141

Personal Projects / Re: Friday the 13th (NES) Oziak

« on: September 22, 2015, 12:29:46 am »

Is the Jason tracker an obtainable item? If not, could it be made into one?

The item isn't in the original game. But Jason's location, both macro (area) and micro (screen #), is tracked in RAM. Thus, such a feature wouldn't be difficult to create. Despite prior claims, Jason *does* have some modest space-warping ability. He's required to go from area to connected area, but isn't required to traverse every screen involved in the linkage.

Is it possible to make a way to revive slain counselors?

Absolutely! Jason and Pamela each get resurrected twice, so fair's only fair.

142

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Cant find smb3 palette

« on: September 21, 2015, 02:20:16 am »

$36D27-9 in-ROM seems to be those three palette ID#'s. (The "transparency" entry isn't included.)

143

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Mario 3 palettes

« on: September 18, 2015, 11:24:45 pm »

Yes, but they're not as fun as NES ROM hacking.

Much sadness. I have a standing offer to pay good money to anyone who makes a FCEUxD-quality Debug/Emulator for SNES.

144

Personal Projects / Friday the 13th (NES) Oziak

« on: September 18, 2015, 09:13:03 pm »

A playable/enjoyable rendition of Friday the 13th is long overdue. Stuff fixed thus far:

* The rock weapon no longer arcs.
* Jason no longer kills you in 4 hits.
* The counselor stats are tweaked so none of them suffer from Polio.

Also slated, pending resumed Adderall™ functionality:

* Simplified, intuitive map system.
* No more warped space transition-points (forest).
* Medicine actually heals you.
* A formal armory, preventing weak weapons from auto-replacing better ones.
* Use weapon while jumping! 
* JasonTracker™

What'd we miss?

145

Newcomer's Board / Re: Changing the Music to an NES Game

« on: September 15, 2015, 03:46:30 am »

Even those with "zero experience" can make stuff like this happen. It all comes down to motivation...

On a related note, do you have any sort of musical background IRL? Almost anything counts- piano lessons, marching band, etc.

146

Personal Projects / Re: Ghetto Warrior (Hack of Dragon Warrior/Quest 1)

« on: September 15, 2015, 03:41:52 am »

How goes the progress on this one? Haven't seen any new screenshots lately

Progress is slow-but-steady. A working ROM exists wherein the new Overworld terrain-draw protocols are in effect, and fully-functional!
I want to reconfigure the Enemy Handling routines prior to the first public Demo, if only to throw in the dozen or so "Streetwalker"-class foes.

Hopefully, this new medication I'm on will result in a marked increase in productivity. Either way, *do* expect something prior to Year's End! 

147

Personal Projects / Re: Ninja Gaiden: Asshole Edition (Alpha ver. download)

« on: September 14, 2015, 08:13:40 pm »

There is a hack called "Super Kusottare World" which more or less translates to "Super Asshole World", though.

The Super Maricón Bros. might want to look into that one!

148

Personal Projects / Re: Ninja Gaiden: Asshole Edition (Alpha ver. download)

« on: September 13, 2015, 07:50:59 pm »

So much for my postulated "Oziak" series of hacks, which would remove Fake Difficulty from otherwise good games. 

149

Newcomer's Board / Re: Changing the Music to an NES Game

« on: September 13, 2015, 07:46:42 pm »

Really bad because i want to create a Castlevania 3 remix.

Correct answer!

I would begin by finding the music data for the two Castlevania 2 songs you wish to port into Castlevania 3. From there, decode the data to the extent that you know which sections pertain to which channels (Pulse-2, Pulse-1, Triangle, Noise, DPCM), how the game distinguishes rhythmic durations from audible tones, special timbre/volume handling, etc. Once you're comfortable with the C2 music format, dive into that of C3 and do likewise. (Konami and Capcom were the two heavyweight third party developers back in the day; if Capcom had a proprietary music format, I'm guessing Konami did as well. This bodes well for your project, as it may mean the C2/C3 music engines have a lot in common.)

150

Personal Projects / Re: Ninja Gaiden: Asshole Edition (Alpha ver. download)

« on: September 12, 2015, 09:32:03 pm »

Is "kaizo" literally Japanese for "asshole"?

151

Newcomer's Board / Re: Changing the Music to an NES Game

« on: September 12, 2015, 09:27:30 pm »

I'm going to indulge in a little self-plagiarism here:

Music hacking is this hobby’s Tower of Babel. The NES has a library of over 800 games, and almost none of them use the same music engine. This makes porting songs from one game to another impossible unless one knows both formats and rewrites the song data accordingly prior to transplant. In the absence of documentation, one must reverse-engineer each format by analyzing the music engine of both games- a tiresome process which requires at least some knowledge of 6502 assembly.

Once that task is completed (or you got lucky and the donor / recipient games use the exact same format), music data must be transplanted in a very precise manner. If the new song takes up more space than the old one, you’ll have to find somewhere else to insert it. NES games are notorious for being tight on space, and music data is almost always contained within a single bank, so there’s usually minimal room for expansion. And even when you find a good fit, pointers and/or song headers must be updated to reflect the new starting points of each channel’s data.

