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Personal Projects / Re: Super Castlevania IV Drunklevania II (DemoCastle)

« on: February 11, 2018, 03:00:39 am »

I'm rooting for ya.

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Personal Projects / Re: Team CV3 Dawn of Sorrow Hack

« on: February 08, 2018, 02:56:27 pm »

Good ideas, but really I wouldn't care too terribly much if he used the Alucard from Hellsing Ultimate.   

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Personal Projects / Re: Team CV3 Dawn of Sorrow Hack

« on: February 07, 2018, 02:18:05 am »

Exciting stuff. I didn't like 3's gameplay for stiff reasons, the layout felt like I wanted to like it though so getting it in another engine might let me stress-test that theory.

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Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda - Nightmares of Koholint Island (update thread)

« on: January 30, 2018, 05:06:32 pm »

Same excitement from me toward this project. Always fun to play something beloved made new again.

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Personal Projects / Re: (DemoPatch) Megaman Legends 1 & 2 Remix (Item Move/Rebalance)

« on: January 25, 2018, 12:47:28 pm »

So I was making notes on what's to come when I do focus my attention on MegamanLegends2:

1) No keyitem specwep, and no plotadvancing specwep, so the entire pool can be shuffled.
2) Busterparts work slightly different, but it only means rebalancing wold be more useful.
3) There is a 100 question Trivia Quiz for a BladeArm part, that asks numbskull shit like US Presidents and how many eyes some bugs have. I am changing it to an actual MEGAMAN related trivia, because fuck yeah I am. That's probably, like, the first thing I'll be changing and patching.

None of this is in the immediate workload to come from me, there will still be a break between my MML1 Remix patch and my work on a MML2 Remix patch, but it's good to mention nonetheless.

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Personal Projects / Re: (Active&Demo) Megaman Legends Remix (Item Move/Rebalance)

« on: January 11, 2018, 05:16:51 am »

I have a playable version published, downloadable at the original top-post.

I've been struggling with the more complex text examples, switching them has been a pain and they are probably still buggy.

I never found a solution to the junkstore reward beside equip the specwep and let the player develop the real item later.

Other than that, it's entirely playable. There's nothing I'm aware of that should break progression, softlock the game, or cause difficulty with any special weapon other than the splashmine which is essentially removed for now.

Changes as of now:
-starting morality is closer to dark
-buster part powers have been balance-adjusted
-specweps are found in a better order; some specweps have new ingredients
-significant items have been moved to new locations
-mainmenu starts with difficulty options exposed

Thank you all for your patience. I'm only nearly a month late as of now, but it's good to finally provide this game with a player-mod. Hopefully I can continue development and expansion.

My next plans include enemy location and enemy-types, dense fog, and working on MegamanLegends2 which won't have any problems with a keyitem specwep like MML1 has had, or even items breaking progress either, so it can be a more chaotic shuffle. To be honest, I have ideas for an animation project in there somewhere, so Legends2 may take the remainder of the year to really get anything out to show for it. I'll probably add it to this thread when it does become a work in progress.

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Personal Projects / Re: PS1 tools

« on: January 07, 2018, 03:11:40 pm »

Didn't read so sorry it this is covered, but what about games that use texture fonts that don't match the native hex alphabet? Megaman Legends letters are between 1B and 4F. Some special characters in the 80s. Does it support thingytable translation? Also, what about snips of hex in the text, such as MML uses an item hex for the game to auto fill the item name, and some hex will just color all text afterwards, so what about nontext within text.

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Personal Projects / Re: Asuncia (PS1) project

« on: January 03, 2018, 04:25:10 pm »

For scattered text, text might be in each area's BIN. Try mounting and dumping a disc into a folder, and checking bins with Hex Editor.

Also make sure it's text and not textures. That's all the help I can offer you, I'm not very experienced.

If I knew of a place to get an already completed perfect game saved near the end I'd just suggest you use that to get the ends of your means.

