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06-24-24 02:06 PM |
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| Main - Posts by smkdan |
| smkdan |
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 Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 182/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
some of the waterfall blocks are solid but they look like the rest (EC / EB, press F5 or look at the status bar when hovering). they were originally put at the top of the screen to stop players from passing through the top. You want A9/A8/A7/A6 waterfall blocks to be able to pass through. similar stuff applies to sky tiles, look at the top of screens that aren't intended to be passed through.
for the animation go to Level->Tiles->Animation editor. Frame delay decides how quickly the animation ticks for a given set. same vertical transition deal applies. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 183/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
you have to set areas manually in sprite properties window if you are dragging sprites between different areas. incorrect areas will get 'ghost sprites'.
there's four lined up as horizontal screens 0,4,8,C,10,14,18,1C = area 0 1,5,9,D,11,15,19,1D = area 1 2,6,A,E,12,16,1A,1E = area 2 3,7,B,F,13,17,1B,1F = area 3 |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 184/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
good call. took only 5 minutes to implement because it just involved switching the x and y coords for looking up tiles. right clicking the tileset now toggles between the two views. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 185/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
it's a nice looking program, i gave it a try. i quickly ran into unhandled exceptions when tooling around with the LAYERS tab. for example i can repeatedly toggle the L3 PRIORITY 1 button and i can see in task manager that every click results in about 20MB or so extra RAM used. it piles up until it hits 550MB or so before an exception occurs (I still have about 800MB RAM vacant at this point).
doesn't seem to effect the actual drawing tiles on the levels though. it does use an abnormally high amount of RAM but without throwing exceptions. that aside, it looks pretty comprehensive as it is and great job getting it this far. looks like there's a lot to learn to use it to its full potential though. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 186/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
i tried it out, here's my critique.
lots of wierd stuff happening in the interface like the red rectangle used for selecting not being cleared when moved and not being able to drag select up and left and quirks that occur if you try to do so. some wierd flickering occuring on the gray rectangular labels when i move around the drawn level. nitpicking yeah, not particularly pleasant to look at though. i think the big issue is that you definitely have a problem with leaking GDI resources. i can just drag the mouse around the room and GDI Object count of the editor all the way up until it caps out at 9,999 objects in task manager. this makes everything else on the computer act real strange, ofcourse. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 187/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
using XP SP2 here. i just saw it in windows task manager:
what it looks like when this happens: 
dragging the sized up red rectangle around the level view ramps up the object count pretty quick. not releasing the hdc sounds about right for something like this. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 188/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
looks like this is developing pretty nicely. would you mind releasing the hacking notes necessary to produce an editor when you complete this? i'd like to recreate the editor in Windows and the notes would help out since i wouldn't (or someone else interested in recreating it) have to reinvent the wheel. definitely a project for me to consider, what do you say? if you have plans on creating a windows port then disregard this.
also, i think Contra is 128kb which is half the capacity of UNROM/UOROM (forgot which one). any plans on expansion to provide greater freedom for level design? i don't know how difficult it'd be since i haven't checked the level loader at all. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 189/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
if no decompressor is publicly available then just make a savestate in ZSNES in the level with gfx you want and open it in YY CHR. i forgot the address but there will be GFX in the file. scroll until you find it it'll be in the VRAM portion. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 190/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
nice. its one of those things i don't think has ever been done before and to see it work so well is really cool. i just tried it out and its really easy to get something running. i wonder how well it would work over the net though, i don't know how sensitive it'd be to the latency or potential lag spikes. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 191/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
i'm trying to get into hacking mega man x here. the game seems to use 32x32 blocks stored in ROM which winds up in RAM as a series of 16x16 block references. i have a decent idea of how it happens but haven't tried to make a level viewer for it yet. my notes are very basic and apparently a thread on an older acmlm board had a bunch of notes in it but i don't even know which incarnation it lies in. does anyone happen to have any notes on hand that might come in handy for a potential level editor?
thanks alot, and expect to see *something* within the next month or something. i'll find out myself if i have to i just don't like reinventing the wheel or anything. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 192/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
thanks for the links. i recognize the bio thread although i already have that code and a bunch of other disassembled chunks in my notes. the sonicretro linkwas pretty interesting i'll definitely get some use out of those ram addresses. MMX3 *does* have an editor but it's borderline unusable it's on RHDN. i'll mess around with a basic level viewer now.
