Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Elektro-Omega - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Hey Retro,

I come to you today to see if any of you can help shed some light on this topic for me.

I am looking to hack a game. The name of the game is irrelevant in this context, as I was hoping to gain knowledge that could be transferred between different games.

1. I conducted my initial search through the rom using a hex editor and found some raw ASCII text strings which are useful to the game (stage names, character names, that sort of thing).
2. I looked through the rom with TLP to try to find any uncompressed art but to no avail. I could not find any uncompressed art in this particular rom.

Now, what I am asking is where to go from here. How can I find any important offsets or pointers that will help me out in the future? If the graphics are not uncompressed, how should I go about trying to find if they are compressed in any way? Would this require deep knowledge of the game in question or would it simply be a matter of trial and error / deduction?

Would I need to use a corrupter for this level of task?

As a side note, how exactly do corrupters' work, do they simply FF all of the data within a specific range, if so, why not do it by hand?

Cheers

Hey Retro,

I could have sworn there was a basic Q & A thread for fan-games yet now I cannot find it, if this is posted in the wrong section, please inform me.

I come to you today with a few questions about fan-games and MMF2 in general.

1) I know the sonic worlds engine runs at a specific resolution (I can't think of the exact figure off the top of my head), I assume this is because it is the resolution that best mimics that of the Megadrive / Genesis thus making Sonic games look most at home and ensuring the graphics are in proportion. My question is, if the resolution was doubled and each sprite / graphical asset had increased detail, do you think it would look aesthetically pleasing? or would it be difficult to play because of the larger size?

2) This is more of a general idea regarding both fan-gaming but more original content. How do you stop people from stealing your ideas or characters?

Hey Retro,

I come to you today looking for guidance building a website. Now I know the basics of HTML and CSS and can do some stuff in Dreamweaver, no problem.

My main couple of questions come in the form of live content. If I wanted to have a small section within a div tag that updates whenever I add a new update or personal news story how would I go about implementing it?

I was thinking of having something along the lines of a small square div tag that displays the headline and maybe a hook of my update which the user can click to view the full story. I gathered that this would be done using an SQL database with a UID to ensure the correct headline (and hook) is retrieved and I would expect some PHP to interact with the database with a simple story.php for when the headline is clicked (A simple HTML page where the content changes depending on the current headline story selected).

My main question (quiet difficult to explain) is how to create a system that updates live (without refreshing the page). Would I retrieve the information from XML files containing the full story and headline that is formatted when the PHP file retrieves it? How does this effect images within the file?

I'm sorry that this question is not explained very clearly, I am having trouble wording my questions as this is quiet a new avenue for me to explore.

Cheers everyone

Old in the respect that I have had it a while and not modded it yet, not in regards to it's release.

Hey Retro,

I come to you today with a couple of questions regarding the PS3.

I am looking to fit a nice little SSD instead of the basic HDD that it comes with and I felt this would improve hard disc speeds which it should (no doubts about that), however I got thinking about streaming the entire game from the SSD as opposed to the blu-ray disc.

I suppose my question is in a kind of grey area, without looking like I am enquiring from a piracy point of view. How wide open is the PS3 right now? I have looked at a few websites which say you can install CFW, backup managers and things of the such but I want to know how secure these methods are. Will they get instantly crippled the second a new OFW comes out with a game? Is it possible to have PSN access (and trophies) via CFW.

I have done some research but it seems that many of the guides are not complete newbie guides and many of the guides seem to already know what they are talking about.

So Retro, the question comes down to you, how easy is it for a newbie to soft-mod a PS3? create and play game backups? does it support PSN and trophies? and moreover will it get crippled as soon as the newest games with OFW come out?

Edit: Also, is it possible to add more memory / better fan to the PS3 and does it make any difference?

Hey Retro,

I am looking to program a basic tile viewer / editor which allows the user to view tiles from a rom file, export the full images and import custom images.

This sounds like a very ambitious project and to be honest, it is, but I'm not entirely clueless.

I know the offset of each graphic that I need.

I'm just having trouble figuring out how to actually program it, I know I would need to read in the data, display it to the screen by re-arranging it and then allow for importing and overwriting and exporting of sprites, I am just completely clueless about it. I program mainly in python due to it's flexibility and ease of syntax, if that helps.

I hope someone can enlighten me as google provides very little help.