Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Infiniti - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

I brought a 120GB SSD for my laptop and I was wondering what the best way to set up the system is. I've seen loads of posts online saying Just the OS and a few programs but I've seen others that say a game or two could be installed along side the OS/Programs. Also I'm fishing for tips on what to disable on windows, to prolong the life of the SSD. (Disable Pagefile etc.)

I wanted to install a game like WoW or Tera or PSO 2 to the SSD.
I also wanted to run one of the many WoW Emu's from AC-Web, but was not sure how often the database for the emulator would be writing to the SSD, updating player/characters as they play the game. I already tried posting on the AC-Web forum for help, but my message never got posted.

I don't mind spending money to get a portable hard drive to store games and data on, I just thought I'd get some advice from you guys first.

Oh I'm also adding a list of the programs I would install to a normal hard drive. If there is anything listed that would be better left off the SSD, please let me know. Thanks guys!

OK the back story is:

Brought a SEALED copy of Win7 Ultimate back in November on Ebay (yea I know, stupid move), and until this morning everything was great. I Emailed 'MS' and posted on the help forums. What I got back from the forums was interesting.

Seems I may of been sold a MSDN key that got blacklisted.


I can either shell out another £150 for another copy of Windows or I can reach out to the Linux users here to advise me on the best version to get. One that has the look and feel of Windows and can run windows software via Wine.

I have VERY LIMITED/NO experience with Linux, so any advice would be great, opinions are welcomed. Links too please, to save me going to 100+ sites in Google


In as short a list as I can, I would be looking for the following support in a Linux distro...

All major Audio/video/subtitle codec's (inc MKV/AAC/FLAC/OGG/XVID etc)
Zip/rar/7z support
Flash (I guess)
Steam
Torrent app
Support for microsoft products (office) So I won't have to redo any documents I may have in Microsoft formats (word/exel)

Oh more important then anything , I will need a distro that can read/write, support AND install to Fat32/NTFS partitions as I don't like the sound of the Linux partition system, and I don't want to loose data if I'm forced to convert the hard-drives.

I have the whole weekend to look into this, but if anyone can help me get the ball rolling it would be great. I'll check in after work.
Many thanks in advance guys.

I hope I am posting this in the right section....
Going back some 6-7 years, I had a few Action Replay codes* I used on my combined Sonic 3 And Knuckles Carts (PAL).
These Codes are useless on the emulated S3K rom, But I discovered one of the codes had an intresting side effect on the emulated version of the combined rom...

Enter the following code in Gen's game genie thing:
FFFE18:0025
This will give the following changes:

Removes Invincibility from the game

Rings work the same as when you have the 7 chaos Emeralds (Only problem is they don't wait till you have 50 of them...) this add's the following effects to Sonic\knuckles.

Knuckles - Slight speed increase & faster climbing
Sonic - Standing/running sprites messed up, Flashes White, slight speed increase and moon jump

It also stops knuckles from finishing his level end pose (and sonic) but this will not crash the game.

The 6-7 year-old codes I used
FIRST....I want people to know I've not used these in years, and I used a Pro Action replay to do them...Also if they don't work for you, shoot me! (they worked for me!)
Erase a file on the combined CART (NOT the ROM...) and use these to have the ultimate save file :D

FFFE12:0099 - Start game with 99 lives
FFFE18:0025 - Start with 35 continues
FFFFB1:0007 - Start with all Chaos Emeralds

This final code had a great effect on knuckles/tails save files, it unlocks access to The Doomsday Zone for tails (from the file select)
And unlocks Death Egg and Doomsday for Knuckles.
(also it makes you start on the doomsday zone)
FFFE10:000C - ALL ZONES UNLOCKED

If anyone does get them to work....good for you!
-EDIT-
My Mistake....the last code (unlock all zones) It should have read 0:000C instead of 0:000D!

I posted this on SCARZ last night, then fell asleep so I'm posting it here now...:P...I might also get a better response too...

