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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Questions about hacking Castlevania Dracula X.

« on: October 16, 2020, 11:03:56 pm »

Well I guess this is way more complicated than I expected,

Thanks for your answers, about the door, my idea was to remove both “alternative exits”, so change the pits in stage 3 to normal pits that just kill you, and change the door in stage 4 for a wall, so the “key” only use would be to rescue Maria, so make the key disappear from your sub weapon slot after you open Marisa’s cell.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Questions about hacking Castlevania Dracula X.

« on: October 09, 2020, 10:18:09 pm »

Good day friends, I have been a fan of the hacks created by this community for a long time and today I decided that I want to try creating my first rom hack, so I decide to start with what seem to be a simple project, I wish to create a hack that allows the player to play all the stages of Castlevania Dracula X for the SNES in a single play through, my preferred order would be Stage 1– 2 – 3 – 4’ – 4 – 5’ – 5 – 6 – 7, I wish to do this because the game is pretty short and does not have enough stages to really support two different routes like the original Castlevania Rondo of Blood did, from what I understand the simplest way to do this would be to identify the bits of data that tells the game which stage load next when the “win condition” from the current stage is achieved; in most stages the only available win condition is to touch the magic orb that appears when you beat the boss of the stage, but there are two stages that have an extra win condition each, Stage 3 sends you to Stage 4’ if you fall in the pits of a specific room, and Stage 4 sends you to Stage 5’ if you open certain door with the “key” sub weapon.

So my questions would be, ¿is my approach correct for what I want to do? And if it is so ¿what is the most efficient method to identify the data that tells the game which stage to load after the current one is cleared? and ¿how do I recognize what data represent each stage?

Thanks in advance for any guidance or advice that you could give me.   

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X6 Tweaks (v2.5)

« on: August 25, 2020, 10:36:58 pm »

Hi everyone, love the patch.
A humble request: ¿May it be possible to change the behavior of the Ground Scaravitch´s stage?
The problem is that the stage picks four rooms at random, one each time you enter one of the totem teleporters, and if you are looking to get the Dr. Light Capsule, or the rescuable Reploids or the portal to the Alt Stage it could become really frustrating, because you have to replay the stage over and over again, waiting for the game to randomly sent you to the specific room you want to go to, maybe you could remove the rooms that don’t have any special items from the pick, so the game always sent you to the rooms that have something important in them, I´m not a 100% certain but I think there are eight possible rooms and only four of them seem to have anything important inside. Anyway thanks for the work that is already been done, the game is a lot more enjoyable already.

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X5 Improvement Project Addendum (v1.5)

« on: June 06, 2020, 07:54:52 pm »

Wow, thank you Nova77, that is certainly a very detailed answer, you have put a lot though on this one.
While I understand that almost anything is possible nowadays with cheats and patience, my proposal was more to the effect of modifying some of the game's mechanics, so the player could have a more smooth experience playing as any of the two heroes and being able to reach 100% completion with either of them.
I admit that I am just a casual player and don%u2019t really know how to hack or code, so my post was more of a say wish list I case anyone with the abilities decide to continue working in the patch.
With that say I think there is a couple of changes that could be implemented that will allow for a smooth and straight 100% run as Zero, without changing the core experience of the game too much:
1.   Change the Dark Hold weapon so it makes the heroes invulnerable as long as it is active, this will allow you to get any item protected by Death Spike's floors or walls, without completely removing the danger of the Death Spikes as you are limited to a short span of invulnerability.

2.   Change the Flash Laser weapon so both X and Zero get it, and make it able to break any of the breakable objects in the game (The cracked wood panel in the sunken ship that blocks access to the heart, the switch in the same sunken ship to get the Falcon Armor Body Parts, the wood panel that blocks access to the EX-Tank in the fortress, the switch in the space observatory that blocks access to the Gaia Armor Helmet and of course the always annoying V-Blocks.

3.   Extend the Air Dash of Zero a little so he could reach the platform with the Gaea Armor Body Parts Capsule without needing the jumper part (By jumping from the Death Spikes platform in the middle of the elevator path in the Airbase) or alternately just make either or both of these platforms bigger so the jump is easier.

4.   Make the V-blocks movable by any form of dash or air dash, instead of only the Gaea Armor dash.

I think these changes will make a 100% run with either character no just possible but streamline and fun as they will also remove pretty much all the need for backtracking, the only downside is that Zero will lose his Chaos Flasher attack in exchange for the Flash Laser but I think it is an acceptable trade off as Zero already has a lot of combat options.
Anyway, sorry for the extra-long post, and hope to hear your opinions about these proposed changes, thanks for reading

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Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man X5 Improvement Project Addendum (v1.5)

« on: April 04, 2020, 03:58:00 am »

Hi Acediez, I just registered on the forum to thank you for this great patch; I just finished playing the game from start to finish and is great to finally being able to obtain all the parts without cheats, I have a couple of suggestions in case you or other hackers decide to keep working on this project.

1. Include the always get both energy+ and life+ option mentioned in the "read me" in the main patch.
2. Remove the "waiting time" to get parts, so you get all the prizes as soon as you defeat the maverick.
3. If possible remove the "black V boxes" and the instant death spike floors / walls, or change their behavior so the "black V boxes" can be destroyed by other means appart from the Gaea Armor buster, and spikes only cause some damage instead of instantly killing you, I suggest this because is pretty obvious that those elements were only included in order to force you to replay already cleared levels with the Gaea Armor witch is annoying and feel like unnecessary padding, and also make impossible to do a 100% run using only Zero.
4. Improve the Gaea Armor so it becomes a viable option for combat instead of a "tool" to get some poorly placed items, I would suggest giving it the normal movement speed of the other armors and buffing up the damage of the Buster so it feels like the "Power" option in contrast to the "Mobility" option represented by the Falcon Armor.

Anyways thanks for your work, is truly an improvement over the original game