/vr/ - Retro Games

What happened to the homebrew snes game /vr/ was making

Last thread >>2976109

>There will never, ever, ever be SotN rom hacking ever
>No romhacks with new castles to explore

>>3015562
github.com/gewballs/graviton ?

I'm the lead. What happened was grad school. I want to finish this guy, but probably won't have time again for another 2 or so months.

Furthermore, although I have posted the source code, I did not post my custom assembler. Although it works, I wrote it a long time ago, and over the years I have come to realize its shortcomings, which are many. I have designed a new, much more powerful assembler, but haven't gotten a chance to implement it yet. Once it's done, I will release it to the masses.

All that I've had time to do recently was the "mega man" series of posts in thread #6 that was detailing how computers work and the basics of assembly. That thread got nuked by spergs in a single night, and I don't think anyone saved that stuff, but it was really me just thinking about how to go about teaching folks how to rom hack. I learned a lot of do's and don't from that. Perhaps I'll write a tutorial from what I garnered and post it on my website or something in the future along with the new assembler.

When it comes down to it I want to help people learn how to hack, because I find it incredibly amusing, and the subject is incredible opaque to the uninitiated, even if the concepts aren't that difficult.

Anyway, I'm here if anyone wants to talk/ask questions about something more technically challenging than graphics hacks (btw the pokemans from the last thread looked great).

>>3015626
Why is this the case anyway? I think I read something about it a long, long time ago now but can't remember the reasons given.

>>3015903
Because no one with the technical prowess has had the desire and time to put the hard work in. It's as simple as that. Rather than complain about it, if someone really wanted to see a SotN level editor one day, then they should make it happen.

It wouldn't be trivial, but it wouldn't be impossible either. The main two ingredients are 1) reverse engineering the level data, and 2) make a gui. Both would take some time investment to develop.

>vidyamon is dead forever

>>3015920
this some sort of waifu romhack?

>>3015562
Making a good NES game in assembly seems quite hard and cumbersome, compared with high-level programming languages, and the SNES architecture is even more complex, so this anon get my respect.

>>3015814
Are you talking about this thread : http://desustorage.org/vr/thread/2963397 ?

>>3015626
>>3015903
>>3015920
Remember that guy who put a lot of time and effort into making a level editor for SotN? Remember how he got as far as a level viewer? Remember how he gave up and said "Lol, I'm just gonna remake the game in Unity", then abandoned the project and didn't even release what he had up to that point?

I fucking remember, and hope the cunt gets cancer.

>>3016432
It's really not so bad. If you look at the git repo the code looks awful, but that's just because my assembler really is primitive. The 65816 is fun to program and the SNES graphics hardware seems small once you know your way around it.

I had looked and thought it was deleted. I was wrong, it was #5.
http://desustorage.org/vr/thread/2854976/#q2854976

>>3016350
Not mine, from last thread.

========================

So we should do something cool this thread. Maybe we can rom hack SMW and make a new power up that let's you fly and shoot fire balls or something. I don't think that's be too hard.

>>3016350
Nah. Just videogames in general.

>>3016463
I always thought it would be really cool to mix power-ups in a Mario game. Fire-Cape Mario, Hammer-Frog Mario, Fire-Hammer Mario. Hacking power-ups is hard enough though.

>>3016752
That sounds like something you could find in a Mario Maker update

>>3016772
Too bad I refuse to buy an amiibo machine.

>>3016774
You don't need amiibos to enjoy the Wii U, dumby. Splatoon, Smash, Mario Maker all use them yes but they're all still damn fine without them.

What are some good EarthBound hacks? I couldn't get very many to actually patch properly(they rarely mention what size the rom should be, or if it should be headered), but of the ones I've played, I enjoyed:
>Halloween Hack
>Hallow's End
>Holiday Hex
Is HyperBound worth checking out?

>>3016774
As far as I know most games let you have all the benefits of Amiibo without an Amiibo. Maybe Splatoon has some little pointless content locked or something, but Mario Maker is fine without them. Probably the only games to actually require them are the Animal Crossing and the Mario Party ones.

>>3016463
>So we should do something cool this thread.
Totally agree. Any ideas?
I have a lot of ideas for hacks I would like to do, but haven't hacked anything in a long long time, so I'm having a hard time getting back into it.

>>3016793
>>3016782
>>3016774
>>3016772
Not retro. Not hacking. Please refrain.

>>3016752
I think it might be simple, although it could be very buggy. Mario's code probably checks what current power up he's got and executes the relevant code. It might be as easy as getting the cape Mario routine to call the "launch fire ball" subroutine in the fire Mario code. Finding these programs shouldn't be impossible. Then it (might) be as easy as inserting a single subroutine. Should be fun.

>>3016818
We're allowed to MENTION non-retro things in offhand conversation you sperg, just don't have an entire thread dedicated to it.

>>3016818
Nice, It would be cool to see something like this be done.

>Not retro. Not hacking. Please refrain.
sorry, seeing them talking about it made me assume I was in /vg/, I'll try to be careful next time

>>3016824
That wasn't just a mention though at that point, it was Amiibo discussion.

DKC2 romhack WHEN? :(

I'd like a version of the Phantasy Star translation patch that keeps the names of the main characters/spells, and uses the PSIV names of planets/enemies. Anyone interested?

>>3016782
>>3016793
I don't care how "pointless" you deem the Splatoon content locked behind amiibo. It's content I'm interested in, something on the disk I would have payed for, and something I wouldn't be able to enjoy without 3 overpriced little figures I don't want. That's true of many other games on the Wii U. It's wrong, and I won't support it.

Newfag here, dumb question, but worth a shot... are there any NES tile editors which read full sprites or something? Every one I tried to use also displayed everything on the same palette, I couldn't identify anything.

>>3015626
Man I'd just like a version where you could use he Castlevania 3 crew, they're all already in the game anyway.

Or dunno, the option to have Richter or one of them as a familiar so you could have a sort of teamwork.

Or even those lost rooms enabled... were they only programmed on Saturn?

>>3016834
If you want a quality DKC2 romhack you could always give it a shot yourself. There are editors for all the DKC games but afaik no-one has made a complete hack yet. I think all those pre-rendered tiles make it harder to put together something that looks good compared to some other games. Not saying it can't be done, just that it would probably take more effort than your average rom kiddie can manage.

>>3016463
>Maybe we can rom hack SMW
I've always thought there should be a western equivalent of VIP. One that's not balls to the walls hard.

>>3017292
dude do you even follow smwcentral? westerners have far surpassed the vip games

>>3017295
Not like that, man. I mean like how the VIP games were 2ch projects.

>>3016868
It's mostly a matter of getting used to put the tiles together in your head.
With Tile Layer Pro you can organize the tiles on a small side panel and form the sprites and backgrounds, but you still have to do it by yourself.
YY-CHR has a tile arrange pattern selection that could help you a lot because sometimes organizes the sprites correctly.
And if you still have issues, no the best idea, but you try Nesticle (Is a DOS based emulator so it will take some work) since it has a real time tile edition feature. So you can edit the tiles while the game is running and see exactly what tiles did you draw on.
Another usefull tip is start with simpler games like SMB and slowly move to more complicated ones when you feel confident enought.

>>3016868
>>3015626

No one is ever going to make a SotN map editor, sadly.

The best option is to create our own engines and then create fan games. Hopefully we can get the physics right.

>>3017295
Can you give a few examples? I think that's a bold claim. I mean, the latest VIP was pretty fucking amazing, can't think of anything west has made that's better.

>>3017383
What was the last one? 5?

>>3017313
Thanks for the tips, actually Nesticle was the first emulator I ever use, haha...
And about starting with SMB... that's the thing, I trie to start with something really simple like edition the Donkey Kong opening screen, but couldn't even figure ou what it was. Pity.

>>3017325
Yeah I don't even care much for a map editor, the game is pretty awesome as it is. If it could be improved, it would be changing the player's options or something.

>>3016836
>thinking he still needs to buy every amiibo made
>to unlock all that content
Are you by chance retarded?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XBQpLWCGOY

>>3017730
Newsflash. You don't need to buy ANY Amiibo period. No one is forcing anyone to do so.

All the Amiibos do is unlock stupid, unnecessary bullshit.

>>3017861

>>3016836

>>3017873
The only content Splatoon "hides" is a few variations on missions that are already playable without an amiibo.

Now will you shut the hell up about goddamn amiibo already. Post some Vidyamon or whatever.

>>3017983
>The only content Splatoon "hides" is a few variations on missions that are already playable without an amiibo.

>>3016836
Why is this so hard to grasp

Hey guys, I'm trying to rebalance a few numbers in Super Hydlide for Genesis, but I am completely clueless on where to look. I got actual coding experience (I mean, if you throw jargon at me I'll get it), but all I got is a hex editor and the binary blob that is the ROM.

Anyone has some advice on how to get started?
Any documentation or guide I can read with format specs and such?
Any general-purpose tool or emulator for Genesis games that can make looking for the item/shop data easier?

>>3017418
Not too familiar with Donkey Kong, but if you can't find anything on any tile editor it could be one of those weird games that compressed the graphics. I remember Contra did that.

>>3018043
I've been looking into hacking a genesis game and most of the graphics were compressed, with some of them being double compressed (I haven't gotten further than that so there might be some that are triple compressed). The key was finding out which compression was used. Game roms use different compressions depending on the game. Some use more than one compression. Look it up on Sega retro.

Tile layer pro helps viewing the graphics.

Some tools are game specific (dealing with code and compressions) if the game exists on other platforms there may already be some documentation or tools for it on another platform.

>>3019484
I see, I wasn't intending to touch the graphics, but good to know about the compression, that makes trying to look for raw values a moot point.
The idea I have is really simple, just balancing out 4 values to make the game less grindy (namely the prices and weights of food rations and camping kits). It's lame, I know, but it's a relatively easy way to get started.

I'll check Sega Retro then, hopefully there's some info out there, thanks!

>>3019484
Yes, most graphic resources are compressed, unless they are accessed extremely often, like a player's sprite data.

Yes, the compression scheme is highly game dependent.

