Basic Questions and Answers Thread

I'm so glad to see my info is actually useful for somebody. If you wish, I may attempt to create a detailed guide on it.


Unfortunately, I'm in total lack of time now, so the guide (if it will be) won't come soon.

 

So, I decided to add the monitors from the Sonic Advance Series, it all works, except this.





But then, after one frame, it goes to this,





Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Trying to figure out what happened? Do you guys have any ideas on what happened?


edit: It's been fixed, seems my own carelessness screwed the pooch on this one.

 

First of all, what are those meant to be? Rings or monitors?


Second question: do they react the way the should before and after the change?

 

1. They are supposed to be rings.


2. They react normally. For some reason, I added an extra frame in the monitors mappings, and well...fucked it up, fixed now. Sorry for the trouble.

 

I've been wondering how to import art to Sonic 1 the easiest way. It pisses me off when I see people easily change their art.


How I change my art is arranging tiles by tiles.


For example, I line up all the useless/unwanted tiles of MZ in Sonmapped, export the art, chop up my wanted art up by 8x8 tiles (by using Microsoft Paint), open the exported art with MS paint, put each tiles in every 8x8 square onto the exported art.


Then I would import the art back into Sonmapped, save.


Last, I use SonED to arrange my tiles into blocks, then arrange them to make chunks...


I would like the answer how to import art to Sonic 1 the easiest way. Please and thanks.


If my computer (with all my hacks inside the hard drive) functioned, I'd post screenshots...

 

SonED2 can delete tiles.....


Also SonMapED is not for level art.

 

Well, it can be really useful for level art, that's what I'm using most of the time.


I'm not sure what you mean, you sound like you're working on one tile at a time. The easiest, in my opinion, if you want to design big objects (such as palm trees, columns or stone blocks) is to build their sprites in sonmaped and import the new art on those sprites, then build their mapping in soned and refine if necessary.


Of course you can design your "object" first (for example a slope), and only then create the mapping in sonmaped.


Keep in mind the mappings for sprites and level aren't in the same format. For sprites it's 1x1 to 4x4, and tiles are taken one after each other top to bottom, left to right, when for levels it's 2x2 and arranged the way you want (often left>right, top>bottom in the original), so the sprite mapping may be less versatile to work with or hard to design properly.

 

It isn't? Bollocks. I may have to start again =P

 

So I decided to give a try with coding and making another chaos emerald object in Sonic 1, using Professor's Neo posts about Emeralds and Special Stages. So I challenged myself to test my skills while reading these posts to help myself. I actually asigned the 1up object to be an emerald like he did and turn it gray and turned the original grey one into a darkish-hue blue.


I read a post Markeyjester wrote about pallette lines:

That was really easy to understand. Though I almost turned crazy by searching for the emerald pallette swap (taking the blue emerald as the lonely example). When I saw the mappings for the emeralds inside the SS I encountered this:



Map_SS_Chaos1: dc.w byte_1B96C-Map_SS_Chaos1
dc.w byte_1B97E-Map_SS_Chaos1


Map_SS_Chaos2: dc.w byte_1B972-Map_SS_Chaos2


dc.w byte_1B97E-Map_SS_Chaos2


Map_SS_Chaos3: dc.w byte_1B978-Map_SS_Chaos3


dc.w byte_1B97E-Map_SS_Chaos3


byte_1B96C: dc.b 1


dc.b $F8, 5, 0, 0, $F8


byte_1B972: dc.b 1


dc.b $F8, 5, 0, 4, $F8


byte_1B978: dc.b 1


dc.b $F8, 5, 0, 8, $F8


byte_1B97E: dc.b 1


dc.b $F8, 5, 0, $C, $F8


even



So the third number which is 'XX' is shown as 0 and if I'm not wrong this mappings show the emeralds animation (when they flash). So finally my question is:


- If I'm right and this mappings show the animations, where is the blue emerald's pallette swap (when it turns yellow, pink and green)? In which part of the coding is?


To sum it up, I know I can swap the pallette for the gray so instead it loads the $0, it loads the (let's say) $60 line, like the blue emerald does.


Sorry if I'm not to clear and if this seems really easy. Tell me if you don't understand.


EDIT: This based on the ReadySonic/SVN disassembly.

 

Special Stage mappings are kinda different


Check out these lines here:



dc.l Map_SS_Chaos3
dc.w $770


dc.l Map_SS_Chaos3


dc.w $2770


dc.l Map_SS_Chaos3


dc.w $4770


dc.l Map_SS_Chaos3


dc.w $6770


dc.l Map_SS_Chaos1


dc.w $770


dc.l Map_SS_Chaos2


dc.w $770



in "_inc\Special Stage Mappings & VRAM Pointers.asm"


the upper 4 bits in each word here (i.e. 0, 2, 4, 6, 0, 0), specifies the palette line used for each of the 6 emeralds.

 

Basically what crash said.


