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

[RetroGameFan]

Have you got a soldering iron? Cause you're gonna need it.

http://callanbrown.com/index.php/castlevania-iii-with-full-famicom-audio

That link has some very helpful information for anyone interested in such a project. To be honest, I'm not interested in doing something like this, but other people might be, like the guy whose site you linked to. That being said, the point I'm making is nevertheless still a fact. That's because it goes for everything in general, and I don't just mean putting full Famicom audio into Castlevania III for the NES.

[julayla]

You know, after watching the 2 part OVA and reading the manga, I wouldn't mind there being a translation of the Dragon Half PC Engine game

[KingMike]

That link has some very helpful information for anyone interested in such a project. To be honest, I'm not interested in doing something like this, but other people might be, like the guy whose site you linked to. That being said, the point I'm making is nevertheless still a fact. That's because it goes for everything in general, and I don't just mean putting full Famicom audio into Castlevania III for the NES.

I don't condone the content, but I would not trust that author's advice. His method on how to remove ROMs even mentions it's a bit dangerous.
I would not trust a guy that tells me to go look up another topic myself on youtube (opening carts) and has a severe lack of photos to show the process. I've seen a number of videos and photo tutorials and those who sound like they know what they're doing will want to make it very clear to the user how to do it. ("cut a hole for the hole, but not too low." FFS man give us a photo of what "just right" looks like )
Also, isn't hot gluing stuff the sign of amateur mods? Never seen any of the guys who give me a "pro" impression use it.

I saw this, because unlike software modding where errors can theoretically be reversed, you can't take back hardware modding errors. It's a FAR more delicate process and one should take time to do it carefully, since again, the risk of breaking stuff permanently.
(I say as I can't hardware mod myself.)

[julayla]

Today, I watched an obscure anime called Cyber City Oedo 808 and that got me reminded of the PC Engine game that never got brought to the US. Maybe someone should do a translation/fandub of the game (ala like the UK did for the Anime series).

[BlazeHeatnix]

Tetris: Cheater Edition

A hack for either the NES or Game Boy versions of Tetris where the player can use dirty tricks to get around stuff and say "fuck you" to the game. Like moving pieces outside the playing field to make them fit, or flipping them so they match their reversed counterparts.

[Vercalos]

The one I really want to see is a hack of the SNES version of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble, with most of the music replaced with the GBA version's soundtrack.  I feel the GBA version's soundtrack is superior to the original SNES version's.  If I had any idea how to do it myself, I would.  I would imagine it would probably take ripping the tracks from the GBA ROM, then transposing everything manually into an SNES-compatible soundfont, and injecting it into the SNES ROM

[BaiduMe]

Kids, you wanna know the spirit of ROM hacking? This is it.

BaiduMe has looked inside this game, figured out how the graphics were stored and how to replace them, then did the same for the text, and for what? To translate the game? No. To add new characters? No. BaiduMe did it simply to see if they could do it.

I think this is the attitude that a lot of posters in this thread could learn from. The best hackers don't do it to get something out of it: they do it to see if they can. Bravo.

If you keep it up, I'm sure you'll do some cool things.

Sorry for the late response, I didn't see it 

I actually did manage to do some cool stuff! I wrote a script that can extract and import data into the game. It automatically calculates the offset in the rom and uses the compression algorithm I got. Pretty dope and interesting. Having a lot of fun with it.

[mamertos]

FINAL FIGHT 2 (SNES): an option to turn on/off hitting each other in 2 players mode, just like final fight 3.

[Vanya]

You say "HELP ME" works for AjDen, but everywhere I've seen online that mentions that password and Akumajou Den say it doesn't. This and I just booted a ROM into fceux and it doesn't work. I don't know what the Japanese passwords are for AjDen, what I mean is the passwords from the U.S. release, if there are not Japanese equivalents. "HELP ME","AKAMA","OKUDA","FUJIMOTO","URATA" and their respective results.

My mistake then. I must be mis-remembering.

[BlazeHeatnix]

Ocarina of Time 3D

Restoring the original Fire Temple music (it's present in the files), restoring the Islamic Gerudo symbol, and uncensoring Ganon's blood.

[ShadowOne333]

Ocarina of Time 3D

Restoring the original Fire Temple music (it's present in the files), restoring the Islamic Gerudo symbol, and uncensoring Ganon's blood.

I've been meaning to have some of the features of OoT 3D ported into OoT 64 using Randomizer as the base, but I haven't had any luck with it due to my inexperience with Python and how the Randomizer is coded.

Basically this is what I am attempting:

A completely "remastered" version of OoT which uses OoT Randomizer as its base for most of the ASM hacks.
https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer

In other words, an OoT Randomizer fork which disables the randomizing aspect of it, but keeps all of the ASM perks of it, which make OoT a much more enjoyable experience altogether.