That being said, I have severe doubts that anything was "doubly" compressed. The point of compression is to have the compressed object contain as much entropy as possible, and you can't compress randomness much more with subsequent compression passes, unless you have a shit scheme. Also decompression is an expensive operation, and running 2 or more decompress steps might be time prohibitive in many cases.

>>3019768
>>3018043
I don't hack the Genesis, but can offer some help. The data you are looking for is most likely NOT compressed because the data structures are small.

If you start with just a binary blob and a hex editor, you'll never get anywhere (or if you do, it will be excruciatingly time consuming).

You need a debugging emulator for the Genesis. I don't know what's out there, but a good one will allow you to examine and edit memory while the game is running, trace execution, and set break points. With these tools and a little creativity it shouldn't be too hard to find the data you are wanting to get at.

Come back when you've found you, that is if >>3019484
didn't scare ya off.

>>3018043
>>3019768
I prefer GensKmod which is a pretty good debugging emulator mod, but there are other options available if you prefer other emulators.

You can check spritesmind for tools ; http://gendev.spritesmind.net/page-tools.html

>>3019791
Ah, I might be able to find the values with a debugger, good point.
I'll dive in tomorrow and see what I can find, modifying them in RAM shouldn't be too complicated, after that the trick is finding where they are inside the ROM.

>>3019791
>>3019818
Whoops, clicked the post button too early.
Thanks for your advice you two. It's a good starting point.

>>3019854
>after that the trick is finding where they are inside the ROM.

And that's the easy part. Assuming that the game loads the store prices into a RAM location you've identified, you just have to set a breakpoint to halt execution when those RAM addresses are written to. You'll be stopped in the code responsible for loading the values. Understand how it locates those values, and go to the ROM addresses that's it's accessing. With luck, all store data is in one place, and then it's just a matter of interpreting the data and editing it.

If instead only a pointer or index to the store exists in RAM, it may be harder to locate the proper RAM location. In that case, reverse engineering how the prices of goods are printed to the screen will lead you to the ROM addresses of the store data in question.

Happy hacking.

>>3016345
Wait, what?!

>>3019868
That...makes a lot of sense! Thank you!

>>3016350
Not the one that anon is making, but we have those.

So I looked up "megaman romhacks" and found this. What romhack is this screencap from, if one at all?

Or is this from Wily Wars for the Genesis or something?

>>3019894
It's not. Vidyamon anon said he was gonna come back soon.

Hopefully

>>3020552
its not willy wars, dunno wheres it from though

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2741/

>>3022627
It looks like Toss the Turtle now.

>>3022627
Did I apply the patch wrong or is it supposed to look this awful?

>>3022987

there are fucking screenshots in this entry showing how the game will looks like

>>3022998
Oh, so it is supposed to look this awful.

I mean some of the stages seem alright like Elecman but almost all the enemies look awful, and Megaman's sprite is vomit-inducing.

>>3022987
>>3022627
I can appreciate the idea, and I like it, but I think it hasn't been well executed. Palettes choice is horrid and all the tiles would need some rework to look better with that snes-ish.looking goal.

I did my own mockup on Megaman's sprite, toke a lot of liberties with it, mainly to make it work better with the colored lines and have more consistent shadows. Still has a big room for improvement.

>>3016463
Strafing Mario, Day 1:

I downloaded SMW and fired up my debugger.

First thing I did was start a new game and got to the Secret Area. This is a good place to hack because there's no time limit, no enemies, it's small, and the items I want to work with are all there.

I then did a CPU trace that only logged instructions once (other wise the emulator would log ~1megaline/second, not a good idea) I proceeded to make Mario do everything that I could think of doing; running around, ducking, jumping, turning directions, walking, duck jumping, hitting his head against blocks (I swear to god that's what he does), going into and out of the level, EXCEPT pick up a mushroom. After a few minutes I stopped tracing and retitled the log file "engine.txt", because this more or less contains the basic engine of SMW (~10kline).

Then I went back to the secret area, hit a block to make a mushroom come out, started to trace again, got the mushroom, then killed the trace after Mario was big. I titled this log "mushroom.txt" (~300line).

Did the same with the fire flower and feather and those logs got called "flower.txt" (~100line) and "feather.txt" (~700line) respectively.

Finally I traced the item swap (~80line).

I began searching all logs but engine.txt for memory locations written to. My conjecture is the game stores Mario's current power up as a number, and that that number is written to in this code.

I haven't found what I was looking for quite yet (maybe my conjecture was wrong), but I did locate the item swap id:

$7E:0DC2 swap.item // Press select to drop this item

Now here's the fun part:
#$00 = nothing
#$01 = shroom
#$02 = flower
#$03 = star(!!)
#$04 = feather
#$05 = upside down purple yoshi egg that drops a 1-up (!!!!)
*puts in jackass quantity*
#$22 = chuck

Evidently SMW is incredibly flexible with what can drop. I got vines, big boos, platforms, etc. I was too amused with freezing the memory location and spawning 20 feathers to proceed further tonight.

>>3023884
GJ, i like it. Keep going and keep posting. Good luck and god bless.

>>3022627
this hack looks like pure shit

>>3023401
That looks much better anon.

>>3022987
>>3023401
Jesus christ how horrible

Has anyone tries to see if Rockman 4 Minus Infinity runs on an actual NES?

Yo /rhg/, I posted about this in a previous thread, but I figured I might as well do it again. I'm looking to make a ROM hack of RPG Maker 2 for SFC that writes the SRAM data to the ROM so that I can distribute it to friends and possibly flash it to a real SNES cart. I asked about this on romhacking forums and they said that either (a) it's not feasible for a beginner because there's tons of shit involved, (b) it's not feasible because the SRAM data could be very different that most SFC games due to the "memory card" RPGM2 used, or (c) it might be feasible if you write the data in the SRAM over the data for the default game on the cartridge. What do you guys think? Any advice on where to start?

>>3026342
Any reason you can't just pass around the rom and a copy of the save to your friends instead? It would be a helluva lot easier than a project like this that which would take months of work even for someone who knew what they were doing.

SD2SNES doesn't implement it, but it doesn't sound as if it would be too difficult for them to do since it's just memory mapping involved.

>>3026342
>I'm looking to make a ROM hack of RPG Maker 2 for SFC that writes the SRAM data to the ROM so that I can distribute it to friends and possibly flash it to a real SNES cart
Just include the ROM with your SRAM file. What you're describing is, as the peeps on Romhacking forums said, not feasible, like, at all.

>>3026367
>>3026439
The reason I didn't want to include the SRAM with the ROM is (a) some of my friends are so tech illiterate that they won't be able to configure it and (b) I wanted to make a cart to play myself. But if it really is that unfeasible to hack in the SRAM, I'll probably have send it separately. Oh well.

>>3026439
>not feasible, like, at all
Oh come on. All you have to do is check for save data on startup, and if it doesn't exist, copy the default data from ROM to SRAM. If you can write to SRAM at all, it's feasible.

But it's definitely more trouble than it's worth and nobody here is going to want to waste the effort to investigate it thoroughly enough to teach someone else how to do it.

>>3026620
It's not SRAM though, it's one of those 2MB Satellaview data packs. It's mapped differently from normal games and is larger than most normal saves by several orders of magnitude. Not going to get that running on a normal cart without seriously advanced voodoo.

>>3026635
I thought he just wanted to emulate it. If it works on emulators now, whatever hacked data he wants it to load instead will work too.

>>3026635
It saves as a .srm file (I'm running it in an emulator), so I would imagine it works just like SRAM. Though I could also be completely wrong about that.

>>3026620
I think you're confused on what I want to do (or maybe I'm just confused by your explanation). All the data about my game is saved in the SRAM, and I want this data to load up automatically. It would be similar to making a copy of Yoshi's Island that automatically loads up with 100% completion despite there being no existing SRAM data.

>>3026659
I'm not confused, that's exactly the solution I was describing. You store the completed save data in the ROM, then copy it to SRAM the first time you load up the game.

Bump

This is a list of randomizers for nes/snes games, should any be added to our list?

https:// docs google com /spreadsheets/d/1rXgXxS1W9AaEhhpxfGjNyLuxC_P7Xa3LBr9jluWUlR0

>>3026342

Someone on the romhacking forums solved the problem (for now anyways); apparently copying the hex data from the SRAM and pasting over the ROM's hex data from 0x1F0000 onward replaces the sample game in the ROM with your custom game. Now I'm just going to try to (a) make custom graphics for the title screen and menu and (b) disable the game editing tools. I'll keep you guys updated on what happens.

>>3030468
>(b) disable the game editing tools.
I wouldn't do that, if they wanna cheat I think it's their right.

>>3030471
It wouldn't be cheating, as the editor doesn't allow you to edit the sample game. I just want to disable it (or make it unable to be selected from the menu, which would probably be much easier) to make the game look more proper. I'm not expecting many people to play this outside of my friends and maybe a couple people on 4chan.

>>3030305
Just wanted to thank you for that list anon

>>3030305
EarthBound reshuffler
Explorers of Sky randomizer

>>3031734
>Explorers of Sky
Not retro, but still pretty cool, and I guess it could be added to the list since there's also GC stuff there. I remember it from when it was just released. Has anyone made a video of it? I'd like to see something more than just a few pics but I'm too lazy to patch the rom and too autistic to use a DS emulator. Maybe I should ask the /vp/ general I guess, I haven't seen them talking about it now that I think about it.
...uh. i think i might have written a little too much, and i don't think that's good for the one who's calling out for it not being retro. thanks for reminding me though.

On the topic of randomizers, how about this one for Lufia 2?
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1170/
It allows one to modify settings of the Ancient Cave, allowing a fixed seed, or a normal randomized cave with special settings, like being shorter, with better loot or stronger/obfuscated monsters. I've been trying it out for a while and it's pretty fun.

>tfw Vidyamon is now officially as dead as Pokemon: Comfy Version

Why does every good project always have to die, and shit like Pokememe Clover gets to fester on for all eternity.

Is there really no justice on this earth?

>>3033101
Clover's having its own drama and will likely die out too, though.

>>3033101
Why do you think it ended? Literally just read what the lead guy said about it.

>>3033116
Honestly I have no idea why he left us.

Did the pokemon comfy crew have any idea why the comfyman left them?
Did the Jerusalemites have an idea why Jesus left them?

