Sonic 1 Jumpdash

I wasn't trying to be rude, I was just saying to him that the code works so he may have done something wrong along the way. So it would properly be best if he followed it again to make sure he didn't make a mistake. Mearly stating a point, no nastiness intended. Sorry if you misunderstood my post as beeing rude and such.

 

And that's why my post was directed at Selbi <_<

 

Thank you. Malevolence.

 

sorry for the bump, but I have to agree but yet also disagree with you all.


on the issue of blocks of code being a a way to encourage somebody to steal, I am neutral there. Reason: have you heard of mida.idc for ida pro? kanada's web site provides it and it can fully disassemble a genesis rom header and all code pointing to the pointers in it.


Someone could find your artwork in the hack you worked so hard on, and steal everything in it with ease, and without even the source code being leaked. Even your technical work can be stolen that way. This is the sad truth. It is impossible to stop the thief that really wants to steal and claim credit for your work. We just have to deal with them and treat them in the proper way to handle a thief.


On the other hand, code that is shared should not be treated as a complete hack. No! It should be treated like a clean rom, if you used such code, you did nothing but make a foundation for your hack itself. Sonic1 with spindash is just plain boring, until you add more technical features and improved level designs that take advantage of spindash.


on the issue of can somebody learn from straight code?: Yes, they can if they really want to. As a matter of fact, a lot of what I want to work with I figure out that way, I learn from doing. Also, as a matter of fact, I would learn it by looking at how the code ticks and get it working in a different game, i.e. sonic 3 ring manager in sonic 1. But, that doesn't mean they will always choose to. As a matter of fact, some people will choose to copy and paste even from guides. I reuse my own code that way, when I have so many projects going on at once it is difficult to figure out what changes I made to get a feature I did to work unless ALL my hacks used it due to Autism. I may by mistake add flying to sonic, lol, if a finished project had flying Tails a week before and flying sonic i not very fun.

 

The issue we have here is that no code can be fully protected, there are always shortcuts in:


Obtaining art: Some believe that you must break open a rom with it's code to get art, this is not entirely false, but there are questions you need to ask yourself, "Is the art compressed?" (Chances are yes, and some games do have their own unique format that would need working out first), "Why go through the trouble of disassembling roms if an emulator can dump the contents of V-Ram and the art/mappings within?" (Because some people are idiots and don't realise this). The point I'm getting at here is obtaining art from a megadrive game is as easy as breathing, so wasting your time trying to find methods of protecting the art isn't very productive, mainly because the art must be in the format the VDP requires to present on screen when the art is in V-Ram (Yeah, you're stuck following the rules of the Megadrive/Genesis).


Obtaining code: Similar to art, there's no sure 100% fine way of protecting pieces of assembly code, the code needs to be uncompressed and in the format of the processor in order for it to be of any use, meaning that even if you found a way of encrypting your code in rom, you'd need to unencrypt it into a memory space (such as ram) before the processor can read it, and like the art, emulators can dump the memory space anyway, so it's never protected. Such disassemblers as IDA (or the one you've mentioned too) can easily disassemble the codes required yes, but the idea that a disassembler can label or even explain what that code is or what it does is out of the question, so if some idiot were to disassemble the code, then they'd have a tough time working out what it all does, people with the knowledge who can understand the functions of a megadrive game are most likely to be mature individuals who could code that stuff themself from scratch, so them understanding it isn't any more harm than being eaten by a snail. If someone has the commitment, time, effort and knowledge to understand what something is or does (Which most of whom are not quite mature tend not to), then there's no reason to get worried or highly strict on the matter.


We're not all monsterous nasty arseholes who'll do anything to protect the trueth from anyone, we are (or most of the time) a community of tallented people, a culture if you will which spreads to many several forums. Please don't bump topics to state some facts we're aware of by now, we know the situation, this issue is old and pretty much resolved you could say, thanks for your input and have a nice day.