Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.4

Assorted new things:

- Started working on a help screen to document some features of the tool.  Not everything is here yet.
- Added an "Options" text box to copy/paste the whole set of options in the lower part of the window.
- Tweaks to item desirability factors with some input from SilentSigil and others.
- Redesign the way I scale item values for "item quality" when "Anything" is selected, since some items being included didn't even have a value to begin with (like Dual Blade).
- Fix issue where included cursed items would lose their cursed-ness.
- Tooltips for some things where they were missing.
- Modify the dialogue of the guy who talks to you when you start gift mode, to clarify that it's a (de)randomized ROM being run.
- Add option to randomize your party rather than allowing manual party selection.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizerv1.4.exe

Illusion of Gaia - "Press X To Run" Hack v1.2

Finally had a chance to (hopefully) fix this.

Once I got around to testing, I found that 1.1 had an issue where you could run straight up sloped tiles.  1.2 fixes it by checking a value at $09AE that seems to indicate you're standing on one, at the start of the new subroutine:

AD AE 09     LDA 09AE
29 00 10     AND 1000
D0 6C        BNE end

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/iog_x_to_run_1.2.ips

SNES Harvest Moon Time Hack v1.1

This, too, had an issue that I found while screwing around.

Without the +1 hour on map change, it's now possible to enter the north forest map at 6 AM, where previously it was not.  At 6 AM, this map has no palette and appears solid black.

Now, instead of removing the hour increment code entirely, I jump to a new subroutine that will only increment it if it's currently 06.

22 00 80 BC   JSL BC8000

at 1E0000:
AF 1C 1F 7F   LDA $7F1F1C
C9 06         CMP #06
D0 06         BNE [end]
A9 07         LDA #07
8F 1C 1F 7F   STA $7F1F1C

end:
6B            RTL

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/hm_longer_days_no_intro_1_1.ips

Illusion of Gaia - "Press X To Run" Hack v1.1

Well, I found an issue already.  I wasn't checking a set of bits that indicate certain controls should be frozen.  Those bits are now checked with a few additional instructions at the beginning of the subroutine I added:

AD 5A 06     LDA 065A
29 00 0F     AND #0F00
D0 48        BNE to [end]

This skips setting the running velocities if any of the directional keys are frozen.

Without this check I was able to run around during some events that were supposed to freeze me in place, and everything got way out of sync.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/iog_x_to_run_1_1.ips

Illusion of Gaia - "Press X To Run" Hack

I heard a couple people on Twitch request something like this a while back, so I thought I'd give it a go.  IoG has running, but you need to double-tap the direction to trigger it, which can get a little old after a few times.  The x button isn't used for anything in IoG, so it was free to assign to something new.

This one is a little more involved than some of my other recent hacks, since some new code had to be added.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/iog_x_to_run_1_0.ips

To be used with Illusion of Gaia (U) [!].smc.  Not tested with other versions.

Details:

$82/80B6 AD 60 06    LDA $0660  [$81:0660]   A:0000 X:0000 Y:006C P:envmxdIZC
$82/80B9 29 00 0F    AND #$0F00              A:0000 X:0000 Y:006C P:envmxdIZC
$82/80BC 8D 5E 06    STA $065E  [$81:065E]   A:0000 X:0000 Y:006C P:envmxdIZC

This code masks the directions off of the controller input value (which was earlier pulled from its mapped location of $4218) corresponding to the directional values and stores it off.  This isn't terribly relevant to this modification except I've chosen this point to inject a bit of new code since this is something that runs as part of the character control code.

That code has been replaced by a jump to a new subroutine:

22 00 00 E0  JSL E0:0000

EA EA        nothing

With the new subroutine added at the end of the ROM to handle X being pressed while direction keys are also held:

29 00 0F     AND 0F00  (replaced code)

8D 5E 06     STA 065E  (replaced code)

AD 18 42     LDA 4218  read controller inputs

29 40 00     AND #0040  and with X mask

F0 40        BEQ to [end]

AD 60 06     LDA 0660   .. 0100 for right held, 0200 for left, 0400 for down, 0800 for up

29 00 01     AND #0100  and with right mask

F0 08        BEQ to [leftcheck]

A9 03 00     LDA #0003

8D B2 09     STA 09B2

80 30        BRA to [end]

leftcheck:

AD 60 06     LDA 0660   .. 0100 for right held, 0200 for left, 0400 for down, 0800 for up

29 00 02     AND #0200  and with left mask

F0 08        BEQ to [downcheck]

A9 FD FF     LDA #FFFD

8D B2 09     STA 09B2

80 20        BRA to [end]

downcheck:

AD 60 06     LDA 0660   .. 0100 for right held, 0200 for left, 0400 for down, 0800 for up

29 00 04     AND #0400  and with down mask

F0 08        BEQ to [upcheck]

A9 03 00     LDA #0003

8D B4 09     STA 09B4

80 10        BRA to [end]

upcheck:

