[Q]

@mz: Another thing I noticed is that if you pause the game to give orders to your units in the PSX version, the music stops, then it starts again from the beginning when you unpause. It doesn't do this in the SNES version; it just keeps playing when you pause. This is another big problem with the PSX version, in my opinion.

[TRIFORCE89]

Patches for Mario Tennis and Mario Golf for the N64 and GBC that unlock Transfer Pak-related courses in each game. Characters, not necessary, and probably unable to do "cleanly" as they borrow player-specific stats. Just the courses would be nice.

[mamertos]

How I said here, other problem of the SNES version of Ogre Battle is that the description menu of the tarot cards during battles pushing down the select button is broken (in the jap version works fine). So, in my opnion, the PSX version wins over the SNES one for this fact. I wish someone fix it

[KingMike]

It might be difficult to say if it was broken or deliberately removed.

Lufia 1 had item descriptions that were surely removed from the localization due to ROM space. (it sounds like the developers were given 12 megabits for the localization originally and then had it cut to 8 at release, and the game seems like it barely fit at that.)

[Q]

How I said here, other problem of the SNES version of Ogre Battle is that the description menu of the tarot cards during battles pushing down the select button is broken (in the jap version works fine). So, in my opnion, the PSX version wins over the SNES one for this fact. I wish someone fix it

Check out FinS's English translation of the Nintendo Power version of Ogre Battle. It has the tarot card descriptions plus other features that weren't present in the NA SNES version.

[Gorganzola]

Hi, I have a suggestion, I don't know if it would be easy or hard to do but there is a game called Metal Walker on the Game Boy Color, it's a good game but the random battles happen too often (You can take as little as 3 steps and have a battle). Would it be possible to reduce the encounter rate for this game to make it more enjoyable?

[mz]

Would it be possible to reduce the encounter rate for this game

Of course it is, anything is.

Take a look at these links to start learning how to do it:
The Newbie Package of REQUIRED Material

ROMHacking.net FAQ: You ask, we answer!
ROMHacking.net Getting Started Section: Newbies Go HERE!
ROMHacking.net Documents Section!
How to ask questions the smart way.
On the Essence of ROM Hacking
Talk with experienced people in our IRC chat and ask specific questions there.

[Psyklax]

Would it be possible to reduce the encounter rate for this game to make it more enjoyable?

If you learn Z80 assembly then sure. That's the only way you'll be able to alter the encounter rate. First you'll need to figure out how the game decides when random battles occur. Like, Final Fantasy 1 takes a random number and counts down with every step, so you could just double the number and get a much lower encounter rate. But this ain't FF1, so who knows.

[CyberFox]

It would be be nice if someone took either Tengen's Ms Pac-Man or Namco's Pac-Man and reconstruct them into an NES port of Data East's "Rootin' Tootin'"

[mz]

Finding a way to disable random battles is the first thing I do when I have to translate a JRPG (the other being finding a way to kill bosses in just one turn). Here's what I usually do:

0. Start BizHawk and open its RAM Search.
1. Get into a place where there are no random battles (a house or a town, maybe) and start a new search.
2. Repeat search with "equal to previous value" many times while you stand still. Several thousand possible addresses should disappear.
3. Get into a place with random battles (a forest or a cave, maybe) and do a "not equal to previous value" then stand still and do the same thing as step 2.
4. Go to other places and repeat all these steps until you can't remove more addresses like this.
5. Mark 25% of your address list, right click on it and select "Freeze Address". If random battles haven't stopped, unfreeze them and do the same with another 25%, etc.
6. After finding that battles have stopped, do a simple process of elimination until you're left with just 1 or 2 address.
7. Put a read/write breakpoint there and see what code handles random battles.
8. Modify it to remove them completely or just to reduce them.

If you know that the game has more random battles the more you walk (or it has any other action that can change the RNG), you can use this information to find these addresses much faster.

Obviously, this doesn't always work, but with a little creativity and luck you can quickly find something similar in any game...

[kdubmods]

One idea I had was to change the team names in NES Double Dribble, as indicated from this thread...
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=27259.0

Does anyone know how do this because I new to rom hacking?

[Q]

The SNES game Batman Forever is known for being insanely awful, probably one of the worst games on the system. The Angry Video Game Nerd did a rant about how terrible the game is here (start at 5:22). Interestingly, the game was published by Acclaim and uses the same engine as Mortal Kombat, so it has the same graphical style, and Batman and Robin have the same moves as MK characters. It would be awesome if someone could use the sprites from Batman Forever to add Batman and Robin to the SNES version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as a nod to Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. (Yes, I know this would require a lot of work and is unlikely to happen, but it's fun to dream.)

