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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X6 Tweaks/Patcher (v15)

« on: February 17, 2019, 01:14:22 pm »

Title screen, voice clip restoration, and retranslation oh my. Thank you for even more continued work on this Definitive way to play X6, no ifs, ands, or buts.

PS. I also appreciate that you decided to insert Alia's dialogue too. I never minded the X6 system for her, I like reading her flavor text every now and then.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Shatterhand HD pack (wip)

« on: August 27, 2018, 08:54:07 pm »

Oh nice! I seen that screenshot the other day, didn't realize it was going to be an HD Pack. Looks cool!

It looks fantastic! Like SNES quality graphics with NES quality gameplay, the best of both worlds.

I have been tempted to design a new set of levels for this game, and this whets my appetite. The way HD packs work, would it still be compatible with a different tile layout for a level, assuming I use identical tiles? Or is it effectively hard-coded to the existing level layout?

As long as you use the same palettes and tiles, it will be ok. Or should be. The only issue you might find is if you use tiles in an area where they weren't before and then a palette shift occurs (like, say a screen flash or something. Does Shatterhand have any? I can't remember.), then those will be considered new tiles as that tile with that palette was never used in the vanilla game.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X6 Tweaks/Patcher (v15)

« on: August 13, 2018, 12:26:09 am »

Your project doesn't detract me from buying the collections. The collections themselves detract me from buying them. Had you never made this, I still would've felt just as negatively about Capcom not offering optional (because some would rather play the garbage original version, whatever floats your boat) fixes for the problems in X6 after 15 years of fans complaining, and I won't even go into the about 20 other problems with XLC outside of X6.

I think it's probably the same for most of the others who did not buy the collection. It's a lazy cash grab, and it's very rare I use the term "lazy," because it's both overused and misused, but XLC necessitates it.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Donkey Kong (NES) HD graphics pack for Mesen emulator

« on: August 09, 2018, 09:46:41 pm »

Very awesome! The tool looks to be really useful too, I haven't had the chance to use it much but hopefully will be able to soon. Great work!

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X6 Tweaks/Patcher (v13)

« on: August 02, 2018, 08:53:36 pm »

Good catch!  Very much appreciated. This probably means the values for infected reploids' orbs are read from somewhere else.

I'm about to release a new version of the sample patch (it hasn't been updated since v05!), so more than ever, bug reports are welcome!

Wow, weird. I didn't even know infected Reploids dropped orbs, since that was one of those "Smash that MF Reset Button" situations for me, so I just use the disable option with the Tweaks.

But since the values are split, that could be really fun and interesting mechanically. Perhaps Reploid Orbs could be tweaked to give much, much higher values, giving an "evil" way of farming souls if you want to let those who don't give any items just die instead. That would've been a neat way to make Zero's Nightmare palette unlockable, if you utilized that more than 5 times or something.

Or it could've been written off as being thanks for putting them out of their misery.

Anyway, enough rambling, gonna try v13 soon. Been using v12 for a while without issues, will report anything if I find it in v13.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X6 Tweaks/Patcher (v10)

« on: July 27, 2018, 11:06:20 am »

I completed a playthrough last night with v08. The amount of improvement is outstanding. Despite the level design issues and stuff, just a few tweaks make this game 100x better. Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

I have a request, hopefully it hasn't been posted already and I missed it: Can the Blade and Falcon Armors have their "Double Tap Jump to Air Dash" "feature" removed? And maybe the Shadow Armor too, if you enable air dashes in the tweaker, but I'm just assuming it's the same way since I have to repatch with the new version to try it yet.

I always hated this in X6. It makes sense with the Fourth/Falcon(X5)/Ultimate armors that it enables a hover or flight mode, but if I want to actually dash, I'll press the button assigned to it. It's too easy to incorrectly trigger a dash this way.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: July 24, 2018, 03:35:17 pm »

Congrats on the release! Made my day to see this.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: May 14, 2018, 10:52:33 pm »

Softlock: I'll look into this when I get the time, hopefully, sometime this week.

Z-Buster Icon: Fixed!

Selection Sound: Normal game SFX stuff, nothing to be fixed. It's a couple underlying SFX so it gets a bit funky, but it works.

Byte text: Fixed!

Doppler Save: This is.. interesting. You're the only one to state this one. I'll have to look into it, possible save corruption or something. He actually 'lost' all of his upgrades or was it just bad on the save menu?

Awesome! And yeah, X actually lost the upgrades. I can only fire up to the 3rd charge shot, I have no map display when entering levels, but on the other hand, I have the double air dash and health regen from the chips and the golden palette. I don't know if it will help, but I uploaded the SRAM which contains that save file (Page 2, File 1) and also a .bst savestate which should trigger the ending softlock consistently. I also have one for SNES9x, though not Geiger's Debug version, which would probably help more but I didn't even think, "Oh hey, play through on that instead." I may do another run in that and grab a savestate here in a bit. Nevermind, SNES9x debugger crashes in Toxic Seahorse's stage. *Shrugs* Surely not a hack issue if the hack works in bsnes, so...

https://mega.nz/#F!vjgyACaT!CwDg7Z9c9mqXwmh8ylq6bg

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: May 13, 2018, 07:46:29 pm »

I think I may have found the trigger for the ending softlock and some other bugs.