AD 60 06     LDA 0660   .. 0100 for right held, 0200 for left, 0400 for down, 0800 for up

29 00 08     AND #0800  and with up mask

F0 08        BEQ to [end]

A9 FD FF     LDA #FFFD

8D B4 09     STA 09B4

EA EA        BRA to [end] (this one is not really needed, we're already here.. keep these here for easy sizing)

end:

AD 60 06     LDA 0660

29 00 0C     AND #0C00  either vertical direction held? no? zero out the 09B4

D0 06        BNE [hcheck]

A9 00 00     LDA #0000

8D B4 09     STA 09B4

hcheck:

AD 60 06     LDA 0660

29 00 03     AND #0300  either horizontal direction held? no? zero out the 09B2

D0 06        BNE [end2]

A9 00 00     LDA #0000

8D B2 09     STA 09B2

end2:

6B           RTL

In short, what this bit of new code is doing is the following:

If "x" is held

   If "right" is held

      Set Will's horizontal running velocity to 3

   If "left" is held

      Set Will's horizontal running velocity to -3

   If "down" is held

      Set Will's vertical running velocity to 3

   If "up" is held

      Set Will's vertical running velocity to -3

If neither "up" nor "down" are held

   Set Will's vertical running velocity to 0

If neither "left" nor "right" are held

   Set Will's horizontal running velocity to 0

Return from subroutine

Note that setting the running velocity ($7E09B2, $7E09B4) to non-zero automatically triggers the game to use the running animation and move Will in whichever direction.  Setting it to zero stops Will's run.  All this code is doing is triggering that existing code in a different way.

This has not been tested with the full game yet!  There may be places where it breaks.  Particularly, spots where Will is forced in a certain direction still need to be tested.  Feel free to report issues here and they will be fixed.

SNES Harvest Moon Time Hack

Time moves way, way too fast in this game.  This hack needed to be made.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/hm_longer_days_no_intro_1_0.ips

To be used with Harvest Moon (U).smc.  Not tested with other ROMs.

Details:

$82/803B AF 1D 1F 7F LDA $7F1F1D[$7F:1F1D]   A:0000 X:0220 Y:0002 P:envMxdiZC
$82/803F 1A          INC A                   A:0003 X:0220 Y:0002 P:envMxdizC
$82/8040 8F 1D 1F 7F STA $7F1F1D[$7F:1F1D]   A:0004 X:0220 Y:0002 P:envMxdizC
$82/8044 C9 0F       CMP #$0F                A:0004 X:0220 Y:0002 P:envMxdizC

This code increments the game "minutes" and compares them against 0x0F.  If it matches, the hour gets incremented.  This hack changes the 0x0F to 0x7F to effectively slow the progression of hours by a factor of 8.


$80/9CF7 8F 1C 1F 7F STA $7F1F1C[$7F:1F1C]   A:440D X:0220 Y:0002 P:envMxdizc

This block of code increments the hour directly when you transition between certain maps.  This has been replaced by no-ops.


Also, you know what else is annoying?  The amount of people it makes you talk to on a new game before you can even play.  Let's just make that whole thing go away.

$84/BF69 A7 72       LDA [$72]  [$7F:1F74]   A:EB0B X:0000 Y:0032 P:eNvmxdizc
$84/BF6B 25 7E       AND $7E    [$00:007E]   A:0000 X:0000 Y:0032 P:envmxdiZc
$84/BF6D D0 07       BNE $07    [$BF76]      A:0000 X:0000 Y:0032 P:envmxdiZc

Changing this BNE (0xD0) to an unconditional BRA (0x80) skips this check and you can just talk to the one dude to immediately go back to your ranch and start the game.  It even gives you the watering can and all the other crap you're supposed to get from talking to people.

Super EDF Volume Hack

Something I've been wanting to look at for a while.

This drops the volume of a couple sound effects in the SNES game Super Earth Defense Force that were annoyingly loud.

Comparison video.  First ~two minutes are original, next two are with the patch.

Patch here - or apply manually by changing 42DE3 from FF to A0, and 42E18 from FF to C0.  Meant for "Super Earth Defense Force (U) [!].smc" and has not been tested with other versions.

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.3.1

Minor fixes.

- Fix an issue where the window was not taking the size of the title bar/border into account when sizing itself, and it would display incorrectly on systems with overly large titlebars.
- Disable chest opening fanfare when using randomized music, so it doesn't restart every couple seconds.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizerv1.3.1.exe

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.3

A few new features with some help from Hetdegon who's been sending me very helpful information:
- A new slider to adjust the number of enemies found walking around on AC maps.
- You can now adjust the relative likeliness of each chest type to appear: weapons, armor, spells, blue chests, and consumables.  You can specify manual values or randomize it.
- Add slider to increase or decrease the chances to find healing tiles under bushes.
- Add an option to start the cave with a Providence so you can always get out.
- Merge randomization tab in with Misc tab for now, since not much was there.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizerv1.3.exe

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.2.2

Bug fixes and stuff:
- Fixed an issue where scaling enemy types to a new max floor sometimes resulted in all lizards due to a rounding error.
- Fixed an issue where enemies were improperly scaling to max floor entry.
- Added debug logging for most features.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizerv1.2.2.exe

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.2.1

Fixes the ugly color differences in the UI that I didn't even realize were there.  I blame this monitor.

