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Topic: Metal Marines (Read 780 times)
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juxzodiac
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« on: October 18, 2006, 05:41:57 pm » |
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Hello. I'm new to this whole ROM hacking thing but the idea sounds very exciting. Not sure if anyone remembers the old PC game turned SNES game Metal Marines? It's a very unique military strategy/builder game and it's quite honestly my favorite game on the platform. I only had one stipulation with the game... I beat it and now I know exactly how to conquer every mission. There are only 20 missions. The missions dont change making the replay value very poor. A level editor would be amazing on this game because it kind of plays like Sim City only you get to bomb the hell out of the CPU's city. If I could create all new levels I could change the game every time I played it. It's a game that probably should have come with a level editor because it is all constructed in a grid fashion, but the SNES probably couldnt power it. I really dont know how I would go about either hacking the ROM or finding someone to help me create a level editor but the way the game is set up it seems like it wouldnt be very hard. Please write me back with some input. Thanks.
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creaothceann
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« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2006, 06:15:08 pm » |
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http://www.romhacking.net/start/I'd say you either have to use a corrupter to find the level data (which may be compressed), or learn ASM to follow the game's level loading code. You'll not just change graphics, so following the tile indices might not be enough.
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DaMarsMan
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« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2006, 10:10:17 pm » |
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Learn ASM and look at trace files. It's much easier than corrupting.
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hippiejake
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« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2006, 01:16:36 am » |
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I have this game and yes, it's awesome. Saying "learn ASM" is like saying "teach your dog to drive." It tells you what you want to do, but leaves you with very little insight on how to do it. I'm not sure if it's OK to link to acmlm, but here is a thread that is very helpful, even though it's geared towards SMW. Even so, I don't know ASM, and probably never will, because assemblers and disassemblers are all command-line driven and I'm not very good with that. I can do some minor hex editing, but that's it. So, I wish you better luck than I have had, and I'd love to see a level editor for that game. To write an actual level editor program, you'd have to learn some sort of programming language. Everyone has their own favorite that they will recommend, but they'll all work. I would recommend C because there's so much info and help out there for it, but that's just me.  Have fun!  |
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Ryusui
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« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2006, 01:39:07 am » |
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Even so, I don't know ASM, and probably never will, because assemblers and disassemblers are all command-line driven and I'm not very good with that. And that's like saying "I'll never learn to drive because I don't like carrying keys." Working with the command prompt is immaterial. If that's all that's hung you up, you owe yourself a swift kick in the pants. 99.999% of all your ASM gruntwork will be done either typing ASM code into the text editor of your choice, debugging it in an emulator or pasting it in via hex editor. All you'll ever have to do with the command line is issue the magic word to the assembler that will turn your source code into working machine code. (Okay, so VBA-SDL-H uses a command-line debugger. It's still easy to use...for me, anyhow. >_>) |
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Spikeman
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« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2006, 02:09:09 am » |
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And you really don't even need to use that. Just use a batch file! Here's what I use for GBA assembly: "C:\\goldroadpath\\goldroad" %1.asm %1.bin
Just use that then drag the file to assemble onto it. Of course it's still much better to use the batch file from the command line.. then you can see errors and stuff. Using the command line really isn't that hard. All you need to know (pretty much) is "cd" which changes the current directory. "Dir" is pretty useful and if you're going to make batch files "echo" and several other things would be useful. |
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juxzodiac
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« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2006, 05:36:20 pm » |
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Ok lets just pretend for a second that I dont know what any of this means lol. Like I said I'm new to this stuff and I really don't know how to do any hacking per say. I don't know how to program either so making my own level editing program is out I guess. My posting was more for finding someone that might have interest in hacking Metal Marines and changing the game or writing a level editing program. I know it's probably far fetched making a request like that but hey....maybe someone that actually knows what they're doing has a love for the same game and wants to change it up you never know. Anyone wanna take a stab at it? If not what can I do to learn how to edit the levels myself?
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creaothceann
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« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2006, 05:41:57 pm » |
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dos commandsjuxzodiac: There's really not much to do apart from learning "the hacker way". To edit the levels you'd need to know where they are stored and what format they're in, what values you can use and how they're used by the game. Programming will help you writing your own editor; SNES ASM will help you finding the info.
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« Last Edit: October 21, 2006, 04:43:26 am by creaothceann »
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hippiejake
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« Reply #8 on: October 21, 2006, 01:57:52 am » |
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o.0 I guess I should take that swift kick in the ass Ryusui was talking about and try again...  \ |
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creaothceann
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« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2006, 04:43:06 am » |
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tomaitheous
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« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2006, 12:21:03 pm » |
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Even so, I don't know ASM, and probably never will, because assemblers and disassemblers are all command-line driven and I'm not very good with that. I can do some minor hex editing, but that's it. I can't imagine you can do much without ASM. How would you write replacement code and such? All the translations and hacks I'm working on require writing new or replacement gfx/compression routines and such. Edit:spell check did catch "writting" |
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« Last Edit: October 21, 2006, 12:37:13 pm by tomaitheous »
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hippiejake
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« Reply #11 on: October 21, 2006, 04:23:16 pm » |
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You can do small amounts of ASM in a hex editor if you look up the opcodes, but... yeah, that only goes so far.  I should've googled this by now, but I procrastination prevailed. Thanks! *I'm off to the lava world now* |
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juxzodiac
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« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2006, 10:37:13 pm » |
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Well, it was a long and boring road but I went through all the Hex code in Metal Marines and found the level codes. I've started making all new levels for the game. It was as easy as I thought it would be because of the grid system the game is built on. I'm on level 5 right now. When I release this hack the game will be strictly for experts lol.
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