I took my hacking attempts in a new direction yesterday (see pic below)

Knuckles with Sonic's palette.*

I know some might see this as 'pointless' to put knuckles in SCD WITHOUT Climbing/Glideing support...but it never stoped Hive and a few other's doing a KTE/S1 sprite hack... and thought it would be good to do a sprite hack for SCD (to start with).

Back in Jul, 2002, Nemesis said (on Area 51)

Quote

....Nemesis, was that for the SCD Version or the PC version?

I'm also quickly gonna mention somthing 'thissideupxl' said in the same thread....

Quote

What became of Shadow CD???

I'm not sure if anyone else has done much work on hacking SCD and the .MMD files and I was wondering if anyone here can offer me any help and/OR info on how to store a new/change sonic's pallette, to Knuckles's propper pallet in the .MMD files I'd be greatful. (TLP did not work...or I did somthing wrong...Knuckles's palette looks correct in TLP, when the .MMD file is opened with the S3&K palette.)

*You may also notice part of knuckles's foot is missing, due to a lack of tiles in Sonic's SCD sprite set.
This is because there are less tile's used in Sonic's sprite set then Knuckles. (I'm taking a educated guess on this...)

The 2 BMP's used were exported from SonikSprite.
IF there's a way to map Knuckles's missing foot sprite to an empty space in the .MMD files, I'd like to know....

Also, are there are there ANY know editors for SCD's .MMD files, or current programs that will do level editing of the .MMD files that DON'T use savestates for the level editing process? (SonEd is a good example of an editor using savestates.).


Thanks in advance.
(I hope I'm right with some of the things I've said! :P)

First off, once you read this, if you having anything brutal to say, just say it. I'd like you to be direct and to the point with me...I want to learn what I'm doing wrong etc...PS, I mean no dis-respect to ANY of the great hackers out there (it just takes some of us longer to reach our goal's...)

Ok, so he we have another happy-go-lucky guy starting off, making a hack. I have chossen Sonic 2, Since it seems to be the choice game to hack.
Using tools like ESEv240/eseii for general level hacks and alterations are easy enough for me, and sprite hacking (should I choose too).

Ripping the 128x128 Gif squares with ESEv240 is simple enough (with the use of a savestate from Gens), I have been able to rip zone tiles from all save files I've tried.
But I believe the next part is where I'm going off track. I use (as my example) Esrael's Sonic 2 Delta hack. After ripping the tiles from 'Winter Hill' I replaced part of the artwork (in the gif).
Example Gif
The NEW art shows up fine in the editor (ESEv240), BUT I need to know IF I'm on the right OR worng track to getting custom art in my hack...
If I'm right, I need to know HOW to save the edited art back to the rom...If I'm wrong (like 99% of the time), I need a crash course in replacing art for a custom level.

I found this topic today...(sound's promissing). Decompressing the data is simple (say:S1-GHZ's 256x256 tiles...saves a DAT file) but what next? In LOst's Second Post, he says:

Quote

...convert the 4 bit indexed patterns using the palette? Convert it with what? How? o_0...Hex?

It's not much use saying 'next Convert this bit to that and point to this location in Hex', because most of it will fly right over my head, unless I have some kind of guide or detailed text help....(without a step-by-step guide, I was unable to attempt using LOst's tool)

Basicly guy's I'm asking for any help or links to any posts that will be of use to me.
BUT if you would sooner say 'It's not worth you trying it, to me then that's fine, I'll just sit back and play all the other hacks out there.
Once again, I just want to say, I want to learn, I want to be able to help other's one day. I DON'T want this 20 Post Trial to end, with me gaining NOTHING out of it but wasted posts. I want to use them to further my own knowledge, not have them wasted, then in 6 months need to ask a question and find I can't post nothing...
Remember I'm a newbie at this stuff....learning all this would be the most rewarding part .

PS. I have Idapro 4.51, if it's any use...