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

[FAST6191]

If you know where the CPUs are located on the track as it were you should be able to figure out what is changing it and go back from there (I imagine it is some kind of if player is greater than distance calculation).

[redmagejoe]

Out of those, Metroid Redux sounds the most enticing to me.

That said, I'd really love to see what you could do with an Ys I Redux. The NES port delivers the core of a great Ys experience, though it definitely has some issues. Despite these, it remains one of the best action-RPGs on the platform. Simply making it so that you don't have to be so near to the screen's edge before it begins to scroll (a rather huge problem in a game with bump combat) would massively improve things.

The movement speed is the biggest issue, not the screen scrolling, but I agree that it would be nice to have the screen scroll addressed. The core issue with the game is that the NES port is the only port where the character's movement speed is DRASTICALLY reduced, and boss fights were tuned with his original movement speed taken into account. If you could adjust the character's movement speed to match the other versions of the game, it would make it significantly more playable and less of an exercise in aggravation.

[ShadowOne333]

Those are some good suggestions!
Although I am not familiar with many of the titles you guys are mentioning, like Ys.

As for Metroid Redux, I might have something already on the works? :^}
But nothing close to being released yet.
I want to be able to fix some of the bugs before even attempting anything fancy with it.

[Weetepin]

What I found seems to just be 'player information' but there are a couple of addresses that are CPU-specific, for example 2 of the CPUs will always be 'frontrunners' who naturally always gravitate to the top 2 positions in the race, which I found the address for.

[FAST6191]

Most of the tournament/GP modes in the ones I have played go for that.

That said if you found the address for that you might set a breakpoint on it as anything reading that likely also handles any rubber banding -- stepping through code is not so fun but should not cause too much messing around.

[Noside]

A Castlevania: Symphony of the Night hack were you could add Maria (Richter is already available) for the PSX version.

[sil3nt_j]

 

[redmagejoe]

Those are some good suggestions!
Although I am not familiar with many of the titles you guys are mentioning, like Ys.

As for Metroid Redux, I might have something already on the works? :^}
But nothing close to being released yet.
I want to be able to fix some of the bugs before even attempting anything fancy with it.

The largest issue with the NES port of Ys is the aforementioned movement speed change. I would suggest playing any version of Ys that isn't on the NES/Famicom for about 5 minutes, testing the movement, then try it on the NES. It's the only version that does that and most everything else was unchanged, making the game far more frustrating than it should be. I feel like the movement is as simple as adjusting a single byte, but I could be wrong, so honestly if you were thinking of such a change, even if it's not a "Redux" level overhaul, I know people (myself included) would definitely appreciate the patch.

[Josephine Lithius]

I'm back, again, with another tiny idea.

I'm playing my way through Secret of Mana and I noticed something...  The "Cancel" button is a really weird one.
See, in Squaresoft games – and RPGs on the Super NES, in-general – the "Confirm" button is typically Ａ while the "Cancel" button is typically Ｂ.  With Secret of Mana, however, the "Cancel" button is assigned to the "Player Menu" button.  This button is Ｙ, by default, but it can be any of the "face" buttons.  My idea?  I'd like to have "Cancel" assigned to the "Dash" button, just as it is in Seiken Densetsu 3.  It just makes more sense, that way.

I'd also like to figure out how to make the default controls swapped so that "Ally Menu" is Ｙ, "Player Menu" is Ｘ, "Dash(/Cancel)" is Ｂ, and "Attack/Confirm" is Ａ, by default.  I tried searching for hex values, but I didn't find anything relevant.

Cheers~

[ultimaweapon]

Here are a few games I feel can definitely use a Redux.

The Battle Of Olympus

Metal Gear

Metal Gear 2

Final Fantasy 7

Final Fantasy 8

Legend Of Legaia

Double Dragon

Double Dragon 2

[#]

Finally finished the sprites: Game of Death game based off of Kung Fu for NES.

