Releasing stuff & Sega CD ports

(A little off-topic, I know)

I'm a terrible programmer, it's probably because I'm impatient, I have a hard time getting in the mood to program and when I do I'm out of it in a short time. This is why I turned to ROM hacking in the first place, I didn't have to worry about programming my game, it allowed me to focus on what I love to do, level design. I can sit at my computer making a level and never get bored like I do when I'm trying to program.

I really enjoy the ASM hacks, they're just not for me, I'd rather make levels in the old "boring" engine.

 

In that case, you might consider seeking out a programmer that wishes his tech hack had some neat new levels to compliment or give worth to his modifications. If you know you want more but can't do it alone, sharing your ideas like that might lead to something neither of you would/could have done alone. Of course, if you want something "minor" (less than a "new game" "hack") and can do that by yourself, that's ok too

 

I'm actually going to be doing the levels for a friend's game, which is pretty much the same thing.

Before I make levels for someone else's hack I have to prove to myself (And others) that I can make good Sonic levels, after all Sonic is much different than Castlevania or Mega Man (My two favorite games to make levels for).

 

Woah, major deja vu to my assembler games topic :P But I've given up fighting, people can do what they like. It's nice if they release guides on how they did their magic stuff and it saves people time so they can focus on the concept they had in mind rather than the coding itself, but some people just like keeping things as private projects for themselves it seems. I personally will release anything I do, for example my work in progress guide how to do stuff like in MP3 tool:
http://www.randomsonicnet.org/srz/ramhacking/guide.html

Kinda got a bit stuck on the little endian/big endian bit, I'll get it done when I have some time

 

It certainly wouldn't be perfect, but I should be able to identify DMA, data copied in simple loops and compressed graphics data using one of the common formats in the disassembler. The emulator should able to catch fancier stuff. I'm not sure what you mean by combining the two though. They're designed to work together (I.e. the backend will be able to take more than one map file as an input and merge them intelligently), but I don't see any advantage to making it a single program if that's what you meant.

PCM should still work, but without the CPU to swap out samples it's not terribly useful unless CD DMA to PCM RAM still works.

 

Which topic's this? linkplz

 

Not only for the CD music, but they also removed the simultaneous 2 player game, possibly for the same reason you can't get Sonic and Tails together.


And that could also be the reason they used the Sonic 1 graphics for Sonic CD, since Sonic didn't have as many animation frames in there.

 

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6658

Enjoy my little conquest XD

 

XD, this topic has close to nothing to do with Sonic.

"RELEASE YOUR THING!"
"NO! I DON"T WANNA!"
"DO IT!"
"IT'S NOT DONE!"
[repeat]

and when it IS done:
"IT'S NOT PERFECT!"
"I SAID IT WASN'T DONE!"
"IT'S MISSING A RING! YOU SUCK!"
"GOD DAMN IT WAS A PERSONAL PROJECT!"
[repeat]

Since nothing is being released in this topic aside from politics, I motion a change of topic.

 

Well, you're probably right, but the forum name itself just says "Engineering and Reverse-Engineering", and I think the way the thread has started and is ending/continuing kinda fits in :P

Seems relevant to me.. the "Releasing stuff" part is referring to the "politics" ABOUT releasing stuff (how, when, why, to who..), and the "Sega CD ports" part is getting alot of attention too

I had forgotten about that, and you're probably right

Well, they also didn't need much more than the original Sonic 1 sprites, anyway. The most likely reasons for not changing them (although they added a few) are that it wasn't important enough to devote limited resources to (Don't know how big that team was compared to Sonic 2), or that Oshima himself (I think I read that he went to the SonicCD team?) liked them just the way they were

Not really, I think there's a major difference between a new, on-hold, unfinished project, and trashed projects or development builds with interesting (not like just dysfunctional code) changes from 10 - 15 years ago

I remembered that some of them were, just not which ones (I don't have access to my copy right now). I wonder why exactly they (presumeably) didn't use any fancy ProgramRAM work to fit more stuff in (like the removed 2P mode ICEKnight mentioned). Having access to the original source for the game, and actual official development documentation/tools, I wouldn't think it would have taken up too much more of their time if it were possible

I'm not really clear on how a sound player using the PCM would work.. wouldn't that require the SubCPU to be running to turn the channels on and off? (whether the sound player were running on the SubCPU, or one on the Main CPU just made the requests [such as file load requests with SLO?]... though I figured the player would run completely on the SubCPU)

A very good idea, I never said you shouldn't do that
Everything takes practice, and solo projects that focus on your specialty help everyone decide who it's best to work with for any one (or more) larger project (This also helps explain what Sonic Hachelle-Bee is upset about :P)

 

Well there's two primary uses for the PCM chip. The first is to play music in a similar fashion to MOD files on the Amiga. The second is to play simple samples. If you're playing a long sample off the disc it might make sense to do CD to PCM RAM DMA. Depending on how sophisticated the DMA is you could theoretically set the PCM chip playing and let the DMA do the work of refilling PCM RAM. I kind of doubt the DMA hardware is sophisticated enough to do this well, but I don't really know.

 

I have to agree with most of the points in this post.

Not getting to political I hope but wouldn?t it be sensible/useful if people do what they do, be happy with it and release it for people to use/play but ... BUT not use or credit as there own work, ya know kind like copyrighting it in a way.

I have to say I am in the same boat as most in this "community" I have loads of artistic ideas in my head (all of which are my own work) that I would like to put in to a sonic game for, what reason? well there?s a few one because I enjoy art (both doing art and looking at it take StephenUK's screenshots of past and present GHZ there shit hot and Rika Chou's and Phoebius as well all great stuff and because I have always wanted a sonic game done by me why because I have always liked Sonic since 1991 so it would be nice to have a game made by me (not entirely ofcorse but proper credit would go to whom ever lent a hand) anyway recently I've started a hack of Sonic 1 and I am enjoying the art work for it and as a plus I am enjoying learning new thing and the challenge of something new however sometimes yes I do get stuck (hey am a newbie to this shit) and I ask questions (now the difference is I am asking for help not demanding it) the right to answer is up the whom ever I ask ofcorse but its nice to help someone! (Or even tell them you don?t know if you don?t!)It gives a sense of "community" to help one another. Again the difference between what I am saying and what Quickmans saying is I would like help not demanding someone do my work I hope you take something from that.

Anyway I am new but getting used to Sonic editing and I've been setting a few question about things to certain people I hope you all don?t mind that becuase I feel kinda bad about annoying people.

I totally agree with Sonic Hachelle-Bee as well when he said Sonic games are getting stuck in an endless cycle of turdy hacks or never ending ports but again with a little help from the people how know the people who make turdy hacks learn to understand and make better ones.

Hope some one agrees with me out there and I don?t get flamed by just about everyone!

 

On a side note, take a look at my mini-site. This might interest some people here (and no, that's not S2LV 2.0 yet =P). It's fantastic that I succeded to do that at the same time we are all discussing about new high-technical stuff coming soon.

 

Brilliant! You should come on AIM more often. I never see you around anymore.

And you STILL didn't write me a manual for that thing. :P How much have you done exactly since the proto you sent me?

 

Just curious, have you guys tried running Flicky and the MegaNet games through SLO? I believe they were designed to be played directly from the system's RAM, so they might work without problems.

omgrofl

 

OMG! I made a mistake ROFLLMAO!!!!!!1111 :blink:

 

They'd probably need some minor modifications to work unless the Meganet cart handles interrupts the same way the Sega CD BIOS does.