Also, this game sounds like a roguelike rpg. You have a timer and game over condition but you do better every time, right? Still interesting for it's time, few games did it well and it takes player commitment to learn and repeat. My favorite of the like, is Ur-Quan Masters (Star Control 2).

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Personal Projects / Re: Capcom Games Editor (NES)

« on: December 31, 2017, 03:19:38 pm »

No invested interest on my end. Was just curious. I thought they did all the ports to Aladdin.

They did do weird ports back in the day. I hear they ported the classic GTA in Japan. That means anything is possible so the question was valid.

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Personal Projects / Re: Capcom Games Editor (NES)

« on: December 31, 2017, 03:27:14 am »

Wouldn't this also work for the Aladdin games? Same Capcom, same generation, likely same engine.

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: December 28, 2017, 01:59:23 pm »

Well *most* sidefeatures and expanded features seem to go smoothly. However, every time I get to the main business of swapping item locations, I run into various problems.

This time, it's "hole in walls", "garbage pails", and "cardboard boxes". For some reason, at 987B5, the value for the last script invoked is stored. The last NPC talked to, the last Chest opened, the last item examined such as fire hydrant or house door or fruit stand or magazine shelf. Everything SANS the garbage pails and cardboard boxes, which SHOULD store to that value and makes no sense why they wouldn't.

This makes them untraceable by conventional means I were using to change chests and such until now. Which sucks. They're only "sometimes" visible by just casually reading bins as well, they're not consistently writ as such to be read from bins. I'm assuming, as is the case with some chests even, that they aren't writ and the game generates text from a central generic script and fills in item names (it doesn't need custom text in every bin for chests that say 99% the same thing).

Once I wrap my mind around how to fix that, I'll release a playable build, now ever so late mind you, but I'm still excited nonetheless, and hope it's just as good for the end-user once I do get it in working order.
January 01, 2018, 07:17:42 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Hard work and good rum pays off, as I trace the item-filling code to a source (a source I still don't understand, code-wise. Is it a spot in the city? Is it a spot in the main engine? What am I changing?). At any rate, I've finally changed a garbage can reward to another item.

For prosperity's sake, 98830 in Native-RAM, fills to a value of the item being given to you. That is filled upon interacting, from opcode at 128F10 (I traced by No$PSX by highlighting opcode location and "Run to Cursor" and then playing game to trigger a garbage pail giving item), by a location in the ~BF400 area. For Blumbear Parts it's BF3A6, for Broken Motor it's BF496.

(also note, 128F10 is specific to Downtown, AppleMarket turns out to be 109E14, so I just have to "sub-return" from where 98830 breaks on write, to find the value for whatever area I'm working with)

I prefer tracing actual interaction scripts, but when they fail to appear to exist, I now have a backup technique to trace item-giving to it's source.

It's more effort for each and every item in the game, but now with the effort, I am again without (forseeable) roadblocks for a working romhack soon.

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: December 18, 2017, 04:07:03 am »

This job and the flu. They're going to kill me yet. Which is why I'm trying to document my process, albeit semi-obscurely. (here, and in an unrelated discord channel)

New feature finally figured out. That difficulty menu on the title screen available by default on game launch, without having to beat the game first.

Hardest part, was 3 hours of playing the game to get title screens with "easy" enabled so I can compare title screens with it enabled and disabled (via CheatEngine).

The location that enables the menu, is located a RAM Address C1B28 (and "easy" being listed as an option at C1B2A). The OpCode that populates it, is located at Rom Address 67004 (and 6700C), and when changed from "20" (which tells it to fill r2 with 0) to "32" (which tells it to fill r2 with r18), will fill 00 to 02 (not the "correct" value, but triggers desired menu access anyway), which is what I did.

Now, the menu boots for the first time with the difficulty selection. I should throw some numbers into some chests to make it of "meh" playable quality, and release it today, as it is the promised day, the Megaman Legends 20th Anniversary.

