Emulator for SNES hacking?

[nesrocks]

I've tried two:
- snes9x 1.51 Geiger build: the first thing I tried to do when testing it was to use the rom hex editor. It simply closed on me.
- bsnes plus v04: it has many great features! It's an amazing emulator, but I can't see how to save the changes made to the ROM on the hex editor. This is a major pain. I ended up having to rewrite every little change that I did on an external hex editor, and that's very confusing to keep track of what was changed and what wasn't. When hacking I need to experiment a lot to reverse engineer the rom, and when it works I'd like to save the current state. I may not remember everything that I changed. I also would like to clear the activity highlighting on the hex editor, it won't clear unless I close the rom and reopen it.

How do you guys do snes hacking?

[eskayelle]

I typically use the Geiger build, but just as a debugger.  I use XVI32 or HxD as my hex editors, but if I'm on the go, I'll use a basic hex editor for Android. 

Not to any degree near what I've read on some of the forums, I tend to make builds.  So, I may do some hex editing, or perhaps some tile changes via TileMolester, or change some palettes via SNESPal, but I'll use Lunar IPS to make patches.  Then, I'll make a .bat file and have it run either xkas (for ASM) or flips (for .ips patches) against a copy of the original ROM.  That way, where one patch in the build fails or can be improved, I can just strip it out without really impacting the rest of my changes.

Admittedly, I've gone a little crazy with the patches and ASM files for my last (and next) hack, but it has been helpful in keeping track of what I'm doing.

[chillyfeez]

I've tried two:
- snes9x 1.51 Geiger build: the first thing I tried to do when testing it was to use the rom hex editor. It simply closed on me.

I've never had that issue with Geiger's, and I use it a lot for hex editing because I like to see my edits "live" (and the old computer I used to use for hacking was too slow for BSNES, so I never really tried it).
What were the circumstances of your crash?

[KingMike]

Geiger's needs some really old Visual C runtimes or something. Did you get those and put in the EXE directory?
msvcp71, msvcr71, and MFC71 dlls.
Possibly there was an additional HexEdit.dll, according to my copy of the program.

[slidelljohn]

I use Snes9X v1.43.ep9r8 - Geiger's Snes9x Debugger for debugging and for when I want to save my changes to the rom. Bsnes plus is good but I still haven't made the jump yet because I like the way the code looks when you trace code in geiger's debugger. I also use Snes9X v1.43.ep9r8 - Geiger's Snes9x Debugger because you can use the save states in vsnes to view most of the save state data. I'm not 100% sure but I don't think you can load Bsnes plus save states into vsnes. Bsnes plus is the more accurate debugger.

[Imogene03]

I've never had that issue with Geiger's, and I use it a lot for hex editing because I like to see my edits "live" (and the old computer I used to use for hacking was too slow for BSNES, so I never really tried it).
What were the circumstances of your crash?

Nice compilation here! Thnx for sharing.

[Z3R0X]

I use Geiger's + No$SNS, why?
Geiger's:
- Memory search.
- Memory W/R breakpoints.
- Hex editor.
Lacks of real time assembler/disassembler.

No$SNS:
- Excellent assembler/disassembler to debug in real time.
- VRAM viewer
Lacks of W/R breakpoints and memory search.

I haven't used Bsnes yet.

[Gideon Zhi]

New on the scene and actually quite really good: Mesen-S

[KingMike]

No$SNS:
- Excellent assembler/disassembler to debug in real time.

Last I had used No$ disassembler, it by defaults outputs in X86 mnemonics rather than the proper 65816 (can be fixed in the settings) but far worse problem is that it didn't even consider instruction re-sizing SEP/REP in the output.
THAT pretty much makes it almost useless.
I had to use it and manually correct it when I needed to work on something I could only get running in No$ (which is extremely unusual) but I would otherwise avoid it. Not unless that gets fixed.

[Z3R0X]

Last I had used No$ disassembler, it by defaults outputs in X86 mnemonics rather than the proper 65816 (can be fixed in the settings) but far worse problem is that it didn't even consider instruction re-sizing SEP/REP in the output.
THAT pretty much makes it almost useless.
I had to use it and manually correct it when I needed to work on something I could only get running in No$ (which is extremely unusual) but I would otherwise avoid it. Not unless that gets fixed.

I never have problems with SEP/REP instruction re-sizing on NO$

[#]

New on the scene and actually quite really good: Mesen-S

Thanks for sharing. I just checked it out and I really like the intuitive, modern-looking UI. Once a few more essential debugging features and support for the enhancement chips have been added I'll probably make this my go-to SNES debugger.