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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - ROM Hacking - SMK title recompression issues. |
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Dirtbag Koopa                   Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| Hi all,
SMK Title screen recompression issues I’ve been working on a SMK hack and want to have it ready in time for my mate’s birthday in 5 days time (yes Father Christmas could well be his dad!) I’ve now got him in to the game replacing DK, it’s not perfect but it’s made people that know him laugh, so it’s had the desired effect! Anyway I have been reading these forums for a few weeks now, now it’s time to say hi and ask for a bit of help. First of all I’d like to say thanks to Ok Impala! some of the information you’ve posted has already helped me. I can’t tell you how much respect I have for Stifu, I dread to think how long you spent drawing all those sprites without a kart as a template! I almost though about doing some 3d java app and getting shots from different angles, and it’s only for one player! I’m looking forward to playing your hack, as SMK is one of the best games ever and always wanted more, lets face it Nintendo cocked up every sequel so far (at least that I’ve played.) Anyway I know you guys have said you don’t want give away what you’ve worked hard to find before your release your hack, so I understand if you don’t want to answer my problem below. DJBouche, hope your work on the editor is going well, I just wanted to let you know I’m already a fan of your old (1.10?) editor for sometime, one of the rom hacking tools I ever used – because SMK is great, so stumbling across you on this board was cool. To read your working on updating is got me more excited than the Wii coming out to be honest. VL-Tone, good work with your M64 work, that’s some impressive reverse engineering! HyperHacker – you just rock, your posts make me laugh (in a good way) Anyway down to my problem for clarity I’m using a non-interlaced good [!] NTSC-U dump, I know some 68x00asm from uni days, and some other stuff like C/++, Java etc. Although I work in IT world I don’t do much coding. So now I’ve got my mate in the game and want to edit the title screen.. I know that the title screen is compressed, so I dumped a save state in to a tile editor and looked for the area I wanted converted it to snes address mode, got a tracing snes9x – my god there is so much to plough through!!! Time is ticking 7 days to go… Fortunately from a post of stifu’s I find this page http://matt.yanos.com/smkpal/?p=10#top and I got the address of 0x71B96 stuck it in to Lunar Compress with 0x71B96 4 0. I was so happy I had to check I’d not loaded my save state in to the title editor by mistake. So next the real test, I went to put it straight back in the game, if I use compression mode 4 I get a totally functioning by black title screen, if I use 2 I get a viable working title but with corrupt graphics.. I would persevere on my own but as I say time is ticking and I’d really to mock him that little bit more  (edited by Dirtbag on 09-20-06 07:14 PM) |
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Tanks Spiny    Since: 06-19-06 From: Eagle Land Last post: 6286 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| This sounds okay. Could you post screens of your hack so far? | |||
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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As requested:
*Fixed the image, I uploaded it manually to some webspace in ascii rather than binary mode (it's late) (edited by Dirtbag on 09-20-06 06:50 PM) (edited by Dirtbag on 09-20-06 06:51 PM) |
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JLukas Goomba Since: 11-19-05 From: USA Last post: 6437 days Last view: 6437 days |
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| Yes, Super Mario Kart is format 4 in Lunar Compress. It's kind of hard to tell from your post where you're stuck at, so I'll start at the beginning:
decomp smk.smc title.bin 071B96 4 0 It should report Compressed Size 1E44 Uncompressed Size 4400 Important - if you don't get that exact compressed/uncompressed size, your file doesn't have a header, in that case use 071996 as the address instead. Then open title.bin with a SNES graphics editor of your choice and make the changes. When finished recomp title.bin smk.smc 071B96 4 0 Again, use 071996 instead if you don't have a header. Another important tip, after you've recompressed, it will display the Compressed Size, that value must be 1E44 or less. Otherwise, the packet is too big and the extra data will overwrite whatever follows, likely causing crashes/display a black screen. |
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Stifu Since: 11-18-05 From: Your mom's bed Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Hey. I wish I could help, but I really don't know what you're doing wrong...
