Ancilla glitches
(Work in process)
Contents
Summary
This page explains glitches that has to do with ancilla.
Go to Spooky Action at a Distance for the also-ancilla-related glitch that was found in 2018. This page is a summary of the glitches found mid 2019.
Ancilla (plural: ancillae) means "object that Link produces/uses". Some examples are Boomerang, Bombs, Somaria block/spark, Sword spark, Boots dust.
Enemies, Heart drops etc. on the other hand, are sprites.
History of the glitches
Yuzuhara found that using items in certain combinations was creating weird effects, like getting two somaria blocks/bombs, having bombs explode indefinitely etc. He did not understand how it worked, and it was mostly not known about in the Discord at the time, but he posted everything on his twitter account here
Someone mentioned it on Discord after 4-5 months had passed, and the videos were linked into Discord. We started looking more in depth on what was happening, and this investigation produced a few new glitches. All of them having something to do with Ancillae.
Some terminology
Slots
When you try to put down a bomb, the game looks for an empty "slot" in the game's memory. There's 10 slots for ancillae, which means you can only have 10 ancillae on the screen at any point in time.
For practical reasons, we've named them slot 0 through slot 9.
For example, you spawn an arrow, and the arrow might be put into slot 4. You spawn another arrow, and slot 4 is occupied and the new one is put into slot 3.
Misslotting
What we found, is that the game was coded to have certain items in certain slots. Bombs for example, needs to be in slot 0 or slot 1. Most other items from Link's inventory was only coded to be in slot 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4. However, there are ways to force them to occupy slot 5+. Since this was unintended from developers (and it doesn't really happen in normal gameplay), unintended things happen.
We call the concept of putting an item into a slot it was not coded to be in "mis-slotting" (or "misslotting").
Level 1 glitch
Heart despawn glitch
A method to despawn heart containers, making our Low% runs lower. This was decided to be NMG.
Example video: https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/low_hpskip_armos.mp4
This one does not use "misslotting", but was just a random discovery during our investigations into misslotting. It works by filling up ancilla slots in clever ways that only despawn the heart container, but not the pendant/crystal that follows (else you would softlock on most bosses where doors are closed and menues not possible).
Pastebins: https://pastebin.com/aNApJZLz https://pastebin.com/BeBFwZX6
Level 2 glitches
Weirdshot/hookclip
"Weirdshot" is the name of a similar glitch in Ocarina of Time speedruns, copied over to ALttP.
The hookshot can pass through one tile blocks.
Example video: https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/gthookclip.mp4
What happens is that the hookshot object is traveling in EG for 3 out of 4 frames. There is another variant of this where the hookshot is _only_ traveling in EG. If you hit something in the other layer, it will drag Link to it and also change Link's layer.
Some technical stuff is here https://pastebin.com/ua73VDi1 but it's not complete. We know more about the technical aspects of this but it's not been written down to a pastebin yet.
Wonkashot/hookpush
"Wonkashot" is a reference to Wonkavator.
Example video: https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/wonkaspike.mp4
The reason this works is very technical. But basically, the "hookshot dragging Link to an object" code is glitched out and Link is dragged for a longer duration and often a different direction. This code does not check any collision at all, so Link can clip through walls. You can also use this to get link into EG.
We can completely control the direction, the duration, and whether or not Link should be put into a different layer, by changing the setups.
Pastebin explaining everything (technical): https://pastebin.com/KsRGZNKu.
Murderbomb
Example video: https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/murderbomb.mp4
By putting a bomb into slot 9, we can reset the "explosion duration" timer by simply using a hookshot or producing sword beams indefinitely.
Level 3 glitches
This is the really broken stuff.
Some examples: https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/ace.mp4 https://milde.no/public/alttp/clips/freecrystals.mp4
- Uninitialized altitude
- Spooky Action Glitch
- Despawn
- Heart Despawn glitch
- Misslotted Ancilla
- Weirdshot
- Weirdshot (Alternating Layer)
- Weirdshot (Opposite Layer)
- Wonkashot
- Murder Bomb
- Weirdshot
There are some similar methods of exploiting the game, that goes across these "categories".