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Personal Projects / Re: Aria of Sorrow Julius Story Mode

« on: December 17, 2017, 02:07:39 pm »

I need a reason to play this for fun again, once I get more time after the holiday. Sounds cool, can't wait 

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Personal Projects / Re: Ghostbusters Remastered (GB1, NES)

« on: December 07, 2017, 01:50:35 am »

This may sound mainstream and dumb, but can this game actually be good? Won't lie, it's amazing how the interesting individuals posting projects here seem to fix games that had every reason to be good but weren't, let alone remixing good ones like some psychedelic rave.

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: December 03, 2017, 01:01:04 pm »

I need to lose this job in the worst kind of way anyway. Way too grindy, way too many hours and not a single day off. I'm here on Sunday right this moment, and nobody else bothers to show up but two of us and we're way behind.

I'm planning (as in meant to three days ago), to record some of me back tracking the opcode leading to adding a spec weapon to inventory. It's very convoluted, it'd take some explanation and a video, and I can't find the actual source of the info it takes to run the script to add weapon (same script is called every time a weapon is added or developed). It seems all the registers used are loaded before the script, and when returned and break, it's unclear when the resister is loaded. It's a very long calculation that's probably mostly unnecessary I'm guessing.

They also aren't numbers I'd expect it to use to generate a simple bit add via "and" operation. It's like it does even more math before even getting to that step.

Tracing it FORWARD, taking out some unnecessary code, and making a call to new script that just injects a simple value that I need, is a hacky alternative if I don't feel like figuring this out and an in a rush.

EDIT: Okay, so I caught a kinda-lucky break. I broke ONLY the tutorial support car's ability to award a special weapon. Well, you see, I can choose whether or not it takes an item either. That means, and this is crazy-hacky, but it'll "equip" you with the special weapon, but you'll have to "fo'real-develop" it again later and then also be able to upgrade it. This STILL means this makes the support car tutorial "progress correctly", so I'm moving on finally to a working build. Might even rebalance some special weapons slightly since they'll eventually be randomized anyway, damage and base range on some of them.

I eventually wanted to figure out how to walk with Shield Arm (without one of the hacky methods like specwep-frankenstein or shutter-bumpering). I still want to look into hooking up difficulty into starting screen. There's enemy healths and projectile speeds, possibly a few prices. Now that I'm satisfied with moving on (and can come back to support car in the future; the values I scanned tonight actually load the offsets the support car originally load with but I'm too busy to reroute it to "fully-functional support car" right now.

EDIT: Oh what in the... apparently, side effects of intentionally getting no reward may include but not be limited to, getting a random buster part, losing all your zenny, and pissing off an amateur programmer... Please standby... sigh... UPDATE: Unlucky. There's at least 5 other values that DON'T have those negative side effects (and 5 more that... cause crashes?), so that was easy enough to fix.

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: November 26, 2017, 06:46:39 pm »

I apologize for the long-time no-reply after all the hype. Got a 60-hr workweek at my job. Sucks tbh. Considering quitting, all to finish this.

Anywho, I'm stuck at some binary player-inventory regarding special-weapons. Anyone who's a wiz with that sort of thing and feel froggy, pm me. Otherwise I should eventually sort it out. (EDIT: I sorted it, I can now switch it, and this means a working version coming soon and all-in-all being on-schedule for an anniversary playable version)

Something mildly related that I'm tinkering with, is control-remapping for those who felt Legends controls to be awkward. I'll try to move strafing to a joystick, and jump-shoot-specwep-ect to the top buttons so you don't have to use bumpers for movement.

I found this thread, and the replies by @NoOneee, very helpful in that regard. Changing buttons outright would be a success, but somehow being able to keep menu-inputs would be a plus.

https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=23114.0

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Programming / Re: Where did you learn assembly from?

« on: November 09, 2017, 02:45:09 pm »

I should probably "learn assembly" one day.

