ThomasSpeedrunner Help Thread

Seriously, are you incapable of putting any thought into anything you're doing? I'm getting really sick of this shit now. All the errors are the same, just involving a different label. Anybody with half a brain cell could work out that the fix would follow the same method, but you seem to want people to do it for you. If I see anything like this one more time, this sheer laziness and unwillingness to put the effort into your own work, this topic will be locked permanently. An 18 page help topic in 2 months is a joke.

 

It seems that we need an anti-tank rifle to pierce his skull. After all, it seems his skull is half as thick as my dick =P

 

Guys, I get the point: I need to start doing stuff on my own.

 

I cant count how many times you have said that exact same sentence, I know Im being a dick but you have said it countless times.

 

I honestly have the perfect solution to all this.

I'll have it ready in a day, okay?

 

19 pages and counting!

 

Well, this topic did 'something'. Don't know if it's what Supreme Commissar Speedrunner (as we must refer to him now) wanted, but...

 

Well, I've been trying to fix a bug with the coding thing that causes the title screen to hang, as in not load. Tried a few things and it will not work.

 

What have you tried so far we need more of an explanation if we are going to be able to help.

 

I used the method MainMemory mentioned, but for some reason, it fucks up the title screen. I tried doing a few things to alter it, but to no avail.

 

This thread is for ThomasSpeedrunner's help thread - anything concerning his promotion should be in the announcement thread.

 

Thank you, Spanner. Now, as I mentioned, the title screen of my hack will not load. I don't know if it's something I did wrong, but I will upload the disassembly in a couple hours. Can anyone assist me with fixing this issue?

 

Warning: This is going to be a fairly long post, but I feel it's necessary to clear up some things. I did not want to reopen the April Fools thread, so I'll put it here instead so the relevant people can see it.

Let me start by saying that I have absolutely nothing against new hackers. I was a new hacker once, along with every other person who has ever hacked before me or since. This is not my problem with you ThomasSpeedRunner, so let me stop you there before you get to thinking that. The problem here for me is the attitude that comes with it.

Lets analyse your attitude when you first came here. You came here proclaiming that you were about to make the biggest hack since Sonic Megamix. A little farfetched, but it's important to have ambition so I left it at that and waited to see what you came out with. Following that opening claim, you followed up with a few more ego filled posts about all the things you were going to do to be the best hacker around and so on. Again, I ignored it and left you to get on with it.

Now, here is where the problem starts. You start asking a couple of questions about doing very basic things. So I'm thinking "Ok, so all those posts about how he was working on the best hack ever were just ego filled boasts". Again, I can ignore that, it means nothing to me. People help you out with your problems by telling you exactly how to do it, and life goes on. The problem is, you started to take this as the norm, which is why we now have a 19 pages topic dedicated to helping you hack. The thing is, on the majority of these occasions you have acted like the community owe you a debt, and must do the work for you. This is an attitude I absolutely despise (and was made evident when you started demanding that people reply). I, along with others, politely suggested that you take the time to read guides and learn how to do things for yourself. That's not to say we would never be willing to help, but it gets a bit ridiculous when we're having to hold your hand through every change you make and every problem that occurs. It starts getting to the point where it feels like this hack is being worked on by everyone but you. You are only following what people are telling you to do, and are showing very little signs of a willingness to learn these things for youself.

Nobody will learn ASM overnight, I am fully aware of this. You pointed someone in the direction of the ASM learning guide and told them to study it to help them out. The problem is, you never followed your own advice. You've looked at it, said "I can't do ASM" and then left it at that. That negative attitude will get you nowhere, and that doesn't mean you can substitute your unwillingness to take the time to learn with abusing the helpful nature of members. It gets to the point where people get fed up of it, and that is exactly what's happening here. The point was proven when you could see the frustration in a post by MainMemory, in which he'd already answered your question a few posts earlier yet you still asked the same question again about a different label. It just goes to show that you don't digest the information given to you, you just follow the instructions without taking the time to ask yourself "Why does it do this? What has this done to make it work?". These are very basic questions, not just in ASM, but in life in general. In the 11 years or more that I've been around the community, I have never seen such a large help topic in so little time with so few results to show for it.

If I was you, I would be pretty embarassed by the fact I was having my hand held all the way through the process. The thing with hacking, like with anything creative, is the sense of pride and achievement you get at the end, knowing you've put in a lot of time and effort in, and to see the final result in front of you in all it's glory. Now, how can you get that same sense of achievement when your entire hack is based on people telling you how to do things and fixing your errors? A logical thought process is that if you have suddenly started getting errors, it's because of something you've just edited. Read up on what these errors mean, what lines are affected and use a bit of logic and an ASM guide to help you fix them. You don't stand a chance at making anything like Sonic Megamix if you're not willing to learn for yourself.

Finally, we come to the point of you attempting to help people. A word of advice, if you don't understand the question or don't know the answer, either say nothing or ask for more details. Don't make a random guess or give some bullshit advice that makes yourself look stupid. You have to remember, a lot of people here are experienced hackers and know what they are doing when it comes to a vast amount of areas. Suggesting to someone, who is asking about a bug within a program they have used countless times (and even said as much), to look at a guide on how to import art and map tiles just shows a complete lack of understanding and is useful to nobody. It doesn't really help your reputation when you make wild guesses like that, especially when the suggestions undermine the intelligence of the hacker with the problem.

