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

[bradzx]

Do cheats in SNES emulators have conditionals? I can not imagine it would be hard to start with an infinite health cheat but say if health is greater than ? (I do not know if there are half or quarter hearts) then set to 3 hearts. I can not remember if this will trouble the sword beam though.

Wait, it have cheat code?   I dont remember when I look up last time.

[Recca]

I really want play 3 hearts challenge in A Link to the Past, but sadly it won't let you process the game until you get heart after defeat the boss.   It there a way to remove heart container after defeat boss or skip heart container? Let me know if you know someone who can remove it.

Why not just reload if you lose more than three hearts and pretend like you just lost the game? It seems like a lot of effort to hack the game for a thing such as this. I'm just saying...

[FAST6191]

Wait, it have cheat code?   I dont remember when I look up last time.

I was saying if the SNES emulators have conditionals for their cheats (if value > 3 hearts then set to 3 hearts sort of thing) then that would be far easier than trying to find ways of preventing hearts from counting. The only problem would be if you needed full health for a sword beam (I do not know if you do for this entry).

I do not know the cheat engines of SNES emulators though, such things exist in later systems but I have not played with the SNES enough to know one way or the other.

[mz]

You can easily do that on emulators with Lua scripting: snes9x-rr, BizHawk, lsnes...

[bradzx]

I was saying if the SNES emulators have conditionals for their cheats (if value > 3 hearts then set to 3 hearts sort of thing) then that would be far easier than trying to find ways of preventing hearts from counting. The only problem would be if you needed full health for a sword beam (I do not know if you do for this entry).

I do not know the cheat engines of SNES emulators though, such things exist in later systems but I have not played with the SNES enough to know one way or the other.

Oh I see.  You mean Hex Editor thing?

You can easily do that on emulators with Lua scripting: snes9x-rr, BizHawk, lsnes...

Well does they have download for Lua scripting for 3 hearts?

[mz]

Well does they have download for Lua scripting for 3 hearts?

Of course. When you download the emulators, they all come with the 3-heart Lua script included, in 9 different files for each Zelda ROM version. Why wouldn't they?

Otherwise, if you want to write the script yourself (it will only be ~3 lines), you can read the documentation of the emulators:
http://tasvideos.org/Bizhawk/LuaFunctions.html
http://tasvideos.org/Lsnes/LuaFunctions.html
https://code.google.com/p/snes9x-rr/wiki/LuaScriptingFunctions

And the basics: http://tasvideos.org/LuaScripting.html

You just want to have a loop like this pseudo-code:
while true do
if memory_read(heart_address) > 3 then memory_write(heart_address,3) end
frameadvance()
end

[FAST6191]

No, it has nothing to do with hex editors.

Most cheats that people make are usually infinite health, infinite bullets, infinite lives, infinite mana....
To make them people run a search for a health value, or just a do search if it is a health bar or something. They then lose some health and search again, lose more health and search again.... eventually you find the location, or enough locations that you can try them all. All well known to anybody that has made a cheat.

Sometimes you want to do something only when something else happens (a button combo is pressed, only on a certain level, only once the game has started.....). To do this you need to find something to indicate the game/button/whatever state.
In code terms it will be something like
IF [this area of memory] is equal/less than/greater than [some value] then do this to [another area of memory]

IF is a common programming term (others include WHILE and FOR, the latter being seen in what are known as slide codes but enough of that). It tells a program to do something when the conditions (hence the term conditional) are met.
Not all cheat engines on all consoles/emulators support such concepts, indeed it is not all that surprising if one does not.

In this case you would want to check if the health value is greater than 3 hearts (it might not be the value 3 if there are half hearts or quarter hearts, or it might start counting at 0). If it is greater then tell it to set the health value back to 3 hearts filled. That way you can have as many containers as you like but you will never have more than 3 of them filled.
Doing this would be far easier than figuring out what hearts mean to the game script -- does it just put a heart in your way on the way out of the dungeon, does it only activate the end of boss teleporter when the container is picked up.... The only problem I really saw would be if Link to the Past has the thing where you have a sword beam at full health like some earlier and later titles (I do not know if it does and a search was not getting me far). Another might be if you have a health fairy that wants to fill up your health and will basically lock the game if it can not do it but that is easily solved (disable the cheat for a few seconds), though if the coders were good they would probably make a health fairy just add 20 health rather than try a loop.