Thanks to Locke GB7 of spriters resource for the Kung Fu rips and also to vgmuseum. Spent all day working on this, haven't eaten yet and I'm pretty damn hungry :p Time to get tacos. Enjoy.




EDIT

Added these. Made Kareem a little thinner and added detail to the level 2 boss. I wasn't sure if Level 2 boss shared the same sprites as anyone else, but this makes him look more like the white and gold karate suit guy from the movie:

I didn't get to it last weekend but I was able to work on it a little in the last few days and I managed to add Bruce to the game, though I had to edit several of your drawings because of the huge number of shared sprites. The first, second and fifth floor bosses cannot be added exactly as you created them because those also share many sprites with other characters. I might be able to do a decent job with the first boss, but I'll need to hack the game to make it use different shared sprites.

[sil3nt_j]

Well that's cool that you were able to add Bruce. Can you break it down a little more for me though? Which characters share sprites?

You said 1st floor, 2nd floor, 5th floor? What about enemies? If I can get an idea of who all shares sprites, I can re-do it. The important thing is getting the first floor boss looking right.

[#]

Well that's cool that you were able to add Bruce. Can you break it down a little more for me though? Which characters share sprites?

You said 1st floor, 2nd floor, 5th floor? What about enemies? If I can get an idea of who all shares sprites, I can re-do it. The important thing is getting the first floor boss looking right.

Look at the outfits. The first floor enemies and the first and second floor bosses all share the same outfit. And the fifth floor boss has the same outfit as Bruce.

[Dreamwhale]

Spritehack for Warioland 1 or 2 which replaces all coins with toilet paper.

Stay healthy everyone!

[sil3nt_j]

Stay healthy too Dreamwhale.

And #, just didn't know how it was programmed.

[Foffy]

Here's a difficult one I'm unsure if it's ever been asked before, that requires some explanation. Over the years, the rom hacking community has done a great deal at restoring SNES-to-GBA ports with changes making them more similar to the SNES originals. Most notably this has been found in color restoration and voice removal patches, such is the case for the Super Mario Advance games. With all of that said, has the community ever tried to hack the resolution of these games?

I've been having a small conversation with Shomuni, developer of the GBE+ emulator, after being inspired by some of his earlier posts on Reddit regarding resolution hacks for GBA and GB/GBC games that he showed possible in that emulator. I asked him about the Super Mario Advance games and the likelihood of them matching the SNES resolution, and he documented his results for the SMB2 and SMB3 ports. What's interesting is what the issue is with SMB3: it doesn't take into account the extra vertical resolution being added to the game, and for this reason it leaves all of the space below Mario to be empty. Taking into account the possibility of a larger screen resolution to work with, how difficult would it be to alter the game to account for this? I would imagine you would have to force the display of the game upwards the X amount of new vertical space produced, but I'm a complete fool with this stuff, so I'm probably wrong about that.

[tc]

Here's a difficult one I'm unsure if it's ever been asked before, that requires some explanation. Over the years, the rom hacking community has done a great deal at restoring SNES-to-GBA ports with changes making them more similar to the SNES originals. Most notably this has been found in color restoration and voice removal patches, such is the case for the Super Mario Advance games. With all of that said, has the community ever tried to hack the resolution of these games?

I've been having a small conversation with Shomuni, developer of the GBE+ emulator, after being inspired by some of his earlier posts on Reddit regarding resolution hacks for GBA and GB/GBC games that he showed possible in that emulator. I asked him about the Super Mario Advance games and the likelihood of them matching the SNES resolution, and he documented his results for the SMB2 and SMB3 ports. What's interesting is what the issue is with SMB3: it doesn't take into account the extra vertical resolution being added to the game, and for this reason it leaves all of the space below Mario to be empty. Taking into account the possibility of a larger screen resolution to work with, how difficult would it be to alter the game to account for this? I would imagine you would have to force the display of the game upwards the X amount of new vertical space produced, but I'm a complete fool with this stuff, so I'm probably wrong about that.

