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Author Topic: Why arent some of the best roms hacked?  (Read 1 times)
Cursed_Soul
Guest
« on: July 29, 2008, 10:52:42 am »
Its been a while since I posted something,
Mostly because my arms are fubar.
Even using speechrecognition when I can..

Anyway..
From time to time I still play old sega and snes games,
Partially on the wii, partially on snes and emulators.
But to get a new experience out of them I enjoy playing hacks, or with the editors.
But games like secret of "mana", "Sonic", "E.V.O. In search of eden", "Terranigma", "Illusion of time" don't have hacks or editors.

And I'm kinda wondering why?
Secret of mana is one of the most wanted snes games ever.. I would've thought that somebody wanted to edit his way around that ROM and hopefully create something wonderfull so we can create our own new rpg universe.
Can anybody explain why some of the best games known on some of the oldest consoles aren't hacked...
DarknessSavior
Guest
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2008, 01:05:19 pm »
Well, I'm hacking Secret of Mana, right now. Well, it's mostly a text retranslation.

Most games that aren't hacked often are not hacked for reasons: graphical or text compression, horrible font schemes, that sort of thing.

I have to agree. With all of the Terranigma jokes in our community, you'd think someone would code a VWF for the damned thing already.

~DS
tc
Guest
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2008, 01:07:38 pm »
How good is the Terranigma translation itself? And does the PAL version run slower?

It's also humorous to some of us that Secret of the Stars uses ALL CAPS for its dialog.
KingMike
Guest
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2008, 03:27:19 pm »
Quote from: DarknessSavior on July 29, 2008, 01:05:19 pm
I have to agree. With all of the Terranigma jokes in our community, you'd think someone would code a VWF for the damned thing already.

~DS
I recall somebody did a width hack font. Said it involved hacking like 2 instructions (though finding those instructions took some time). But they didn't release it (rewriting the text?).
Disch
Guest
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2008, 03:40:51 pm »
Quote from: Cursed_Soul on July 29, 2008, 10:52:42 am
Can anybody explain why some of the best games known on some of the oldest consoles aren't hacked...

Why haven't you personally hacked these games?  Or made editors for these games?

When you have the answer to those questions, you will have the answer to yours.



Also... Sonic games have a rather large hacking community -- it's just not this community.
tc
Guest
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2008, 03:51:01 pm »
The Sonic hacking community is rather interesting. They're pretty much self contained. Very little overlap either positive or negative between us and them.
Nightcrawler
Guest
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2008, 05:06:51 pm »
It's quite simple really...

For these projects to get done you need someone with:

a.) The skill
b.) The time
c.) The interest

Only when someone with all three items at THE SAME TIME comes along will it get done. Obviously, it's a rare combination for the games in question. Wink
Celice
Guest
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2008, 05:13:18 pm »
Quote
The Sonic hacking community is rather interesting. They're pretty much self contained. Very little overlap either positive or negative between us and them.
Fire Emblem is kinda the same way.  It's too bad that most of the people interested in the games don't even know how to work a hex editor though...
tc
Guest
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2008, 05:17:14 pm »
Serious hackers tend to avoid series that attract too many n00bs. Like Pokemon I consider a victim of this.
KaioShin
Guest
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2008, 05:35:47 pm »
Quote from: tc on July 29, 2008, 05:17:14 pm
Serious hackers tend to avoid series that attract too many n00bs. Like Pokemon I consider a victim of this.

Not really. Look at Tauwasser or Koolboyman. They are both top notch romhackers. There are a ton of great tools for Pokemon too, who wrote them? Surely not the noobs. The fact that there are a lot of idiots wanting to hack a game doesn't mean there aren't serious people doing it too.

The reason not so many games are getting hacked is simple. There is not that much talent in the game hacking scene. Most people who work on stuff there can only use level editors. If they have to do something themselves they fail. They have to rely on someone else to come and write an editor. The few people who know their stuff each have their favourite game and that's that.

