 |
| Register | Login | |||||
 |
Main
| Memberlist
| Active users
| Calendar
| Chat
| Online users Ranks | FAQ | ACS | Stats | Color Chart | Search | Photo album |
|
| | ||
|
| Register | Login | |||||
|
Main
| Memberlist
| Active users
| Calendar
| Chat
| Online users Ranks | FAQ | ACS | Stats | Color Chart | Search | Photo album |
|
| | ||
| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Kirk Bradford Myers |
| Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 |
| User | Post | ||
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy                   Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| There is a program called HexCmp that I use for all of my comparision needs. The program is shareware and does cost a small fee to register, but it's well worth it in my opinion. It can compare two files side by side and highlights the differences in a different color. It also has second-to-none search functions in that regard.
Here's the link to it. If you don't want to pay the fee and don't mind the opening nag screen, the program can be used for free for fifteen days from installation on your computer. Take my recommendation, though, and just pay whatever it costs. This is honestly the best hex compare tool I've ever used and makes finding differences a snap. 
Take care... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Yes, it is. However, a very creative hacker who's name currently escapes me did a hack of the game Super Mario World and used the same name for his hack. It is a hack which changes all the levels of Super Mario World into the levels of the original Super Mario Bros. and uses re-touched SMB3 graphics. Quite frankly, I think it's an amazing effort that looks ten times better than Super Mario All-Stars! 
However, I have yet to play it...  |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Hey, everybody. I need a little bit of help with something and thought that you guys and girls can help me out.
A while back, before the boards went down, Parasyte posted a thread on Acmlm which featured a hack for Metroid that adds a Super Metroid style automap in the top left corner. I've got to admit that it was pretty impressive, although I won't be using it for my own hack Metroid Begins as the space that it uses is instead reserved for a separate custom number set to be used in the energy-missile display sprite. I had to do this to get Metroid Begins to work with PocketNES because of the difference in the way PocketNES handles pixel compression when it comes to sprites as opposed to everything else. No choice in the matter. So, as you've guessed, I'm not here for the automap hack. HOWEVER... In the same thread, Parasyte posted a small hack that allows each and every block in the original Metroid to be shot out and destroyed. I would really like to have this hack for my own research purposes. The reason I'm asking is because I may do something more artistic with the door frames in the game, which will require me to use three separate custom tiles instead of the one repeated three times. Of course, all three tiles must have that "door transition" quality to them which I will need to edit. If I can get my hands on that ALL_BLOCKS hack, perhaps I can figure out just what was done to it, locate the properties of those blocks, and just change the ones I need. I have tried loading this thing from a cached page of the thread to no avail. And believe me, I have Googled, Yahoo!-d, and AllTheWeb-d this thing to death, and simply cannot find it. If anyone has the IPS, I would very much aqppreciate if they can post a link to it? I'm more than willing to look for the data myself...I just need that IPS file to give me a push in the right direction. Many thanks in advance. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Ths site is indeed up. Thanks for the info.
And many thanks for the links to Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. Tried it out yesterday and had to pick my jaw up off the floor.  Granted, it's got a few minor quirks, and Bowser doesn't put up much of a fight...but it's a hell of a lot more than most could probably do with Super Mario World. A lot of work went into it, and from what I can tell it probably required a re-write of over half the game. Very impressive!
Metroid Begins, my own upcoming hack, will be coming to Romhacking.net on August 6th, 2006, so look for it then. Screenshots coming very soon, promise. Second round of playtesting to begin this weekend, as I had to practically re-design the bottom of Norfair to successfully incorporate the use of TWO pallette switches... 
Kudos! (edited by Kirk Bradford Myers on 02-22-06 04:35 PM) |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy  Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Yes, it was VL-Tone. Sorry about that...I was trying to recall the thread from memory, and my short-term memory leaves much to be desired... 
Granted, that is the thread I was looking for, BGNG, and I do thank you for your help in finding it. However, it appears that the link to the file that I need is broken...and ONLY that file! Auugghh!!  but many thinks for the links to the archives, as there was a couple of other posts I was looking for for various reasons...
As for the ALL_BLOCKS hack...perhaps VL-Tone would like to chime in on this one? |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| What's really scary is that someone actually wasted what could have been two productive days of their life writing that. Imagine what could be achieved if he/she put as much energy into figuring out how world peace and unity could be created. Hoo boy, and I thought that when I put hands to keyboard that I created some real doozies...