Softlock: I think this may have to do with playing NG+ right after a regular game. I have gotten it to trigger that way on both SNES9X 1.54.1 and bsnes classic 0.73u1 and can reliably reproduce it everytime I beat Sigma. Though I thought I encountered it on a regular playthrough (non NG+), I cannot reproduce that.

The Z-Buster menu icon has white on the bottom side rather than gray like the right side and like all other weapon icons. Not that anyone would care, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

The selection sound on the main menu (like when you go up or down between options) changes in pitch for a second or so after pressing Select to swap between X and Zero. Again, no big deal though.

If only Byte lives, when he appears before fighting Godkarmachine O Inary, his text does not scroll off the text area properly. This happened when playing as Zero.

This one is really weird: while playing via bsnes classic 0.73u1, I saved after Doppler 1 into Page 2, File 1, a previously empty slot. For some reason, this resulted in X losing all upgrades except the boots and all 4 chips. Everything else appears to have saved properly. I also could not revisit any capsules to reobtain the missing parts. I have only seen this happen this one time.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: May 10, 2018, 12:23:40 am »

Interesting, I actually triggered a softlock like that too. Was it during the scene of Doppler's Lab being destroyed? Like, right before the camera pans out to show X and Zero on the cliff?

I assumed it was the overclock I used at first, but I tried replicating it several times to confirm it was indeed that (I'm slowly gathering data on what SNES games work with the overclock and what games don't) but I couldn't get it to happen again. Since someone else has seen it, I'll try doing another run without overclocking and try to replicate it. What emulator were they using, by the way?

EDIT: Also, I wasn't on NG+ at that time, I believe. Pretty sure I was finishing up a save from the previous beta in order to get NG+ unlocked.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: May 08, 2018, 09:43:02 pm »

Just playing the latest update, may have found a small bug on NG+. I'm using the MSU-1 patch as well as the latest update (not the "sub weapon colors for Zero" version) on a 100% (Gold Armor obtained) NG+ file. If you're playing as Zero and have a Z-Saber charge stored after defeating Maoh, X will teleport in with an incorrect palette. (Think he's using the Z-Saber palette actually.)

I can't wait to see what your next project is, even if it isn't Megaman X related.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: April 29, 2018, 01:26:15 pm »

I played with the last patch (which included saving/loading) and completed the game 100% with no issues and used saves/loads often to test, all while using SNES9x-libretro's slowdown reduction/"overclock" option at "Max", but in the latest patch released today (NG+ included), the save/load feature hangs at a black screen if using the "max" slowdown reduction option, which otherwise has worked without issue for 3 full playthroughs of vanilla X3 as well as 2 full playthroughs of Zero Project prior to today's NG+ beta patch.

That said, I know the huge, ingrained belief that "overclocking will break everything" but there are games that can take advantage of this and X1-3 are prime examples where it works really well. If possible, it would be great for the latest patch to be altered to run with the "Max" slowdown reduction option. (For that matter, it could probably be fixed if libretro SNES9x just had exposed options for all 3 values it tweaks, but until the option is ported to standalone SNES9x, I wouldn't expect something that """in-depth.""") If I can help test a "fix" to this or something, I'd be more than happy to help however I can.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Snes emulators (Canoe, Snes9x) -- game problems and fixes

« on: April 19, 2018, 08:09:54 pm »

As for the Megaman X1 copy protection issue, I ran into that recently while trying to play the Megaman X Generation hack. I had assumed this issue was never fixed, and really it's an emulation issue anyway and technically shouldn't be fixed, but after giving up I was randomly poking around goodset dats or something and found out at least 2 patched ROMs exist to fix that. I got a hold of those and used them as a basis for MMX Generation and finished the entire game without triggering any of the copier code, even trying to trigger it several times, as well as testing just the [f1] ROM.

I made a couple IPS patches based off the ROM, one for headered ROMS, one for unheadered. They only change a few bytes. Try using these on a vanilla 1.0 ROM and then apply the translation patches, or, if the translation is the same size as the original game (1.5MB), it's probably safe to apply over them. (I probably should've done BPS patches anyway, I might do those later.)

https://mega.nz/#F!rrR00YzR!oWO7JK7GrLNo6QuIi3JhMQ

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man 1 (NES) - 30th Anniversary 16-bit Graphic Pack for Mesen

« on: April 18, 2018, 07:47:03 pm »

Many thanks for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it! In some ways, it was necessary since WW had larger tilesets and changed sprite sizes, but I wanted to use the original NES graphics overwhelmingly because I think both the sprites and tilesets are more iconic and charming in their designs, and I also wanted a much brighter, more saturated look than WW, so anything I did port over almost always ended up with a new palette. I hoped it would still feel like Megaman 1 rather than an actual remake, if that makes sense, or like you said a Megaman 1 port to PC Engine or another console, but more than anything I hoped that the charm would still be there despite the graphical boost.