What I'm mainly looking for, is that on top of the Randomizer ASM hacks, the only thing I think needs to be added or modified is:

• Restore all cutscenes back into the game, to enjoy the full OoT experience without their removal (which was done due to speedrunning nature of Randomizer)
• Remove all item/equipment randomization aspect from the project. Basically make it so that all items are located in the same places as in vanilla OoT, so that people that want to play a revamped/remastered version of vanilla OoT can do so, without having to worry about random items and such
• All settings/toggles should be the same as vanilla OoT
• No damage/power/price modifications when compared to vanilla OoT

I have attempted to make the changes myself, but I do not fully understand how to restore all of the cutscenes (I did manage to restore some, not all), nor how to remove the randomization from the project.

If anyone can help out, I'd be very grateful!

[Recca]

I think it would be an awesome idea to combine different fighting games on the same console and style into one. For example (for the SNES): Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers combined with the two Fighter's History games and possibly even Battle Master. SD Hiryu no Ken combined with Super Chinese Fighter.

[DragonflyShadows]

I know no-one's going to read this, but on the one in a million chance someone does and knows how to hack DQ1, can we get the controls from DQII and onwards. Also, maybe the experience stat could be hidden from UI elements to make the UI even sleeker.

[Fionordequester]

Is there anyone here who is familiar with DTE Compression for NES?  I downloaded the DTE Tutorial, but I also wished to have someone I could talk to in case I'm confused on something.

[#]

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[4lorn]

I'd like to see a Final Fight 3 hack with Resident Evil characters - players, enemies, bosses, etc. Probably based on the 1st or 2nd RE. I was playing it the other day and some backgrounds and scenes wouldn't be out of place, actually. I could do the necessary player character edits, quite likely, but the FF3 extractor on RHDN is offset based, and I can't justify hours of inputing random offsets until I strike gold.

[Psyklax]

So guys, I don't normally post here, but it's worth a shot because maybe someone knows something I don't. I recently tried Pole Position in MAME with my USB racing wheel. Most arcade games are fine with it since it's essentially like an analogue stick without up and down, and most arcade games use this approach. Pole Position, however, doesn't: it uses a spinner, like the racing controller on the Atari 2600. In the service menu it's clear: each position of the spinner is between $00 and $FF, and as you move it around it changes to whatever position it's on at that moment (and doesn't recentre when you let go, naturally). This basically means that unless you can a) get a real spinner controller or b) hack up a mouse to do something similar, your only acceptable option is to use a regular digital joypad/stick, since at least that way you can smoothly go left and right, whereas a typical analogue stick causes chaos.

But I'm a ROM hacker, so immediately I wondered if I could hack the ROM to use typical analogue controls instead of the spinner. I can understand the principle, but one problem is that all arcade games are a different system. All I know for sure is that the main CPU is a Z80, which is good since I can understand that. What I don't know is how the input is registered. I found a reference in the RAM to the same value I saw onscreen in the service menu, but I don't know if that was just for displaying the number on the screen. Anyone got any thoughts/knowledge to share? The best alternative seems to be the Dreamcast port, though maybe there's something else I haven't seen before.

[#]

So guys, I don't normally post here, but it's worth a shot because maybe someone knows something I don't. I recently tried Pole Position in MAME with my USB racing wheel. Most arcade games are fine with it since it's essentially like an analogue stick without up and down, and most arcade games use this approach. Pole Position, however, doesn't: it uses a spinner, like the racing controller on the Atari 2600. In the service menu it's clear: each position of the spinner is between $00 and $FF, and as you move it around it changes to whatever position it's on at that moment (and doesn't recentre when you let go, naturally). This basically means that unless you can a) get a real spinner controller or b) hack up a mouse to do something similar, your only acceptable option is to use a regular digital joypad/stick, since at least that way you can smoothly go left and right, whereas a typical analogue stick causes chaos.

But I'm a ROM hacker, so immediately I wondered if I could hack the ROM to use typical analogue controls instead of the spinner. I can understand the principle, but one problem is that all arcade games are a different system. All I know for sure is that the main CPU is a Z80, which is good since I can understand that. What I don't know is how the input is registered. I found a reference in the RAM to the same value I saw onscreen in the service menu, but I don't know if that was just for displaying the number on the screen. Anyone got any thoughts/knowledge to share? The best alternative seems to be the Dreamcast port, though maybe there's something else I haven't seen before.

Turn the dial sensitivity down low in analog controls and any analog stick or racing wheel will work like a charm. No hacking required.

[Psyklax]

Turn the dial sensitivity down low in analog controls and any analog stick or racing wheel will work like a charm. No hacking required.

I tried that first, and although it DOES make the handling more bearable (though it's still not quite correct), something strange happens in the actual race. Now, I haven't heard anyone mentioning this before so I feel like I must be crazy, but when I do the qualifying lap, it feels fine, I'm able to qualify without much trouble. Then, in the race, the handling completely changes. It becomes much slower to turn, to the point where it feels like you're playing Quake with a bad ping (wonder if anyone here will get the reference ). It's almost impossible to drive in the race, for me at least. Don't know if anyone else gets this issue, but it's weird.

[FAST6191]

Rather than messing with sensitivity would some kind of dead zone fiddling get you what you want? Or maybe routing the wheel though one of those joypad to keyboard programs to turn it into more regular input styles?