He just up and disappeared with the wind one day, and hasn't been back for 11 days now.
That's like six years in meme project time.

>>3033147
>He just up and disappeared with the wind one day
Nope he said he was going to take some time. I can understand it since the project is pretty ambicious and probably started burning him out.
But it doesn't mean he dropped it.

>>3033116
Why is there only one "literally" in your post? You could have managed to squeeze one in before every verb.

>>3033651
Jesus also said "cya lates" before he disappeared forever up on the cross.

That doesn't mean he's coming back for us.

Hey, since there's been a lot of talk about retro Pokémon in this thread, would it be out of line if I posted a recent cover I did in Pokémon Crystal's audio engine? The song itself is from a non-retro Pokémon game but it plays in Crystal. The reason I'm asking is because I'm not sure if I'm going to actually do a hack, right now I just like making music in the engine for fun.

Normally I just ask /vp/ hack threads for feedback but I haven't seen one up since the new games got announced and the board started moving super fast (relatively), so I thought I could ask here.

>>3016834
There are a few DKC2 hacks here: http://www.dkc-atlas.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33&sid=d59d6d9cc8e97db0f32283b2de37b58e

Most of them look like shit or seem to be completely abandoned, unfortunately.

>>3020552
>>3020851
I'm 99% sure that this just a fan art.

>>3033797
Post it!

Also, you should help vidyamon anon with his game.

Speaking of which, where the fuck is he anyway?

>>3035198
I don't think I could help vidyamon out that much, my spriting is terrible, pic related. I gave him a few suggestions and I'm hoping he succeeds at what he wants to accomplish with the hack.

Anyway,
https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1/mt-cornonet-gbc-8-bit-final-version

I really like Sinnoh music and an anon asked to try to cover this months ago. I found getting it to sound good while trying to keep in all the important songs was tough, and I ended up cutting out a small section of the song at the end, but I overall think I did a good job. I haven't received any criticism on it, though, which makes me concerned that I've inflated my ego and think it's better than it actually is.

>>3035198
>Speaking of which, where the fuck is he anyway?

He said that he put Vidyamon on hold for the time being.

>>3035230
You probably did one of my favourite tracks!
I'm not an expert or anything, so I don't think I can give you proper criticism, so all I can say is that I like it.

I have a fuckton of romhacks for Super Metroid.
Any recommended hacks or should I just play vanila on my first playthrough?

>>3037276
>Any recommended hacks or should I just play vanila on my first playthrough?

>>3037276
Nigga you ALWAYS play vanilla on your first playthrough. The only time you'd be okay not doing so is for something like that Simon's Quest hack that retranslates the game and makes text scroll faster, since that's minor and doesn't change the content within the game itself.

>>3037434
Cool, I just thought there might be some bugfixes and whatnot like A Link to the Past has and other games.

>>3035230
>pic related
Those are actually pretty good, anon, just need a little bit of polishing, but you are there.

>>3037276
>>3037434
Or when you can play something like an improved version, like Sonic 3C

>>3037276
play vanilla, then Z-Factor

>>3037592
I'd count Sonic 3C as similar to that Simon's Quest hack.

I mean there might be something like that for Super Metroid, but I only hear people talk about retardedly hard hacks that require ten million bomb jumps in a row and all that shit.

>>3037756
Add Sonic 2 extended if you wanna see cut content from Sonic 2. Although honestly the re-implemented levels aren't modified so they still have kind of shitty layouts (the second act of Genocide City Zone is exactly the same as the first but with a boss) but it's cool to see what was cut and more chances to get the emeralds.

There's a Kirby's Dream Course editor by the same man who did the Kirby's Adventure editor and the Exhal tools.

also apparently Zombies Ate My Neighbors got an editor release recently.

>>3037592
>Or when you can play something like an improved version, like Sonic 3C

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Sonic 3C have glitches that weren't present in the original?

>>3038467
>>3038475
cool

>>3033101
>>3033115
That's the joy of having a dev team small enough to be manageable, but large enough that we have specialists in every area of romhacking. Clover's almost finished, actually.

Also, "Not retro" and similar catchphrases.

If you insert or delete data in a SNES ROM, do you have to modify pointers to ROM data manually, or is there some tool to do it for you?

>>3041653
The SNES's CPU has some state-dependent behavior, so while it is possible to guess most of the time what code will do, in general it is impossible to trace a 65816 program without actually executing because the task is equivalent to the undecidable halting problem.

This means that, while in theory you could program something to help you generically fix pointers some of the time, you can't write a program to do it all of the time. Practically you'd be better off reverse engineering specific games and writing programs to edit the specific level data correctly.

Furthermore, if the pointer in question is a run time computed quantity, you're really up shit's creek on that one because of the halting problem, and while it would be possible to catch a lot of common cases with a generic program, no algorithm could do it perfectly. And there is a lot of variety in how people code assembly.

So, no, there isn't a program that does pointer magic for you both practically and theoretically. Nor has anyone tried to make such a program for the SNES to the best of my knowledge.

That being said I have been working on an SNES disassembler, although for the reasons outlined, it would necessarily require human input to figure out tricky runtime cases.

Btw, what's gotten you thinking about pointers and hacking? Any ideas in mind?

>>3041680
Want to insert new items, enemies and IP attacks on Lufia 2, they are coded so you get the enemy/item data, and then a small custom script of variable size, so as soon as one definition ends, the next begins. Item drops also require inserting a couple bytes to add one to enemies that don't have one already.
The problem is that once you modify the length of one enemy/IP script or add an item drop, everything placed afterwards becomes (obviously) broken.

What tools can I use to ease my way in? It's my first ROM hack, and while I am familiar with coding, ASM and such, modifying the binary blob without breaking it is a thing I never did before. The ROM has some empty space to work with, and I can actually overwrite a few things if needed, but making it so everything gets actually "found" and used is the tricky part.
I assume it'd be a thing translation patches have to face as they have to modify string length, so there's probably something out there.

>>3041680
As a side note, that ship looks damn cool, where is it from?

>>3041729
Crack open a hex editor with a search function and find the pointer table, then you can change the lengths of the data that it points to. If you know the addresses of the data, you have a good chance of finding the pointer table. Often, it immediately precedes the data. For SNES games pointers are almost always two bytes so try searching the rom for two-byte values the match the least significant digits of the addresses of the data. Usually pointers are absolute values (or relative to zero) but if they are relative to some other value, you can try searching for two byte values where the distances between successive values are the same as the lengths of the data. But that's a pretty rare case.

>>3041829
P.S. searching and editing binary data can be a pain in the ass to do manually, so it will make your life a whole lot easier if you know how to do binary file I/O operations with a scripting language like Python.

>>3041829
Gotcha, sounds reasonable. I'll probably try to do it manually at first then automate it with a script as soon as I have a working method to automate.
Probably some sort of GUI tool to make the attack scripts as well. It's a bit of a pain but it'll be worth it.

OP, didn't you plan to make a fangame list? What happened with it?

>>3023401
>>3022987

>dithering
>JUST LIKE THE LATER MEGAMANS RIGHT GAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIS

>first time coding my own shit in ASM
>anxious that I will break the game
>code does nothing

That's life, hahaha. What a story.

>>3043793
>>>/v/, retard.

Hello i have been trying to find rom addresses in nes dragon warrior 4.

Is there any secrets to finding rom addresses? i have been sorta using fceux trace logger and debugger and i made like a binary value dump of the rom so i can search for specific values.

omg what else can i do?

Anybody has an idea of what's going on here?
It's there a reason why the sprites get torn off?

>>3046134
If it's not a bits-per-plane issue that YY-CHR can resolve, then the characters require some extra processing before they are ready to load into VRAM. Perhaps they are 3bpp characters that need to be decompressed to 4bpp (ala SMW)?

If you get a debugging emulator you can set a read breakpoint at the address of the characters and wait for the game to access them. If you can read assembly you might be able to see what the extra computation is.

>>3046141
they are not characters, they are sprites, portraits of the characters to be exact.
I belive you might be right in that there might be an inbetween processing missing to view the full sprites, though isn't it strange I'm able to see portions of them just fine?

here's a screenshot for comparison

>>3046175
By "characters" I am referring to the Nintendo's technical terminology of the graphics data before a palette is applied, ie what you are looking at. I don't really like the word, but I'm used to it.

You can see some portions just fine because 3bpp (or whatever their semi-compression strategy was) still has a lot of the same structure 4bpp has. If the graphics were fully compressed, they'd look closer to static, but often times commonly used graphics are left uncompressed or very loosely compressed because it takes a long time to run full decompression, and graphics need to be updated rapidly.

Btw, actually both "objects" (what you would a sprite) and "backgrounds", the two graphics primitives on the SNES, can use the same character data.

Hi, I posted some weeks ago here asking about a FFTA hack.
From what I gathered the sentiment wasn't bad but it didn't fit the board's rules, however this is the only pace I figure I could request this and hope to get an answer so here it goes:

Does anybody know of a repointing tutorial that isn't game-specific or that just covers the basics without game specific tools?
I have a bunch of text entries that I need to assign more room to but I have no idea what I'm actually meant to change to make the game look for that data in a different place.

>>3046134
wrong canvas size. see webm
also wrong palette i know

>>3046194
>>3046185
oh wow, so that was the problem then.
thank you both, I'm still pretty new to the romhacking bussiness

>>3046186
To a CPU, memory looks like a big linear array of bytes indexed by a single number called the "address".

A CPU is free to specify any integer address in the range [0,2^n-1], where "n" is the number of bits in a fully specified address. This range is called the "address space" of the CPU.

All external memories (ROM, RAM, external registers) connected to a CPU's "address bus" are assigned an address in the address space. When the CPU puts an address on the address bus, it can then read/write from that location using the "data bus". In this way the CPU can uniquely access code, data, and hardware mapped I/O all in the same manner.

An address, being just a number, can itself be stored in memory. When an address is stored in memory, it is called a "pointer".

Pointers, being located in memory, are stored at their own addresses. The address a pointer is stored at is in general different from the value of the pointer. This is the main point of confusion when people first encounter pointers. However when memory is viewed as above, I hope this is obvious for you.