Of course, for all the thought he put into how Earth could possibly be destroyed, he forgot one method... Destruction by Marvin The Martian Marvin The Martian, orbiting planet Mars aboard a space station made of nothing but glass-enclosed catwalks, runs over to a gumball machine and dolls himself out a few Instant Martian seeds, to which he just adds water. He then convinces the resulting ostrich-like abominations to secure his Acme Brand Super Exposive P38 Space Modulator from the clutches of that "wascal wabbit". I think you know what happens next.
Probability: Depends on your current level of detachment from reality...
I watch way too many cartoons.... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Thank you millions!  Much appreciated. I will hopefully be putting this to good use, that is assuming I have two tiles to spare in each area. Shouldn't be that hard to do with a little bit of structure definition hacking, as I've already done quite a bit of that already.
Pretty much all I'll have to do now is throw an ALL_BLOCKS patched copy of Metroid into HexCmp along with an untouched copy, and the program should point out the differences in the two files for me. Figuring out what your did to it should be a snap. The fact that the destructible blocks are buggy is non-consequential, as I'm not trying to create destructible blocks in my hack. My main goal here is to find the location of the data that determines what blocks contain what properties so that I can turn a few spare tiles into door transition tiles from whatever they currently are. I've been able to surmise through common sense that there are four types of tiles in Metroid...solid, transparent, destructible, and transition...and the structures (the large objects that make up the room data) can be made up of combinations of any of these tiles of different types. A good example is the solid Chozo statue that holds the destructible ball. Something is setting these individual tiles to be the properties that they are, and I intend to find out what. Once again, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Take care... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Oh, If only hacking music in a game was that simple. I have quite a bit of musical talent as far as writing goes myself, but I'd much rather be plunking the notes down in a visual MIDI editor than be being bogged down with the bare programming aspects of it.
That's something I've never been able to figure out about NES games. Quite a bit of them contain separate chips for the actual game program and the graphics. Why not a separate one for the music and sound effects?!? That way, all games across the board could have uses the same hard-wired sound engine accessible from simple commands in the program. Much more efficient, in my opinion. Music and sound effects, and interchanging them between games, would have been a breeze to hack. I guess that would have made too much sense, though... I guess the creators of the NES did things the way they did because they wanted the sound engines for games to be more flexible than a unified way of doing things across the board would have allowed. But why? I mean, it's not like you can't immediately tell that a certian song came out of a Nintendo Entertainment System...they have a very distinct sound.to them. One of these days, I'm going to sit down and tackle Metroid's music engine. That game seems to be largely ignored music-wise, no doubt due to the supposed difficulty involved with it. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| That's actually not half bad for a first attempt...I've definitely seen worse in my thirty-three year long career as a human being. Keep up the good work, it looks promising...something could definitely come of this. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy  Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Tossing out all the cow dung? We can't do that, the human race wouldn't survive. It's used to fertilize the soil out of which the healthy fruits and vegetables Richard Simmons convinces you to stuff in your kisser every day comes from. Isn't that a comforting thought? Man, who could have thought that being a vegetarian was so much fun? so folks, the next time you order mushrooms on that pizza from Domino's, just remember what they grew out of...
Using feces as the next energy source seems like a pretty resourceful idea. But I think I'd have a pretty hard time getting a cat turd to fit perfectly in the battery compartment of my Game Boy Advance...those things tend to vary in size in shape depending on kitty's particular mood. 
Just imagine how much fun it would be to fill up your car's gas tank... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| NetSplit is absolutely right about this. And to clarify, Metroid uses a set amount of rooms for each area, and these rooms can be assigned to any of the 1024 possible map locations. Metroid must use the same set of rooms for all areas of the map and rooms can be re-used, so keep in mind that when a certain room changes, every instance of that room on the map will change. It's up to you to make sure that this doesn't interfere with your overall level design. Like NetSplit says, it's like one big puzzle. After using MetEdit for a while, I find that it's just as much of a challenge creating a legitimate level design as it is playing through it. In putting together Metroid Begins, I've earned a new respect for programmers who rack their brains day in and day out over this stuff.
