ramps up the difficulty a bit as it now means dying and voiding are much more punishing. Since it was impossible to re-enter after leaving in the original Song of Time would have to be used to get back in which would already reset the enemies. So in that regard that didn't really change other than the added convenience of just being to re-enter even on the same three day cycle. Players will definitely want to stock up on supplies before starting. Arrows and Magic can be found near the start but anything else the player will need to bring with them from else where.

I also learned something about the ReDeads. Not many of them are used in Majora's Mask and all of them that exist in the normal game will dance when either Garo Mask, Captain's Hat, or Gibdo Mask are worn. I've always assumed this was just a built in property of them and they will always dance if one of the masks is worn. Turns out that is not the case at all. The dancing is part of their initialization settings. By changing this setting on the actors themselves they can be made to not dance. This is something I didn't want in the original because it removes any difficulty in killing them and since Garo Mask is required it made it a guarantee that the player could thwart them. Not anymore! All of them in the Crucible are now changed such that they will never dance.

Item Drops

When the player defeats enemies they normally have either set or random item drops. These include things such as rupees, hearts, arrows, bombs, magic, etc. This is no longer the case in the updated Crucible. All enemies will only ever drop rupees!

There are two different functions that get used for this. One always drops a single item, while the other can drop multiple of an item. In either case the drop is randomly selected to be any of the following: Green Rupee, Blue Rupee, Red Rupee, or Purple Rupee. If a Red or Purple Rupee is selected then a re-roll is done and whatever is selected is what will be used. This means that to get a Red or Purple Rupee it has to be selected twice in a row to get it. For the case where multiple can be dropped a random amount is selected from an array which is the following: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5. So it is more likely to get only one Rupee, however it is possible to get up to five. If the player gets some insane RNG they can get five Purple Rupees from a single enemy!