By using pointers, one can very efficiently refer to data in a program by address only, rather than having to copy the data. The savings are critical when you consider huge data structures like level data.

As mentioned, everything is uniquely identified by its address. That includes the locations of programs, graphics, music, and even the text you are trying to edit. If you move anything around in memory that is referred to by a hardcoded pointer in ROM, then you have to "fix" the pointer or else the program will access the wrong data. This is complicated by the fact that a ROM is "mapped" to the CPU in nontrivial ways (ie ROM file address 0 != CPU address 0).

To perform most non-trivial hacks, you must first locate the data you want to edit in ROM, understand how the program accesses that data, and then fix any hardcoded pointers used in that process. This is highly game dependent.

>>3046315
This is highly game dependent, but there are common techniques to solve this.

For instance, if you can locate the data you want to edit in ROM, you can figure out what the CPU address is, and then search ROM for that address. This is often the case with graphics and text.

Furthermore if you're lucky the pointers you are looking for are all located in one array called a "pointer table". These things are gold mines for hackers because they contain the address of every related concept they are investigating (ie finding a level pointer table allows one to document every level in the game, possibly even dummied out ones.)

Unfortunately in general you may find more complicated data structures that aren't so easy to reverse engineer, and the only recourse then is to disassemble the program.

Hope this summary helps your understanding.

Now, specifically concerning what you want to do, it sounds like you know where the text is. The next step is to search for the pointer data the program uses to find the text. You really need to be comfortable with the ROM-CPU mapping to do this. Take a text strings ROM address, convert it to a CPU address, search for that address in ROM. If you're lucky you'll be searching for 24-bit addresses which are fairly unique numbers. If the pointers are 16-bit, then they are probably located near the text, or near the program that handles the text. Once again, unfortunately unless you know assembly, your options to hack rapidly run out if you aren't lucky enough to find tables.

>>3046315
>>3046327
This was actually the sort of introduction I was hoping for exactly.
A shame 4chanx didn't tell me about the replies since now I'm four hours into a workaround that will achieve a functionally similar result; but I'm sure that new instances where this is necessary will arise as development continues, hopefully with elements that are easier to work with that these, too.

And you were not wrong at all with the main point of confusion you bring up in your first post. Many things I'd seen around didn't to add up because of the addresses at which pointers were being stored didn't match what I expected them to, so I assumed I was missing something and redid steps expecting results that never came.

Again, thanks for the neutral look at it as it really does help. Out of necessity I've grown to be good enough at working around issues one way or another, but at times the ability to make the game look elsewhere for X data seems just critical. It probably is, too.

Hello guys. I completed a hack. The Yoshi has special abilities.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tuuqjscwww4ecnr/Yoshi%20Quest%20-%20The%20Awakening%20of%20Magic.zip?dl=0

Enjoy the hack! Give comments!

A question if I may.
If a game has compressed text, is there supposed to be a table of sorts that has data concerning what each compressed word is referenced to, or by contrast is it more common to have the actual descriptions be amalgamations of words that are then decompressed following a certain pattern?

Mind you I'm not trying to decompress the text, that's way out of my league. I'm just wondering if I could repurpose it by just ovewriting it with plaintext. Seems like with the first type of compression it shouldn't be a problem.

>>3048132
You are trying to modify text from a game that doesn't really have a lot of it, unlike, say, an RPG. It would be surprising to me if the text is compressed. However if it is, while the encoding is probably unique to the game, the decompression process is probably very simple.

The decompression code probably only takes a source and destination address as arguments, and decompresses the data without any other input. Honestly, I've never seen tables used for compression except perhaps for RPGs to use non-prinitable ASCII codes for common words (ie "the") or special text commands (ie bold).

For you, probably the simplest thing you could do if the game text is compressed is to find the code that decompresses strings and dummy it out with code that just straight up copies uncompressed data from one address to another. Memory isn't an issue nowadays, so this is okay most of the time.

>>3049389
The game does have a relatively high amount of text to be fair, as an SRPG it has wordy descriptions for just about any concept and dialogues happen often enough.
The odd thing is a sizable chunk of this text is compressed, there's also a moderate amount of it that isn't. Since "moderate" is relative to the amount of text overall, it's actually a remarkable amount of stuff to be straight up modified without further involvement.

I had some size constraints, so I was considering repurposing compressed strings
by cutting them short, but after I realized I can just merge any number of consecutive uncompressed ones it stopped being an issue.

The idea about replacing the code that takes care of uncompressed data with code that copies is elsewhere is good though, don't think that would've occurred to me.

>>3046981
While the Yoshi graphics and level palettes are nice (I like how all cave levels have that nice gradient at the bottom going), it's obvious the levels are just modified versions of the original Super Mario World levels (the unchanged overworld makes it even more overwhelmingly obvious) and it's really easy, why are there two blocks with Mushrooms/Fire Flowers right next to each other, even something right after a mid level checkpoint? Seriously, space that shit out.

Final Fantasy VI Advance sound restoration just got updated

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/657/

now we need to use the other fixes and put it in /vr/ shares

>>3053291
>sound restoration

It's still restrained by the console's 8bit DAC, hence it's never going to sound as good as the SNES version.

>>3053297
Yeah, I wish they'd stop calling it that.
Hell, VI's patch doesn't even faithfully "restore" the original audio in the first place, it uses an orchestral version of the opera music instead of the original.

So like, what's the deal with Vidyamon?
Is it dead?

>>3054660
The guy said he wanted a break. That's it.

bump

>>3046315
Man deleting a post as helpful as this because of videogame censored retroboobs is harsh.
Reposting for anon's great work.

>>3055928
Damn, I didn't even notice. Funny thing is that was the opening image of a mahjong thread that died naturally a couple weeks ago. I think the janitor hates me for some reason because a lot of my posts and threads get deleted, even when my main goal is to improve the level of dialogue on the board (besides shitposting in shit threads that wont die and that the jani really ought to delete but doesn't).

Oh well, I'm glad you got a lot out of it.

>>3055953
Janitors can get rather petty

Corocoro was a disappointment. Please come back vidya anon.

>>3055928
>Janitors
>in charge of being useful

Did you know you can get posts deleted by arguing about janitor and mod activities? I mean what the fuck.

>>3057575
not fully leaked yet

>>3057598
Says who?

>>3057959
me. i have the full thing but i'm not sharing it :^)

>>3057982
You fiend!

Hello, I am trying to figure out how to patch Sonic 3 Complete. What the fuck do I do? The wiki mentions NOWHERE how to patch this

>>3037628
>Z-FACTOR

>>3058314
Oh, its distributed as a full fucking game. Jesus christ all this fucking time

Has a Kirby Super Star level editor come out yet?

>>3058393
Z-Factor is good, fuck you

>>3058314
>>3058450
Thanks for the smile anon.

You're alright.

>>3058551
Oh shit, there actually has.

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1151/

Huh.

>>3059278
Not retro

>>3059278
>tiles in Kirby are 24x24 rather than 16x16
huh, I never realized that before, how funny

>>3059709
>KSS
>not retro
>inb4 they're not the same game

>>3060407
Really? I always sorta though the tiles in Superstar were kinda big, but not enough for it to feel too... Enlarged.

>>3057575
On the bright side I made more progress with my hack. Ended up doing another route theme (I don't even know if I'll use it but I think it sounds good, I just love making music) and figured out how to add new maps, then made a little developer location a la Game Freak HQ in Celadon.

https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1/unova-route-2-gbc-8-bit

This is the route theme, and the hacker location is a little forest clearing east of Ilex, because rural areas are comfier than apartments.

Dropping by to say my fan-translation for this pretty cool PS1 game is right on track for a mid- or late-2016 release. It's a 2-disc game of which we released the first one last year without knowing whether disc 2 would be possible to translate but I worked things out and this will be the project final year.

Not many PS1 fan-translations around, so I'm happy that me and my team will be completing one after 7 years of trials and tribulations.

bump

Any recommended romhacks for Super Metroid that are *NOT* on the big list you guys can think of

I've now played all of them but Hydelius and there's nothing left

The only one I played that's not on the list so far is Eris, which was really hard but really cool

made a hack of the rockman and forte title screen

i've no clue how to fucking fix the palette though

>>3063517
It looks... unfinished.

>>3063593
it is.
ive been working on it the past week, so not that much time has been put into it
it's my very first rom hack ever.

i'm not really feeling finishing adding the gradients till i can figure out the palette issue, like i said i'm a newbie to this shit

Alright, the list should be up to date now. I hope.

http://pastebin.com/pYxhe4L7

>>3043397
Ah, the fangame list. I had some early draft of the Mega Man section finished before giving up. The main problem I had is that it's really tough to find good fangames. I would love to continue working on it, though.

>>3063187
almost all Super Metroid hacks are trash. They always change the physics, or replace the graphics with garish tilesets that look like they were drawn in MS Paint, or both.

>>3065756
>that look like they were drawn in MS Paint
I sure wonder why they look the part anon, I sure do.

How feasible would it to take Zelda II FDS, and add all the improvements from Zelda II NES into it? Make a best of both worlds version and all. A retranslation would probably be in order as well, though the original translation is probably good enough.

>>3063606
>>3063517

Holy Shit! I was just working on this too but I got stuck and gave up. Mind sharing?

>>3063517
..but hasn't such a hack to change the title screen to "Mega Man & Bass" already been done?

>>3065756
>almost all Super Metroid hacks are trash.

>>3065756
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH9Yw-dm20g

>>3066314
That's really well done!

>>3066321
check the guy's other videos. He is without a doubt the absolute madman.

>>3066254
Not with anything that looks like official artwork, no. >>3066087
Yeah actually I don't wanna post anything until I figure how to unfuck the palette

>>3015551
>jonbound not in the pastebin

w
e
w lads

>>3065963
Well okay, MS Paint is fine for pixel art. I was just trying to convey that they often use flat shading and clashing colors, since those are traits that I associate with MS Paint art.

>>3015551
>you have to get premium in order to download folders
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK NIGGER?
Mega does this shit for FREE.

Let's suppose I have a japanese gameboy color rom, and I wanted to translate some names into english. What would you do?

