Messages

1

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Help with smb1 hack

« on: May 17, 2013, 12:46:55 am »

Solution is pretty simple.
If you look at the code at ROM Address $5FB1 (CPU $DFA1):

$DFA1: CMP #$C2
$DFA3: BEQ $DFAB
$DFA5: CMP #$C3
$DFA7: BEQ $DFAB
$DFA9: CLC
$DFAA: RTS

This is a 'check for coin block' routine. What you have to do is to insert the spike block judgement code into this routine.
So this is what you have to do:

1: Jump to some free space. Remain the coin block judgement unchanged. That is, if you jumped from $DFA7 you need to write the rest of the coin block judgement code there.
2: If the block isn't a coin block, do not write CLC RTS immediately. Instead write your own spike code.

Example:
;Coin judgement fails
CMP #$69       ;Which is the spike block in one of my hacks, in personal projects
BNE CLCRTSCode
LDX #$00
JSR $D958      ;Instant death if one touches it. Of course you can make changes here.
PLA
PLA
RTS            ;Immediately jump out of the previous routine. After all, as the player's dead, there's no point of continuing the block judgement routine. Probably PLA-PLA-LDX-JMP is also okay, but that doesn't matter much.
CLCRTSCode:
CLC
RTS

2

General Discussion / Re: I have rewatched Puella Magi Madoka Magika lately...

« on: April 30, 2013, 03:58:57 am »

Well my opinion about this anime: In some parts impressive and unique, overall subversive but dull and unrealistic, only above average(at least better than those moe animes like K-ON). I agree with Idkbutlike2.
PS: Unlike most people, I didn't get to hate Kyubey a single bit after watching the anime.
April 30, 2013, 04:10:28 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
Someone here wants to make a contract?

Bad idea. I have a better one: Look for people who can see Kyubey and ask her/them to keep a Kyubey, then make money by making others sign contracts with Kyubey. That's still a bit risky, but at least you won't be the one fighting against majos.

3

Personal Projects / Re: Project Rohrleitung Gate(SMB1 Hack) (Update: Alpha Preview Version)

« on: April 25, 2013, 12:13:41 pm »

I believe it's time for a thread bump? An update here.

4

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: How do I add levels in Super Mario Bros. NES?

« on: April 25, 2013, 10:34:54 am »

Did EMB actually do all of its stuff without expanding the ROM at all? 

EMB is an 80K ROM. Such fact is still amazing though. There are many SMB expanded ROM hacks which waste a lot of space. Many simply put several ROMs into one single ROM.

5

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: How do I add levels in Super Mario Bros. NES?

« on: April 25, 2013, 01:46:21 am »

Answers and some tricks:
The SMB ROM has no free space left, and I believe it's a very bad idea to sacrifice other space(e.g. music space) for the levels.
One of the most common ways to add levels is to change the mapper and expand the ROM. Expanded ROM would be rejected from the SMB Utility's ROM check. However, you can edit levels of a usual Mapper 0 ROM using SMB Utility, and then use SMB Map Importer to import the level data into the expanded ROM.
ROM expansion is about assembly and bankswitching. Mappers that have the simplest bankswitching methods are the VRCx mappers I believe. (Don't use MMC1.)
Although there are about 200 mappers, you don't need to memorize or even recognize all of them. Just select a mapper, find out how that mapper handles bankswitching, and then it's coding time.
Mappers which generate scanline IRQs are: MMC3+, VRC3+, N106 etc; Superior mappers are VRC6+, N163, SN5B(Enhanced music), MMC5(Notable for easier 'multiplication' and enhanced music)

Crap stuff below: Well, personal opinion is quality over quantity. It's not that a huge course is bad; Extra Mario Bros has many long levels. But EMB has not only long and well-designed levels but also amazing graphics and effects. There are a great number of SMB hacks today, and level hacks are no longer fascinating unless the levels are real cool and creative. What is more important is that what you find creative might already be old-fashioned.
Gain experience while hacking, and then you have good hacks.
Want to learn how to expand the ROM? Go ahead, learn assembly. We need people who can handle 2A03 ASM. Soon enough you will find that using assembly, there are a lot more things to do other than expanding levels. In my community there are people who continually think of ideas like 'what if I can make reverse pipes...' and they can't. And that's a pity.

