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

[Atariboy]

If I understand the point of the thread correctly, the project I'd love to see someone with talent take on is adding in save support and MSU-1 audio for Test Drive II on the SNES.

Seems a shame that it has a high score table and tracks fastest stage times, but isn't able to retain that data like the Genesis version can. Presumably the developers envisioned this capability being a feature of the game, but the publisher didn't want to spring for the added cartridge expense of a battery backup.

And audio wise if one wants to enable the excellent music, it disables the voice samples (Not too big of a deal) as well as the sounds of the other cars. There's a cool sound effect with the doppler effect when you blow past traffic that sadly is absent when music is playing.

Ideally the original SNES music would be pushed off to the MSU-1 chip, allowing the full range of audio to be enabled simultaneously rather than having to make a trade-off between music or full sfx/voice samples.

[Tsukiyomaru0]

Ideas for Gauntlet Dark Legacy:
1. Zoom out the game some
2. Improve the music so it doesn't feel like it's drilling our ears out.

[lilpuddy31]

I don't know if anyone has brought this one up, but after playing TMNT: Shredder's Revenge nonstop since it was released, how about adding 4-player capability to TMNT2(nes), TMNT3(nes), TMNT4(snes), and Hyperstone Heist(gen)???

[FSH17]

I hope one day someone will work on translations for Super F1 Circus Limited (Super Famicom) and F1 Circus '92 on PC Engine.
Two of the greatest top-down racers. 

[Tsukiyomaru0]

Could someone fix SNES' Revolution X and its mouse support? It is possible to use mouse in Port 1 or 2 (and recognizes as Player 1 and 2 respectively), but the game pauses whenever LMB is pressed, a behavior not repeated in games like Mario & Wario.

And before it's asked: yes, you can move the cursor with the mouse, shoot disks with RMB, shoot your machinegun with LMB, but it's just this pause thing that ruins it. If anything, changing Pause to LMB+RMB might be optimal.

[Skyro14x]

Mega Man X3 Grab to Walls.
-and no dmg from spikes.

Can Any1 help me...

SNES Mega Man X3... Stick to walls. No gradually slide down.

I tried my best searching for the XX:XXXX vertical while falling, but Im to new to all this.

Also if its possible to stick to the ceiling XD
and no dmg from spikes.

I want to make the Shadow Armor For Mega in X3

[Arcade-Elite]

Need a English translation of NES dragon ball Den. Last game to get done in dragon ball and dbz games. Super Saiyen Please 

[Arcade-Elite]

Are you having the TMNT fever like all other gamers rate now? Here is a free idea for a new NES TMNT game. Hack NES Track & Field. To Track and Field Leo.


Get the sprites looking good for Leo and the shooting section he can use his bow and arrows.
If you could change the gun sounds to arrows that would be sweet. Also tmnt music would be a treat as well but you get the idea. Make it so pizza lover's, I am sure you guys could pull this off.   Later dude

[julayla]

Gonna be honest: Seeing that there are color hacks for old Gameboy Games in the site, I hope someday someone would do color hacks for the black and white Wonderswan games one day. I think it'd benefit for being in color just as much as the Gameboy games.

[pelador]

Is it hard to build a game editor? I feel like that would be really handy for modding Breath of Fire 1.

[FAST6191]

"Game editor" is a rather broad concept though mostly will be split between text editing, stats editing and level editing for the vast majority of games out there, maybe with some graphics stuff if that is relevant for the game and what in pokemon circles gets called scripting (say that outside pokemon hacking and most will think you want to edit text).

Stats editing is probably the easiest editor to make on the PC side of things -- change number at fixed/known/calculated location in file being a rather easy thing to do even as a UI (depending upon the tutorial it might even be the example used for it). The trick however comes in finding the stats in the first place which is doable enough but really benefits if you know some assembly.
Save editors are remarkably similar to this as well, with the main exception being you have to figure out the save hashing format (or edit the game the disable it and get your user to save in the modded game in and emulator and export the save back out as some kind of what would be oracle attack in general security) and I guess you can find save tweaks like you can find cheats ( https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial ) where stats can be a bit more fiddly.

Text editing for a specific game might not be so bad, especially if it is a simpler game. The reason text editing is so hard outside game specific stuff is there are about 1000 different things different devs can do and have demonstrably done which all arguably have to be accounted for when making a generic text editing tool, and that skews it into becoming nigh on programming language of its own territory. If you know the encoding, know the pointers and any markup/placeholders are similarly known and can be substituted then life is not so bad and text editing boxes (assuming you don't just make a command line injector that takes text files with suitable markup inside them* for any pointers/line determinations, markup, placeholders and such like) is also not so bad.

*Whether you make your users use nice square/angle brackets or have a UI button or select between the two as appropriate is up to you.

Level editors... you can get something functional quite happily but a proper level editor people of various skill levels will want to use is going to get into real UI designer territory fairly quickly** (1000 buttons being bad even if it is most general, and that is not withstanding any play testing or even simple https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdHD50gs8MNXF1GCf08efg/pub for the virtual test) you get to categorise things. I generally don't place figuring out level formats as that hard a tricky and while, like most things, assembly hacking skills can aid things drastically you can do most games, especially anything 16 bit or could have been from 16 bit era, quite happily. I don't know if this is particularly the place to cover basic level editing but I generally note there as being two main approaches which can be split into layers and mixed up between them too. Those two approaches are bitmap wherein every byte in the file corresponds to a fixed location, and where items are given some form of grid coordinates. Layers then being background, obstacles, pickups (which might include doors aka teleporters), enemies and things do get combined there. 3d games do similar but you will usually have a collision layer that doubles up for any internal mechanics (location of track, out of bounds of level, ladders...) and some 2d games have this too.
Find these layers within the game and you can make something edit them easily enough, or at least what you think is easily enough (you might allow it to do something illegal within the game and cause crashes, the choice of whether you account for these or expect the user to is your own debate to have).