There are two main forms of control over the sprite's V-Ram read address:

1. The "$XX,$YY" of the mappings.
   
2. The "$VVVV" of the second object ram byte "$02(a?)".
   

Both of which have control over the palette, the flip and mirror, the plane priority, and the V-Ram tile address to start the sprites reading from, and in exactly the same format, one will add to the other.

 

Oh nice, thanks to both Crash and Markey. This was quite easy to figure this out. By the way, I'm trying it this afternoon. Once again thanks!

 

EDIT: Also thanks to Markey to clarify me the two ways the mappings can show the pallette it uses.

 

Music hacking in sonic games is now the only thing I have no clue about.


The hacking guides on Retro do not provide ample explanation.


What are these eXtended Module and SMPS formats? In the disassembly, all the music files are .bin files.


What tools do I need?

 

If you have no experience with creating tracker music you're facing a pretty steep learning curve, but here's what you're going to need:


To start with you'll want ModPlug Tracker, to create/convert your .xm (eXtended Module) files, and either xm3smps or xm4smps (try them both, decide which one you prefer) to convert the .xm files to the smps format (the .bin files in your disassembly).


You'll probably want to google up some XM files to start yourself off, open them up in ModPlug Tracker and get an idea of the format. Learning how to arrange the channels so xm3/4smps will import them as painlessly as possible is pretty important. Label the tracks "FM1" through "FM5", "DAC", "PSG1" through "PSG3", and arrange the notes into the correct tracks. xm3/4smps have an auto fill button that will read the track labels and arrange them correctly. Then it's a matter of finding appropriate instruments (xm3smps comes with a bunch I think, otherwise try googling for ym2612 instruments or something).


Alternatively some guy on the Retro forums recently released a tool to convert midi files directly to smps, I haven't really played with it so I can't comment on how easy it is to use.

 

I recommend using a hexadecimal editor:





The details about the format used known as SMPS can be found here, there's quite a few stages to it:


http://segaretro.org...nts_and_Headers


http://segaretro.org...ces_and_Samples


http://segaretro.org...cking/Song_Data


I recommend this over converters and other tools, though do feel free to find alternatives should you feel intimidated by the large scale of numbers above.

 

I've been looking around this site(and that sonic retro place) for some time and reading what's available for tutorials, but unfortunately, I couldn't make much sense of it since I have zero coding experience.


I only just have two questions:


1. Just how do you replace/add new characters to a sonic game? (For a future "[insert Character here] in Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 and Knuckles" Hack)


2. How to a transplace/replace the music in Sonic 3 and Knuckles?


(I thinking/hoping I could learn a lot from the answer.)

 

A1:


Have you looked at this tutorial? http://info.sonicret...SonMapEd/Part_1. This is a tutorial on using SonMapED which allows you to edit/replace art, mapings and dplc of the rom. (E.G Sonic 1) Although this program is used with a disasmebly so I recommend downloading a diasembly from sonicretro. If perhaps you'd rather open the rom and edit the sprites directly, then you can use a program called sonic sprite which I believe is in the tools section on sonicretro's info pape.


Adding a character is more work than just replacing sonic, I won't go into a load of detail until you under ASM because I don't want to confuse you so I'll try and explain it in a nutshell. The best way in my opinion would be to replicate the codes used for sonic, like for example he's an object so his object code would need to be duplicated with new names so it doesn't have problems when building it. Create you art, mappings and dplc for your character and then you will have to load them like sonic's is loaded. But yeah I would learn ASM and download a disasmembly first so you can have a proper understanding of how things generaly work.


A2: This maybe able to help you http://sonicresearch...?showtopic=2026. This is a guide on understanding the smps format.(the format of megadrive/genesis games like the sonic ones) Its very easy to understand and by learning this it can teach you how the format works and whats needed to be done. You will need a hex editor, so if you need to learn a bit of hex I think there are guides about as well for that on sonicretro and maybe here as well. There is also this http://info.sonicret...G:Music_Hacking although you might struggle with this as people find it a bit difficult to understand.(me included at one point)


An alternative would be to use a music tool to port say s1 to s2 , s3k to s1, etc, but its not recommended if you want to learn how porting works, and it won't fix everything for you so the ports may not sound 100% correct when you listen to them.

 

Thank you very much for the help. I think I may consider music porting as an option since, I found a tool on sonic retro that allows one to import MP3s onto sonic 2. I guess, it looks like I will have to do a lot of reading on hex editing. My original Intention was to just replace the sonic sprite and replace it, so I am glad my original plan is a good approach.


Anyway, your advice is really helpful.

 

Well hello there, its been awhile since i've posted here. But I've been lacking asm for awhile now, and I'm hoping you guys could provide me with some information. I'll get straight to the point, the rumble effect in sonic 2 Mystic Cave zone with the boss, is it done via the resize routine in sonic 2? or the boss object?. I have been having a look and from what I can see its something to do with the boss. I just want to find out how to recreate this effect for my own use, so once I know where it is located specifically, I'll start experimenting. Cheers.


Edit: Forget it.