Actor Glitch / Actor Displacement

--- Loading rooms and Actor Glitch ---

There are two steps that occur when loading new rooms.

Step 1: Loading the new room

To make room in memory for the new room, some actors will be unloaded in the starting room. The amount of actors that are unloaded seems to depend on the amount of actors it needs to load in the new room. (I still need to figure out exactly how the game determines which actors to unload, but it seems to generally prioritize unloading enemies and chests before other actors)

Step 2: Unload the starting room

This unloads the remaining actors and textures in that room.


The reason for having two steps is so that when entering the new room, the player will not see the starting room in its unloaded state as easily. They will still see some actors (usually enemies) disappear instantly when they start to open the door though.

Actor glitch is simply causing the first step to occur without allowing the second step to occur.


--- Actor Displacement ---

Currently it is only known to occur with the dragon statues with the hookshot targets in the Water Temple.

When you do actor glitch, the hookshot target gets unloaded but the dragon statue remains loaded.

Within the dragon statue actor is a pointer to the actor which is attached to it (normally a hookshot target).  When the room is reloaded (by entering through a door or corridor), if any actor is loaded at the same place in memory as the previously loaded hookshot target, the actor will be attached to the dragon statue. By manipulating memory with pulling bombs, arrows, hookshot, bugs, fish, breaking pots, etc., you can manipulate which actor is loaded there and will be attached to the dragon statue. The effects will also differ based on which room you came from and which rooms have been loaded in the scene.

This should be possible in other areas with actors attached to other actors.