Also keep in mind when designing your levels that certain rooms tend to play certain musics. (The statue rooms all change to that creepy beepy music, for instance.) So it's best to leave the general purpose of these rooms as they are. I have not yet figured out what causes certain musics to play in certain rooms, but I am digging for it, believe me you! By the way, if you're handy with a hex editor, editing doors by hand is a snap once you get the hang of it. A full tutorial on room creation using this method can be found here, and a ROM map for all rooms can be found here. I find that hex editing often offers me a level of flexibility in designing rooms that MetEdit cannot always provide. However, it is great for beginners as a jumping off point for bigger and better things. Good luck with your Metroid hack. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Folks, if this does not qualify as craziness, I may have to re-think my whole philosophy on life.
Enjoy the pretty pictures... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| Despite the obvious immaturity level of the whole thing, I can't honestly say I didn't enjoy this, it does have some good parts. The funniest, in my opinion, has to be the parts about the Whitesnake/White Lion tickets. I laughed so hard I pulled a "Beavis" and made my pants dirtier...
I can't wait to see what he's going to do with Starship Troopers. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| You want to travel to the limits of your own imagination? Here's how...
Kick up the stereo system, turn the lights down way low, plug in the headphones, and light up the Ozric Tentacles album known as Spirals In Hyperspace. Then sit back in the recliner and close your eyes, and watch the pretty pictures in your head that the music feeds you. You can hear some 30-second sound bites here. Seventy-or-so minutes long, nine songs, all instrumental with no lyrics. Sort of a cross between hard rock, acid jazz, spaced-out techno, and Egyptian music, if you can picture that in your head. From beginning to end, that album takes me to another planet and back. (edited by Kirk Bradford Myers on 02-27-06 07:48 AM) |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| I Stand Alone
I braved the storm, Would not conform. "Bow to the norm", They told me. But, in my plight, I chose to fight What, day and night, Controlled me. Now, hard like stone, I stand alone. My funny bone It tickles To not abide, But stand in pride... A dime beside Those nickels! Temple Of The Sun God Temple of the god of sunlight, Pyramid of days bygone, I shall make my pilgrimage... To you, tonight, I'm feeling drawn, Called to your majestic splendor By the forces mystical. Hopefully, I'll find some answers, Then my life's cup will be full. Shattered remnants of your glory Lay in ruins on the ground. Still, I'm humbled in your presence... Knowledge that I seek is found. Ancient refuge of the pharoahs, Docimile of long gone days, Your eye of wisdom gives me power With it's eerie, mystic gaze. Planet Zebes From icy blue and rusting red To vestibles of emerald green, The depths of Brinstar's caves conceal The way to reach the main machine. It's areas are large and vast, A trove of sacred relics past. Who so shall take these treasures wins... Your journey, in this place, begins. Beneath the planet's crust lies Kraid, A frigid, musty world of fear Where dang'rous creatures run afoul. The Ice Beam benefits you here! In secret passages throughout These walls of stone, you'll find the route To reach the dreaded lizard's land... He holds one key in scaly hand. Tread carefully through Norfair's nooks, A wealth of tunnels, crags, and chutes. Not one escapes the mis'ry here, Lest they possess the Hi-Jump Boots! The walls grow thick with alien life And secret passageways are rife. Beware this place which few have crossed... It's all too easy to get lost. The fires of Ridley's zone await Deep down within the planet's core. Without the Wave Beam, youlln't go far... So leave your Ice Beams at the door! Beneath these molten catacombs, A fire breathing dragon roams... The scourge of ninety hells, no less, Who holds one key to your success. Perhaps you'll reach a dismal cove Of cybernetics intertwined Where Zeebetites and cannon's fire Protect the artificial mind. For Tourian's this place's name Where empty air spits rings of flame And Metroids roam and multiply Beneath the Mother's watchful eye. Edges Of The Universe We shall reach the stars, And walk the sands of Mars. Up to the skies above We will disperse. Together, we shall trod Across the stars of God To reach the edges of The universe. We'll take ourselves from here, Beyond the atmosphere... Take flight just like the dove And lift the curse Of Terran chains that bind. We'll leave this world behind, And see the edges of The universe. We look up to the skies With starlight in our eyes, United in our love For best or worse. We'll meet out destinies Out in the galaxies, And cross the edges of The universe. Forever, we have planned To reach the promised land. And when push comes to shove, We shall immerse Ourselves in nebulas Like God almighty does, And touch the edges of The universe. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| For the record, I am a righty. But here's the breakdown...