1) Cram all text into the already defined boundaries (until EOL)
2) Rewrite all text until the EOL of the block of text
3) Rewrite all text and redefine all boundaries, including the last EOL (what if you don't have more space?)

>>3068314
what game

>>3067846
you don't need a 'premium account' to download individual files retard

>>3068850
I think he's complaining about folders, not single files.

Complete hacking dumbshit here asking for help on how to make use of this script utility

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/477/

Been trying everything I can to open the script files after the utility dumps them but nothing yet, please help this scrub.

Metroid: Rogue Dawn

>NES
>MMC3 upgrade
>Custom music by Optomon
>Improved graphics
>More content

Looks promising.
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,18620.0.html

>>3068850
I meant FOLDERS.

>>3068985
>This is a prequel and takes place before Samus becomes a bounty hunter. It is an attempt to fill in the missing details at the root of the series. Why is Samus so obsessed with the Metroids? Why does she feel responsible for their eradication? How did the mother brain facility end up with the species on ZEBES? And why did Samus go to the planet SR388 in Metroid 2 to finish off the Metroids, how did she know to go there?
Literally all these things are explained in the game backstories for Metroid and Metroid II.
>the entire rest of the story summary
jesus fucking christ why

>>3070419
expecting fanfiction to be well informed and not slop mopped up from the floor of some deviant art page

>expecting people who have no originality to make anything of worth

Straight up the worst thing you can do is piggy back off of someone else' original content and success.

>>3068985
>That story
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse story than Hyper Metroid, but there ya go.

Anyone check out this channel yet? There's lots of SMW stuff, for those who are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwBbjSNHvA6UXToVS0QbHow/videos

If I find out a GBC's game's graphics are compressed, what should I do? I did and I'm currently clueless, all I've done is to try and trace the calls.

>>3070623
First locate the compression routine. If you find a RAM location where something is decompressed to (level data, graphics, music, etc), then set a breakpoint for write to that location. When the program breaks, you'll be inside the decompression routine.

Now you have 2 options:

Easy, lame way:
If you emulate and memory is not an issue, you can disable the decompression routine by saving decompressed data in ROM and fixing pointers. Effectively you are making the decompress into a memory copy routine.

Harder, cooler way:
Disassemble the decompression routine (not trivial, even by disassembly standards because these things are highly optimized and mathy). Write compression routine against it. Have fun inserting and removing data to your heart's content.

>>3070634
I tried to manually trace the calls and I kind of wrote a pseudocode for it, but I figured out there had to be other ways.

>you can disable the decompression routine by saving decompressed data in ROM and fixing pointers
Simpler is better. So, how do I go about doing this? I emulate, make a write breakpoint to the first pixel that's supposed to be written (I figured the tiles are decompressed in an orderly manner)... Then what? Do I wait until all data is decompressed, then I edit the graphics or something?

>>3070637
Yeah, so it's conceptually easy, but laborious because you will have to fix a lot of broken pointers.

You will need to wait until the data is decompressed, save that data in ROM, and (the tricky part) fix the pointers that direct the decompression routine.

If you disable the decompression routine, you are free to dummy out all the memory associated with the program and write your own program in its place. Just write a program that takes the decompression routines arguments (99% chance its just a source and location address), and replace it with a memory copy program. You may need to append the uncompressed data with a number telling the routine how long the data is, because decompression might have other ways of knowing when to stop, like a null terminator.

Make sense?

>>3070642
So you're suggesting me that I should just replace the decompression routine with a memory copy program, which should be easy to code. And then I just edit the tiles as much as I want without worrying about broken pointers, yes? Luckily this is feasible because the ROM sprites for text use more or less the same space they would do uncompressed.

Now another question. What if I break something else that depends on this program?

>>3070650
>without worrying about broken pointers
no no no, broken pointers are bad. The hard part I was talking about is you have to reverse engineer how the game feeds pointers to the decompression routine so you can not only fix broken pointers, but also know if you broke something else that needs to be fixed.

For instance, one way I have seen pointers be fed to a decompression routine is by having the data in the code stream itself. The decompression code would manipulate the return address on stack to step over the hardcoded arguments when the program returned. In this case, the data was local to the call. But there are many other ways people have devised to call their decompression routines.

>What if I break something else that depends on this program?
Answered above, but a lot of the fun (and experimental side) in hacking is watching what happens when you poke the brain of a video game and see it twitch.

>>3070692
I'm too sleepy to think anymore, but, once I can get to work in this I will give it a try. I maybe will be able to reverse engineer the code this way.

Thank you very much. Oh, and cute gif!

>>3070569
Found the best hack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHUsL582hjk
Almost started laughing at the title screen, and the concept of the hack is pretty funny, too.
Also, I can't find that picture of Mewtwo eating pizza.

>>3071808
Jesus christ so many videos on that channel.

>>3070692
jesus all this knowledge to modify a children toy

>>3061502
Thanks for sticking with it.

Are there any Paper Mario romhacks?

>>3071818
Computers are what they are today because of nuclear weapons, meteorology, and video games.

>>3068865
So no one knows how this thing works?

>>3072228
The PM hacking scene is still young. The only worthwhile hacks we have so far are:
>hard mode(1.5x enemy ATK)
>insane mode(2x enemy ATK)
>hardcore mode(2x enemy ATK + more enemy HP)

If you decide to try any of these, I'd recommend as a self-imposed challenge that you don't use any stun attacks(Lullaby, Dizzy Shell, Power Shock, etc.) as they completely break the game and null the purpose of these hacks. Also, if you cook a Volt Shroom, you'll get a Hot Shroom, which is a very handy healing item that you might want to use.

The only hacking tool we currently have is Kirigami, which is quite limited. It isn't even suited to making simple difficulty hacks, as it cannot change the ATK power of enemies. You can check out the program yourself, but don't expect much. It is just version 0.1.1 after all.

On the flipside, a user named Clover is working on another (currently unnamed)tool. It is much more fully featured and will come with a badass demo hack with new side areas and a boss rush. The main limitation to Clover's tool is that it won't be able to change music(at least, until someone figures out how music works in PM). I'm super excited, both to use the tool and see what other people can make with it.

>>3072234
and porn

Bump

>>3068985
That looks pretty cool.

>>3072732
>The only worthwhile hacks we have so far are blah blah blah
The problem is that number inflation is never the answer to any kind of difficulty. If people understood that concept, then difficulty hacks would be so much better.

An ideal difficulty hack is one where it's dangerous to actually attack the enemy.

>>3076431
>The problem is that number inflation is never the answer to any kind of difficulty.
Usually, I'd agree with you, but Paper Mario's enemy numbers are insanely low. Firstly, they have so low HP that you can one-shot nearly any enemy turn 1 with PBomb+Starstorm or something similar. In addition, you can heal faster than nearly any enemy can attack, especially with Deep Focus stacking, Defense Plus, Damage Dodge, et cetera.
The base game is so broken that number inflation actually works somewhat. It isn't perfect, but it's a start, and it shouldn't be dismissed.

>If people understood that concept, then difficulty hacks would be so much better.
The problem with that is that it's more complicated to change things that aren't numbers, especially at this point in time in regards to the PM hacking scene.

>An ideal difficulty hack is one where it's dangerous to actually attack the enemy.
I don't really understand this point. What exactly is dangerous about the enemies in this ideal hack?

>>3076726
He means that enemies should counterattack so that you're forced to use trial and error to learn what attacks you can use, in other words, BNW-style "real" difficulty

>>3076839
>you're forced to use trial and error to learn what attacks you can use

Paper Mario already has that. You can't use the hammer on winged Goombas without missing, can't jump on those helmet Goombas without taking damage, etc.

Or does he want there to not be any visual hints like the helmet goombas having spikes?

What skills do you need to learn in order to hack ROMs?

>>3015814
I love your work man, I learned a great deal from observing the threads about the development of the SNES game

>All that I've had time to do recently was the "mega man" series of posts in thread #6 that was detailing how computers work and the basics of assembly.

Please link?

>>3077553
>Please link?

https://desustorage.org/vr/thread/2854976

Hey, I posted music earlier without it being a problem, so I thought it would be okay to ask for feedback on the latest track.

https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1/maxiearchiebattle-wipwav
I've tried a few things but haven't been sucessful at making this sound good, the whole thing feels empty. I've asked others for feedback but nobody will give me anything constructive, so I thought I'd try here.

Also posting two finished recent covers I did since the last time I posted covers here; I think these two are much better put together but if anyone has criticism for these as well it'd be handy.
https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1/littleroot-town-gbc-8-bit
https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1/vs-hoenn-gym-leader-gbc-8-bit

I'm just having a lot of trouble with the WIP first track, which prompted me to post.

Don't have much else to speak about progress, inserted a few trainer classes but that's all. Hopefully I haven't overstepped my boundaries by asking, and I apologize if I have.

Hi, I made this

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2760/

feedback is appreesh

I would love to learn how to code for the snes, what is required?

>>3080328
Holy shit, assembly. Nevermind.

>>3080328
Do you want to modify an existing game or create an original one?

>>3080357
DON'T GIVE UP

>>3080323
The levels could be longer, but other than that it's not half bad.

Back in the palm pilot days where I first discovered roms, there was a big scene for romhacks and modified shit.

I'm 90% sure this exists, but I have sweeped the internet several times and I can never find a trace of this even existing save for one forum comment. It's a romhack of Survival Kids for the gameboy to be more like a pokemon game. From the start you can pick a trainer (I think it was gold and crystal) instead of the standard two kids. Then a pikachu wakes you up on the beach instead of a monkey.

From there you go on as normal, cooking pokemon instead of animals. Is this ringing any bells for anyone?

>>3016448
>Person puts their free time into a project
>Gets disillusioned
>"Hope cunt gets cancer"
Suck a dick, people don't owe you shit.

>>3085467
You're right that that anon shouldn't behave like that, but not releasing the source code is dumb to be honest. Why wouldn't the developer do it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EidVPEg3WjQ

>>3085486
this.
There's no reason for any ROM hacking tool to be closed source, really. We're a niche community, being non-open source only hurts us all. Worst offender being FuSoYa but there are others too.

