[Andrew75]

I know this is not Sonic related. but I was wondering if anyone had ever attempted hacking this gem of a game here on retro.
Its known that there were sprites of Mario found within the game, but the details of that find seem to be lost in the sands of internet time along with whatever else may have been found.

[KingofHarts]

This sprite sheet found on TSR: Astal Sheet - The Spriter's Resource
It has the Mario sprite, even makes mention of the graphic file that it is found in.

Gotta say, I've never heard of this game or the character. Looks interesting though.

[Andrew75]

KingofHarts, on 12 September 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

This sprite sheet found on TSR: Astal Sheet - The Spriter's Resource
It has the Mario sprite, even makes mention of the graphic file that it is found in.

Gotta say, I've never heard of this game or the character. Looks interesting though.

Astal is a great showcase of what was possible using the 2D graphics capabilities of the Saturn.
Back when I first got the Saturn I really wanted there to be a sonic game that took advantage of the same technology as Astal.

I'm very interested in viewing the environment textures from Astal.
So... how would one view or extract the textures in the first place. It would be nice if we had some toolsets or something to dig into the treasure-trove of saturn game assets.( not just for this game but many others as well)

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 12 September 2013 - 10:17 AM

[Knucklez]

Saturn games are very neglected in the hacking community. I'd really like to see more effort being put into cracking the Saturn.

[Andrew75]

I'd like to see some Panzer Dragoon hacks myself.

[Mr Lange]

Hack Astal? I can't even get it to run on a Saturn emulator. If you've figured out how I'd certainly love to know.

[Andrew75]

Mr Lange, on 12 September 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Hack Astal? I can't even get it to run on a Saturn emulator. If you've figured out how I'd certainly love to know.

To get it to work with a Saturn emulator you'll need to run it in SSF and in options /program 3 tab check the SH2 Cache to enable it.
Optionally to boost performance of SSF...You can than make a save stat after the game loads and than disable that SH2 Cache thing, reset SSF reload the stat and the game will run normally. No idea why it needs to be cached when first loading the game.

Perhaps one of the technical Genus's of retro can fill us in on why this is.

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 12 September 2013 - 03:18 PM

[Mr Lange]

I'll give that a try later, thanks.

[Knucklez]

There's also an emulator that goes by the name of "Saturn.emu" by Robert Broglia. Look him up. He's made a phenomenal collection of emulators that are just flawless.

[Mr Lange]

Knucklez, on 12 September 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

There's also an emulator that goes by the name of "Saturn.emu" by Robert Broglia. Look him up. He's made a phenomenal collection of emulators that are just flawless.

http://www.explusalp...home/saturn-emu
This? It's not for Windows. Looks like a spinoff of Yabuse for mobile devices and ARM processors. This is useless for most people, including myself.

[Knucklez]

Yet the simplest to use; just load and play. No other setup required. If you have a tablet, you wouldn't regret using the emulator. Don't be skeptical about mobile emulators because this one is better than what anyone has to offer on Windows, which is why I've resorted to using it.

[Mr Lange]

Knucklez, on 12 September 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Yet the simplest to use; just load and play. No other setup required. If you have a tablet, you wouldn't regret using the emulator. Don't be skeptical about mobile emulators because this one is better than what anyone has to offer on Windows, which is why I've resorted to using it.

Uh, ok? I don't have a tablet, or phones or whatever, have no intention of getting any of that junk, and even if I did I certainly wouldn't rely on them for emulation. Thanks for mentioning those though I guess I'll keep them in mind for whatever.

[Shadow Hog]

I can't imagine it's seriously a better emulator than SSF is.

I have tried Saturn.emu on my phone, actually. Dragon Force runs at an absolute crawl. That's about all I can say, though.

[Knucklez]

I don't even know anymore. But as far as Astal goes, sprite editing should obviously be the first step in attempting to hack the game. I think the level layout and design is just too gorgeous to fiddle with.

[Andrew75]

SSF does not seem to have any VDP1 or VDP2 viewers sadly.