I can play keyboards farly well with both hands, although I'm a bit faster with my left hand than with my right. I have no trouble playing the bass and melody parts of "Axel F" on a piano at the same time. I type as well as masturbate equally well with both hands. Yeah, I know, TMI!
I steer a car better with my left hand than my right. This has the advantage of leaving my right hand free for radio, drink, holding my fiancee's hand, stuffing a quarter pounder down my throat, shifting gears, etc. I write with my right hand exclusively, but I can barely do that legibly. Thank God for typing!
Most menial detailed tasks are performed with my right hand, as it is the hand my brain is pre-disposed to use at all times. I will actually reach over to a toilet handle on the left side and flush it with my right hand without thinking about it... And the right hand is used exclusively for applying TP to my bunghole. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
| It's amazing that I've never even tried Metroid X, as much as I've heard about it. I think this might be due to the fact that working on my own hack and trying to weed out some of the original programming/design errors that I've become privy to has made me leary of encountering these same flaws in a new Metroid hack the likes of which have not yet been prevented against. In hacking Metroid, I've found a shitload of flaws that are not even to this day documented, none of which are of consequence in Metroid Begins. Did you know that you can jump upwards through one-block thick platforms using the bombs and the Mid-air bomb boost jump? Had to design around that, since there's no way to prevent it...wouldn't want people going somewhere they weren't supposed to. Did you know you can reset the Mother Brain destruction sequence mid-explosion just by going backwards in the room far enough? Had to redesign Tourian to prevent that. . There's a couple of others, I'll be releasing a full list of what was corrected with the Metroid Begins documentation.
I'm somewhat of a neurotic perfectionist when it comes to ROMhacking. My first tendency wouldn't be to play Metroid X, it would be to tear it apart and make sure it was up to my standards, and if not then correct what was wrong with it. And trying to perfect a game which by it's inherent nature was programmed in a way that makes it impossible to perfect fully has driven me up a wall and back down, so I can only imagine how others might not have noticed or bothered with the small stuff. Regardless I believe that I've gotten rid of all the "intolerable" errors in Metroid Begins, leaving only the stupid stuff like wrong color tiles (actually made less prominent with careful color placement,), phantom doors in vertical hallways (made null and void by area design,), and the imfamous wall-door trick which I am tring to find a solution for. I have one, but it makes the "doors in vertical hallways" error even more prominent to the point where it begins affecting horizontal passages and compromising level design. I've got to find a way to prevent both, which I probably won't do before the game's release on August 6th...but that's cool considering that this is an error you have to do something unusual to make work, and not one you can just bring about by simply doing what you are supposed to do. There were so many "incomplete" or "bad" hacks out there like the aforementioned "Zebian Illusion" that I guess I just sub-consciously lumped Metroid X in with the others, which may have been a mistake. Perhaps I'll have to give that one a try. Metroid Captive is antoher one I would like to give a chance to, just judging from the look of it. What I'd really like to do is to find a way to contact Curtis Himel, author of Metroid Challenge, and submit my Tourian design from Metroid Begins for use in that hack, too. As of version 0.87, Tourian is the only thing I believe he had left to finish, and considering that my version of Tourian is quite a bit harder than the original I'm sure it would fit into Metroid Challenge nicely. I'd just like to see him finally finish this hack, as it is for all intents and purposes incredible. The thing that breaks my heart though are the Metroid hacks that have lots of potential yet fall short. Metroid Mario comes to mind. This was an attempt to hack the levels of Metroid and use new graphics to give it the look of Super Mario Bros. 2. What the author did managed to finish looked surprisingly EXCELLENT!!! Granted, the fun (and the editing) stopped as soon as you hit the second Brinstar vertical hallway. Makes me think it was more of an experiment than anything. Project Ridien is another one that comes to mind. Project Ridien is one of those Zelda Challenge: Outlands style hacks that literally changes everything, and would have been an amazing hack if it did not require you to use "teleporters" which affect scrolling and are highly error-prone. When i read the documemntation for a hack and see "Just make sure you don't do this or don't do this..." I start to say "Ummm...uh oh." 