Most games the topic creator wanted hacks for are RPGs. They are especially hard to create hacks for since they usually use more or less complicated scriptings for story sequences and such stuff. It's often a bit more complex then creating a map of a level with some obstacles. You have to completely dissect the scripting engine, the text engine, the battle engine (if you want to change anything) and the level stuff. You'll have a hard time to find someone who creates easy to use tools for this stuff. So they won't make any hacks. Instead you get more challenge hacks, most beginners manage to open an hex editor and change some monster stat tables. Big deal. Unfortunately, total conversions like Dragoon X Omega will stay very very rare. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Cursed_Soul
Guest
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2008, 06:05:31 pm »
Quote from: Disch on July 29, 2008, 03:40:51 pm
Quote from: Cursed_Soul on July 29, 2008, 10:52:42 am
Can anybody explain why some of the best games known on some of the oldest consoles aren't hacked...

Why haven't you personally hacked these games?  Or made editors for these games?

When you have the answer to those questions, you will have the answer to yours.


Is your last sentence correct? :p
Anyways, I'm using speechrecognition since my arms are fubar.
I was working in the game-industry as an environment artist,
But I had to quit because my arms started to hurt.
I thought it was because I was using the PC a lot (RSI),
But that wasn't the case, now 2 years further they still haven't found the problem.
I cant work because of the pain, and on good days i try to work out a game i have in mind.
Also, even though I'm quite creative.. coding is my weak point..
I started with pascal and the first few months where amazing,
Always coding and most stuff worked.
But all of a sudden.. I lost it.
I don't know why but.. Nothing made sense anymore..
Ever since.. I cant code, not in flash, not in HTML (but if i spend hours i can get something decent.. without dreamweaver) not in c++ not even visual basic.
Though I'm still quite good with hex since I played with action replay when I was a small kid.. filling in random numbers to see what happened.
I remember BA3A6DAD.. it was a code for Mario.. i think snes, but it might have been Mario 3.
It also changed colors of the weapons and 1 of every 3 monsters in Secret of mana euro version.
Uhm In E.V.O. you could rebuy stuff you allready bought (cheaper healing), and In sonic 3 & knuckles (euro) hyperknuckles changed colors.
I once found a code for SOM that made you warp from the water castle to Krissie's house.
Also one.. very unstable.. that made you any random creature.. or.. some uberhero with all magics available.
lost the code though Sad

Also.. think about how long it took me to make the computer write all of this correctly, especially since my English is with a dutch accent :p

also, i understand what kaioshin (and others) are saying,
My expertise is not coding, but visuals/gameplay/environment.
I'm the kinda guy that can work greatly besides a coder, but just.. cant.. code.
I can do great stuff with limited prefabs, and (when it comes to 3d) I can do almost everything visually myself.
I always wanted to recreate some amazing snes games, and didn't know it could be done until i found romhacking about a year ago.
Ive been trying out some of the hacks and tools, but you can only do so much with speechrecognition and a wacom.
Believe me, if I had the money, id pay a coder to hack s.o.m. to pieces.. just for my personal fun Smiley
« Last Edit: July 29, 2008, 06:13:34 pm by Cursed_Soul »
Cursed_Soul
Guest
« Reply #11 on: August 01, 2008, 09:50:36 am »
wouldn't it be easier to create your own engine, compared to hacking a ROM?
Could be stand alone, but it could use an existing emulator.

I don't know, I'm no coder, but creating a 32bit sprite/tileset using engine with WYSIWYG functions should be possible.

(just thinking out loud)
seirj
Guest
« Reply #12 on: August 01, 2008, 02:10:12 pm »
Speaking of good games that nobody has hacked yet, what about Battletoads?
I've been trying to figure out how to, first of all, change the intermission text.
But it must be compressed, because I can't find it anywhere.
kazuya
Guest
« Reply #13 on: August 04, 2008, 04:21:56 pm »
"How good is the Terranigma translation itself? And does the PAL version run slower"


I thought of this myself a few times before... I know that all PAL games run in 50HZ compared to all JPN and USA games which of course run in 60HZ. Retranslating the JPN game would be only way to play it in English at full speed, considering Enix`s american HQ was closed before it could be released there..

Not sure why Enix couldnt of got some other publisher to release it though..
« Last Edit: August 04, 2008, 04:27:45 pm by kazuya »
tc
Guest
« Reply #14 on: August 04, 2008, 07:35:36 pm »
I've heard there's an extremely limited number of games that run well in PAL. Supposedly Donkey Kong Country is one of them, IIRC.
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