[magictrufflez]

I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but since I recently finished a 2nd play through of Tengai Makyou Zero as part of the beta testing, I would love to see someone take care of some serious balance issues in the game (don't worry, no spoilers follow except as they relate to game systems):

--The scroll system for magic and the way characters gain battle skills is great and really encourages explroation throughout the game, but the usefulness of these things vary wildly.  For example, status effect magic is almost uniformly worthless for the heroes (although very useful for enemies), making it ridiculous when I get late-game status effect scrolls I'm almost guaranteed never to use. Buffs/debuffs should also be rebalanced as with the exception of Sting, most of them don't do much.

--Also, certain characters bring scrolls into your party, and a certain character that brings a lot of attack magic really breaks the game balance as those scrolls are pretty powerful for the point at which they join. This is another beef--there are 2 tiers for attack magic, but the power jump is pretty massive, although by the end all the attack magic is mostly worthless. Rebalancing these while fixing the utility of ~50% of the scrolls would be very welcome.

--Item access problems utterly break the game starting about halfway through. It is very possible to get a setup that maxes out the defense values of your hero's equipment at this point, and there are certain items you can purchase for relatively paltry sums that make magic restoration items almost completely unneeded after this point. Doing something about this would likely fix most issues with difficulty by the end.

--Similarly, the first 3 godstones are absurdly more useful than 2 of the last 3, and while I believe their powers are meant to stick with their respective god's theme in japanese folklore, they should really be rebalanced a bit to be more evenly useful rather than frontloaded.

--Generally just rebalance enemy movesets to make better use of status ailments. They're used pretty sparsely for ~3/4 of the game, but then show up out of the woodwork later, normally by the time you've got all the right equipment to make them wasted turns anyways.  Again, item access could help here, but I think better use of ailments early on would be a good idea, among other AI improvements.

[Plint Michigan]

I wonder how hard it is to hack boss HP in videogames. There are quite a lot of bosses I like fighting but wish that the boss had a little bit more HP. I feel like it might just be easy as editing a single hex, but which one?

[Bob789]

I wonder how hard it is to hack boss HP in videogames. There are quite a lot of bosses I like fighting but wish that the boss had a little bit more HP. I feel like it might just be easy as editing a single hex, but which one?

It actually would not be that hard. Granted, I'm a beginner myself, so take this information with a grain of salt, but it's probably that easy. Maybe a couple hex values, and it probably would require a bit of ASM knowledge, but nothing you couldn't figure out after reading a couple documents.
October 17, 2017, 10:10:33 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)I personally would love a hack of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. That game was awesome. Any hack would do.  I would make a hack of it myself, but I have no creativity.
Seriously, if it were a D&D stat, it would be 0.

Actuallly, since I'm going through the work of typing this, I might as well ask, anyone have any ideas for a hack for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga?
As I said, if I had ideas, I would implement them, but alas.

[SCD]

The hack idea that I have for Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga is one that will not only translate the Japanese version into English, but it will also restore the unused Starbeans cameo appearances of popular Nintendo characters back to it as well.

The Japanese version is better because they did a lot of improvements in it.

[Psyklax]

I wonder how hard it is to hack boss HP in videogames. There are quite a lot of bosses I like fighting but wish that the boss had a little bit more HP. I feel like it might just be easy as editing a single hex, but which one?

If you know what you're doing, it's as easy as pie, though I've no idea what system or even what genre you're referring to. I presume it's RPGs? Gimme a specific game with a specific boss and I can show you how to do it.

[protomank]

I have an idea, I would happily do myself if given some directions.
The thing is, there are some games fro Sega Genesis that are very good, but long and lack any save feature or password system. One example is Fantastic Dizzy, that, if you look upon reviews, you will see a lot of "could be suberb, if had save". This is, of course, meant for those playing on original Genesis/Mega Drive, not in emulators.

So, given that some NES hackers are now able to add SRAM save into games that do not contains that, such as Super Pitfall, I do ask: is it possible to do the same for Genesis roms? Can it be hacked to have added SRAM save feature?
Thanks.

[Psyklax]

So, given that some NES hackers are now able to add SRAM save into games that do not contains that, such as Super Pitfall, I do ask: is it possible to do the same for Genesis roms? Can it be hacked to have added SRAM save feature?

Here's the thing: if a game already uses passwords, it's certainly possible to add SRAM saving to it: essentially you just tell the game to save the password instead of telling the player, then you tell it to load that password instead of the player having to manually input it. Simple.

