Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: JJ-Fox - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

A lot of you have probably noticed that the Chaotix protos/hacks are very buggy when you try to play them with Kega (3.51). This is because Chaotix requires a different setting for CPU interleave between the two SH2s, and Kega only uses this setting if the ROM matches Chaotix's CRC32 checksum. Protos and hacks obviously have a different CRC32, so this setting is not enabled when playing them in Kega.

Use this modded fusion.exe to solve the problem:
http://www.saveonepiece.com/prototypes/Keg...r%20Chaotix.exe (thanks Quexinos)

Chaoxed V3, which was originally a C++ port of the VB version but now a complete rewrite, is pretty much finished and will be released really soon. This version is a thousand times better, considering it's C++.



Lots of new stuff like easy 24 bpp bitmap import/export, grid-lined art editor, status bar, all that cool stuff. The neatest thing is probably the 24 bpp bitmap importing. You select a bitmap, the portion you want to import, and whether you'd like to import the art and it's 16 top priority colors over the current art's palette, or just import the art determining the closest match of colors in the current palette. Chaoxed then trys to find the closest match for colors other than the top 16.

If you want the current source, I have a SVN repository set up at http://chaoxed.googlecode.com/svn. I usually update it every couple hours, so don't be afraid to checkout whenever. To make, you need a compiler such as g++. And go for the linux/mac ports guys, because this will eventually lose the word 'Chaotix' within its title, meaning more than just for Chaotix.

Yes, I am releasing a new update of my hack. Some of the new features include:

• Special Stage Art (from Sonic CD and SGR)
  
• Overall New and Better Shaded Sprites (by KojiChao)
  
• Combi Catcher sprite now uses the right Palette
  
• Fixed up transparent pixels on Sonic on Title Screen
  
• Title Card art now contains "Sonic" instead of "Mighty"
  
• Fixed shifted lines of art for "Mega Monitor"

However, this hack still contains some minor problems. There still may be transparent pixels in some art. The 'Switch character to Mighty' monitor still contains Mighty's art due to the fact that I cannot find the position of its art. Special Stage sprites are also kind of weird.

Note that this hack still does not work in Kega. By trial and error, I have figured that Chaotix has a special checksum check routine within it's code that disables the slave or master SH2, causing the game to do weird stuff like flicker the screen. I have tested this in other 32x games as well by changing a single byte, but they still work fine. Drx says they probably intended to do this to piss hackers off, and I AM quite pissed at this. However, Gens bypasses all this, so until we find a solution, we'll just have to use Gens.

Credit for the new shaded sprites goes to Heran Bago and KojiChao. Heran actually held on to these sprites knowing some day they'd be needed. And because I could not find them anywhere on the internet, I asked Heran Bago if he had them, and he just so happened to have them. What an awesome guy! As for KojiChao, she is probably the best spriter in the world. Thanks a whole bunch. Also, thanks to SGR for testing, pointing out sprites, and for the Special Stage sprites. Thanks to my C++ Port of Chaoxed, and again, drx for the cracking of the art compression format.

Download - (1.84 MB)

If someone has the ability to test this out on the real hardware, please contact me.

Opinions and Comments would be appreciated. And in case you were interested, here are some pics:

Because I have ported Chaoxed to C++ and because of some of Koji's awesome art, I was able to port Sonic to Chaotix. And just to let you know how easy it was to port him with this new Chaoxed, this only took me about 3 days. Everything was pretty much perfectly ported except for the combi catcher sprite. I still cannot find it's palette. I have not ported the sprites for the special stages either, simply because there aren't any out there. I give all art credit to KojiChao and the sprites in Crackers. SGR was also a very big help for beta-testing.

Getting Sonic on the title screen was a HUGE pain in the ass. It took me more time than porting the character art & hand art. I had barely any art source at first, until SGR pointed out the little page on Sonic-Cult comparing Sonic and Mighty, which had some awesome art done by KojiChao



Sonic and Knuckles starting off in my favorite level, Techno Tower.



Sonic and Knuckles running through Techno Tower.



Yeah okay, screw the screenshots, you guys just want the rom =P
give me rom plz

Use GENS for now, I am still working on a solution for Kega

1. The Idea / Progress
==================
About a week ago, I took the time and effort to study the basics of the Win32 API, and I felt like making a use out of this knowledge. A few days back, I started porting my Knuckles Chaotix Art Editor, or Chaoxed for short, from VB 6.0 to C++. Not much has been done because of school, so I was only able to work on it last weekend on my pentium 2 thinkpad, spending about half the weekend trying to get VS6.0 to work on the piece of shit. The main form is 95% ported, my user datatypes are all ported, and the function to read the pointers from the rom into an array is pretty much done.



2. The Plan
==========
If ANYONE wants to help with the project-hopefully drx because he's maybe the only one other than me who understands the format-feel free to give me a chat/call/message/whatever. It would be awesome if I could get like maybe 2 people with knowledge of the win32 API that I can release my source to and let them spice it up a bit, or just give me help in general. Remember if you do help, you get credit, meaning the name would no longer be JJFTails' Knuckles Chaotix Art Editor, but Knuckles Chaotix Art Editor, and your name/s would be right under mine in the credits. Now you may think, "Yeah yeah, it's just a name, no big deal", but I believe people have to be credited, whether they help with one real small thing or one huge thing. Now I don't mean to go on a big spiel, most of you would agree that if someone steals your work and everyone praises him/her, that's not fair, and its a really good way to piss people off. And even if someone reminds you to add a semicolon to the end of that line in your code, and you credit him/her in your program, you raise his/her confidence. It's a lot more effective than just a "Hah, how could I have missed that? Thanks.", and it's always nice to know you made someone proud, right?

3. C++ means cross compatible
=========================
I recall people suggesting a mac port, and because I know awesome people like Lostgame, I can possibly make this happen. I'm not exactly sure how hard this would be, and not even sure if I can even do it. But if you're one of those Mac junkies with knowledge of the Mac API(?), and you want to help make it happen, then awesome. If you don't want to help with anything, it's still awesome, because you took the time and effort to look at this topic.

Summary for the lazy
=================
if u want 2 help w/teh chaoxed port 2 c++ then lol gvie me a holla