6

Personal Projects / Re: Project Rohrleitung Gate(Super Mario Bros 1 Hack)

« on: March 22, 2013, 08:52:06 am »

Started fixing some known glitches of the original SMB system... Now it's hardly possible to go through walls or do wall jumps.
One stage is now a mixture of SMB and a real retro game...

7

Personal Projects / Re: Project Rohrleitung Gate(Super Mario Bros 1 Hack)

« on: March 04, 2013, 10:22:35 am »

I believe that due to the game mechanics, it's highly impossible to design a puzzle-solving stage that is easy in action(correct route) but hardcore in action(other routes). Probably design stages in which multiple routes are availble, and puzzle&action are balanced?

(My computer suffers from this post reply form! I even posted an unfinished post before...)

8

Personal Projects / Re: Project Rohrleitung Gate(Super Mario Bros 1 Hack)

« on: March 03, 2013, 03:46:59 am »

I hope it is easy game.

Sorry but this game won't be easy... The game gets quite hard halfway through World 2, and gets hardcore(but not glitch-requiring) in World 3. In World 2, puzzle solving is harder than action though.

Looks sweet! For me as a german player the name sounds pretty awkward though^^

The name derives from the name of an anime. The anime itself says its name is strange(Lines of one character: 'You have German mixed up with English.')

9

Personal Projects / Project Rohrleitung Gate(SMB1 Hack) (Update: Alpha Preview Version)

« on: February 28, 2013, 09:30:18 am »

Rohrleitung Gate is a project I started about 4 months ago. Initially I didn't want to make a huge project, but now it's a 100+ KB ROM.
(The project itself is a parody of an anime, so I'm concerned whether this project is actually legal...)

The game is a puzzle-solving game. It's not a maze like Extra Mario Bros. The course is linear, but almost every stage is a puzzle.
Level design is about 90% complete; ASM is about 80%; CHR is half complete and it gets me into trouble.

Current changes include:
-- Forward&backward scrolling within 2 pages.
-- Multi-layer background effect in various stages.
-- Koopa shells can break bricks and bump into hidden blocks, revealing them.
-- Enemies can appear on the first page.
-- Konami code(Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) can be entered on the title screen, increasing the num of lives to 31 and activating hard mode.
-- 2 endings(Not including Game Over, aka the Engrish phrase 'Dead End').
-- Recomposed soundtrack. What's significant about the soundtrack: SMB only used the 4 traditional channels, but here I've made use of the DPCM and VRC7 channels. A PCM sound effect is also included.
-- More minor effects.

There will be some more planned changes.

Images:

The background I used in a stage. Note that it's actually a multi-layer background: The stars won't move, the hills move at 1/2 speed, others move normally.
(It's not raster scroll of course, it's done by changing the CHR tiles. The limitation is that the background gets repetitive. If a part of the background doesn't use the multi-layer effect, that part can be completely user-defined.)
I'm not a good graphics designer, so your suggestions(or help) are welcome(I'm desperate for them!)

The infamous fake wall.(This is not a new effect.)

A puzzle-solving stage. The pipe shown is the exit, but it's blocked. (Things are not so simple here... Currently, this is the best stage I've designed in this project.)

