Nemesis working on documenting Sonic 2 code

Let me say that it was about time something like this was made public.

 

Wonderful. I have waited for this so long. Nemesis is really great ^_^

 

I'll have to add a feature to my w.I.p. editor to load data from individual files! That definition file idea will almost certainly be considered.

Definatly! Who needs sonic theories when you have this level of ROM code understanding avaliable to the public, and such an ingenius way of finding it too.
Thank you Nemesis!

 

That was my shtick, Simon. Gimme mah credit.

And uh... god, I wish I were female, I'd have Nemesis' children a bajillion times over.

 

Nice, nice...

Guess I'm running out of excuses NOT to create a Genesis hack. :P

I wonder what other games will get the treatment?

 

In theory, this method is universal enough that it can be applied to any game.

Yeah, you heard me.

Not just any Sonic game.

Not just any Genesis game.

ANY GAME IN EXISTENCE FOR WHICH THE ASSEMBLY IS KNOWN AND A DISASSEMBLER IS AVAILABLE CAN BE PARSED IN THIS WAY.

This is a huge leap forward not just for the Sonic scene, but for game hacking as a whole. Even our distant cousins in the Mario scene can benefit from this. This is the culmination of six years' work. We peer, ladies and gentlemen, at the Holy Grail.

 

A bit over the top, but well said Quick Man. Nemesis deserves some kind of reward/award for his effort, can't think of what though :P

 

:wub: Nemesis!

 

Kudos to Nemesis for taking Sonic 2 hacking to a new level.

 

In that case, you work with a cracked release, or if you're ballsy, you crack it yourself =P

 

Sweet. This certainly opens the door for much including much more creativity in hacks. I forsee a couple problems, though:

1) N00bs bugging people about learning assembly, or just asking at the wrong boards. I think we'll see members showing up here asking about 6502, should NES games get this treatment.

2) People making hacks that they don't put through the basic quality assurance. They're could screw the game up when tinkering with the ASM.

It's also funny you should bring up the Mario scene, when I registered at Acmlm's board, a board with quite a bit of Mario hacking stuff, less than a week ago.

 

But those wouldn't be "hacks" anymore, since they will be compiled like a normal game would... Right? :huh:

 

Good point. "Modifications"? "Offshoot games"?

 

'Reprogrammings'.. I'll probably still do hacking though, because hacking is more fun than reprogramming. You meet interesting challenges, which is most of the point for me =P

 

Although I do see the significantance of this, I just want to look at it at a legal point of view (not that anyone cares). An IPS patch, when you really get down to it, it just a list of bytes and where they are susposed to go. Now, all the Sonic games are copyrighted (and none (expect *maybe* crackers and the betas) are in public domain, and so it the engine code and the compression system. http://s2beta.com/uspat.php - Some sections are actually patented and if you release them, and don't get clearance from SEGA, you are open to lawsuit. Now the reason that oldschool patching with IPS patchs is that none of SEGA's code is in there because the IPS patch only has the code you changed. Now lets say you make an Ips patch from a edited Sonic 2 ROM. If you changed the data so all the offsets are different, then the IPS patch will still have SEGA's code in it, so you can still get sued for releasing something with there ccopyrighted and patented code. Don't get me wrote, I'm happy this is happening, but just be wary on releasing anything you use it with.

 

Hmm, I'm not sure, I mean the patents seem to apply to more hardware/enginey things (though admittedly I haven't checked them all). If you modify a bit of the engine, it'll still be a little bit of it in the IPS patch, and if you replace the engine, then your new engine in the IPS patch isn't copyrighted (though I don't really know the full details of the IPS standard).
I can't think of many circumstances where you'd break the patents really. You'd need a lot of code for sega to claim it's there's, and besides these are old games and sega would lose a lot of fan respect if they sued a rom hacker.

 

Sonic McTails - You're a really paranoid guy, I've noticed a few legal topic things you've made, and might I say that you won't be sued. Again, lawsuits cost a fair deal of money, and is SEGA really willing to plunk all of it down, I know for a huge company it's probably nothing but still, it can be quite aggrivating (to all parties) for all this to go down.

Besides, IPS patches are legal. Again, it's not worth SEGA's time and money to sue us, they can just issue a cease letter if they really care that much (which I highly doubt they do), and if people refuse then I suppose the law suit would follow.

And good luck on being accepted into membership.