Originally posted by JLukas That's right, he should make sure the compressed size is 1E44 or below... However, even if it isn't, it should still work. Having a compressed size over 1E44 will just corrupt another part of the game, but the title screen should still be fine. Besides, he tried to recompress it into the game right away, with no modification from what I understood, which means the new compressed size should be clearly below the limit. Do the title screen graphics appear correctly in your decompressed part, when opened in a tile editor ? If not, try 71996 as JLukas advised, in case your ROM doesn't have a header. |
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HyperHacker Star Mario Finally being paid to code in VB! If only I still enjoyed that. <_< Wii #7182 6487 4198 1828 Since: 11-18-05 From: Canada, w00t! My computer's specs, if anyone gives a damn. STOP TRUNCATING THIS >8^( Last post: 6287 days Last view: 6287 days |
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| It's possible that the re-compressed data might be larger if the compressor is not as efficient as Nintendo's. | |||
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| I’m at work right now so I’ve just downloaded LC and found a copy of the ROM on a USB stick to have a quick go. I did as JLukas said, and yes, I am rather embarrassed to say that the wrong offset was being used. So thank you JLukas! (and others) I can now keep on hacking, and I will make sure I make sure I keep the size < 1E44 |
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Stifu Since: 11-18-05 From: Your mom's bed Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Originally posted by HyperHacker Lunar Compress is much more efficient than the original SMK compression routine, at least... Recompressing the original title screen with LC should give you a compressed size around 1Axx. Anyway, good to see the problem is solved. |
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Once again thanks guys. Here’s what I did when I got in after work:
Crude I know, art is not my forte. Let me explain the BG, the red car on fire represents his poor 3 year old GTV that caught on fire when he was driving it. The foot well started to fill with smoke and he got dripping plastic on his leg. He got out in time, just before the air bags went off! The no smoking sign is because he is giving up the ‘menthol’ cigarettes. After cleaning up the title screen I'm going to have a go at hunting down how to change DK Jr's name to Baldy. I also saw some offsets somewhere, forget where now, for the players attributes so I can have a go at making him a really bad racer  |
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Stifu Since: 11-18-05 From: Your mom's bed Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| Making him a really bad racer will also affect Bowser, though...
Also, I would have used an uppercased D for the title screen... Aside from that, not too bad. |
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MathOnNapkins  1100  In SPC700 HELL Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6286 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Originally posted by HyperHacker Or it could end up smaller if the compressor is more efficient... that's the upside many people don't always think about. |
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| think it's safe to say that it is more efficient than Nintendo's own, I've done lots of messing around and I'd be impressed if someone could make a title screen that was too big after LC has done it's magic. | |||
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Stifu Since: 11-18-05 From: Your mom's bed Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Originally posted by Dirtbag Heh, actually, the Epic Racers one has been too big on numerous occasions... The fact I decided to give different color palettes to the drivers for the GP result screen didn't help reducing the compressed size either, among many other things. (For the clueless ones, the title and GP results screen layouts and all are both defined in the same file) I even had to more or less randomly change pixels in the title letters to improve the compression rate bits by bits... I was around 17xx and managed to bring it down to 1E42 by doing that. And I'm not done working on that screen yet, I still plan to make it look a bit better... |
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Griff Morivan 190  Since: 06-10-06 From: St. Petersburg, Florida. Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6287 days |
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| ...Woah, I just had a weird thought that is not related to this in a gaming aspect, but a personal one. Is Baldy an Asian cook? | |||
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| Stifu: again much respect, I know you are far from beta testing stage but feel free to sign me up when you are ready. I am more impressed with your mod the more I hack the ROM. To totally change the title with all the mirrored titles it uses is an impressive feet with the lack of documentation and ROM specific tools for SMK. Having said that it makes it more fun to hack…
Griff Morivan: ROFLMAO no Baldy is a nick name for a very good English mate of mine, and I pray he never finds this post because he will not be happy to know I’ve posted this story on the net. What I am about to tell you is 100% true and might make you cross your legs – even if you are female! I think I best explain how he got his this nick name from the start. When he was much younger, just old enough to start developing hair around his private parts, he went to the toilet one day to relive himself as you do. Unfortunately this time he zipped himself up a bit too quickly. Even more unfortunately he got the zipper well and truly wedged stuck. Fortunately for him his very young niece was staying over that week as it was the holidays so the bathroom had disposable nappies (dippers) that he was able grab one and used it too staunch the blood. He went found his mum, nappy covering his man hood, and proclaimed “mum there’s been a terrible accident” she looked him up and down and replayed with “lets get you to the doctors.” Ok so that’s unlucky, but why is he called Baldy? Well he needed stitches in his man hood, and to do this they needed to shave him before they could stitch it up. Now he would have gotten away with this little dark secret if the nurse that shaved and stitched him was not his best friends mum at the time. So the following day at school everyone knew… To this day even his young niece calls him Baldy.. Baldy if you ever do read this, I'm sorry I just didn't want people thinking you where a Asian cook (edited by Dirtbag on 09-22-06 08:58 PM) |
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Griff Morivan 190 Since: 06-10-06 From: St. Petersburg, Florida. Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6287 days |
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| ...XD!