Some don't even realize they could do it. I've seen a bunch of threads where the author only wanted to release the tool as quickly as possible, and only after a "Can we have the source code?" post the author released it alongside an "Okay yeah sure whatever" message.

MarCas remains closed source because the author is "ashamed of the code quality"

ugh

Somebody mod Jackal already!
I want spread guns on my Jackal...
and Lasers too!

>>3086820
But couldn't people improve the code quality with fixes? I can't code for shit and I know if I tried making a tool and releasing the code I'd probably get a few "holy shit why did you do it this way" comments but they'd likely be accompanied by posts suggesting how to improve said code, so I'd think it were worth it.

Please tell me someone saved the Vidyamon spritesheet.

I had to reboot my system and lost EVERYTHING.

>>3088294
Well, it's in the archive(s), isn't it?

>>3088294
this one?

>>3079080
I'm just here to tell you fuck your username

>>3088350

http://www.baddesthacks.net/?p=1974

Look's like /pol/ made a Donald Trump hack.

>>3088329
>Non retro characters
>Playstation Characters
>fucking disgusting ass Kingdom Hearts characters

What a bunch of trash.

>>3088329
Yes, thank you.

>>3088596
No one asked you.

>>3088593
Would you just fuck right off
You shill your shitty site for shitty hacks every fucking thread, why can't you leave us alone?

>>3088596
It's Vidyamon, not /vr/mon, you colossal faggot.

>>3088294

>>3088294
Shit, here I cant attach a few images

>>3088294

Will there ever be a Super Mario 64 ROM hack as good as Star Road?

>>3090065
Star Road 2.
Around the world seems nice, but if progress goes on like this it's going to take a lot of time.
Kaze's new hack looks promising.
I guess some of the Star Revenge hacks seem nice, but I haven't seen enough yet to talk about it.

>>3089897
>>3089832
>>3089831
Thanks a bunch guys. I guess I gotta start from scratch again, huh?

Fuck it, I'll just use the Crystal rom instead. You win Crystal anon.

So who the fick should Kris be? /jp/, right?

>>3090780
Does /vg/ have a -tan?

>>3090815

>>3090815
Not that I'm aware of.

>>3090945
FUCK ME, DISREGARD THAT TRIP

>>3090948
Too late tripfag! TRIPFAG EVERYONE LOOK AT THE TRIPFAG WHAT A FUCKING PRICK!

>>3090952
OH NOOOOOOO MY CAREER OF POSTING ON 4CHAN IS OVER

Does anyone have the link to the Disassembler for Pokémon Crystal? I want to try that now.

>>3090991
https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal

It's already disassembled, you get the disassembled code.

>>3090815
Does /vr/ have one?
I would mind drawing one, but I'm afraid there would be no way to get at least most people here to agree on one design.

>>3091386
/vr/ has a -tan. I was in the thread he was created in, everyone came to a conclusion on what he should be very peacefully and quickly.

>>3015814
I'm currently reading through this thread http://desustorage.org/vr/thread/2854976/#q2854976 and I want to say thanks for your work and explanations, keep it up.

>>3088294
FUCK

>>3090780
/vr/-tan in drag. Facial hair and all.

>>3088305
Would someone go through it and compile the most updated back sprites and shinies?
Some of
>>3089831
>>3089832
Are outdated

Are there any good SMB3 hacks with custom power-ups besides Mario Adventure and 3mix (played both of those)?

>>3083546
HELP MEEEE

>>3088593
Why was this deleted?

>>3093469
Mentioning that board or posting something inflammatory that belongs there can get your post deleted. It was either that or it was considered spamming or marketing.

>>3093484
I don't see how bringing the hack up is inflammatory. I'm not a /pol/ browser but I think we can tolerate a little racism, I've never been banned for bringing up Super Penis Nazi Cartel Freedom Fighters 3, which is in the vein of that hack but more offensive.

>marketing

This whole thread would be marketing then since we're all talking about hacks we're making.


Also how the hell do you beat 4-2 in that hack, it's an endless loop and all the pipes bring you back to the start it seems.

>>3093495
>I think we can tolerate a little racism
Global Rule 3 says otherwise. It won't always get deleted, but it's more likely to be deleted eventually on slow boards.

>>3093513
>Global Rule 3 says otherwise.

Global Rule 3 isn't that stricty enforced. If it were, I'd be banned for calling someone a nigger. I've never been banned for calling someone a nigger.

The only times I usually see GR3 get enforced is if someone reveals their race and then gets insulted as a direct result, like someone mentioning they're Mexican and being told "fuck off spic" as a result. A so-bad-it's-good Donald Trump hack doesn't fit that criteria in my opinion and I don't see it as worthy of being deleted, especially on a more chill board like /vr/.

>>3093517
It is enforced. It's just that the mods always have a hard time keeping up with reports. Like I said, slower boards are more likely to be cleaned up eventually.

This is now wildly off topic. We should end it here.

>>3093525
Fine, but I still disagree.

>>3088329
What about the pastebin with all the characters and their corresponding pokemon?

>>3093517
That's really what it means by racism, otherwise /pol/ would burn to the ground and jokes about Islam wouldn't be allowed.

tl;dr don't be racist to your fellow anons, they can't help the way they were born unlike faggots

>>3072732
Will Clover ever finish his tool?

>>3093554
I still have that.
Luckily the only new sprite I was doing that was never posted here was Banjo and Kazooie. http://pastebin.com/JRXwwenK

Dialogue and map data was the only thing I've lost really, all backsprites and frontsprites are accounted for. Well... except for the shiny sprites. Which were futile really, because to do what we were doing (replace shiny recolors with different sprites entirely) I would've had to resized the file to accommodate 250 additional sprites.

God fucking damnit though.

At least I've learned my lesson though. I'll probably set up a Dropbox or someshit in the future.

>>3088696
>>3088873
Doesn't matter.

Even if it is vidyamon, non Nintendo character have no right to even be in it.

>>3094280

>>3093027
>clearly a nerdy manchild in a dress
>nobody realizes he's not really a cute little girl

>>3094280

>Working on messing around with Wonderboy In Monsterland
>2/3rds of the rom is compressed graphical data
>Z80 ASM documentation can be confusing and contradicting
>Data Crystal doesn't even have a Sega Master System section
This is gonna be a long slow slog just to get a rommap going.

>>3016890
Yea the pre-rendered graphics are too sophisticated and complex to mess around with. I've tried it myself and, while I do feel comfortable with it, it still equires a lot of work. If someone had enough time to invest into hacking this game, then we could have something worth giving praise in these rather unexplored whereabouts.

>>3095329
What are you wanting to do specifically?

>>3095352
Map the fucker out as well as I can. Looking to make some changes to the game for shits and giggles down the line.

>>3095364
Have you ever programmed assembly/disassembled before?

Are you using a debugging emulator to trace the program? (Is there even one for the MS?) If not I'm not sure how far you'll get; mapping a rom is a huge task, even for old games.

If you can trace the code, it should easy to determine where most of the code is by playing the game and doing as much unique shit as possible.

If you can set breakpoints, with some ingenuity you can locate the decompression routine. Hacking that and looking in the program for calls to the routine will let you map out all that compressed data, of which there will be probably only 3 types: level data, graphic data, and music data.

Z80 is very well documented. However many companies used a Z80 core and customized the CPU and peripheries, so non-standard SEGA specific stuff may not be well documented. romhacking.net is the best resource for system specific documents.

>>3095396
>Have you ever programmed assembly/disassembled before?
No/Somewhat.
>Are you using a debugging emulator to trace the program? (Is there even one for the MS?)
God, I wish SMS had something like FCEUX, that would make my life a lot easier. As it is, I consider myself lucky I found a disassembler that labels all jumps and seperate sections of code. Between that, HxD, and a tool for working with the compressed graphical data, here's what I've got so far:

16KB banks, 16 of em, banks 0-4 contain the program code and some misc graphics(main character, text), and banks 5-15 contain compressed graphical data for all the enemies, shops, menu screens, and tilemap data for levels. I think banks 9-12 contain sound/music data, but I'm not %100 sure just yet.
I'm trying to take it one bank at a time, so right now I'm messing around with bank 0. So far I've located a few bits of data that don't LOOK like Z80 ASM, but appear to be an essential part of the game code, or possibly how the SMS interprets data.

>I'm not sure how far you'll get; mapping a rom is a huge task, even for old games.

Don't worry bout me, I used to mess around with Earthbound for fun. This shit is a lot simpler.

>>3095759
Z80 is kinda weird, and the language is a bit hard on the eyes, but is not too difficult to understand. I've only disassembled Tetris' next block routine, but more or less could read it. I assume by saying you can disassemble somewhat, you can somewhat understand what the code is doing?

That's nice you have a Z80 disassembler. I have been kicking around the idea of writing a 65816 disassembler for a while, but there are run-time variables that sometimes can't be fully deduced unless the code is run (equivalent to halting problem), so it complicates things a little.

Banks 0-4 are going to be by far the hardest nuts to crack. Bank 0 most likely has the reset routine and main utility functions for managing memory, drawing to the screen, and updating VRAM and graphics registers during V-blank. Understanding these functions can make understanding the code much easier because they will be used all the time. The engine may be in the higher banks.

I'd suggest mapping out the data banks as much as possible to give you clues on how to interpret what is going on in the code. Unfortunately this may be difficult for you without an debugging emulator. I'm used to finding level data locations in RAM and working back from there.

How hard is to hack a SNES RPG just to correct some text or change the name of a character, item?

>>3096158
Depends on the RPG and whether or not the text is compressed or in a weird format

But usually not very hard

>>3095786
>I'd suggest mapping out the data banks as much as possible to give you clues on how to interpret what is going on in the code. Unfortunately this may be difficult for you without an debugging emulator. I'm used to finding level data locations in RAM and working back from there.
Which is why I'm stuck doing things the old-fashioned way, NOP-ing out a section of unknown data, then running it and see what happens. Already discovered a few bits of the main title screen code, or possibly LUTs used by the main title screen code. Still trying to figure out which they are. The fun continues!

>>3098285
>NOP-ing out a section of unknown data
I don't know almst anything, but just let me ask. Do you have any way to tell where you could stop NOP-ing somehow or do you just do it randomly?

bump

>>3100192
bump

>won't line up
why jesus

How much math do I need to know to get into this sort of stuff?