Zoku, you asked about Metroid Begins, and I'm going to stop rambling long enough to address that. Metroid Begins, for all intents and purposes is finished, but there are still a few very minor yet significant kinks to work out. I had to redesign the bottom of Norfair to re-incorporate the existing pallette switch and create a new one, so I'm going to need to playtest this game from the beginning again. In addition, I was having some trouble graphically with the Norfair/Ridley elevator shaft because I redefined the elevator structures to make them wider and Ridley seems to be the only area in the game without a legitimate blank tile to use. I've found a viable solution around that problem, it's just a matter of implementing it which will take a bit of digging through the levels with a hex editor to find spare bytes...
Once playtesting is finished, the only thing left to do will be a speed run and a resetting of the times required to achieve certain endings, which is as simple as editing four measly bytes. It is during this time that I will be making screenshots. Believe me, I'm as anxious to get those posted as you are to see them. Hopefully just another month, tops. I just don't want to release anything half-baked and then have to change it later. One more bit of advice...write your back-ups to CD-R at least once a month! Once a week would be better. You may lose some of your work, but only up to a point where you can recover some of it. I recently had six months worth of new work accumulated on my hard drive which I finally decided to stop being lazy about and backed up. My computer was hijacked by a virus the very next day! You don't know how relieved I was...
Take care. Once again, good luck with your hack. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Originally posted by Thoughtless I don't bother with the knife and fork. I just pick up that big ol' slab o' meat and chew it off the bone, right after I sop up some Masterpiece barbecue sauce with it. I'm a redneck at heart. And just for the record, I use my right hand to do it.
As for right-handed people being less creative, I would like to defend thyself by presenting evidence to the contrary. It's amazing what one can do with just a mouse and his right hand...
Of course, Jimi Hendrix was a left handed guitarist, so it's hard to say. |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Originally posted by NetSplit Hey, NetSplit. Found that trick in an old Acmlm thread ages ago, already tried it in my hack. That exactly the thing that I did to it that caused all the problems I was having!
The deal is that, for some odd reason, when you open the door and it stays open, then you make tracks for another "room" in the given passage, the column of blank tiles that take their place decide to print themselves on top of every single subsequent room that you go to in horizontal and vertical shafts, usually where a door would be if that room had a door. This continues until you encounter another door in the same area. Part of the reason you see phantom doors in vertical shafts in the original Metroid is because you can move away from the door faster than the game can update the status of it, and when it goes to update it to "closed" it "closes" it in the next room your heading to, and your see the door where it shouldn't be. Usually that's the end of the story, bacause the door status is updated. But because using the above trick causes the game to never close the door, it still thinks it's supposed to print those "open door" blank tiles when you go to another room. The game is basically too retarded to update the door status if the door never closes. This wouldn't be such a major deal if it only compromised the look of the game slightly, like normal phantom doors do...but it also compromises level design as well. Those blank tiles will overwrite whatever was there in the next rooms, be they pillars, walls, or whatever, and act as transparent tiles that Samus can shoot/pass through...not good when tightening a level design to the point of near linear. In order to get to the bottom of this problem, I'm going to have to dig apart how door mechanics work within the game, something I thus far have no expertise in. Until then, the ability to pull off the wall-door trick is just going to have to stay. The first working released version of Metroid Begins will be 0.99.1a, so that research can continue and an update can be made if I ever figure this out, amongst other things. As for the color tiling problems, I have made significant improvements to this via careful color selection, level design, and re-setting the color attribute tables in the room datas themselves. While the problem will probably never completely go away, it will be a lot less noticable, and probably as good as it's ever going to get. So I have taken some time to work on this as much as I can. One thing is for sure, it will be a hell of a lot better to stomach than it was in the original Metroid! At least now when it does occur it won't look like a dog threw up his breakfast.
Time to go finish that Ridley elevator graphics deal... |
|||
|
Kirk Bradford Myers Shyguy Since: 01-23-06 From: Baltimore, Maryland Last post: 6617 days Last view: 6617 days |
| ||
Originally posted by Everybody Wang Chung I was having a discussion with my friend Patrick from work tonight about this. I'd like to know where he got those funky orange plates myself! 
I can't wait to see what this guy is going to do as far as giving Metroid some love.
By the way, here's another one he did for Bionic Commando that's not on his original list of seven pictures. The best one, I think... (edited by Kirk Bradford Myers on 03-02-06 04:24 AM) |
| Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 |
| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Kirk Bradford Myers |
