 |
| 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 sp |
| User | Post | ||
sp Micro-Goomba                Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/22-Faxanadu-Sprite-IDs.html | |||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| If you want to know what I think I'll tell you. You took TMPHexEditorEx from http://www.mirkes.de/en/delphi/vcls/hexedit.php, added it to a Window and added a menu that controls the control in the most simple way possible. In fact even the demo application on that website has about 10 times more functionality.
I estimate that so far you've invested 30 minutes into this project. Maybe you should have waited until you can show something you've actually added yourself. Like bookmarks (very simple to implement) or something. Finding things to add is very easy. Download every hex editor you know and check them all out. Implement the functions you like, avoid functions you don't like. |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| Reading the file in chunks is the way to go in my opinion. Only read what the user actually wants to see. Assuming you have a standard hex window that's never more than like 1 KB of data. This amount of data can be read from a file without any speed problems right before you display it.
Here's the tough part though. You need to figure out a way to handle changes to the bytes. If the user already made some changes you obviously can't re-read the file from disk. You have to create a more or less eleborate system that tracks these changes and makes sure the changed data is displayed instead of the original data. There are several approaches to solve this problem. I'm not going to mention them though. Not because I don't want to help but because I'm hoping you can come up with a cool and new solution yourself. That way I could learn something too. |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba  Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| Reading this might improve your next posts considerably. | |||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| Hi,
since my last proposal for centralized repositories for ROM/RAM maps was so well received (see Data Crystal and WikiRAM, for example) I want to suggest something else. I believe it would benefit the ROM hacking community tremendously if we created centralized repositories of atomic IPS patches. Atomic IPS patches are IPS patches that are kept as small as possible and patch just a single functionality into a ROM. An atomic IPS patch basically contains patch data for just one function, taking anything away from such an IPS file would break the patch. Example for these atomic IPS patches could be adding Shyguy to SMB3, making Mario jump twice as high or reducing mana costs for a spell in some RPG. I see several potential benefits of creating such repositories. First it will save a lot of time because people won't have to re-invent the wheel anymore. I'm sure how you make Mario jump twice as high is already well-known by some people. These people could just make a small IPS patch named MakeMarioJumpTwiceAsHigh.ips and put it in the repository. Other people could then instantly benefit from this in their own hacks. The second advantage is modularity. Organizing patch-functionality in a modular way offers all the advantages modules provide for regular software engineering. They simplify hacking projects because they provide a higher abstraction level. Furthermore they make it easier to spot bugs because people who want to make Mario jump twice as high do so in a well-documented manner. More people using the exact same patch means more people can potentially detect problems. Think about it. Maybe Data Crystal or WikiRam or someone else could integrate such a repository into their websites. (edited by sp on 01-10-06 08:08 AM) |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba  Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
Originally posted by NetSplit You raise a few good points but I don't think that they're significant enough to reject my idea. Let me explain. First, IPS archives are not supposed to replace data repositories. They're mainly meant to compliment them. Ideally each IPS patch would also come with a decent description that tells the user what it does and how the patch works. Furthermore the atomicity of a patch is not determined by it's size. Sure, maybe making Mario jump twice as high is easy and can be done with a 1-byte patch. This is a trivial example then, and maybe a ROM map would be enough. Adding Shyguy to SMB3 is not nearly as simple. Nevertheless the two patches would have the same atomicity. The compatibility issue of course exists but I don't think it's too hard to solve. A simple tool could easily remove the vast source of all compatibility problems. This tool could check all IPS patches in a directory and automatically test what patches use the same space and are therefore incompatible. Ideally a IPS repository would also be wiki-style and people could just mention incompatibilities on the page. Incompatibilities that come from other sources but patches using the same data can of course not be tested automatically but I think these kinds of incompatibilities are less likely to occur. |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba  Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| Starting next monday, people from Microsoft are going to broadcast a series of freely available webcasts about game development with C#. Lasting until early febuary, this 11-part series will feature topics like 3D engines, collision detection or artificial intelligence. Last but not least you can earn yourself a MSDN webcast super hero action figure. This alone should be worth signing up in my opinion.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnvideodev.mspx |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba  Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| First I want to state that I'm a bit of an extremist/open-source zealot. Why? In my opinion people who don't open-source their freeware are assholes. I can forgive them if they have legal reasons for not releasing their code but any other excuse definitely falls on deaf ears with me.