I've never heard anything of the sort ever suggested. I guess it makes sense the GBA could draw resolutions bigger than its LCD physically allows.

Hacks that won't work on original hardware tend to be frowned upon, but this is a revolution. It opens the door for OVERWHELMINGLY improving games constrained by the screen size.

[Foffy]

I've never heard anything of the sort ever suggested. I guess it makes sense the GBA could draw resolutions bigger than its LCD physically allows.

Hacks that won't work on original hardware tend to be frowned upon, but this is a revolution. It opens the door for OVERWHELMINGLY improving games constrained by the screen size.

There appears to be limitations, but I imagine the hacking scene could probably figure this out on a game-by-game basis. Any game that uses GBA custom effects, for example is hard-coded to the default display. That's why in my original post, there's garbage effects in the opening screenshot to SMB2. It's something you'd have to take with the effort, like how widescreen patches might have T-Pose characters in the corners of the screen, or how widescreen Mode 7 games don't render many assets outside of the default SNES resolution space.

I think the SNES-to-GBA ports could be a good start at exploring this concept, as we know that these games at one point did display more than they presently do due to them being on systems with a larger display resolution than the GBA. In fact, the biggest issue with such ports are the loss of vertical space, and in the linked example in this post, one can see that it can be worked around.

This is also possible for GB and GBC games, but that's a game-by-game basis as well. I cited specific GBA games because we have a foundation or target to aim for more specifically than "expand the screen space" because we can actually compare the versions and see what visual real estate was cut. Other games might be able to be expanded by 16 pixels in terms of real estate (which is a decent bit for handheld games like this) and others might benefit less so. I think Shantae's example of it failing really shows the potential in having more space to work with, in terms of potential.

I think it's something worth entertaining, and something seriously worth looking into for the GBA ports. Right now the weakest thing about the Super Mario Advance ports is the real estate of the screen, and it appears something can be done about that.

[FAST6191]

I've never heard anything of the sort ever suggested. I guess it makes sense the GBA could draw resolutions bigger than its LCD physically allows.

Hacks that won't work on original hardware tend to be frowned upon, but this is a revolution. It opens the door for OVERWHELMINGLY improving games constrained by the screen size.

There are plenty of 3d systems that do this, including on what is essentially native hardware (see stuff like widescreen gamecube games on the wii and wii U), though that is 3d and does not count outside of maybe someone cracking it for the PS1's rather bizarre setup.
A few emulators have also tried their hand at things by rendering one step in every direction (some going a bit further and disabling random battles or having some kind of screen difference detection) or forcing the "2d camera" as it were.

If I was going to pick a 2d system to do that (that is not a PC running an essentially arbitrary resolution for 2d) in then it would probably be the GBA or its descendants

As a basis for a series of hacks... meh. I would sooner rip assets and recreate the game, or do something like Square Enix did for their recent PC efforts at Final Fantasy et al where it is an emulated game but with overlay graphics, though, you know, competently.

Continuing with the hacks. The GBA does have just about enough memory ( http://pineight.com/gba/managing-sprite-vram.txt ) to store backgrounds a file tiles larger and thus bring up a possibility.
Some games use said backgrounds for animation purposes (my usual example is tetris worlds -- the flying through space background is just a star map type thing that they whizz around on to make it look like endless).

Beyond that then yeah you run into logic/scripting, NPC pop in, enemy behaviours and more besides. Most of which is triggered relative to screen or virtual level position. Memory issues would also be a thing, though probably slightly easier to work around.

[julayla]

I know this may be too wishful thinking, but when I look back at some of the Point and Click adventure games, there are some that don't have PC ports, like Blazing Dragons. It's kind of sad this never had a proper PC port and is instead regulated to Saturn and PS1.

EDIT: On another topic that involves character hacks, I want to say that some of the old Sonic Game Gear games may need some sprite graphics hack. And maybe have the Sonic 2 game have Tails be playable or something? Just a thought.