**Are there stories of devs using super mario maker (a modern Nintendo game they presumably poured millions into making) to make prototypes? There are indeed. Are those that are used to ROM hacks and tools thereof generally less than impressed with said same? Indeed they are. Do general users have massively mixed feelings? Oh yes. Play that as you will.

Graphics aspects... compression can be a fun one to handle, as might pointers and restrictions are back again (why am I not allowed anything in the invisible tile of the 4 that make this top heavy enemy up). That said it is not like you are remaking gimp/photoshop and a basic palette grabber and grid view pixel editor (which also does for many textures in 3d, at least until textures got their own depth in more recent years). Finding graphics is not so bad.

Scripting/AI pathing/AI behaviours is its own kettle of fish. If the game is set up for it then you can try to figure out the format/logic of it and allow your users to change accordingly. Many games won't however be set up to have it readily changed and instead behaviours might be baked more directly into the code which is still potentially within the scope of an editor.

[pelador]

I've been going on about it for a while here but the reason I asked was that I really, really, REALLY want a randomiser for the game and I was curious if a level editor would make it easier to build. I rememeber looking at the bytes for the game and I could not for the life of me work out where the treasure chest items were stored.

[Animebryan]

I brought this up before, but old NES games like Battletoads & Ninja Gaiden are ridiculously difficult for all the wrong reasons. Bad/limited programming, sadistic programmers, bugs & glitches, etc., These games need to be nerfed! To be challenging, but FAIR! Respawning douchebags that never stop is horrible game design, whether it was intentional or not.

Being sent back to the beginning of Act 6 in NG after getting your ass handed to you by a hard ass triple boss rush that strips you of your sub-weapon after the 1st fight, is completely unfair.
As for Battletoads, that Turbo Tunnel needs to slow the fuck down! Volkmire's Inferno too! The Rat that you race to the bomb also needs to be slowed down! Along with the Clinger Winger boss (just a little).

[FAST6191]

I've been going on about it for a while here but the reason I asked was that I really, really, REALLY want a randomiser for the game and I was curious if a level editor would make it easier to build. I rememeber looking at the bytes for the game and I could not for the life of me work out where the treasure chest items were stored.

Randomiser tends to be a special case of level editor, with maybe some smarts to make the game able to be completed (if this item is needed to solve a puzzle then better have said item, if there is a levelling system then different matter entirely*). The smarts aspect tending to be the harder one to make, especially if it is said item or level requirement.

*though there are those that might consider it a kind of test of skill to have say the end boss that could be beaten but needs super reflexes/long term concentration for a given run (see also those martial arts that might handicap someone for a given bout, or similar for weapons training -- operating your rifle one handed/non dominant hand for pistol or something).

The doors/teleporter behaviour then being key for this for most people. Whether it is code level (making a program run through a specific sequence of events is easier than making some kind of generic engine to handle whatever so most devs go for the former or "it is 5pm and I want to go home" for aspects of it) or more level handling then becomes harder. If you can not figure this out then I would say this is the bigger hurdle even without the cheat stuff (more on that in the next bit). Hopefully it is something nice and easy and you can put a tile/tiles down and have it teleport you to a specific room/level (someone's house being another level as far as the internal logic is concerned). If it is that simple then have a start, have a destination and then probably do something like a linked list to make it get to that point, possibly with fixed points along the way if necessary or sequences if you need to have a specific pickup.

Chests and contents thereof can be a fun one. Some games might have it at code level, some games might have the chest for room 2 of dungeon 5 be a specific item that contains whatever, some might have it be at a level editing point such that is no different from having these monsters spawn in.
Do bear in mind for a cheaty method you can combine things with cheats to make sure you have specific items at game start or such like, or something more exotic in an emulator with Lua. Inventory cheats being rather easy things to make, even more so if you can edit a level to allow you to pick up things by walking a space and pressing A.

[LaudinoInfamous]

For those who understand any street fighter alpha/zero, is it possible to add wall bounce?

[Tsukiyomaru0]

idea for SNES Mega Man (X) games: Default Dash (and Slide for Mega Man in 7 ad & Bass) to R and turn L into a shortcut function. How the shortcut function could work? You go into the weapon menu, hover a weapon, hold L and press a directional to set or unset it to that combination. Then in the middle of action you hold L and press that directional to quickly switch to that weapon.

[Antonio Nero]

I have found a YouTube playlist with many Final Fantasy 5 bugs that could be fixed (some of them, as the two Galuf, are already fixed): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCAgpzj87174au25CNvhqem932t3EyOVc

This forum is huge, so I say sorry if it is a re-post.

[PSERCEPTION]

Here's the idea
Contra Force (NES) manual selection of the weapons. Not across the characters but within the character's signature weapons like this one
http://www.juwanshe.com/roms/detail/29333
Megaman 4 NES auto-charge for megabuster, there are GameGenie codes for megaman5 and Megaman6 just wants the same for it.

[MysteryMan3D]

Can someone add the Sonic 2 Spindash to lory1990's Sonic 1 Bugfix hack? I really enjoy that hack as well as Sonic 2 Improvement, and wanna declare it my preferred version of the game, but IMHO it won't be perfect without the spindash.

[PSERCEPTION]

Everyone do watch the posts no one act on them. When will mine custum dream come true.