As mz said you can probably also do this with emulators that have Lua support, Lua is a full programming language used all over the place (not just in emulators and games) so it definitely will have conditionals/branch code/loops. Various people use Lua to help hacks and whatever else. Here is a discussion we were having on one for the NES ( http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,18717.0.html ).
The idea would be much the same -- find the memory location of the health in the game, have the lua script read the value and if it is greater than 3 hearts you would tell it to set it back to three.
I would prefer to do it in cheats as it is more portable between emulators (or even real hardware) and this does not really need the full power of Lua to do it but it is still very much a valid method.

[KingMike]

I'd like that for Link's Awakening DX too.

Link's Awakening has an awful bug where if you save with too many hearts, or even too much HP for the hearts you do have (8 per heart), it will have major graphics glitches. It can be fixed by navigating the invisible menu to delete the affected save file.
It's even worse on the DX version: you won't even be able to reach the file screen if one of the files is bad.

[Rodimus Primal]

I'd like to see Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Arcade) hacked to have some of the features of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

[shenron002]

I am requesting for a version of NES Tetris with Gameboy music! If that is possible. Thanks!

[Jorpho]

That sounds like a nice idea, but there are a million gajillion Tetris fans out there and since what you propose evidently hasn't been done before, it's probably not very easy to do.

Anyway, this is what the Hack Ideas thread is for.

[NES Boy]

I don't remember much of the NES Tetris soundtrack, but I know that both the Game Boy and NES versions have the same Type B music.

• Game Boy version
• NES version

[shenron002]

i would like this song as a choice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OLtOdnE1mg

[Zoinkity]

Let's face it: the soundtrack from the original GB game was awesome.  Anyone else catch themselves muting the terrible music in whatever Tetris they're playing and humming the GB score really really loudly?

Great request!  Hope somebody picks it up.

[Chronosplit]

Here's one: Permadeath in Pokemon, a Pokemon fainting deletes it completely.  Would be neat for any version, but FireRed especially because there's a couple things you can do to this one's engine to make it nearly Roguelike (minus random maps.)

I know there's an ASM hack to implement half of this in FR (faint=delete), but it's in a limited fashion as a battle mode and I don't have the skill to make it happen through the entire game.

[Recca]

I've got a good one! How about either editing or replacing the enemy sprites from the Final Fantasy games 1-6 with ones from Bahamut Lagoon and Rudra no Hihou so that they have animated attacks instead of just flashing which always bugged me? Final Fantasy 6 (SNES) might be the easiest to work with since the graphics in that game look similar to those of Bahamut Lagoon and Rudra no Hihou. And while we're still at it, the character sprites and portraits could also be improved upon somewhat. Would such a thing be very hard to do?

[vince94]

I've got an idea. How about completely eliminating the Guardian Acorn drop rates from Link's Awakening? I got the idea from this - http://youtu.be/LDigtTSQbWM

[aterraformer]

So ya know how the Wonderswan was supposed to get Final Fantasy III before it was deemed too big?  Well I don't remember if was ever planned for the GBA like the others were ported over but that's what I would like to see.  2D Final Fantasy III in the graphical stylings of the other GBA tites, maybe a difficulty balance too?  That's probably going too far lol.  Anyways, it would probably have to be on two "carts" or something.  As long as I'd be able to run it on the upcoming GBA Everdrive, I'd be happy with it 

[Midna]

Here's an obscure one: Hack the English version of Princess on Ice to change the (terrible) redesigned characters back to their Japanese counterparts.

[FAST6191]

I could see de chibifying the DS port/remake of FF3 but it is not like the final fantasy engines are that close to each other so that would be a serious hack, especially when you can just pick up a DS or use the GBA's NES emulation options (you might want to find the font patch if you go pocketnes or try HVCA on the GBA).

Also what are you looking forward to on the everdrive that you can not get currently?