don't click here

Well this is interesting to say the least

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by Glisp, Dec 10, 2009.

  1. Glisp

    Glisp

    That one weird guy that does stuff. Member
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    None at the moment I'm afraid.
    [​IMG]


    Yeah, I've been hacking a lot in BKII beta and SOR 2 final.

    Interestingly, this title screen is in the Bare Knuckle 2 beta's compressed art data at offset $176F6

    I'm trying to piece it together to see if it is anything like this: [​IMG]

    I'm not sure if its data is in the final version of the game or not as half of the art in the area that the title screen data occupies is garbled in SonMapEd on the final version of the game.

    Why is this present in the beta version of Bare Knuckle II when changing the regions does nothing to the title screen? Well most likely, the US territory detection or what ever it is called wasn't implemented in this build just yet but they were getting ready to so the US title screen was made as a result. (evidence of this can be found if you switch regions and reset the game. The Bare Knuckle II title screen will always load in the BKII beta regardless of what region its switched to.)

    I'm going to be piecing it together piece, by piece. Of course if someone would like to do it instead, feel free to. I mean I'm sure you'd have some fun with it. I could just give the whole thing to you in binary format and you could mess with it in SonMapEd if you wanted to. I can do it myself if nobody wants to. Its not like I'm going to die if I don't get it done quickly.

    Still, an interesting bit of info if you ask me. Not ground breaking, but something nonetheless. In case, you're wondering why I haven't produced any material to start hacking the game like an ametuer to make a fan hack, its because I'm basically trying to learn which parts of the rom(s) everything is located in.

    btw, I tried opening SOR 1 in SonMapEd and found nothing of use as almost everything was completely garbled beyond recognition regardless of which compression format was selected when loading the rom.

    Edit: JoyJoyfulRabbit has already taken the liberty of posting this tidbit of info on bombergames so no need for any other bombergames members to post it on the boards again.
     
  2. LocalH

    LocalH

    roxoring your soxors Tech Member
    Looks like it might be a leftover from the build in which that title screen shot was made. The artwork (sans palette, of course) definitely seems to match up (see the placement of the top of the "OF", as well as the shape of the R). Either that, or it's a slightly later version using the same art.
     
  3. Glisp

    Glisp

    That one weird guy that does stuff. Member
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    None at the moment I'm afraid.

    I've confirmed that it is indeed that title screen. (not that it needs to be.) It goes unused as far as I can tell. Of course unless there is qnother dump of it somewhere I don't know about, the dumpers hacking the game might have altered it. I think the screenshot is from a slightly later version as you said.
     
  4. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

    Original, No substitute Resident Jester
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    ahh I see you're doing further research on this game, nice work =)

    Also, what compression was the art compressed in? (I'm assuming nemesis, but I've been wrong enough times to know that I shouldn't really assume anyway)
     
  5. Glisp

    Glisp

    That one weird guy that does stuff. Member
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    None at the moment I'm afraid.
    On the wiki its said that BKII beta used nemesis. However, I'm not quite certain it does due to what the guy who helped me get started with hacking said.The BKII beta definately loads sprite tiles better than the final though. I think the final is using some different form of compression that isn't used by a whole lot of games. Most enemy sprites come out fine, but some of the other sprites are terribly garbled. this includes level tilesets. The guy who was helping me, made decompresser to decompress some of the art. However, he neglected to tell me it only decompressed things from offsets he found. This was useful for some things as it meant that many of the sprites present in the garbled masses of sprite data could be viewed without the extra junk that made them garbled. As for the other things, I'm forced ignore them for now until I get all of the offsets for sprite tilesets that I can actually tell what they are.

    The guy who was helping me has been researching pre-SMPS, so he hasn't had much time to see how I was doing. I decided to start doing shit as a result. Plus I meant to do that from the beginning anyway.
     
  6. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    The prototype title screen is far better than the final product. I wonder what possessed them to change it... perhaps because Sega of America weren't fans of Roman numerals?
     
  7. Meat Miracle

    Meat Miracle

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    Did anybody ever took a good look in the SOR2 proto? I mean, like, trying to search for the other levels or enemies, or even music?
     
  8. Glisp

    Glisp

    That one weird guy that does stuff. Member
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    None at the moment I'm afraid.
    I've been looking for sprite data. SonMapED opens it up fine. All I saw in the beta's art data were the enemys and characters you see in the game. Nothing interesting other than this title screen and the message displayed when you boot up the rom which displays the fuckers who dumped it. I don't like it when fuckers hack the game just so they can put their mark on it. If they wanted to put their mark on the game they could have peed on the cart before dumping it. :rolleyes:

    Thankfully we don't have to worry about this kind of shit with drx when he dumps betas.

    Dynamite Headdy beta, Sega Genesis Jurassic Park Beta, Maybe the very early Ecco II beta and a few others, have the boot up section of the rom hacked. (At least in all of the dumps I've seen for them at least.) Its completely idiotic because I want to see the beta's behavior when I soft reset and I can't do that if these idiots have the fucking logo at the begining of each rom boot up.
     
  9. LocalH

    LocalH

    roxoring your soxors Tech Member
    Many times, such hacking can be done non-destructively. Most intros I've seen only hack the start vector, and put the intro at the very end of the ROM. Disassemble from the start vector and you'll eventually find a jump to the real start vector, which you could then restore to $000004, followed by chopping off the intro. This only fails for 4MB ROMs, since there's no place to put the intro other than overwriting original ROM data.

    I wish the classic crackers' practice of adding intros wasn't shunned nowadays - it's how many famous demogroups got their start. I want to bring back this practice in a non-destructive way - release a clean ROM alongside a patch that adds the intro. That way, the onus is on the user to patch the clean ROM if they want to see the intro, otherwise it's a completely unhacked ROM.

    No reason to bash the ones who released the ROM in this form - back then, this was standard operating practice (see all the C64 and Amiga cracks with intros, noone bashes them, even if they don't add intros to newly-released stuff).
     
  10. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Hey, nice find. I didn't even know about that proto title screen before...
     
  11. Glisp

    Glisp

    That one weird guy that does stuff. Member
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    None at the moment I'm afraid.
    [​IMG]


    That's how much I have built of it. The roman numeral II is being a bitch.
     
  12. Man, hats off to you, sir, you are exactly thinking what I am.

    Oh, and nothing beats stuff in SMD format 8)
     
  13. Uberham

    Uberham

    King Of Oblivion Member
    Dunno about other emulators, but this boots normally in GENS and Fusion, dunno if it's got any "marks" in the rom data though.