Update: Here's an alpha preview version. Any ideas are more than welcome. Levels of world 1 and 2 are complete; I have some levels for World 3 and 4 but I probably need more. Use the Konami code to get access to World 4.
http://www.bwass.org/bucket/RGAlpha.zip

10

Front Page News / Re: ROM Hacks: New Hacks Added to the Database

« on: February 28, 2013, 07:14:31 am »

Seems that someone submitted a lot of Chinese Mega Man hacks? I checked some of them and... First of all, please make the fonts on the title screen better. Take MM9: The End of the Nightmare as an example: 'Of'(De) is Heiti, while 'Nightmare'(Emeng) and 'End'(Zhongjie) are badly drawn.
Not to mention the level design or the music. In MM8, the Pharaoh man stage is like a Fire man stage, and the music is horrible. Never be careless with the music...
Oh well. Hacking is some work on which you may spend a lot of time but still get poor remarks. Quality over quantity, and experience makes quality.

If the authors of the Chinese Mega Man hacks can see this message:
Do you have a Baidu account, and often go to Baidu Tieba? If yes, what's your account? (CH: 您是否有百度账户，并且常去百度贴吧？如果是，那么您的百度ID是？)

11

Script Help and Language Discussion / German --> Japanese translation(transliteration?)

« on: February 12, 2013, 07:56:24 am »

OK I don't know the term for 'translating' in this way, I'll just call it 'transliteration' here.
We got games like Super Mario Bros, Dragon Quest, and their names in Japanese are Suupaa Mario, Doragon Kuesuto, respectively.
Now suppose the German word 'Rohrleitung' is in the name of a game, how should this word be translated in this way?
(The game I'm talking about is one of my projects. I have the title screen coded in a different way, so I want to finish it now and leave it unchanged.)

12

Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Chinese Translating PAL5

« on: February 12, 2013, 07:23:03 am »

As a native Chinese, I believe I have quite enough knowledge even on the classical Chinese language field, however this is not guaranteed. It's a pleasure if I could help, but I'm not that good at English, so I can only offer rough translations.
It's OK to call me if you really need help on the Chinese script, but I don't expect massive text; I still have some Rom hacking projects that I need to finish.
PS: I've only played PAL1 and PAL4 and have my characters in both games at Lv.20 or so, I don't really know a lot about the PAL series itself.

13

Programming / Need tech support, about VRC7(IRQ & emulation related??) stuff.

« on: January 22, 2013, 09:15:41 am »

OK, I don't know the answer to the spambot question on the NESDEV forum register form, so Mr.Bot is trying to look for an answer here.

Some time ago I did a simple experiment on the Super Mario Bros (JU) ROM--changing the mapper number from 0 to 85(VRC7 mp). Emulation on different emulators varied. On some emulators like VirtuaNES, NNNesterJ, all was well; on some others like Nestopia, it couldn't run. On FCEUX, emulation was OK, but when a savestate was loaded it started glitching.

This puzzles me. Truly, different mappers have different bank sys, IRQ sys etc. But this problem was beyond my explanation although seemingly simple. The SMB ROM sets the I flag at the very beginning and leaves it on. But when FCEUX loads a state, an IRQ is generated, and the IRQ routine(in SMB1 the routine is an infinite loop) is called, and the CHR banks are in a mess. I tried coding IRQ routines and handling(disabling) IRQs in different ways, but eventually I reached wit's end.

'It appears as if' loading the savestate in FCEUX sets some things which should have remained their own values. But this is highly impossible. The other explanation I can think of is that there are some settings which should be set in the reset routine, but if so, what are these settings? This is not related to VRC7 audio of course.

Waiting for a genius...

14

General Discussion / Re: Piracy Question

« on: January 03, 2013, 02:35:32 am »

I'm also concerned about the problem...
Now assume one distributes a hacked game in .ips form. There is an NPC in the game who is from another game. Is this illegal?
And what if one actually includes audio/art from other games/animes in hacks?
Also, what's the definition of money making? If one says he does the work for free, but also accepts donations. Is that money making?

PS: I'm not from the US, in fact I'm from a country where piracy is everywhere and no one is willing to pay for games. If I want to introduce my games to people around the world, which laws should I obey?

15

ROM Hacking Discussion / Newcomer post which doesn't belong to the newbie section. About SMB Hacking.

