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Main - ROM Hacking - The Zeed Project New thread | New reply

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jargon
Posted on 03-27-08 07:54 AM (rev. 2 of 04-01-08 03:06 AM) Link | Quote | ID: 81054


Ninji
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Posted by interdpth
Why did you need so many excess files and folders?
And it appears to split the original image into smaller pieces or something, the idea seems cool, and you should code it to get screen capture
Hope it becomes fruitful!


Thank you for the good wishes, interdpth. It means a lot to me to get good feedback from people that take my work semi-seriously.

I intend to create a screen capture sub-module for my "Keal" SDK once I iron out the "PDT8" bundled patch glitches as I will explain, which additionally hinder the ability to generate real-time AVI's, GIF89a's, or even dump PNG's. Blitz has a command called "SaveImage" that saves video memory directly to a 24bit windows bitmap file, and that's all I've bothered to use thus far.

The splitting into unique tiles was the easiest part actually. All i had to do was create a database of pixel information and systematically reduce to a single set of unique pixel data. I have done this in many different ways since I started the "Zeed" project in 2007.

One method is to create a binary-split tree of entries in which you define each tile region as an entry, testing each time if the entry already has been created in the scripting dictionary. The scripting dictionary from Zeed has evolved into "Keal" SDK's "aa" sub-module, of which stands for associated array.

However, ever since the "PDT8" Windows Update, a memory map update was apparently bundled with it, of which broke Blitz Prototype, Basic, Plus, + 3D's ability to undefine memory that has already been allocated. In layman's terms this means Microsoft accidentally broke the ability for programs made using Blitz Research's "Blitz" line of BASIC game making tools, so that the games made using them can no longer remove objects in memory from RAM, including RAM used by both the "GPU" (video card's Graphics Processing Unit) and the "CPU." (main Central Processing Unit)

This means that I have had to experiment with over 8 different builds of the Associated Array ("aa" scripting dictionary) for Keal SDK, of which included variant combinations of the following: 


1. Memory Banks Daisy-Chained By 32bit Handle 
  a. A Dynamic Arbitrarily Defined ASCII Hash
  b. A Compacted Limited set of Alpha-Numeric Look-Ups
  c. Full ASCII Hash-Table.
  d. Raw Binary-Split.
2. Memory Map Linked By 32bit Index
  a. Indexed Block-Based Dictionary.
  b. Indexed Super-String Dictionary.
  c. Multiplexed Video Memory.


By the time video-memory failed on me as well I realized my goose was cooked, that is unless Microsoft fixes the patch bundled with the "PDT8" Daylight Savings Time related patch in the as-yet finalized XP Service Pack 3, or else fixes it in the current XP-SP2 edition, the Scripting Dictionary method no longer works reliably and is *very* difficult to debug.

There are alternative methods though: 


1. Create an array of tile entries, 
   then cycle through every tile in the sheet and 
   add new String entries of the pixel data by looping 
   through the existing table in the array using one of 
   two methods:

  a. "Hi-Lo" game using bubble sort with strings of the pixel data.

  b. Cycling front-to-back through all entries until a match is made.

2. Create an array of tiles entries as tile row, column, and index.

  a. reduce by cloning portions of the image and 
     applying boolean logic such as CMP (equality) for each 
     ARGB in video memory in order to assign the index of an 
     entry to a prior encountered duplicate then undefine the duplicate 
     tile from video memory.

  b. reduce by cycling through video memory by scanning the raw 
     source image directly as in '2.a', without cloning imagery.


After that you dump the result to either individual image files or a sheet.

If you are interested in my methods of reducing tiles, including keeping track of four-way-mirror redundancy, then I suggest you follow this thread chronicling my Reverse Engineer of Seiken Densetsu II (Secret of Mana) here.

I have used other methods as well, but I have implemented so many methods that I have come up with that I do not even recall them all.

Cheers, TRK

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interdpth
Posted on 03-27-08 06:41 PM Link | Quote | ID: 81073


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Last view: 4072 days 		It should be much more of just a simple pixel compare to get matches
Just need to get the tile then create 3 seperate buffers to create the possible mirroring then search for those =p
And for the current window, just catch the print screen key message

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jargon
Posted on 03-28-08 05:10 AM (rev. 2 of 03-28-08 05:11 AM) Link | Quote | ID: 81090


Ninji
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Posted by interdpth
It should be much more of just a simple pixel compare to get matches
Just need to get the tile then create 3 separate buffers to create the possible mirroring then search for those =p
And for the current window, just catch the print screen key message


With four-way-mirroring, I suppose it would be faster to hash each mirror after I already have tested for exact matches, however this Zeed project never needed to handle 4-way-mirroring. But i will take your suggestion to heart for when I begin working on Zeed again.

-edit-
BTW, in some versions I think pressing space-bar overwrites the screen shot file.

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troopa pride
Posted on 03-28-08 09:19 PM Link | Quote | ID: 81136


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Last view: 5567 days 		Is this possible to be used on smw or YI perhaps?*shot*

jargon
Posted on 04-01-08 03:07 AM (rev. 2 of 04-01-08 04:33 AM) Link | Quote | ID: 81292


Ninji
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Posted by troopa pride
Is this possible to be used on smw or YI perhaps?*shot*


I never finished the algorithm for flat-on levels. But, yes.

-edit-
All that is needed is tweaking the provided source code.

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