>>3098293
>Do you have any way to tell where you could stop NOP-ing somehow or do you just do it randomly?
Well, first I ran the rom through a disassembler, which gives me the code labeled and labels for the DATA sections. So I translated that into a ROM map, which tells me what needs NOPpin and which doesn't.

>>3102016
Because it takes less space on the ROM. Get used to it.

>>3102832
Depends on how deep you wanna go.
You just wanna fuck around? Grab Lunar Magic and start messing around with SMW.
You want to find out stuff about roms that aren't that well mapped out on Data Crystal? You can find out a lot with just a graphical editor.
Wanna get wild and crazy? Corrupting shit with a Hex editor is pretty easy.
Want to make changes to the code or how things are stored on the ROM? Knowing Hex is important.
Want to get deep into ASM? Better know Binary, Binary Coded Decimal, and Hex very well.

>>3102832
None whatsoever. Anyone who tells you hex is math is stroking their own ego.

>>3102871
Why wouldn't they just tell the truth?

Thankfully Vidyamon Rom link is still working

http://www.mediafire.com/download/bw9y44uw2qb52jb/Vidyamon.zip

>>3102871
Hey now. You can do a lot without it, but undoubtedly you will encounter at least some problems where knowing math makes your life easier. Especially in the old days when resources were limited, developers used all kinds of bit tricks and obscure algorithms to save time and space. I definitely wouldn't be as capable in this hobby as I am if I hadn't studied discrete mathematics and digital logic.

>>3102832
To directly work with a processor, all you need to know are the following:

Arithmetric (add, subtract)
Boolean algebra (AND, OR, XOR)
Numeric bases (Decimal, binary, octal, hexadecimal)

Everything else builds off these basic operations. In order to synthesize more complicated math (ie multiplication, exponentiation, sin, cos, trees, matrix operations, etc. etc.) you will either need to have a math handbook ready or a solid understanding of math. For old game programming this is rarely necessary. However things like graph algorithms can help you write more advanced programs like AIs and pathing algorithms. These latter topics fall under the umbrella of discreet math (as does boolean algebra).

Keep in mind that math is only about 1/3 of what a processor does. Moving data around and controlling program flow occupy the other 2/3.

Math is empowering. The more you know, the more you can do, and do well. But truth be told, you can start programming with next to no prior mathematical knowledge.

Pro Tip:
If you really want to be a mathematical gaming badass, learn basic physics (kinematics, Newton's laws), basic calculus (what a derivative and integral are conceptually), and for the love of god LINEAR ALGEBRA (specifically vectors and matrices). I'm an engineer and hands down Linear Algebra is the most useful and widely applicable math I know. Much of physics and computer graphics are based on vectors and their description and manipulation. Granted you probably won't have the computational horsepower to do heavy matrix math on old hardware without special hardware support.

>>3103052
btw, I want to point out that the mega man image posted here is actually extremely simple to realize in software (even though this particular implementation used an overkill hardware solution).

The lines are described by their endpoint's positional vectors which are transformed into screen coordinates by a matrix multiplication. Lines are then rasterize to connect the endpoints.

All in all the code could be less than 20 lines of C.

>>3103052
Not that guy, but I've been meaning to ask.
Say I want to translate or retranslate ROMs. How difficult is this?
I'd imagine graphical text is a different animal entirely, but I'm talking straight text here.
Also are there any particular hoops to jump through to replace a japanese alphabet with a roman one?

>>3103093
Translations are worthy tasks to work on, however they are by no means trivial.

First off, every game has it's own way to store text. If you're lucky, you find a standard encoding like ASCII. If the developer used a unique encoding, that already presents a small barrier.

For text heavy games, like RPGs, many other complications occur. For instance, many RPGs compress their data, so to do a proper translation, you'd have to reverse engineer the decompression routine and write your own compression routine. Some RPGs have complicated dialog trees dependent on game variables at the time of printing (ie character specific lines). Nearly all text heavy games also include their own non-printable encodings, such as a place holder for the main character's name, or maybe some common words are shortened to a single byte ("the" would be a good candidate).

Moreover, their are far more Kanji than RAM can possible hold at once, so a game might have some sort of paging strategy to load specific kanji at certain times (dunno, that's just conjecture).

Finally, not all text in a game is stored identically. For instance menus might have kanji baked in to their graphics that do not reference any text string in ROM. You'll have to hunt those down and fix them to, sometimes going through the preceding paragraphs hurdles all over again.

Clearly translation is not a trivial hack. However it's also not impossible, and a quality translation when none existed prior is universally appreciated.

You'd really need some assembly skills, translation skills, and reverse engineering skills to do a proper translation. Sometimes teamwork is the only way to get that skill set in one place.

>>3103052
This is undoubtedly a stupid question but I'll ask anyway.. How does a computer do calculus and physics? I mean, how does it move from doing one calculation to another? Is that where the logic operators come in? I'm astounded something as complex as videogames are even possible given its working with strings of 1 and 0

>>3103161
Whoops I see you sort of answered just that at the beginning of your post

>>3103120
That explains a lot of roms that are inexplicably untranslated.
Sounds at least partially doable though.

>>3103161
You can go far with just 1s and 0s. Perhaps the most important thing we have learned about the information age is just how useful it is to represent things in the abstract as data and manipulate that data with mathematics.

Think about it. The english alphabet can be interpreted as a base-26ish number system. Thus, if a word is interpreted as a number, you can convert any word into its binary equivalent. In fact, several words taken as a whole themselves can be encoded as a number if you count space as a part of the "english alphabet" base. In this manner, a book for instance can be assigned a unique number.

To address your question, calculus is realized in three ways on a computer: symbolically, analytically, and numerically.

1) Symbolically: the computer manipulates text strings by formal rules to derive results. This is only used for solving theoretical problems with a computer algebra systems, and practically never sees direct application.

2) Analytically: the programmer has a closed form solution that they implement directly. For instance, if you need to know the derivative of x^2, you can precompute 2*x and implement a function that let's you specify x on the fly. Fastest solution and most common solution.

3) Numerically: As soon as you move out of the class room, precious few problems can be solved for analytically. In this case, one must discretize the problem and resort to approximations. For instance, integration hardly ever results in simple formulas, however the definition of the Reimann Integral can be easily implemented to easily evaluate nasty integrals. Computer games use this if analytic solutions aren't available.

Physics and geometry is usually described with a combination of vectors and calculus (uncreatively called vector calculus). Finite dimensional vectors are very easy to realize on a computer. In regards to caluclus, some combination of analytics and numerics is used.

However video game physics can be very easy...

Is somebody still hacking Baroque?

>>3103251
For instance, let's say you wanted to make a 1D lunar lander game.

Your lander is affected by a gravitational force and a thrust force. Let's say gravity is downward.

Using Netwon's first law, where "m=mass of lander [kg]" and "a=acceleration of lander [m/s^2]", and "g=accleration due to gravity [m/s^2]" we write.

m*a = F = F_gravity + F_thrust = -m*g + F_thrust

Every frame the player gets to choose to apply thrust or not. To find the velocity of the lander next frame, one calculates "a" above. Since the game is naturally discretized by frames, the amount of time between frames is a constant "dt". Since acceleration integrated over time is velocity, we can approximate the integral by multiplying "a" by "dt"

v_new = v_old + a_new*dt

In much the same way position is found by integrating velocity over time.

x_new = x_old + v_new*dt

I am numerically integrating an analytical solution in this case, and this gives a realistic model of the lander. Notice how you don't really see any fancy calculus in the final solution, everything has been reduced to just arithmetic.

Final thing I can add is that if you've never done physics before, the thought that math can be applied to understand real world phenomenon can seem like magic.

Hopes this somewhat answers your question and gives a solid example.

I have a few questions:
How hard is it to import translation to ps1 game?
Is there a Shadowrun hack that removes censorship?
Can you recommend some books about powerpc asm?

>>3061502
Doing gods work man.
Keep it up I know any support means a lot.

>>3104210
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=20561.0

This hack removes the patriarchy's censorship.

First time screwing around with tile molester, since I thought I'd need to get familiar with it for later on. It's an absolute nightmare throwing this together.
The background is compressed, so although the title itself I could get done in relatively little time, in order to get rid of the multiple shadows I need to modify the compressed data. After some head-scratching
I just resolved to locate and paste parts of the picture that don't have letters in them. The huge beige ADVANCE (right in the middle, too) is what bothered me the most and I'm not sure my "method" will do well for the left and right frames.

Anyhow I've been looking at this for too long now and can't tell whether it looks like shit or not, should I carry on like that and hope I can make it look decent in the end?

Oh and picture is current > just title > almost vanilla.
Excuse the monochrome, too. The title palette is very good so I'm sure I can do something with it.

I'm sure you guys are familiar with the "Chaos edition" romhacks. I'm looking for one of Banjo Kazooie. I couldn't find any online, but you guys know of any?

>>3104210
>How hard is it to import translation to ps1 game?
Do you mean make a translation, or use a patch? Because if it's the former, look a few posts up for your answer. For the latter, you use XDelta patcher.

I just finished writing the code for a 'DX' version of Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru.

>>3105868
>A DX version of For the Frog the Bell Tolls
HOLY FUCK YES

>>3102939
Yeah at least I can copy the dialogue used here.

I'll commence making new sprites soon. We should probably just get that out of the way, first.

>>3106490
>Robert Vasquez

The fuck. I didn't type that.

>>3106491
It is the april fools joke, relax

>>3106491
It's April Fools Day, mate.

>>3106494
>>3106497
That'll do mootwo, that'll do.

>>3106502

Shut the fuck up Leonard before I rape your face.

>>3103301
This is really cool and helpful, thank you. I've had the calculus sequence and linear algebra, but not really any physics or CS classes yet (bio major).

>>3105868
Cool april fool's joke

>>3107141
I just chose a terrible day to show it to the world,it's actually happening.

>>3107504
If you're lying to me I will find you.

>>3107514
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,13779.msg301896.html#msg301896

As you can see in my profile I'm the one who made that VWF hack for Link's Awakening DX: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2414/

>>3015551

I'm doing a graphical hack of Skull and Crossbones with Double Dragon characters.

