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Sonic Advance Android Disassembly

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by EliGamerX, Nov 3, 2016.

  1. Hi. I am EliGamerX. I am new to the Sonic hacking community, but I learn quickly.

    One of the reasons I may have been accepted to Sonic Retro was my disassembly of Sonic Advnace on Android. Some of you may remember that version was released only in Japan in 2011.

    If GBA rom hacking was hard, hacking the Android Version should be easier! All you need to know is how to make an Android app. To make a mod, you'll need an Android app editoor.

    You can download the disassembly here.

    I hope to see many great mods for the Android version, and hope to see the ULTIMATE mod in next years SHC!!!
     
  2. kazblox

    kazblox

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    Nice to see you come around! If I can recall from my fuzzy mind, I saw your original post way back in 2014 in the validation forum. Either that, or I am remembering some other different member.

    Anyways, welcome to Sonic Retro, and kudos on the disassembly! This will surely go great for hackers who want to look into Sonic Advance.
     
  3. DecadeW Climax

    DecadeW Climax

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    Great job! I read your post on the Validation forum and peeked around at your Drive folder. Android is a very common OS (I believe 9/10 phones in the world run it) so many people will be able to use this if it gains steam!
     
  4. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

    RickRotate'd. Administrator
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    If you're going to start modding Sonic Advance for Android, here's an idea for where to start: Fix the framerate bug.

    On pretty much all modern phones, Sonic Advance runs at like 15 fps. I'm fairly certain the phones it was designed to run on ran it at the normal framerate. Maybe it's using poor software upscaling instead of a hardware-accelerated method? (Current phones have 1280x720 or higher-resolution displays; phones back then were between 320x480 and 480x800.)

    EDIT: Google Drive makes it rather painful to browse source code. Can you repackage it as a single archive file, e.g. Zip, or better yet, upload to GitHub?
     
  5. Lanzer

    Lanzer

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    So I'm guessing that this port of SADV1 is more closer to the "Sonic N" version then the GBA version right?
     
  6. Techokami

    Techokami

    For use only on NTSC Genesis systems Researcher
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    Click the name of the folder to the right of "Shared with me" and select "Download" from the dropdown menu. That'll let you download the entire folder as a zip archive.
    But GitHub would be a smarter choice overall.
     
  7. JoseTB

    JoseTB

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    This is pretty significant actually, there's a ton of information there that was never previously reverse engineered on the original. I assume all the class/method/variable names were extracted directly from the app? Is there anything particular you need to compile it back or will any version of the Android SDK do? Can you share a bit more about how you decompiled the app?
     
  8. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    Would be interesting if someone was able to use this for a Hacking Contest submission in 2017.

    Who knows, maybe there'll be a Trophy for handheld entries in general...
     
  9. Remember, the Android version has some flaws, like the bad framerate, screen resolution, not working after putting the app in the background and the Japanese only text. Don't forget that this was due to little testing by Dimps (yes they ported this themselves).
     
  10. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Where did you get this info?
     
  11. I played that version of the game and noticed the flaws.
     
  12. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    I think he means "Where did you get the information that Dimps did the port"
     
  13. Beat the x zone and watched the credits
     
  14. Jeffery Mewtamer

    Jeffery Mewtamer

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    Considering that this was a subpar port, did they even bother to update the credits?
     
  15. Lanzer

    Lanzer

    The saber calls for its master... Member
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    True but shouldn't even the most subpar ports have credits added to it for the team that worked on the port? even Sonic 1 Genesis had credits added for the team that worked on that.
     
  16. AFAIK, they never said who worked on Sonic Genesis (which I believe is the second worst Sonic game).

    They also didn't update the credits for that version.