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Personal Projects / Re: Ninja Gaiden series (NES) Trilogy Upgrade: Graphics Pack for HDNES/Mesen

« on: April 16, 2018, 09:42:08 pm »

Still, it took a long while to do the work. I meticulously organized the files, as well, to help identify everything while working on it on my end. I don't wanna think about how many hours I've invested total into this.

It adds up quickly, doesn't it? lol

This is awesome too, definitely something I was hoping to see eventually since the SNES version offered basically no benefits other than graphics and even had drawbacks to the originals. This would be, I think, pretty much the definitive way to play Ninja Gaiden, unless of course you want the 100% pure, original experience.

I can't imagine dealing with the various palette swap effects in these games, and as great as it would be to do so, and as much as I could maybe disagree with patching out/patching-in consistent fading if I were just a player using the pack, having done this stuff myself, I have to agree that it isn't worth it. You'd need to be beyond human to deal with the tedium of capturing every tile and getting it all correct for the Game Over effect plus everything else. At least, I'd certainly consider anyone who could do that a demi-god or something.

Anyway, great work! Hopefully I can try them out soon!

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X3 - Zero Project (V4.0)

« on: April 16, 2018, 09:13:57 pm »

Holy crap, didn't even know you were on Twitter. Finally, a Frog Ride armor that looks usable. I get what they were originally going for, but it's so frustrating to pilot in the original that I never use it. Not to mention everything you could use it for is obtainable other ways, so it's often useless on any playthrough in vanilla. The save screen is looking super nice too. I played through the latest beta you linked on Twitter with "overclocking" via SNES9x-libretro and it was great. I cannot wait for 4.0 final.

The only bug I noticed was during the second fight with Vile in Doppler Stage 2, Vile's text " "the new "Goliath"! " did not scroll off the text box properly and was caught at the top until the text box began to shrink. I encountered that without the overclock as well. I was also playing as Zero during that.

I don't suppose this is possible right now, but maybe someday I think it would be great if the extra couple of screens and Vile teleporter from the prototype's Toxic Seahorse level could be re-implemented. I love all the changes made towards encouraging different stage and item collection orders, or making each playthrough different with Bit and Byte randomization for example, so that would fit in really well I think.

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News Submissions / Re: Other: Castlevania HD Pack for Mesen NES emulator

« on: April 06, 2018, 05:57:18 pm »

Awesome work again, kya! I'll have to do a full playthrough with this soon!

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Gaming Discussion / Re: Chrono Trigger gets a Steam release.

« on: February 28, 2018, 12:11:02 pm »

I hate when re-releases are just ROMs and some really basic emulator, but then you have this. An actual port, except it's a port of a port and so bad in multiple ways that just emulating the SNES original would've been better. A real shame, especially for such a great game.

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Gaming Discussion / Re: SNES and PSX Overclocking:

« on: February 24, 2018, 05:54:03 pm »

I've been testing this for a while now and Megaman X1-3, MM7, and Rockman & Forte all work really well in my experience, having done full playthroughs of each. The only major bug is in X1, which requires the "Max" option rather than "Compatible", but things like that are to be expected of the one-size-fits-all/minimalist options Libretro cores tend to have.

If using Compatible, Boomer Kuwanger's stage will have corrupt BG graphics when re-entering it after beating it. (Armored Armadillo or Storm Eagle can have this issue too, if you're using older builds with different overclock values.) The only other bug I've found at all is at the very end of X2's intro sequence, the wireframe "X" animates too quickly, prematurely cutting off the music. X3 is the same way, but it doesn't cut off the music. (Just lucky timing I think, I would be surprised if they actually tied screen fade to the music ending.)

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man 1 (NES) - 30th Anniversary 16-bit Graphic Pack for Mesen

« on: January 06, 2018, 08:14:57 pm »

Gonna play again as Rock 

Oops! Thanks for that! I figured out the issue. During development I must've set the sky color manually to test something or whatever and forgot to properly set all relevant graphics back to transparent. I had been using the FCEUX palette, which meant the colors matched and the issue was invisible to me.


I'll upload the fix in a bit! 1.2 is uploaded with this fix in place! Also hope you enjoy playing as Rock! I always wanted to play with that skin since you often see helmetless Megaman in hacks and stuff, but never Rock. (I think, I've never seen one.)

Excellent work! How about posting a video of this on Youtube?
Also will you consider posting on the News Submissions?

Thanks! I'd love to do a Youtube video for it, I just need to get some simple editing software and hope my PC doesn't give me problems. I might do a news submission for it, I didn't even know you could do that actually