How to examine something?

[McKnight]

Got someone working on a ROMhack of Earthbound, and I'd like to know, is there a way I can suggest to him to verify whether or not the "mysterious" move that zombies use was in fact meant to have some kind of effect, and what that might've been and what its intended odds of success were?

[FAST6191]

If a later port added it back in then that is one thing, other regions can have stuff cut for whatever reason, if the source came with one of the gigaleaks then that, if one of the original devs or testers spoke/is willing to speak of things and remembers it, if the game's code has a bunch of leftover data where it logically should be if the table(s) of stats and whatnot continued , if the game's code has some obvious jump or blanked out branch to a piece of code that never gets taken then that could yield something.

For older games then assembly development does mean you stand a better chance of something still being tucked into the code compared to newer stuff that would have seen it lost in a recompile.

As the earlier stuff there is unlikely to yield much you are left with analysis. In that case find the tables of various move stats, or the logic of what move gets picked (I would probably work backwards from a player being hit and it taking health away -- work back from there far enough and it will be deciding upon the move and then you can analyse the branches and locations around where they might land).

Sometimes there is inference as well; if for some reason wherever they are found has a lot of poison antidotes but nothing really poisons you then there is that. Beyond that you are left with pure luck type things where some random data used to pad something just so happened to be an early copy of something, which I am not expecting here.

[Jorpho]

I suppose it's not impossible, but Earthbound has been completely torn apart at this time and I would be very surprised if no one has investigated this before. You'd probably be better off asking at one of the Earthbound-centric forums.

(Also, what is with that subject line..?)

[McKnight]

Orbay, the person I hired, just figured out that the attack in question is "repeatedly doing something on a specific condition."

If anyone is willing to try their hand to figure that out, I could ask him to pinpoint where in the code he found that out.

[Cyneprepou4uk]

Maybe you can find something here
https://tcrf.net/EarthBound_Beginnings

[Jorpho]

Maybe you can find something here
https://tcrf.net/EarthBound_Beginnings

Did you mean https://tcrf.net/EarthBound ?

[Cyneprepou4uk]

Maybe. He didn't mention the platform.

[Bonesy]

Maybe. He didn't mention the platform.

honestly not the only thing the user has neglected to mention about this supposed project tbh

[McKnight]

honestly not the only thing the user has neglected to mention about this supposed project tbh

You mean me?

I've actually taken the time a few days ago to compile a list on Google Docs, of both the different games I'd like hacked at some point and the actual changes I'd like for each.  Suffice to say, it is going to evolve over time.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16SRjlT0yoVtV6AHcjqR11sXiZU5pYKbf9e7v6On7Ydg/edit?usp=sharing

[Jorpho]

Well, that still doesn't answer the question as to whether you are referring to the NES or the SNES game in this thread.

[McKnight]

I thought it would be obvious that I'm referring to the SNES game.  I mean, seeing how few people I've ever seen call the NES game by its once-intended NA title instead of one of several variations thereof or Mother, whereas this game is known as just Earthbound pretty consistently, Japanese version aside.