On top of all of this, not all hackers possess a musical background. One needn’t be able to tell a Plagal Cadence from an Authentic one, but unfamiliarity with basic concepts such as quarter notes and absolute pitches will prevent aspiring music hackers from forming associations and noticing patterns within the code. When you tally it all up, they’re essentially playing Enigma Machine to four different languages: the music data format of the (1) donor / (2) recipient games, and (3) the 6502 assembly code which interprets it to produce (4) music. Moreover, all it takes to jeopardize the entire process is a single breakdown in any part of that tetrahedron.


tl;dr- How bad do you want this?

152

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Help with Mega Man sprites.

« on: September 09, 2015, 01:58:25 am »

In reply to "how do I make red not assault your eyes"...The NES sucks at reds, oranges, yellows, grays, and browns. Its really only good at blues and blue-greens. You have like twenty blues and not 1 good yellow. (Sigh). What can you do? Nothing.

This topic has always fascinated me. Someone at some point had to make the final call on the Famicom/NES palette roster. How and why they went with what they did.... there just has to be a story there. Two shades of black (one of which could damage 80's TV screens) with four duplicates apiece, two near-duplicate shades of gray which don't correlate with their Playchoice-10 counterparts, way too much space devoted to the decayed algae part of the spectrum, and last but not least, freakin' Nintello.

That said, I always liked Red #16...

153

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Mario 3 palettes

« on: September 09, 2015, 01:44:59 am »

Beware that SMB3 assigns most background/sprite palette layouts to multiple levels/areas. Thus, changing one entry can affect multiple places throughout the game. (And the game's large enough that exploring every single nook & cranny after each alteration isn't realistic.)

If only I could find a way to actually make money off of NES ROM hacking.  Hah!

Do you have any experience with higher-level programming languages?

154

Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: Two Links [WIP]

« on: September 07, 2015, 12:45:48 am »

Could you direct me to documentation on how to do such a thing?

I'm not sure if such documentation exists. It's not too difficult a procedure, but a lot of the specifics depend on the nature of the hack. Certain routines need to be designed to swap-in CHR-ROM banks at certain times, and a lot of that is tied to the hack's position along the [Original Game's Protocols] <---------> [Total Artistic Freedom] spectrum.

For example, in my recent hack I assigned Underworld Spritesheets on a per-room basis, using two bits from the Layer 5 data array. This allowed me to shuffle things around to enable almost any enemy combination I wanted. But if fighting Wizzrobes alongside Darknuts isn't a priority, one needn't go to such complex lengths in the conversion process.

155

Personal Projects / Re: Critique needed, Legend of Zelda: Link's Gauntlet beta ready to play

« on: September 06, 2015, 09:46:28 pm »

It's def a challenge since Link is a loser and can't move diagonally.

That shouldn't be too difficult of a mod to pull off... Most of the challenge would involve background/object collision detection.

156

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Background graphics for Zelda1 MMC5 + CHR-ROM not showing up

« on: September 06, 2015, 09:44:25 pm »

You're using FCEUX 2.2.2, so this may not be relevant.

But FCEUxD_SP 1.07 has a weird timing problem with MMC5 CHR-ROM pages. I've found that it can be bypassed by doing a double-write to $5127 (assuming 8kB CHR-banks and regular 8 x 8 sprites).

157

Personal Projects / Re: The Legend of Zelda: Two Links [WIP]

« on: September 06, 2015, 09:35:37 pm »

One question for people who have changed the art of NES games before: how the heck do you find what you're looking for?! There are just so many tiles and sprites to scroll through! (I'm speaking from the standpoint of someone who uses TileM)

I eventually declared a not-so-mild oath and converted the game to CHR-ROM.

158

Newcomer's Board / Re: Branching in Disassembled Code

« on: September 01, 2015, 08:30:47 pm »

I'm sure the CPU is not smart enough to know if it's branching into the middle of an instruction. If it does branch there, it will just take whatever data is there and turn that into an instruction.

Bingo.

Moreover, I've seen instances of such "dirty" coding in published NES games. Probably the most common variation is branching to the nearest #$60 byte, thus double-casting an operand as an RTS command. (And when some rookie hacker decides that Captain Awesome should have more than 96 bullets, start out somewhere other than slightly left-of-center, etc., the game crashes and needless discouragement ensues.)

159

Personal Projects / Re: Sour Music Kart + Demo

« on: August 31, 2015, 09:27:10 pm »

The races here takes place inside the lamest grocery store of the local Brainerd, MN area as the customers shop.

Is there going to be a cash-filled briefcase hidden in a snowdrift near a fencepost?

160

Personal Projects / Re: Sour Music Kart + Demo

« on: August 29, 2015, 03:37:33 am »

Is the SNES Mario Kart music format documented anywhere?