[Archived] Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas.

[Midna]

I'm not sure how plausible that would be. Somewhere, there's an NES emulator with support for custom high-resolution graphics which works basically like HiSMS. I can't find any videos of it right now but it does exist.

What you sound like you want, though, is a complete recode of the games. At a certain point, it'd probably just be easier to make an HD fan remake than a straight ROM hack.

[John Enigma]

^Maybe I'm asking too much for this?

[nesrocks]

To be fair I wish there was a good NES emulator that allowed for simple assignment of higher res tiles to existing tiles. There is one called HDNes but it is bad. It complicates things and it is buggy. It should be simply a higher res chr bank.

[TRIFORCE89]

I just stumbled across a series of git repositories by someone named Normmatt, that consist of .bat scripts to translate some GBA games to English (F-Zero Climax, Guru Logic, Stafy, etc.).

I have no idea if they're complete or what the quality is. I am also on a Mac and unable to run a .bat.

Would anyone be so kinda as to try these out and make .ips patches out of them if they prove decent? https://github.com/Normmatt?tab=repositories

[Kallisto]

I just remembered this, but why not add the stuff from Dragon Quest III GBC (Excluding the medals) to Dragon Quest III SNES? Stuff like the Medal Dungeon, and other extras. Course probably won't call it the Medal Dungeon, but give it a different name since there will be no monster medals.

Optionally also give DQI-III MSU-1 support. DQI-II had really terrible SNES music. I'm pretty surprised no one has done it yet since it would get the most benefit from MSU-1.

[Animation Guru]

If you're gonna do that, then we need to also fix the bugs in DQ1&2.  I listed a few when I reviewed the English patch for the site, but those might be emulator-specific.  (I was using the SNES emulator for Gamecube.)  There is one confirmed bug in Dragon Quest II when one of the party members gets sick, and a dialog box gets stuck in a loop.

I've also heard that Dragon Quest III english patch 1.1 has a save bug and several other glitches.

Seriously, those need to be fixed ahead of any other adjustments to the game.
May 05, 2016, 11:08:00 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Here's one I've been wanting for a while...



In lieu of the Shining Force III Translation Project coming up with their own English voices for Shining Force III, what I'd like is to be able to insert the Japanese voices from the Japanese version of Scenario 1 into the American version of Scenario 1.

The English voice acting of Scenario 1 really is quite terrible.  And I mean AWFUL!

The Japanese voices are much better, even if they're not in English.

And yes, you can always turn the voices off, but what's the fun in that!?

[TRIFORCE89]

If you're gonna do that, then we need to also fix the bugs in DQ1&2.  I listed a few when I reviewed the English patch for the site, but those might be emulator-specific.  (I was using the SNES emulator for Gamecube.)  There is one confirmed bug in Dragon Quest II when one of the party members gets sick, and a dialog box gets stuck in a loop.

This fix once existed. Unfortunately, it is lost to time. I hope someone might have it and share it http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=19449.0

[Bonesy]

i had it but lost it when I was reorganizing emulation folders lol

i might still have the patched rom though


if it helps, the patch in question was one of those weird byuu-y formats and not IPS

[Animation Guru]

If you still have it, it can be extracted.

[Bonesy]

here is what I have in an IPS format patch

contains the translation with the dragon quest version and the fixes, I'm too lazy to make a patch for just the changes so you'll have to do that yourself

http://www.mediafire.com/download/h0m3o9gdxdyfiis/DQ1_2.ips

On a related note with "files I have bumming around that might be useful", would anyone like me to upload the patch someone on /m/ did that brings the HP levels on SRW MX PSP in line with SRW MX PS2?

[Kallisto]

Good thing I brought it up.

As for SHIII

I know they're constantly working on the project, and I helped bring attention to a few issues with SC1. It seems they finally fixed the battle files as I suspected was the cause for much of SFIII-SC1 freezing, especially when you get to the Train.

SC2 & SC3 for the most part only suffered from lesser stuff, but SC1 was the one game that really needed patchwork.

[ShadowOne333]

A music hack for Super Mario Land that removes that Can Can music for the Star Power and replaces it with the usual Star/Invincible theme from the NES titles.

I never liked that. xD

[Bahamut ZERO]

Breath of Fire 3 PSP - Teepo Edition. Basically swaps Ryu & Teepo's sprites so Teepo would be the main character instead of Ryu.