[SCD]

Game & Watch Gallery 4 (Game Boy Advance): A hack that would restore the original uncensored sprites for classic mode Fire Attack.

The main sprites are located in the offsets 39f298 and 3a1aa4.

[Gorganzola]

Hi mz, thank you for your reply. I was able to find this with BizHawk:
In address 0690 when you are in an area with no random battles the value is 0 and once you go outside, it is set to 1
In address 0695 when you're in a battle area the value quickly goes from 01 to 18, then resets back to 01 and continues the same behavior (It is set to 0 when you are in houses). Do I understand correctly that this is what influences the random battles?
When I froze the value on 18, the game became much more enjoyable because the random battles aren't as commmon as they were. What can I do next to make 18 a constant value?
Does read/write breakpoint have something to do with this and I'm very sorry for the silly question but where do I find this read/write breakpoint? In BizHawk?

[Melissa]

[SNes]Chrono trigger - Disabling XP for inactive characters


As u should know inactive characters get 75% XP. Does anyone have patch to disable it?

[mamertos]

Super Bomberman 3 (SNES): you need enter 3 different passwords for enabling new battle stages (30 stages in total). Also (how I said here recently) there are others 2 special hidden levels which you need push down x button a lot of times and very quicky in the title screen for enabling them (it's impossible to do without the autofire feature). My idea is unlock all battle levels from the beginning without passwords or that insane cheat for the special levels.

[mz]

Hi mz, thank you for your reply. I was able to find this with BizHawk:
In address 0690 when you are in an area with no random battles the value is 0 and once you go outside, it is set to 1
In address 0695 when you're in a battle area the value quickly goes from 01 to 18, then resets back to 01 and continues the same behavior (It is set to 0 when you are in houses). Do I understand correctly that this is what influences the random battles?
When I froze the value on 18, the game became much more enjoyable because the random battles aren't as commmon as they were. What can I do next to make 18 a constant value?
Does read/write breakpoint have something to do with this and I'm very sorry for the silly question but where do I find this read/write breakpoint? In BizHawk?

Great job! I just tested setting 0690 to 0 and the random battles were gone.

To make 18 (or anything else) a constant value, you can freeze it like you already did or use a cheat manager ("Tools" -> "Cheats" in BizHawk.)

To use read/write breakpoints you'll need to learn assembly (~Z80) language and how to use a debugger. ("Tools" -> "Debugger" in BizHawk, although BGB's debugger is recommended for this.)

EDIT: Ah, I just realized that you probably want to patch the ROM so 0695 is always 18 or something. You'll need to learn ~Z80 assembly for that, as you'll need to manually edit the code that changes that byte in RAM while the game is running (or much better, change the code that reads and process it).

[Psyklax]

In address 0690 when you are in an area with no random battles the value is 0 and once you go outside, it is set to 1
In address 0695 when you're in a battle area the value quickly goes from 01 to 18, then resets back to 01 and continues the same behavior (It is set to 0 when you are in houses). Do I understand correctly that this is what influences the random battles?

Good find there. I took a look at the game in BGB's debugger and if you just want to have random battles disabled permanently, change $2339 in the ROM from 7E to 79. This instruction is used when you move from one screen to another and changes $690 in RAM to whatever that screen requires. With this change, instead of loading $690 with the correct value, it loads it with what's in the C register - that is, zero. Different areas have different numbers, so this presumably affects what kind of enemies you encounter.

As for reducing the rate instead of turning off battles completely, I'm not so sure that $695 is connected: it rolls around every frame or so and you still get random battles regardless of what number it lands on. That will take a little more investigation.

[KingMike]

I thought $0690 was a ROM address on GB/GBC?

[mz]

I thought $0690 was a ROM address on GB/GBC?

It is. We're talking about $690 in the WRAM domain ($C000-$CFFF), so $C690 in normal system bus terms.

(Blame the BizHawk devs for that confusion. )


Something really quick I noticed in the RAM viewer: there's this byte at $06b5 (aka $c6b5) that goes up every step or so... It seems if you keep it really low (like 1), random encounters appear much more rarely. Maybe the game uses this number as a % of probability (ie, if there's a 20 there, a battle can come up 20 out 100 times). Also, if set to 0, it seems there are no random battles at all.

Maybe someone with more time and skills can take a look at the code handling that address.