[Tribeam]

So I had an idea, while working on my palette editor (seen below) I had the idea of hooking the genesis games to a lua api, by which I mean being able to mess with the engine directly with a third party scripting language, stuff like spawning/deleting objects, level/art/sound/music/memory manipulation, with a few minor asm changes to make that work, I have played with this idea and it is possible.

A con of this idea is that it would force you to use gens rerecording emulator.

My question is as follow: Would this community be interested in an idea like this?

Looking forward to your opinions.


And for no reason, a screen of my new pal editor

[Retroman]

rom plz :]

[Mr Lange]

Your con is not really a con lol. Gens rerecording is the best branch of Gens I've seen yet. It's what I use.
Regardless, this sounds like a fun idea. Attempting to go way beyond Sonic's debug mode.

[Ravenfreak]

Using lua scripts to manipulate and edit the game's engine directly sounds like a very cool concept indeed. I've already thought your palette script was wonderful. So I definitely think this would be really cool to see, and I'm sure I'm not alone either.

[KingofHarts]

1. I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. Your palette editor was something else, in and of itself...
2. Gens Rerecord is NOT a con, by any means. It ranks second only to Regen in my book... I can live with using it instead for this.
3. Any timetable on the release of the new palette editor?
4. What are those lower 3 palette lines?

[Tribeam]

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Your con is not really a con lol.
2. Gens Rerecord is NOT a con, by any means. It ranks second only to Regen in my book... I can live with using it instead for this.

Well, I thought some people wouldn't like the fact that it causes win7 to go into basic theme mode

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rom plz :]

Erm, this isn't a thing yet, just an idea, or am I not catching on to something here?

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3. Any timetable on the release of the new palette editor?

When It's Done :P

That screenshot is kinda old actually, I'm currently working on a new gui system, one with dragable windows and dynamic control systems. I didn't get a screenshot of it causes its not in a presentable state yet.

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4. What are those lower 3 palette lines?

Those are the red green and blue color sliders, they change color like that based on the other 2 values, this gives you a visual so that you can find that exact color, instead of messing with buttons and rgb values.

Side Note:
If I did go through with this, I'd need some knowledgeable ASM folks to help me with this, idk ASM or the engines enough to do that on my own...

[KingofHarts]

Tribeam, on 06 May 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

Well, I thought some people wouldn't like the fact that it causes win7 to go into basic theme mode

Dunno how I did it, but I managed to get around that... :P

[Extended Play]

KingofHarts, on 06 May 2013 - 11:08 AM, said:

Tribeam, on 06 May 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

Well, I thought some people wouldn't like the fact that it causes win7 to go into basic theme mode

Dunno how I did it, but I managed to get around that... :P

That's not particularly odd now that you mention it. Windows 7 does that to conserve memory even when I have 4/8 GB free and a video card with 2GB of GDDR5 whenever I run firefox in 2 monitors. I'm not sure it's something to blame Gens for so much as something to blame on Windows 7. Not to digress, but I can't seem to figure out how to stop it.

Either way, I just switched from GBA fangaming to hacking and started using your Realtime Palette Editor. To be blunt, it makes life easier, so thanks. Your idea to extend the concept further is great, but I have a question. When this new editor is released, will you release the Realtime Palette Editor source code? I just want access to it for educational purposes when you feel like no one will try to rip it off and steal credit because it's old hat.

-A Motorola 68000 microprocessor: $5.99
-A book full of 68k ASM programming examples and exercises: $20
-Being able to see what you're editing while you're editing it: priceless

For everything else, there's Tribeam.

This post has been edited by Extended Play: 12 May 2013 - 12:31 AM

[Tiddles]

The switch to basic is caused by original Gens and Gens Rerecording using 16-bit colour instead of 32-bit. As far as I know, there is no way to run Aero in this mode, and no way to have these versions use a higher colour depth.

This is my biggest problem with original Gens and Rerecording. It's not just an inconvenience because of Aero; the depth switch tends to mess with a bunch of stuff I have open in the background, and stops me from doing any proper graphic work while I'm using it. I don't know how easy that is to fix, but a bunch of other Genses (including GS) have 32-bit available.

So much as I wouldn't use Gens Rerecording as my primary emulator because of this, I do use it for the palette editor from time to time, because it's really very useful, and I'd be very happy to try a more in depth tool such as this - I'm sure it will be worth the pain Gens inflicts on my screen while I'm using it.

This post has been edited by Tiddles: 12 May 2013 - 02:02 AM

[MoDule]

I love the idea of adding game-specific debugging features through external scripts. It's just a shame you'd be stuck using Gens, which kind of defeats the purpose of testing and debugging. Maybe we should start nagging Nemesis to add scripting support to Exodus? That seems like a perfect candidate.

[Tribeam]

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will you release the Realtime Palette Editor source code?

Yes, Lua code is always open source.

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Maybe we should start nagging Nemesis to add scripting support to Exodus? That seems like a perfect candidate.

That would be neat.

--

I've played around with this hook idea and I managed to inject objects into the OST, very simple and straightforward process, but I find this kind of lacking in that I can only inject predefined internal objects.
I don't know if I can make external object definitions, I have an idea on how to do this but I know nothing about ASM and I ask forth a request to the ASM gods to help me out here.

Also I'm using s3k and only s3k, as its the most advanced and I like a challenge heh

My idea is as follows:
-Make an obj pointer that is just a special blank obj
-Lua scans the OST for these blank objects
-This object will have special memory values that will tell Lua what it should be doing
-There will be a Lua system that will keep track and control the interaction between the obj's values and Lua

If anyone has a better idea I'd like to know it heh.