The problem is when a game has no password system at all. There's no basis to start with, so it's a lot trickier to include it. You'd need to add a whole routine with a save menu or a password menu, and it'll just be a lot of work. Not impossible - nothing's impossible - but not really practical. That's how I see anyway, maybe someone else has a different opinion.

[julayla]

What I'd like to see is the Squid Sisters in Mario 1 or 3.

[Bob789]

The hack idea that I have for Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga is one that will not only translate the Japanese version into English, but it will also restore the unused Starbeans cameo appearances of popular Nintendo characters back to it as well.

The Japanese version is better because they did a lot of improvements in it.

Hmm. That sounds interesting. But first, I'd like to know: What exactly are these improvements? Is it worth spending time on? And the Japanese version had more cameos than the English? Wow. I thought that because you got an item that referenced a different game series with every new type of coffee you made, it was laden with cameos. What are these cameos?.

While I'm here, I'm on the go so I'm using my phone and, we could really use an RHDN app. Just for the forums and maybe the documents section, but I think that would be really cool. And also maybe have the ability to save threads. Then again, I've never seen this asked anywhere else so I'm probably on the minority.

[Plint Michigan]

If you know what you're doing, it's as easy as pie, though I've no idea what system or even what genre you're referring to. I presume it's RPGs? Gimme a specific game with a specific boss and I can show you how to do it.

Well, I guess for example I was playing Castle of Illusion yesterday and decided to play on hard mode. I noticed the first two bosses: The Trent and the Clown, had double the hit points in hard mode (Five in normal, ten in Hard) but the fish and dragon bosses had the same (The fish boss having five, the dragon having six). I feel like editting the Fish boss might be a bit harder, given that it's five small enemies that run into a five-block tower, and it'd be harder to edit in more fishmen and blocks (though it might be possible to make it so each fishman takes two hits as opposed to one) but it's the dragon I'm more interested in. The Normal version dragon was a pushover, using very primitive and predictable moves. It's hard mode version is less predictable and a bit harder, but it still takes the same amount of hits to beat. It also looks like a boss that SHOULD take more hits to beat than a small face or a clown, which kind of disappointed me.

I also happen to really like Very Gnawty from Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. I think the idea of a boss that uses incredibly predictable and primitive strategies to fight with, yet has the nerve to LAUGH every time he gets hit as if he either still thinks he's going to come out on top or is actually somehow enjoying it, has a lot of charm to it. ...Still, I think it'd be more fun if he took more than just five hits to beat.

I feel like these two bosses would be easy, but there are other bosses I can think of that might be harder.

[KingMike]

Just increasing hit count I don't think increases the challenge in a good way.
If it's just the same shit repeated more times, that's only making it more tedious.

I was absolutely shocked to find Intangir (was that it's name, the invisible enemy) in Final Fantasy VI Advance was meant to be Death-immune. 32,000 HP for a World of Balance wild enemy is total bullshit. I can't remember how long it took to even kill one of those things for a Bestiary entry. 10 minutes maybe? FOR A RANDOM ENCOUNTER! I don't think even WoB bosses had that much HP, did they?

[Plint Michigan]

Just increasing hit count I don't think increases the challenge in a good way.
If it's just the same shit repeated more times, that's only making it more tedious.

I was absolutely shocked to find Intangir (was that it's name, the invisible enemy) in Final Fantasy VI Advance was meant to be Death-immune. 32,000 HP for a World of Balance wild enemy is total bullshit. I can't remember how long it took to even kill one of those things for a Bestiary entry. 10 minutes maybe? FOR A RANDOM ENCOUNTER! I don't think even WoB bosses had that much HP, did they?

I think if the boss is simple enough and open for attacks frequently, it's fine. The Dragon's head is open for attacks more often than the Trent or the Clown, so I think at least bringing his HP to Trent/Clown's hard mode HP count would make it a more balanced fight for a later boss.

[SCD]

Hmm. That sounds interesting. But first, I'd like to know: What exactly are these improvements? Is it worth spending time on? And the Japanese version had more cameos than the English? Wow. I thought that because you got an item that referenced a different game series with every new type of coffee you made, it was laden with cameos. What are these cameos?.

While I'm here, I'm on the go so I'm using my phone and, we could really use an RHDN app. Just for the forums and maybe the documents section, but I think that would be really cool. And also maybe have the ability to save threads. Then again, I've never seen this asked anywhere else so I'm probably on the minority.

No, they didn't add any new cameo appearances to the Japanese version. These were completely unused.