I just wanted to make fan-content for my fandom, and stumbled onto ram edits that I wanted to apply to rom, such as moving items around, changing values, ect. So, I looked up documentation on Romhacking and eventually PS1 debuggers.

I honestly keep a chart of what "basic assembly functions" do for MIPS r3000, as well as x86 (no$psx uses x86 syntax for some reason), but I don't know barely anything about it except to read what's in front of me and calculate backwards what the PSX is getting it's numbers from. Where the memory address is, where the code that fills it is, ect.

Other than that, I don't know anything about "opcode", except "what" it is.

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: November 08, 2017, 05:00:31 am »

Okay, so still making progress slowly, taking several days off at a time and pecking at it, but I'll have time to do this 3-4 days(nights) a week hopefully for the whole of the holiday. EDIT: I am now switching/adding jobs, so now I may have LESS time to work on it, but the deadline is still a very likely success.

I also have some update. I've changed the buster parts (minor adjustments to those few listed), and I've ran into a problem/opportunity:

Some BusterParts have 4 locations for their textblock, yet others have 2 locations. After being nearly-done, I've discovered why: 2 locations are the store-description (1 for market, one for woods), and 2 are for BusterPartsMenu.

Furthermore, instead of modifying text-pointers in BusterPartsMenu, I can just rob space from the description for the additional space for numbers (not glamorous, but you'd hardly notice). HOWEVER, the shop doesn't have space to rob, which means to do it the "lazy way" (without changing textpointers) i'll have to butcher text for a few of them.

The OPPORTUNITY this provides though, is the store's item locations, possibly the script to grant the items too, and their cost, and it exists INDEPENDENTLY for EACH store location, so the following things might now be possible:

1) Having store sell different items than each other (they already only offer items Megaman DOESN'T have). E.g.: Market sells ChameleonNet but not DefSh, Woods sells DefenseShield but not CamoNet, and WITH THE FREED-UP SPACE the Market now sells MysticOrb and Woods sells CannonKit.

2) If the store knows how to only sell items Megaman doesn't already have 1 of (HyperCart, ShieldRepair, ect), but knows how to progressively sell 99 "ExtraPacks" (canteen upgrades), perhaps I can script it to sell "copies" of extra "HyperCart" and "ShieldRepair" (possibly even progressing prices for each already owned, limit of 2 or something).

3) I might be able to change prices.

4) I might be able to change "when" in game-progression, that a shop will offer an item (in the example above, not offer CannonKit until after Downtown fight but before Marlwolf... or, if such a progress-flag doesn't exist between then, at least not offer it before the class B license)

Anyway, if I am satisfied with fitting text for BusterPart descriptions, I'll release a trial-version soon that just makes the few changes I've already made (buster parts, morality, the location of starting busterparts, the grenades instead of mines).

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Personal Projects / Re: Megaman Legends: Second Quest (Item Location Move/Shuffle)

« on: November 02, 2017, 08:02:29 am »

Worthy enough update. Took another break for other megaman-related things. Well, I came back and decided to pick a random topic of interest: How Buster-Parts modify the BusterGun's attributes.

I must be getting good at this.

So, I scanned for changing BusterValues in ePSXe1.9.25 using CheatEngine (the ram locations never change in a game loaded in this emulator, even after the emulator resets or the entire computer resets).

I found Attk to be CheatEngine=B40D4C. I rendered the following formula for MML1 (possibly all PSX games?), to be (ePSXe&CE)-(A8B6A0)=(NativeRAM) which means RAM=B56AC. C is Attk, D is Energy, E is Range, F is Rapid.

I ran a Break for RapidFire at B56AF, and found on the second break, that the value loads from RAM=900F6(-199h), or 8FF5F.

Sure enough, 01 is the value at 8FF5F, and a lot of conveniently buster-part-looking values lie in the same area (a lot of 00s, with peppered in 01, 02, 03, and 04's).

