Problem with Bobesh8's Sonic 1 SegaCD remake

Most mp3s from OCR use weird id3 tags, try stripping them with a tag editor (such as Winamp's). As a matter of fact, removing all the tags is the first thing I do when I download songs from OCR.

 

Right click a file in your playlist, there should be an option something like "Edit Meta-Data". Alternatively, select a file in the playlist and hit Shift+E.

 

Yeah, apparently OCR's tags are so weird that Winamp can't even remove them entirely (I use another program to do that, but I suggested Winamp since it's popular and I assumed you already had it). It's still possible that this isn't related to your issue, but since different ReMixers use different encoders to make the MP3s, the only common factor are the tags, which are written by the OCR staff themselves. To further this theory, the ID3v2 tags are placed at the beginning of the file, the best place if you want to confuse a program which isn't expecting them.

I should have replied with this detail sooner, but I wasn't at home earlier and from my previous post you can tell I hate to type on a phone.

 

ID3v2 tags are indeed likely to crash programs that don't expect them - especially if they include pictures.

The simplest way to remove ID3v2 tags via hex-editing is to search for the bytes "FF FB" and remove everything before, because most MP3 blocks begin with those two bytes.
Alternatively you can try to get the length of the tag block by decoding the value stored at offset 06-09. (It's a Big Endian number where only the 7 lower bits in each byte are used - I.e. 0x8F0 is stored as 00 00 11 70)
If you want to do that with multiple MP3s though, I'd probably just use a tool. I've been using Mp3tag most of the time. It's pretty powerful and I also used it to remove ID3v2 while keeping ID3v1.

 

Some folks get mad even if you don't distribute. It's just the matter of simply looking at their code.

 

It's not surprising people think this way after how many times we've been burned before: code stealers, hack disassemblers. In a community where people often contribute code in guides and actual disassemblies, it's pretty rude to overstep that and go straight for the code someone doesn't want you to see. It's no secret that I occasionally disassemble sections of others' ROMs, usually to find the source of crashes, but even I find it slimy to do so to learn ASM. That's what guides are for; if someone wanted to help you with that, they would have. Also, 'elitist'? Really? We're trying to treat each other's work with respect, and you're going against that just to benefit yourself, and we're the bad ones?

 

Modding retail games happens, yes.
The key difference is they already make the millions out of the game, AND everybody knows the original product and who made it.

A hack of a hack is a bad form because people might assume you made everything or that you didn't credit the original author well enough.
I promise you, if you were in the reverse situation you wouldn't like someone taking your code, level layouts, sprites and whatnot and plastering them in their product.
And if you say you would be ok with it, that's because you haven't done enough stuff. Its like 'Sure, if I win the lottery I'll buy all you guys shiny cars, donate to charity etc' but when the time actually comes...

If you want to be doing this just for learning,
a) don't release it publicly or otherwise
b) couldn't you just do your changes on the original game?

P.S. Modifying retail games is most of the times still considered illegal, and you can see it being enforced from time to time by banning players.Why don't you try to modify TF2, Dota 2 or CS:GO and watch what happens.

 

Hold on there now. I personally have been on this scene for 4 years, done all kinds of stuff, even pretty complex ASM edits, and I done not really care if someone goes out to rip code or other assets from my hack. In fact, I would encourage anyone with the knowledge to disassemble my hack and rip all the code out. But "why???!!!", you ask. The simple answer is; if someone is capable of disassembling my hack in the first place, they may as well be skilled enough to make any code in there by their own. Or even if now, they have done something rather complex and deserve a little cherry on top.

Of course, when we talk about noobs going in to some random leaked disassembly to piss all over my work, then I wont be happy with it, because they don't need to put forth any effort to understand any of the code, they can just poke it with a stick and make it *kind of* work. But for someone who truly took it upon themselves to disassemble the ROM and understand the code, I have no problem with them 'stealing it'. So please do not assume everyone in this community act like the worst elitist scum we have been conditioned to accept.

 

The usual issue in those games is people cheating in matches. I don't think that's even comparable to modding. I know some people like to go into multiplayer games and cheat and that's their way of having fun, but that's cheating and that's trying to give yourself a competitive edge over others. If I make a new level in Sonic the Hedgehog, that's not really me giving myself an advantage over others. If I make a new gun or hat for TF2 that goes over another existing thing, that's also not giving myself an advantage necessarily. I've been on servers in TF2 where Scout's model had Pedobear's head for example. I would consider that modding and not cheating. Several servers I've been on have Quake's announcer on them. There are also servers that give you random character layouts or restrict you to the default loadouts for the cast. None of that will get you a Valve Anti Cheat ban. Making it so your gun hits all the time and always gets headshots and gives you as many kills against every player that you can gain without the game breaking is cheating.

It's after midnight for me currently, so if that doesn't make sense, what I'm trying to say is you're trying to compare someone looking through someone else's code to cheating. There are a lot of places that offer code that is written for you to take advantage of and people get caught plagiarizing all the time. There's not really much you can do to stop people from stealing your code or trying to view it and tinker around with it. I've made some of the stupidest maps in DOOM with all sorts of textures from other games, and to be honest for a lot of modding scenes, that's what a lot of people do. That's how a lot of people get their start in game design.

 

I agree with you both.

If someone made a derrivative of my work I'd like for them to at least try to contact me about it. As you say, if someone is willing to disassemble your stuff it means they are dedicated and it might be a form of flattery.

On the other end of the spectrum there was recently a person that claimed they drew their spritesheet and immediately someone called him out with the source sprites.

Maybe my example with Valve games were bad. I've seen people being banned for non-gameplay changes like reverting Battlefield 3's shaders to realistic and not washed-out-gray or for unlocking the framerate modifier on Dark Souls(both were not presented as giving the player an advantage, but just the companies being mad because bad).
And some models on Quake 2 can be considered cheating as well since they reduce the player hitbox size and you cant hit him? I might be remembering it wrong. Anyway my point was that many companies don't like modding.

 

Semi off-topic, but some companies ENCOURAGED modding their games. Hell, id Software did just that with Q3TA. And both games' source is officially out on the internet so you can mod to your heart's content. AND they made their way to GitHub.