The Grid

The grid is the community's term for the alignment of the game's tilemap. Link's relationship to this grid is important for executing and optimizing dash routes.

Overview

A tile in this article will be used to refer to the building blocks of the game's level geometry. This is important to distinguish from a floor tile.

Tiles in the game are made up 8x8 pixel blocks, and they can have many different properties to them. Some of them Link can move on, some are "solid" collision that he can't, some can be interacted with, etc. Because they are made up of 8x8 blocks, it stands to reason that the distance between any two tiles on the tilemap will be some multiple of 8 pixels. If Link is positioned such that he is also some multiple of 8px away from other tiles in the room, he is said to be on-grid. And of course if that isn't the case, he'll be off-grid. It's very common that Link is on-grid with respect to one axis and off-grid with respect to the other. Players can align Link with solid tiles (walls, pots, rails, torches, etc.) to guarantee his grid alignment. This is frequently an important consideration for optimizing Link's path through a room.

There are a few ways to guarantee Link being on-grid:

1. Link's initial position on a room or screen will be on-grid along the axis of the transition.
2. If Link is positioned directly against some object (wall, rail, pot, torch, chest, etc.) in the room, he'll be on-grid according to the axis of his alignment with the object.
3. If Link nudges against some object during a dash, he will be on-grid in the direction of his dash after the nudge.

If using the practice hack, players can confirm their alignment with the grid by looking at the rightmost digit of their coordinate. If it's a 0 or an 8, then Link is on-grid along that axis. This pattern (as well as the presence of similar patterns) is why the practice hack displays Link's coordinates in hexadecimal. Grid alignment is mostly valuable in the context of Link's dashing on normal ground. His dash speed on normal ground is 4 pixels per frame, making his dash "in sync" with the grid (multiples of 8 are also multiples of 4). In this context, Link could be considered "on-grid" with coordinates ending in 4 or C, although he'll never get this type of position from aligning against solid tiles, which are laid out on grids spaced in 8px increments.

South dashes

South dashes have an interesting relationship to the grid. In every other direction, if Link makes an on-grid dash, players can cancel his dash on the closest possible position to a solid tile in his path. For example, if the closest X-position Link can stand next to a vertical wall is 12A0, and Link dashes on-grid towards that wall, the player will be able to cancel their dash on 12A0.

This is not true for south dashes. If a player begins a dash on-grid to the south, he will bonk on the frame he touches the closest possible pixel to the wall. In fact, being any amount off-grid will allow the player to cancel south dashes with Link closer to an object than they would be able to if he were on-grid. This has a couple of important implications:

1. Keydashes never work when Link is dashing south (more on this below).
2. Most players regard on-grid south dashes as having a very different "feel" compared to dashes in other directions, and it's important to pay attention to this difference when executing certain dash lines.

Keydash

A keydash is a dash that travels through a locked door. In order to perform this, Link needs a key to open the door, and he needs to start his dash from a position that's some multiple of 4 pixels from the door (4, 8, 12, 16, 20, etc.). His position on the perpendicular axis doesn't matter. So if Link is trying to keydash a locked east/west facing door, his X-axis position needs to be a multiple of 4px from the door, and his Y-axis position isn't meaningful. If Link doesn't have the correct alignment, he will bonk against the locked door instead of cleanly dashing through. South facing doors cannot be keydashed due to their unique collision properties. If Link's dash travels any number of frames on some alternate terrain (tall grass, shallow water, ice), keydashes won't work on any door regardless of direction. This is due to Link's dash no longer moving at 4px/frame.

Luckily, players typically don't have to bother with manually positioning themselves. Because of the grid, all objects in a room are multiples of 8 pixels from each other, and any multiple of 8 is also a multiple of 4. So players can align Link with with some object before dashing towards the door, and this will guarantee that Link has the correct alignment for a working keydash. After aligning with an object, players must use care to not alter their position along the axis towards the door before starting their dash. A common solution to this is to use a dash turn. Players can also start their dash from a bad coordinate so long as the dash nudges past an object on the way to the door.

There are a few different techniques players may use to achieve a keydash.

Neutral dash from room entrance

This is the most basic form of keydash. Come into a room, don't touch the d-pad at all, and start a dash. Because Link's initial position is on-grid, the keydash will work.

Object alignment

Link can make sure his position along the axis to the door is aligned by positioning Link against a wall, pot, torch, or some other object.

Nudging

Link can also make sure his position is aligned by nudging some object on his dash to the door. An example of this is on the dash through the north locked door in beamos hellway. The player can align Link against the top of the row of pots (for an object alignment), but they can also just make sure Link nudges by the top torch in the room on his dash path.

Chaining dashes while maintaining alignment

This is the most complicated example, and it appears in one place in the Any% NMG run: the stalfos hallway in Thieves' Town. On the dash left to the locked door, there's not an object close by for Link to align with. But there is a torch for Link to align with on his dash south after getting the small key, and this will put him on grid along the horizontal axis. From here, the player just needs to make sure they cancel their south dash with and dash turn to the left.

Setup-less

Occasionally keydashes don't have a zero-cost setup. An example of this in the Any% NMG run is the hallway to Helmasaur King's door. Although there are corners to align/nudge against after warping, there are turtle enemies in Link's path to the door, and they have to be dealt with. After handling the turtles, there will be no object nearby to automate Link's Y-axis grid alignment. The optimal strat in this case is just to YOLO it with no setup.