NES games are really fun to mess around with.

Since the Telefang translation patch being made over at Tulunk Village's release date is NEVER EVER, I had the idea of polishing up the bootleg versions of these games.

Basically it would be like this:
>Re-enable the intro logos, this fixes the palette issue in the demo movie
>Change the title screens back
>Correct all the Denjuu/Item/Location/Character names
>Polish the engrish dialogue enough to make better sense
>Fix the other bugs like saving,secret denjuu calling, game over crash, item menu crash, etc.
>Translate some untranslated graphics
>Re-enable naming your character/nicknaming denjuu if possible, if that's too hard just leave it give everything the default names like the bootleg.

How hard would doing all this stuff be? I have the Diamond/Jade roms on my PC so what kinds of tools/skills would i need to do all this?

bump

>>3109997
it's dead, jim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEHBLtkqnWw

>>3015551
This thread needs to keep going. Why don't we have something Super Mario World related?
That's a thing, isn't it?

>>3112974
This your level?

It's very creative but
>5 minutes long
Why do VLDC entrées always do this.

What do the flying Podoboo's actually replace? Is it just a coded version of the floating Eerie to move slower and float lower?

>>3115826
Man, Richard why you such a dick

>>3112974
That looks fun. The VLDC9 compilation hack can't come soon enough.

>>3103251
Have you saved all these long, insightful answer you've been giving over the past few threads?

It would make a G*R*E*A*T guide or F.A.Q. for starters, even if kept in the same Q&A format given here.

>>3106490
Archive has saved the previous threads. You can save some of the sprites there.
>desustorage dot org/vr/search/subject/Rom%20hacking/

>>3119394
Even though I know how evolutions were chosen, I can't help but think X and Legend should be reversed.

>>3089832
Literally Sans' smile

Any idea on how to make possible a hack (or saved game file hack) for Mega Man X5 to stop all in-stage dialogue?

The game remember which ones you have already gone through and never repeats them, so I guess somewhere in the save file it must be stored. So maybe there's no need to hack the game itself, just to edit a save file from the start of the game with all the "dialogue seen" markers already checked.

Anyone with hacking experience interested on working on this? I am, but I have zero skills at this point. The only thing I can think of is to test changes on an HEX editor between a 'clean' save file after the intro stage, and a second file that's already gone through some dialogue boxes, left the stage, and saved back.

Of course, there would be other differences (this game has a 16 hour timer that goes down 1 hour after each time you visit a stage), so I would have to pretty much test editing any point where both files change and do this for every dialogue box for every stage.

I was wondering if someone here would be capable to do this in a more efficient way. Or at least, point out some tips to do it better.

Super Mario Land finally got an editor
Frank documented the formats in like 2004 or something.
https://youtu.be/JMKL_p5mnvA

>>3120020
Sounds like you have a better idea of what to do than you realize. You should do exactly what you describe. Come back if you hit any walls or have data to share with others so they may assist you.

One (probable) complication: Saves usually have checksums as a first defense against corrupted data. If you do locate the flags that specify whether to show the dialog or not and choose to modify them, you must recalculate the checksum. Otherwise the game will prolly wipe the save, thinking it's corrupted.

>>3120179
That's a very important tip to have before starting. I guess I'll start by editing a single stage to make sure the whole method works, including seeing if the edited save file is accepted by the game.

>>3119394
Holy shit, Goemon to Ryu Hayabusa? This is awesome. This single-handedly makes me want to play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JouJV2MZRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH9Yw-dm20g

Is there anyone who has romhacked a Mario Party map and edited it, say to a custom design?

>>3121202
see
>>3066314

>>3119394
>generic dracula
>not sotn dracula
Why?

>>3115826
Palette is looking much better now. It's best to avoid black outlines on a character or object sprite whenever possible

>>3121614
Oh. Crap.

>>3120179
I did some testing editing save files... I think I found the address of at least one dialogue box. But, as you said, the game won't take an edited save file, and I have no idea how to recalculate the checksum. Are there any tools for this made? I couldn't find any. Or does it change per-game?

>>3123218
Hypothesizing the verification really is a checksum, that's special meta data about the data file, so it is very likely that it is either the first or last few bytes of the save file. Often times with checksums the sum and it's binary complement (NOT sum) are stored side by side.

Can you look for this kind of pattern in the save data where I specified? If there is a sum, it will likely be 16- or 32-bits. Also, could you put up on pastebin or something a readable dump of the save in hex?

>>3123230
Correction: it would be nice to have two saves.

One is a save you make early in a new game.
The second one is a save you make after triggering ideally only one of these dialog events after loading the first save.

This will give us saves with a minimum of differences between them, and hopefully the only differences will be those concerning the dialog flags and an updated verification mechanism.

bump

>>3123230
>>3123236

Thanks for all your insights, I'm learning quite a bit just by trying out stuff and asking here!

Although I figured out an easier way to produce the save files with all dialogues seen; just playing through each stage (exiting right after the boss without getting any item or losing any lives) while freezing the collision countdown with a gameshark code.
It's not elegant... maybe the character's ranking will be affected... but it gets the job done.

Still, since you offered your help, I would still be interested in being able to hex edit these saves for future use.

Here are the files you asked --- they're the same ones I was working with anyway.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/23w90cfo2l17kw2/mmx5_test.zip

1. A save file right after the intro stage, before entering any other stage.
2. A save file made after visiting Grizzly's stage once and exiting right after (first dialogue seen; the one you get automatically right when you enter the stage)
3. A save file made after visiting Grizzly's stage once and exiting after the second dialogue box of the stage shows up (so it has the first and second dialogue box marked as seen).

Comparing these three files, of course, the first one had more differences than the others. But the single byte that was different in all three was at 00000354.

The first one is 9B, the second one is 8E, the third one is 90.

The test I was talking about in my last post was that I changed that byte to 90 on the first save file, and wanted to see if that marked any dialogues as seen. But the savefiles showed up as empty once loaded in the game.

Here's the release I'm using, just in case

https://archive.org/download/psx_redump_usa_20141221/Mega%20Man%20X5%20%28USA%29.7z

>>3124817
You could use No$PSX which has an integrated debugger and memory viewer. This way you could look for those values inside the RAM, experiment with them at your leisure, and once you find the right values you won't even need to figure out the checksum since it will all be handled by the game itself. Cheat Engine is also a very useful (and less buggy overall than no$psx, which is crash prone) tool for this. You could even turn your findings into several gameshark codes, assuming those RAM values are not dynamic.

>>3122353
Sotn Dracula is Shiny Dracula.

>>3125384
No, he's not. Shinies don't work like that and the author has already said he's not doing it.

>>3122353
Because generic Dracula is what was in all the classic Castlevanias.

>>3124817

Ok, so here are the only memory locations that differ in the files.

s0
$0200: 0001
$02E0: 00BC 3400 911C
$02F2: F800
$0354: 9B06

s1
$0200: 0002
$02E0: 7568 3100 5C24
$02F2: F801
$0354: 8E06

s2
$0200: 0002
$02E0: 1B5A 3100 B632
$02F2: F803
$0354: 9006

Looking at this, I think it's obvious that address $0200 is the number of times saved:

$0200 u?int16 saves; Number of times saved

I forgot to add that computers store data with a particular 'endinaness'. The smallest addressable data location is (almost always) a byte. When you need to represent numbers larger than a byte can hold, you need to store the number in multiple bytes. It is not clear whether you store the number byte-by-byte starting with the smallest or largest part of the number.

For instance, the 16-bit hex number 0x1234 would be stored as
12 34 // Big endian
34 12 // Little endian

This comes from Gulliver's Travels where the lilliputians argue about to correct way to eat an egg; from the little end or the big end?

I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like per memory location $0200 the data is big endian, somewhat of a rarity.

Anyway, we know that $0200 can be manipulated easily, which may help identify the verification mechanism address. Is it possible to save a second time immediately after loading up the save file right after the intro stage and before any other stage? This will allow us to see if we are dealing with a checksum or some other mechanism.

>>3125580
pink-haired link is cute!

>>3125861
Why is his hair pink in Link to the Past anyway?

>>3115826
That looks pretty sexy.

>>3125425
It looks like plenty of the other mon lines display series progression though. Pac, Sonic, Mario, Megaman, Koopa, Mado
No good reason not to use the vastly superior version of CastleVania Drac, that would also make the hack represent both sides of the series.

>>3016432
NES 6502 and SNES 65816 are easy to learn and the memory maps for both devices are not difficult to master. they are both well documented and the original programming manuals supplied by nintendo were leaked online a few years ago which helps a great deal.

>>3124823
Oh wow, I had no idea that Redump sets are avaliable on the Internet Archive. I've been on the PS1 kick recently, so this is godsend.

soon niggas

>>3128332
Well, it's all up to the author, who seems to have vanished again.

>>3128585
holy shit

>>3129770
What a pointless comment. Feedback is not irrelevant

>>3130586
Yours certainly is.

>>3130592
Why?

>>3130607
Because the matter was already discussed heavily and the author made his decision.

>>3130609
Oh alright :/

bump

>>3015626
wait a couple minutes

>>3132370
https://mega.nz/#!Rd5yAaQR!mx1-CAgkzrtUaVBmZw93_fBI2KycwjsmY41-XSNP8L0
pass 'muh retro'
most of the tools don't like working on modern operating systems, and some are designed for 16 bit windows. You may wish to make a virtual machine.

>>3119394
I think this is missing Opa-Opa.

>>3128585

I was wondering what happened to this

Glad to see it back

>>3121459
bump
It would be pretty fucking cool to be able to mod and make custom Mario Party maps

ROM hacks suck.

>start playing a hack
>pretty good, solid level design and good difficulty balance
>difficulty keeps ramping up
>hits kaizo-level difficulty and stops being fun
>keep playing anyway because there's only a handful of levels left

Why can't games keep to a reasonable difficulty, or if they want to set out being bullshit hard, be bullshit hard from the start instead of luring you in with reasonable levels for the first half of the game?

>Mario GBA ports.webm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmQ71JGomII

>>3133180
Out of curiosity, what hack were you playing?

>>3133187
How did they do that?