« on: December 11, 2012, 12:21:42 am »

Hiya folks. I'm w7n here, and I already have a hack submission and a doc submission at RHDN. I've been active in the Baidu SMB Bar(a Chinese community) since 2 years ago, but ever since the admin there banned the distribution of the 'spike' IPS, the community went into chaos, so I'll try to stay active here.

Some time ago I learned ASM and I have some ASM projects and unfinished WIPs here. A complete project named 'Lost Mario' can be found at my home page. One unfinished project is an action-puzzle game, which includes both left&right scrolling within 2 pages, and koopa shell breaking bricks and hitting hidden blocks, and tunes which use DPCM samples. Only the levels and the 'Game Clear' BGM are unfinished now. I have another unfinished project, meant to be huge, but currently I have only expanded another 32KB into the ROM, and only <10KB has been used. The WIP of the latter project includes auto scrolling(that's ATA's patch), a 7-level Mario upgrade(6 complete), and various other patches. The expanded part only includes Mario's 'Let's go!' voice at the world intro screen, and a VRC7 music processing system(incomplete, and cannot run for the time being). All BGM are composed, though.

What I'm going to talk about here is the latter unfinished project. Personally speaking, no better project than Extra Mario Bros has been released since 2005. Has anyone had the idea to create a real advanced project? Consider making use of expanded memory($6000-). Consider a cutscene system based on the original system. Consider cancelling the gravity routine for hammers, and design 'spell cards' using hammers. Consider a VRC7 music processing system(and simply change the value in $FB to choose which BGM to play, if required by the cutscene system).

I'm not trying to find someone and then leave the project to him, seriously. I'm just providing an idea, and also looking for ideas and information. If anyone wants to join, I'm honoured. I have been working on this, but progress has been slow and continually delayed since I'm a sophomore.

PS: Are there simple ways to contact other members?

16

Front Page News / Re: ROM Hacks: Pokemon Yellow NES Music Hack

« on: March 01, 2012, 07:39:54 am »

I emulated this with FCE Ultra, yet something faulty comes into my way from time to time... Nesterj and VNES just don't work, and FCEUX is too slow on my computer born in the jurassic age. Anyone knows an emulator which deals with this ROM well?
Seems to be nice though I have only played the beginning part. Yet the menu translations are a few puzzling(I'd rather read Chinese as I am Chinese myself :-P)
Anyway, would you continue to translate all the text into Eng?

17

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: About the x.dmc file. I'll be very grateful if you know the answer!!

« on: December 30, 2011, 02:54:20 am »

Difficult to explain in a few words.
The NES has a limited PCM like playback function used for short sounds.

I only need a quick tutorial as I can do ASM programming. Just tell me how, or show me a tutorial.

18

ROM Hacking Discussion / About the x.dmc file. I'll be very grateful if you know the answer!!

« on: December 29, 2011, 07:30:25 am »

I'm found numerous tutorials on how to convert x.wav files to x.dmc files. However, I haven't found any tutorial that tells me how to finally put this sound into the NES.
Can anyone tell me what part of data means what in a x.dmc file? How should I give values to the CPU Addr $4010, $4011, $4012, $4013, so that this sound can be heard?

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Front Page News / Re: ROM Hacks: Super Mario Unlimited Released!

« on: December 28, 2011, 06:03:37 am »

this should be fixed in patch 0.992

it is a bug, but i think this bug exists in the original game

Just cancel the animation time, like my patch in mariohackereng.ys168.com .
Better nothing than bugging.

20

Front Page News / Re: ROM Hacks: Super Mario Unlimited Released!

« on: December 28, 2011, 02:52:06 am »

Awesome hack, but awful music... Better improve the BGM, and the hack will be perfect.
December 28, 2011, 03:00:40 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Uh... In 2-3, Mario goes into a pipe and comes out from "the air"??
December 28, 2011, 03:15:55 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)In this hack, when Fiery Mario is hit he becomes Super Mario. If Mario is pulled by the force of a whirlpool at the time, he will still be pulled down during the animation time. Is this by design, or is this a bug?