Some work would probably have to be done for some of Ryu's poses that I'm sure Teepo wouldn't normally have, but it would be so badass to run around as Teepo instead. Having him around for just 2-3 dungeons at the beginning feels like a tease!

Breath of Fire 3 PSP music hack - I've seen a handful of Final Fantasy hacks that play the dungeon music continuously during fights. I'd LOVE to see something like that done for BoF 3. 

[TheNintendoFan]

A version of FF5a's Custom Classes mod for the PS port of the game?

[Trantor]

Mother 3 Combo Delay Hack:

Ever played Mother 3 on an emulator? It is near impossible to land a combo, because of the audio lags behind the gameplay about 160 to 500 ms. Wouldn't it make the game much more fun if someone would hack the battle song combo files such that they compensate for this delay?

The delay may vary from computer to computer, so possibly the rom patchr could prompt the user to specify a delay.

If no one is up for the job, I'll attempt to do it myself, though I have no experience in rom hacking (only programming)

[FAST6191]

I am curious now. I have not invested any great time in Mother 3 on an emulator but now I want to figure out a way to test this lag, if indeed it exists and is not just an emulator quirk on your setup. This might involve a camera recording fast and an oscilloscope. Might even have to dig out a CRT monitor.

I don't know if Mother 3 uses the sappy format (a format very common on the GBA and part of the SDK Nintendo provided, though at the same time their devs were often the ones to twist it to breaking point and Mother 3 is an interesting example for a lot of GBA development. If it does I am sure you could relatively easily modify delays, remove a note or two or otherwise offset something.

If you have not already then do go around the options. I have not checked modern VBA-m but on the DS with desmume you do have some selection options to increase or decrease audio accuracy. Golden Sun was also another series that causes fun with sound on the GBA, such a thing then becoming a test to see how good emulators are, so if you can find a test with that then you might find a better option for you here. There were a few forks of VBA, supposedly merged back into VBA-m but you might still find something there. Speedruns, audio and recording did feature in various forks there so you might get lucky.

Also if you have not tried no$gba, which got a new version today (though mainly for DSi related stuff) then you might wish to try that http://problemkaputt.de/gba.htm

[jink640]

I have played mother 3 through a flashcart and an emulator, the timing isn't off with the emulator the combo system is just strict as hell. Of course it could be an isolated incident for me.

[nesrocks]

My experience with GBA emulators is that there is unbearable lag (maybe because I like GBA mostly for its rhythm games).

[Trantor]

The emulator I use is the newest version of Visual Boy advance.
I use DirectSound with the Primary Sound driver.
The emulator gives the option to specify the "Number of sound buffers:" which I set to
"5 frames = 83.33 ms".
I also tried switching to DirectX's XAudio2 which according to this http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/914622-mother-3/55586804 internet post sort of reduces the latency, and it does, the downside is that the audio is noticeably worse (part of what makes the game great is the awesome music, I daresay the music is part of the story itself).

Another factor is the keyboard input latency, which might be faster on the GBA. In any case, when I press the corresponding A or B key on my keyboard, the button sound (when you navigate in-game menus itll make sounds) sounds undoubtedly dissonant to the keystroke. I play piano, and the latency of keystroke to piano-sound is much lower.
When I play a midi-keyboard on my computer using the primary sound driver, the latency really throws me off and I can hardly play, but when I use a special driver called ASIO-4-ALL it works much better.

Lastly I would like to add that this problem is something many people have, especially if the sound card, sound driver etc. isn't the best. It all depends on the hardware and its driver.

edit: and thanks  FAST6191 for the emulator tip, I'll try it out sometime tonight (German night). If you can hack the rom I'd be delighted.

[John Enigma]

-Emulators-

26. I wish someone would develop a Bandai Wonderswan (Color) with a working editor & debugger, and the rare WonderWitch dev kit software, just like the NES emulator (compilation), FCEUX. Emulators that exist for this obscure console are Oswan, Cygne, BWS, and the one with a debugger, Mednafen. But that's it. I wish someone could make with an accurate & easy to use debugger system.

27. The same above me, but for the Neo Geo Pocket. The only emulators that exist for this system are NeoPop, Neopocott(?), higan(?), and Mednafen(?).

28. Something that hasn't been done before, and that is that someone should make an Apple Bandai Pippin emulator for both @WORLD and Atmark models. I also wish the emulator had a built-in homebrew game maker.