Download

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer v1.2

New options:
- Scale up or down enemy difficulty
- Scale up or down the jelly's HP
- Use the same sprite for all enemies to hide which type they are (currently this is a fixed sprite, i may randomize later or base it on the difficulty setting)
- More cores, no cores, or ONLY cores appear as enemies.
- Better or worse items from normal chests
- Include items not normally dropped by normal chests (like Gades Blade)
- Randomly include or exclude gear found in chests from the cave
- An option to not perform the derandomization that makes the caves have a fixed structure (only apply the other options)
- Randomize tilesets/music
- Decrease bottom floor, with an option to scale everything up such that the new bottom floor is floor98-like.
- Gift mode always enabled or not always enabled
- Adjust starting exp level of characters when entering ancient cave (normally 1)

Download here

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer Update

Minor updates.

- Gift mode now enabled regardless of saveram state.
- Popup when done writing the file.

Download from save location as before: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizer.exe

Ancient Cave De-Randomizer

Here's a little tool I've been thinking of making for a while.

Normally, Lufia 2's Ancient Cave is randomized on-the-fly based on a frame counter and a pile of garbage bytes that changes when you do certain actions.

This tool injects some code that hardcodes those values to pre-determined random values for each floor, so every trip through the cave is the same.

There was some desire for this so that two people could race Ancient Cave and have it be the same cave.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968993/AncientCaveDerandomizer.exe

May not work perfectly yet.  Report any problems here.

SNES Livewallpaper Release

Version 0.1 released:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.moppu.sneslwp

Includes:

- FF4 Zeromus fight background
- FF6 Airship
- CT time gate
- LTTP credits background
- Earthbound battle BGs (only one of these at the moment)

Feel free to report bugs or make requests here.

More Livewallpapers

uneventful weekend so i've been having fun making these things.  this one is a take on the credits background from a link to the past (original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJh3D_zX0To)

Another one of these things

FF6 this time.

Missing airship and clouds still, and has a couple holes in the overworld i need to fix

This will be part of the same wallpaper set with the zeromus clouds and the chrono trigger time gate, and probably some other overworlds like this.

Chrono Trigger Live Wallpaper

I was bored yesterday so I made this

Zelda Deathmatch - Progress

No new interesting screenshots or anything, but I've gotten a bunch of new features in recently.

- Game management is now a thing.  The server specifies when the game starts, and the client hijacks some code in the ROM to prevent you from starting the game until the server allows.  When the server says the game ends, the client dumps you back at the player select screen by flipping a few RAM values.  The results of the game will vary by the game mode.  I plan to have some basic PVP modes (Deathmatch, something CTF-like), as well as a race mode with PVP, and a co-op PVE mode with boosted enemy stats.

- Custom maps can be a thing.  As a test, I have one that isolates the southern end of hyrule by modifying a few columns in ROM on the fly.  This can allow for smaller, more PVP-friendly arenas.

- I had to inject a little code into the ROM to do detection for which player killed which by saving off the ID of the object that caused the kill and reading that with the client.  This should be working now.

Things that still need to be done:

- Kill/death tracking.  Most of the pieces are already in place for this to work.  I intend to have some sort of login system and have the server track a running history of things like this for each user.

- Bomb handling.  Bombs are the only player weapon that there isn't an enemy equivalent of that I can use for remote players, so it will be a little tricky to get PVP bombs to work.

- Enemy syncing.  I have a couple ideas for how to make this work.  We'll see if any of them work.  This may end up being a "later" sort of thing.

- A few other minor things and bugfixes.

I will probably make this open source at some point so people can apply the same concept to other games.

Zelda Deathmatch - Map Generation

Select-button menu now generates maps for every dungeon and for the overworld.

First draft.  A few of the columns still aren't processing correctly (note entrance room for Lev1 looks screwy) and there are still issues with position jumping around when transitioning between rooms, but otherwise it seems to work.

Two connected clients, one (on the right) with map open:

Local player shows as a blue/green flashing dot (Entrance room to level 1, outside level 1) and remote players show up as red/blue flashing dot (left side of level 1, west of overworld start spot).

Also added arrow and boomerang combat, and made it so you can hit left/right on the player select screen to select 1st/2nd quest.  This might be ready for testing sometime soon.

Major things to still do:
- Game modes (PVP deathmatch, PVP race, PVE Co-op, etc)
- Syncing enemy positions
- Second quest handling (currently only first quest maps etc work)
- Bomb support for PVP - no idea how to do this yet since it's the only weapon that doesn't have an enemy equivalent that will damage the player.