Here's the info about the unused Starbeans Cafe cameo appearances of popular Nintendo characters: https://tcrf.net/Mario_%26_Luigi:_Superstar_Saga#Starbeans_Cameos

Here's all the improvements that they did to the Japanese version of this game: https://tcrf.net/Mario_%26_Luigi:_Superstar_Saga/Regional_Differences

The Japanese version was released 11 days after the American release, so they had more time to improve stuff.

[tc]

Hack WWE Wrestlemania X8 back to its original intention WWF Wrestlemania X8.
Looks funky with WWE legal blah-blah pasted onto a game otherwise WWF throughout. Down to the WWF logo at the bottom of the title screen.

[SCD]

I wouldn't mind seeing a hack that would restore the WWF initials back to that game.

I never like the WWE initials they went with, I always thought it sounded really stupid and it also makes the company sound more fake as well.

I really wish they went with WWFE as their new initials, it sounds way better in my opinion.

The one hack that this game really needs is one that will fix the cheap CPU to actually behave right so the game will finally be fun to play.

[Psyklax]

Well, I guess for example I was playing Castle of Illusion yesterday and decided to play on hard mode. I noticed the first two bosses: The Trent and the Clown, had double the hit points in hard mode (Five in normal, ten in Hard) but the fish and dragon bosses had the same (The fish boss having five, the dragon having six).

Trent? You mean the tree? Well, I opened the Bizhawk emulator and played up to the tree dude (with cheats of course) and through process of elimination (via the RAM Search function) found that his health is kept at $D42A in RAM. So the next thing to figure out is where in the ROM is the instruction to give the boss his health of $14 (that's 20 in decimal: a butt bounce removes 2 while an apple removes 1).

I set a breakpoint for when $D42A is written to, then entered the boss area. Sure enough, there was a break, and an operation involving the number $14. Only problem is, when I changed it in a hex editor, the ROM no longer works, just boots with a red screen... I don't have any experience with hacking the Genesis, so I'm not sure what I did wrong there.

Maybe someone else can chime in to help me out with that?

EDIT: for clarification, the operation is this:
117C 0014 002A
or
move.b $14, ($2A,A0)
I've looked through 68k opcodes and don't really understand using a point after move - there's move.b, move.l, move.w and so on in the code. Again, I'm inexperienced with 68k, but I've done 6502 and Z80 before.

[Kallisto]

I can't believe I never thought about this before, but Suikoden II is rather infamous on how to obtain characters and sometimes there was a absurd time limit. Can someone basically destroy the time limit, so people can enjoy Suikoden II at their own pace without worrying about missing a character? Also it would be beneficial for that one side quest.

[KingMike]

I set a breakpoint for when $D42A is written to, then entered the boss area. Sure enough, there was a break, and an operation involving the number $14. Only problem is, when I changed it in a hex editor, the ROM no longer works, just boots with a red screen... I don't have any experience with hacking the Genesis, so I'm not sure what I did wrong there.

Probably checksum protection, sounds like it's common on the Genesis.
Emulators usually have an "Auto fix checksum" option but if that doesn't work, you'll have to fix it manually.
(some games never bothered to have a correct checksum, which is worrying for people wanting to make sure they dumped their games correctly)

[Psyklax]

Probably checksum protection, sounds like it's common on the Genesis.

Checksum, of course, good thinking. Segaretro says the exact thing that happened to me. Thankfully there's a utility on RHDN for this:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/342/

Now for me to try my hack again...

EDIT: Success. I changed the $14 to $02, fixed the checksum, and played up to the boss (sadly my savestate from the unhacked version crashed Bizhawk) and killed him in one hit. So yeah, if you wanted to double his hitpoints for some reason, change $14 to $28 and you're done. With that boss, anyway: you'll just have to play the game and figure out which bytes correspond to which boss/enemy.

Although I have to echo KingMike's sentiments:

Just increasing hit count I don't think increases the challenge in a good way.
If it's just the same shit repeated more times, that's only making it more tedious.

The same problem I have with JRPGs. "Okay, I can't reach the next part of the game, better spend an hour killing the same enemies over and over again!" But hey, changing the boss's health is far easier than doing anything else, and now you know how!

Incidentally, the fact that you need to fix the checksum, and that Bizhawk savestates don't work when you do (and it says "I don't know this game, what system is it?!"), really makes things more tedious for hacking. If there's another Genesis emulator with equally good debugging then I'd love to know about it. I tried Gens KMod and I couldn't see a way of making a breakpoint or even looking at the memory. Oh, if only all emulators could be like FCEUX.

[Bahamut ZERO]

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Breaks Loose (SNES)

Graphics mod that makes the game resemble a Sonic the Hedgehog game, or, turn Buster into Sonic for shits and giggles.