Good, that's out of the way. Now about the topic. I firmly believe that more information = better than and available source code is more information than any documentation could ever contain. Arguing for more documentation while simultaneously arguing for closed source is completely grotesque in my opinion. The core of all progress is the simplification of earlier inventions. That's not just the case for software, but for the rest of the world too. In the years after Gottlieb Daimler invented the automobile it was so complicated that it was seen purely as a tool for engineers who know to fix their cars basically on the fly (because early cars were difficult to control and broke down a lot). Only a few decades later, people like Henry Ford managed to simplify automobiles so far that even normal people could use them. This is not just true for cars, but for most if not all inventions. Combine this with another aspect of life. There are no geniuses. Nope, none. Isaac Newton once said that "If I have seen further [than certain other men] it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants". Using this sentence he tried to explain why he invented so much more than his contemporaries. He studied the history of his field a lot more than others and studying that gave him an advantage over others. He knew what was already tried and failed and he knew what wasn't tried yet and could concentrate his efforts on those areas. There are other examples. Who invented the telephone? Graham Bell? No. The telephone was invented by (at least) Antonio Meucci, Charles Bourseul, Johann Philipp Reis, Cromwell Varley, Poul la Cour, Elisha Gray, Thomas Edison and finally Alexander Graham Bell. The invention of the telephone was not the work of a genius (because they don't exist). It was the work of many people who studied what their ancestors in the fields of electrical engineering developed and they all improved on these ideas. It's the same with the steam engine. Think James Watt invented it? Nope. By the time James Watt made his significant contribution to the steam engine some hundred of them were already running in Great Britain. James Watt merely studied them and found ways to improve them. We don't have to limit this to great inventions. Here's a ROM hacking example. If FCEUXD had not been open source there would most likely be no symbolic debugging or conditional breakpoints in NES emulators today. I do not have the time to develop a NES emu myself just to make a better debugger. I am not sure if even have the skills to write my own one. I can, however, guarantee you 100% that I would have never implemented anything like I did in FCEUXD SP if I couldn't have built upon the work of the earlier contributors to the FCE/FCEU/FCEUXD project(s). And - in my fairly biased view - this would be quite unfortunate. I really like symbolic debugging and conditional breakpoints. What I want to say is that a closed source policy is against many of the most important aspect of inventing and developing. You want to deny us the ability to build on the works of our "ancestors", you want us to reinvent the wheel over and over again, you want to deny us the necessary simplification (for example in the form of libraries that could be developed for common tasks) to make quick advances, you want us to be geniuses (which don't exist) and you want to force us to be the first "giant" in line over and over again. I ask you, how's that any better than just making programs open source? |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| Hi,
open yy-chr.exe in a hex editor of your choice. Go to offset 0xCC1F and change the value - which should be 0xCC - to 0x00. AVG should not find a virus anymore after that. This change is completely safe because the byte is only used for proper alignment. It doesn't hold actual functionality. |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
Originally posted by BGNG Companies that create hardware cheat tools (like Action Replay) employ professional rom hackers. I talked to one a few months ago. That must be an awesome, awesome job. |
|||
|
sp Micro-Goomba Since: 11-25-05 Last post: 6251 days Last view: 6251 days |
| ||
| I'd like to see a hack that turns a one-player game into a two-player game. Preferably a SMB hack where Mario and Luigi act simultaniously like in Chip & Dale (Hi, DahrkDaiz). Having two Kit's in Kid Icarus would be cool too.
I'd also like to see a NES hack that uses a level generation engine to randomly create levels kinda like the first Diablo did. I think Kid Icarus would be a top candidate for this one. |
| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by sp |