edit: 
yeah there's not much to see but it's the first screen of the possible editor. all it does is load level data (which I can only assume is done correctly) and displays one screen in those blocks, i'm guessing i'm looking at part of a bridge. screens are 256x256 in size and there's going to be a table somewhere that defines what screens go where to compose a level. level palettes are stored very simply although sprite palettes not so much. next goal is to try to display graphics, i know where all the data and pointers are but nothing about the compression. to make sure i even have the level data sorted out correctly i'll make it draw levels from a premade GFX file dumped from a savestate since I want to get to GFX compression later on and just make sure the level data is being read right. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 193/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
you won't see anything for editing X2 or X3 from me unless i really get sucked into it. i should follow through with this one i hope.
i got screen viewing in there (sort of, no GFX compression uncovered yet). 
the crap on the last 32 pixels is because that portion of the screen is not viewable on the SNES. hit a major snag on the second one though, the game swaps in banks of graphics and updates palette on the fly as you progress through the level and this tileset i'm rendering from is from the very start of the level so that's going to make things a bit awkward. i'm guessing there's an array somewhere in ROM that decides whether a palette or tile chunk should be uploaded during gameplay for a given screen but that might take a while considering this is only day #3 since i started poking around the ROM. right now the program just lets you browse the screens that compose level 1 it's a long way off to even viewing it correctly. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 194/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
thanks. made some more progress but the game stores its data in a bizarre way it will make things more complicated when it comes around to saving that's for sure. the screen arrangements are compressed for whatever reason; they're only 128 bytes long.
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/5876/level0eo5.png 8192x1024 (fairly sure i got the metrics right) shot of level 1. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 195/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
^compression is really only for production costs, anti-piracy included things like checking for the right amount of SRAM, the region of the system and for earthbound's case also cehcking to see if anti-piracy routines themselves have been tampered with.
bit of progress: correct tile viewing for graphics that get swapped in based on checkpoints: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9751/54256495vf5.png http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/4407/33796753om5.png you can preview the level appearance based on whatever point. it does the same thing for palettes which needs to be sorted but i don't care all these hardcoded level conditionals i see tied to the graphics routines, i never feel like catering to those. the editor will eventually have: -sprite editing (when i disassemble the relevant bits...) -screen editing / screen arranging -checkpoint editing -scroll data editing (hope this isn't a pain to find) don't expect much in the way of graphics editing for a while. so you'll be able to make a decent hack at the very least. i'm going to bump up the size to 3MB (double the ROM size) and repoint compressed data / level layouts there so each level will potentially be as expansive as any other. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 196/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
got in previewing for palette and tileset changes but i assumed wrong on where the data comes from (source is only partly correct). it sort of works though, here's launch octopus in the first area of the level and towards the end of the level.
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/9740/level1pb2.png http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/5392/level1bzi2.png these buildings are using the right tiles too bad about the palette http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/67/level0wn9.png time i have to work on this is going to be slashed fairly soon so it's probably not going to contain stuff beyond the essentials. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 197/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
i'm a super mario kart expert and my surname starts with dan. pretty wild huh |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 198/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
to answer your question berion
some sprites force the checkpoint # based on what you see in that quote (bottom of the doc that comes with the zip). not complete i'm sure. i know you used cranes in the level (why is one in the water?). IPS pointers are only 24bit so i guess that gave it the 16MB limit. it's also crude as hell it was made in the early nineties for small scale stuff. it was made on some Atari computer according to a guy from the demoscene which would also explain the big endian encoding. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 199/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
i'm here for the romhacking forums and that's just about it. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 200/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
Linux is great. But what about Microsoft Windows?
Anyway it looks like pretty good progress. does it swap tiles / palettes mid level like mega man x? (disassembling the portions that cover this but got broed of it, picking it up later). I never played MM7 but I really should sometime. |
| smkdan |
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Ninji Level: 36 Posts: 201/238 EXP: 290026 Next: 18084 Since: 05-26-07 Last post: 4121 days Last view: 4071 days |
consider development frozen since i don't have any motivation to add anything beyond the gameplay essentials which are already all there. i know i saw a modified title screen before but i don't know where. |
| Main - Posts by smkdan |
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