Holy crap, that is awesome... Alright, dropping out of this thread, because I have Zero feedback on SMK hacks. |
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Luigi-San Ptooie ZOMG Wii is teh pwn Since: 11-18-05 From: The Mushroom Kingdom a.k.a Buffalo, NY Wii: Yes Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6288 days |
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Originally posted by Dirtbag Here ya go. |
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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Originally posted by Earth Luigi-SanOriginally posted by Dirtbag Ah thanks very much. I was actually thinking of the Player attributes as in the acceleration curve, etc. Yeah I know it will affect Bowser to Stifu but that don’t matter really. As you kindly found me that information I did make use of it. Taking that info and subtracting 200 form the offsets for my header-less rom, yeah I learnt my lession
I now got: 
Is the location of the full players name documented anywhere? As they have shortened names for the time trial stuff I see. I get a nasty feeling they are going to be compressed or use a totally different table. *edit* as I seem to be the last post - Video uploaded: http://www.dirty.plus.com/ (edited by Dirtbag on 09-27-06 08:01 PM) |
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Dirtbag Koopa Since: 09-20-06 From: UK Last post: 6290 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| I didn't want to start another thread so maybe the title of this one could be changed?
I've finished the sprites for Baldy's kart in my SMK hack now. I but I noticed there are a few textures that I still need to change. The only one 'in game' is if the play is to get squashed, is this compressed or am I just being blind? Also there is the icons of the players faces when they finish the races this compressed somewhere as well? I know the end game is compressed so I'm trying to track down the offset for that. You’ll be please to know that I've stuck a header on my ROM. Many so I don't have to convert addresses each time. I think I've found something at offset x75024 and x76533 but I'm not sure what it is, if anything, yet… My immediate problem is extracting the correct pallet values as I have friends that are willing to make other drivers for me. So I want to make life as easy as possible for them. I can't workout how to extract the current game pallets so I'm matching colours manually :s If someone could show me that we be appreciated. What I have done so far on my own is this: Taking the info from http://matt.yanos.com/smkpal and looking at the format of my .pal created by Djinn. My pal file is laid out xxx xxx xxx (decimal) this figures as RBG values. So I take the standard hex address from matt’s page and spit it to convert each one to decimal. So after a bit of messing around with Excel to convert it all for me (lazy but the values are right I did check). I got a working PAL file with colours that seem to match ish. 
Any ideas where I’m going wrong? I’m sure this is not the most elegant way of doing this anyway, how does everyone else do this? |
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Stifu Since: 11-18-05 From: Your mom's bed Last post: 6288 days Last view: 6286 days |
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| Driver face graphics: compressed at 30200.
Squashed driver graphics: compressed somewhere. As for the color palettes, they're compressed and you can find their address in d4s' notes. What you should do, for example, is open your SMK ROM with Tile Molester (or whatever you want, although I don't know the other programs, so can't help with them), load a ZST file containing the appropriate color palettes (ie: a savestate taken at the title screen, player selection, during races or wherever the drivers appear)... Then go through each of the color palettes of this file until you find the right ones. After that, export the drivers that now have their right colors... Is that what you wanted ? (edited by Stifu on 09-30-06 09:51 AM) |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - ROM Hacking - SMK title recompression issues. |
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