Basic Questions & Answers thread

Thanks man!

Also, Natsumi, I see what you mean. I'll try to use less WAV files and start trying to look for the format changer that Clownacy was talking about.

 

Figured I'd repost this since it's a new page and this is preventing me from moving forward with my hack.

 

It's saying that you're trying to branch too far with the bne.s you're using there. Try changing that to a bne.w, perhaps?

 

Hm, it changed that error into this one:

 

The error didn't "change", that's another line altogether, not related to the first one (see how the line numbers are 5637 and 58241 respectively). Same deal, change the .s (short (meaning byte)) to .w (word). Should more similar errors pop up, repeat. You might also consider to sort your code in a different way, but for now this will suffice.

 

That worked! I was able to continue the guide to a point, (the last bit about the sliding sound is out of date) and the game builds fine, but whenever I hit any monitors now they don't do anything. No idea what's causing that. My previous download link has been updated with the current codebase.

 

Does any surface in any Sonic game have an angle of $40 or $C0?

 

FIRST OFF, I see one huge problem.

On line 5637, under "CheckLoadSignpostArt", you have this line:

Code (Text):

1.     tst.w   (Two_player_mode).w
2.     bne.w   ++  ; rts

As you'll remember, you changed the bne.s to bne.w. However, that was'nt the "true" cause of your problem, and will probably only cause more problems.

Changes that "bne.w ++" to just "bne.s +" (On plus sign).

I'm going to stop here, because I feel like you don't yet understand the distinction between s and w, and that's extremely important.
1: "bne" means, "Branch if not equal." In other words, the code I showed is literally "Test for two-player mode. If two-player mode is NOT ZERO, go to the code at +"
2: "s" stands for "short", and "w" stands for "word". Those are different lengths of branch. Basically, an "s" branch is much faster on the CPU, but has a significantly shorter reach. a "w" branch is slower, but can go farther.
3: "+" indicates a nearby branch location, marked in the ASM with a + at the start of the line. In this case, you had "++". That means "Branch two + lines ahead."

In this instance, the desired effect is to stop running code, but using "++" landed you into the middle of the level art loading code, so your game would probably crash when getting near the signpost in 2P mode.

Your other problem comes from the "Monitors don't break when gliding" part of the guide, where you made some mistake.

Part of the problem could be some weird duplicated code:

Code (Text):

1. Break_Monitor:
2.     neg.w   y_vel(a0)   ; reverse Sonic's y-motion
3.     move.b  #4,routine(a1)
4.     move.w  a0,parent(a1)
5.     bne.s   return_3F78A
6.     neg.w   y_vel(a0)   ; reverse Sonic's y-motion
7.     move.b  #4,routine(a1)
8.     move.w  a0,parent(a1)

Should be:

Code (Text):

1. Break_Monitor:
2.     neg.w   y_vel(a0)   ; reverse Sonic's y-motion
3.     move.b  #4,routine(a1)
4.     move.w  a0,parent(a1)

 

With your help and a bit more troubleshooting I was able to fix it. Thanks to everyone who helped!

 

True Dude: I'm sorry my guide caused you problems, I just don't follow every change anyone makes to the S2 disasm, and I guess nobody who works on the S2 disasm bothers updating the guides either. I'll try to fix that in the future.

Meanwhile, if anyone following a guide finds an inaccuracy, you should probably fix it, it is a wiki after all.

 

Thank you. I asked about this same exact thing before, but I didn't get a response... Unless I forgot anyway.

 

Hi, I was wondering if any one knew where the RAM offset to keep track of the location for the Blue Sphere special stages for sonic 3 and knuckles? I checked EE78 in the RAM Editing guide but didnt register any values in the special stage. Also if there is any offset that keeps track of your orientation.

Thanks!

EDIT: After hour 12 I finally had a good idea to find the orientation which lead me to the position in the grid



E426 and E002 give orientation
E422 and E434 give X
E424 and E436 give Y

Oddly if you go around the map which is 32x32 it keeps counting i.e. 33,34,35 or going the other direction 1,0,-1,-2. and couldnt find a counter but i guess its just 33 mod 32=1 and -1 mod 32=31 ect.

 

Sorry to interrupt (I think), but I'm back with another problem...

So I put Esrael's S2 Menu into Sonic 1, but when it loads, it uses the title screen palette instead of the level select palette. I tried loading the level select palette before jumping to the code, and that didn't work. I even tried it on a clean disasm, but it still happened. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Here is the section of code:

Code (Text):

1.  
2. ...
3. Title_ChkLevSel:
4.         tst.b   ($FFFFFFE0).w   ; check if level select code is on
5.         beq.w   PlayLevel   ; if not, play level
6.         btst    #6,($FFFFF604).w ; check if A is pressed
7.         beq.w   PlayLevel   ; if not, play level
8.         jmp     Level_Select_Menu ; <- Menu from Sonic 2
9. ;       moveq   #2,d0
10. ;       bsr.w   PalLoad2    ; load level select pallet
11. ;       lea ($FFFFCC00).w,a1
12. ;       moveq   #0,d0
13. ;       move.w  #$DF,d1
14.  
15. Title_ClrScroll:
16.         move.l  d0,(a1)+
17.         dbf d1,Title_ClrScroll ; fill scroll data with 0
18.  
19.         move.l  d0,($FFFFF616).w
20.         move    #$2700,sr
21.         lea ($C00000).l,a6
22.         move.l  #$60000003,($C00004).l
23.         move.w  #$3FF,d1
24.  
25. Title_ClrVram:
26.         move.l  d0,(a6)
27.         dbf d1,Title_ClrVram ; fill VRAM with 0
28.  
29.         bsr.w   LevSelTextLoad
30.  
31. ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
32. ; Level Select (the old one)
33. ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
34. ...
35.  

 

Try uncommenting the section at the end of Title_ChkLevSel, if you haven't tried that already.

 

It will not do anything because of the unconditional jump right above that segment of code.

 

Keyword, you tried loading the loading the level select BEFORE the code jump.

You want it to load AFTER. The Level Select is a new scrren, so there should be a palette load request in the Level Select code itself. It will look something like:

Code (Text):

1.  moveq  #2,d0
2.  bsr.w  PalLoad2

Or PalLoad1. What you need to do is change the number in the moveq line to match your menu screen palette.

 

Is there any GUI utility to edit plane mappings for the S3K disassembly? Was planning on editing the game title, but have no idea where to start.

 

Plane mappings are plane mappings, any editor should work.

 

Alright, I got a tool that works for it. What's the compression used for S3K's title cards? It's not defined in the disassembly but it is compressed, I know that much.

 

Kosinski Moduled... You can find the list of title card pointers at TitleCard_LevelGfx.