Well, changing that location's 01 to 03, now causes RapidFire to always grant +3 when equipped, for the duration of the game.

The 16-byte neighborhood can be searched in ROM, where one finds a result: ROM=F63B7 for RapidFire. From this general location, I can likely change the strengths of all buster parts in the game.

Rebalance ahoy! I'm going to give rapid parts so much rapid, rpd/eng parts so much rapid, attk parts I might even reduce attack power on the farther endgame parts and grant energy instead.

I have to change "buster part description" text manually, but that's easy as hell and has already been established in practice to a point of elementary level work. Another important note, is that rapid is locked at +4 as MAX in the engine (manually forcing the player's rapid beyond it, results in same ROF). So... I'm going to have to get creative about the rapid values and possibly peppering in +eng to go along with +rpd.

Also, my city won the baseball world series 2017 for the first time in the team's 50 year existence. I don't even like baseball, but it makes for good conversation.
November 04, 2017, 08:43:12 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)...and so it is decided. Balance is as follows, because this is the 1 thing in life I actually get to balance so I'ma act like I'm MLG and am god's gift to balancing.

• Rapid parts always grant +2 for tier1, or +4 for tier2.
• Sniper units have +rng+atk, buster units have +eng+rng, because that makes way more sense in my head. Any Objections?
• Everything +Atk has been limited to lower numbers. Only 2 obtainable parts in the game have +3Atk (PowerStream and PowerRaiserΩ)
• Anything Max (+7), is now +3 for 2 attributes.
• "BusterMax" is now "OmniUnitΩ" (Atk/Eng +3, Rng/Rpd +2) ; Formerly "OmniUnitΩ" is now "OmniUnit ⧜" (All +2). Easymode eNuff

Ergo:

• "Power Raiser" (A:+1), "⧜" (A:+2), "Ω" (A:+3)
• "Turbo Charger" (E:+1), "⧜" (E:+2), "Ω" (E:+3)
• "Range Booster" (R:+1), "⧜" (R:+2), "Ω" (R:+3)
• "Rapid Fire" (S:+2,E+1), "Rapid Striker" (S:+4)
• "Omni-Unit" (A/E/R:+1, S+2), "⧜" (ALL:+2)
• "Omni-Unit Ω" ("BusterMax") (A/E:+3, R/S+2)
• "Blast Unit" (A:+1,E:+2), "Laser" (A+2,E+2), "Blaster Unit Ω" (A:+2,E:+3)
• "Sniper Unit" (A:+1,R:+2), "Sniper Range" (A:+1,R:+3), "Sniper Unit Ω" (A:+2,R:+3)
• "Buster Unit" (E:+2,R+1), "Buster Unit Ω" (E:+3,R+2)
• "Power Stream" (A/E:+3), "Auto Battery" (E/S+4)

How this changes vanilla strategy:

• Attk requires eng/rng/rpd sacrifices to boost and can't be boosted as early either.
• Rpd is now easy to include with other builds.
• Eng can be boosted earlier and coupled with rapid will probably be stronger dps than attk, but max-eng is still limited at the top-level parts to reduce maxing.
• Range is reduced at higher levels, and reduced what includes it with other attributes, so range must be more intentionally equipped.
• Without BusterMax Omni-Ω, more can be maxed by endgame minus attk, less if maxing attk.
  (WITH Omni-Ω I believe there is at least 1 build that lets you max everything by endgame: Omni-Ω & Omni-⧜ & and whatever random Attk-Eng-Rng part)
• Lastly, if possible, difficulty can be further increased, by reducing 2 buster slots to 1 (and joint plug granting 2nd instead of 3rd). That way, first half of game is played with 1 part, and later half has to finish while limited to 2 parts.

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Personal Projects / Re: Super Castlevania 4 Randomizer

« on: October 30, 2017, 02:00:20 pm »

Made it before Halloween at least. I am still interested in checking this out.