/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5141310
This is the best Samus.
Prove me wrong

>>3735648
By not making any more. Metroid, II, and Super, Prime, Zero, and Fusion (debatable) were all fucking awesome, but let a franchise stop on a strong note, rather than fizzle out over time. If games were musicians, the former would be far more preferable.

To really drive this point home, none of the original talent from any of the originals are around. It's lucky we got a few extra great games from different studios. But this should really say something.

>>3733086
...cont...

+Vector : This is a special area of memory set aside for storing the start of your program (usually called the RESET vector), in addition to some other specialized programs. When RESET happens, the PC is loaded with the address found at the RESET vector.
+ Interrupts : Events that can temporarily change the flow of execution in response to time critical shit, such as vblank's NMI (see below)
+Status register : this tells you about results of recently executed instructions (ie was the result negative, or zero, or did it produce a carry, etc). Sometimes the CPU's behavior is also set from here.

>2) System architecture
this is were you go out and download either a Genesis dev manual or scour romhacking.net for useful docs. These docs tell you how the CPU is connected to various memories (RAM, video RAM, Audio RAM), and also how to interact with specialized hardware (GPU) through special memory locations called "memory mapped I/O registers". These docs will also tell you about graphics formats and audio formats used for your system.

>3) Game structure
A video game is simply a loop that tells the GPU it controls how to draw the next frame of the game and then waits for an opportunity to update the GPU. You need to understand what vblank is (a period in TV tech that nothing is being drawn to the screen), why it's important (VRAM can only be modified when the GPU isn't reading from it to draw the screen), and how it fits into the code (vblank triggers an interrupt called an Non-Maskable-Interrupt (NMI) that is used to execute the GPU update code).

Clearly this only scratches the surface, but you should have enough to orient yourself.

Use this thread to ask question you may have.

(btw, if anyone in here hangs out in the /rhg/ and the old "megaman series" of what a computer is and how to hack, plz post it. It was a gold mine of useful shit for beginners.)

As a child, I didn't had Super Metroid.

I never saw the cartridge in any store when I looked, and I didn't knew better, despite knowing about the game through our Nintendo tv show Nintendomania at national broadcast TV. Maybe the interest per se wasn't there, I was more of a fantasy kid than scifi. Or rather, as I grew and knew more about the game's gameplay, I felt intimidated by it's open-world sidescrolling with save stations to be found, or else, you go way back. But still, even as a kid and a teenager some curiosity in my mind kept lingering.

Well, the other day (Monday to be exact) I found the Justin Bailey hack for Super Metroid and I tried it just for the laughs. And then I thought I'd play some more to try it out, on my modded Wii.

I didn't notice it, I just got into the game. Big time. I played 2 or 3 hours after work daily this week, and I just finished the game. I got like... 10 Energy Tanks, 2 Reserve Tanks, a lot of missles, super missles and the like. I think I did rather well for being my first time, no guides and no save states used as soon as I seriously got into the game. 69% completition grade. Don't know my total exact play time.

How was it for my first time? I'll replay it next month, I think, but now I'm really with a feeling of self-accomplishment. I haven't gotten so much into a game since high school, and using no guides, just like it was 1994 again, felt great, even if I got stuck at times for a long while. I thought about either tackling Metroid Super Zero Mission (another SM Romhack), or Metroid II: Return of Samus next, I haven't decided yet.

However, there is another game I wanted as a kid, and I have yet to tackle: The Lion King.