Oh and as for the April Fools thing, don't take it to heart. It was a bit of harmless fun, nothing malicious meant in it. Some people took it too far and their actions have been noted, but other than that, consider it a joke based on the attitude you've shown so far. Learn from it, adapt your attitude and outlook on hacking, and build yourself into a decent and contributing member. If you continue to make yourself look like an egotistical and lazy bastard, than I'm sorry but you only have yourself to blame.

MainMemory: If you read this, I just want to say that I hope you don't take it all too seriously and leave. I enjoy seeing your work, and it would be a shame to see you go over something like this. From what I've seen, despite your polite exterior, the situation in this topic has frustrated you as much as the rest of us (as shown in your post a page or two back when you had to repeat yourself). Some people might take it too far and throw insults at him for the sake of insults, but when push comes to shove the sort of thing going on in this topic needed addressing. I may come across as nasty at times, but everything I say always has a motive behind it to try and get the best out of people, if they are willing to learn and put the effort in. If they're not, then I really have no desire to waste my time putting up with them, it's as simple as that.

 

Okay, allow me to say something before I begin: I have uploaded the disassembly for anyone who can help me with the title screen issue.

Now, StephenUK, allow me to break down my post by paragraph.

Okay, at least I know that the problem isn't with my inexperience with hacking.

...I did say that, didn't I? Still, the hack was, at the time, planned to be a super-mega-epic-awesome hack with so much extra content you'd want to play the crap out of the game just to eventually step back with pride and say you'd 100%'ed the damn thing. Not as much extra content planned, but still, I had lots of ambition back then, and in all honesty, I still have quite a bit of ambition as I type this.

(I combined these three paragraphs because my response is pretty much the summary of all three)

O_O I'M AN IDIOT, AREN'T I?

...

Now that I have your attention, I can start my response.

Okay, so anyway, this bit made sense, but at the same time, it didn't entirely make sense. I want to learn these things for myself, I really do. But in all honesty, I'm...well...scared to do it for myself. I usually feel like I'm going to screw something up or worse yet, royally screw up the entire hack. That's why I ask questions about things. I did experiment with a few things, though. I have a working jumpdash (screw that damn homing attack, it's too fucking complicated), and a working Super Peel-Out that doesn't display right (it won't show the animations right, still working on that), but those are the only two things I've experimented with. Hopefully, that cleared most of this fiasco up.

...but...I'm just trying to help. Instead of me thinking the community owes me a debt, despite it often looking like I think it does owe me a debt, it's actually currently the other way around: I owe the community a debt, and a big one at that, for all the help the community has given me. I acknowledge that fact, and I'm merely trying to return the favor. It's a guess based off of my (very) limited knowledge of ASM. It's not necessarily a random guess when I give my answer. I am trying to pay my debts to the community for helping me all this time.

Oh. Well, I'm glad it really was just a joke. At first, I was irritated beyond belief when it ended (it was only 7:00 PM where I live, so it was still April Fool's Day), but I have gotten over the incident. And trust me, there's a greater chance of me getting validated on Sonic Retro in my current position (I was an idiot and set my name to Tailsguy24) than of me becoming an admin here. Regardless, I will try my hardest to correct my attitude in the upcoming days, and hopefully I can successfully do it. I truly appreciate all the help I've been getting. I just don't know how I can make myself more confident with ASM...

I hope this post cleared most of this fiasco up, and I am sorry if my recent behavior makes me seem like an idiot. But this post was written to clear everything up, and I hope it has done so.

 

The best way to make yourself more confident in ASM is to fail a lot. Work in a clean disassembly, try stuff, fail, learn and eventually when things start working, your confidence will be up and you'll be in a better place.

 

Make a backup of your disassembly every time you sit down to work on it. Go crazy trying new stuff out and if you fuck it up beyond being salvagable, revert to an old copy and try again.

 

This.  I fuck up my S2R hack lots of time.  I've even made the SEGA screen fail to come up.  Luckily, I back up all the time.  I retrace my steps, and see what I've done wrong.  Everyone makes mistakes, everyone fails, that's life.

Like the old saying goes, "You'll never learn anything in life without screwing up once in a while."

 

I stopped hacking a long time ago because I wasn't really getting anywhere. I always contemplate restarting and giving it another go, I have shitloads of old disassemblies from past attempts, but personally I think the standards for hacks nowadays have gone beyond what I can do. Just putting that out there.

 

This.  I fuck up my S2R hack lots of time.  I've even made the SEGA screen fail to come up.  Luckily, I back up all the time.  I retrace my steps, and see what I've done wrong.  Everyone makes mistakes, everyone fails, that's life.

Like the old saying goes, "You'll never learn anything in life without screwing up once in a while."

I just leave Notepad++ open til I get the desired effect. That way I can just hit Ctr-Z when it fucks up in the build or whatever. It helps when you never turn of your computer =P

 

I prefer to have a backup file, also because the light can go out at any time (I bought an UPS some time ago but it broke so now I don't have it anymore). I used to keep only one backup file at a time, though, deleting it when I was confident that my edits didn't break the game. I think I had two backup files at most when I was inserting some features I wasn't 100% sure about, but that was rare.


Oh, and I have a complete directory backup of every public soniNeko release, which includes all the art and all the music as well. Not to mention the backup of that unreleased soniNeko version with 7 Chaos Emeralds (one of the "not so sure" features I mentioned above).


I learnt the importance of backups in the hard way, when repeated power failures in my area damaged one of my old HDDs which contained many important things I didn't have a backup of