This is all quite on topic, it has not gone off on a multi-paragraphed essay, it is just comparing the types of kill codes from games, This may be important to Karatorian, and frantik in the creation of this game. Or it may not.

Anyway, I would like to say good job you two on all your work so far. It is nice to see a game get broken, rebuilt, and made better, faster, stronger... ^^;

Better? Yes and no. Stronger? Maby. Faster? Naw. Heck, if anything, with the stuff we've added, every loop of the main game engine takes a handful more cycles that it once did. Not that it matters as I don't think we've run out of vertical refresh yet ... Oh, you meant figuratively? Well, thanks, we do what we can =_=


Actually, it's the activity on this thread that keeps me motivated. Even when it's only tangentally related to the hack itself.

In regards to the current progress, I haven't really gotten anything done lately. I've been distracted by a bunch of RL stuff (fixing my truck) and a new utility project (Mototile). But now I've gotten back into it and I've started working on the credits sequence.

SMBS has a long credits sequence, of which we'd like to add the content of to the end of our hack. Additionally, SMB didn't have any credits, so I decided to add the hard working folks at Big N as well. Finally, of course, we have to credit ourselves and (more important to me anyway) give special thanks to all the playtesters, tool authors, etc. that helped make this project possible.

So I started looking into the victory messages code and stuff. Quite frankly, I don't quite know the NES and SMB's engine internals quite well enough to figure it out exactly.

Anyway, the text data is fairly straight forward. It consists of a three byte header, the text, and $00 as a terminator. I've managed to figure out two of the three header bytes. The second is the screen position to draw the text to. The third is the length of the string. (Why it has both a string length and null termination is beyond me.) The first one is the one that I haven't figured out.

In all of the text strings in the game, it's either $25 or $26. I thought I could figure it out from the text drawing routine, but, like so many other bits of SMB, it's hard to follow. Rather than do any actual work itself, it just sets some variables and lets some other part of the engine (that I haven't located yet) handle the real work.

So, does anyone here know what that first byte means?

Hey, Frantik, any ETA on getting the last of the bugs resulting from the new block code fixed? To test out my changes to the end code, I fixed the flagpole in 8-3, but as a result it's location ended up being $FD, the end of object data marker, so YY-ME simply moved it to $ED instead so it's not in the right spot. (I also messed up the hole before it somehow.) Anyway, if you find the time, a fix would be nice.

Edit: Never mind, I figured it out. The first byte is part of the screen location as well. Actually, the first two byte are a pointer to the location to write the string to. (Oddly, it's in big endian format, hmm.)

As the engine gets changed more and more, most Game Genie code don't work anymore. For anyone that's interested, I've developed a few cheat codes that only modify RAM locations and so are stable from build to build. The downside is that they can't be used with a GG or PAR or similar ROM modding device.

Here's the list (straight from FCEU):

The "World Menu" code just activates hard mode, so you'll have to turn it off if you want to play in easy mode once you select a world. The "Invincible" code is an infinite starman. The "Flight" code lets you swim on all levels.

The final two are a little obscure. The "World Eight" code is an alternate method of selecting which world to load. You can modify the value to select other worlds. The so-called "Castle" code is used to select a specific level. Unfortunately, it uses the internal map numbers, so it's kinda difficult to use. I've yet to find an easy way of selecting a level.

I could take care of any GG codes once the hack is finished or if you need any done for the most recent build.

Once the hack is finished, it would be kinda cool to include a list of handy GG codes, seeing as most SMB codes will no longer work. In the mean time, it's not really neccessary as I can do almost everything I need with FCEU cheats, which are actually easier to make and use.


In light of these new patches, you can get the latest expanded patch here. The changes in this release are relatively minor. It, obviously, includes all the fixes Frantik just made. Also included is the original (anticlimatic, but complementary) end game victory message and slightly changed hack credits to accomodate it.

I'm currently working on a few things. One is a full credits sequence. The other is a few minor bug fixes and engine tweaks. We've decided to back off of the major engine changes with the new enemies and power ups for now. This is to focus on getting some of the samller issues out of the way first and to provide a stable codebase for extensive play testing. (Thanks, once again, to everyone who's helped with that.)

I'll holler back at you: Those L-pipes still where they shouldn't be.

Again, are you playing Karatorian's patch or my patches?  cause my patches are NOT meant to be played by themseleves

yeah only use karatorian's patches from now on


edit: hmm  looks like you havent implemented the hack to always make lifts 6 tiles.. i think i forgot to mention it or it was a while back haha.. its not out our list though

- bonus work in 2-4 missing scroll stop

- uh oh a semi-major issue:  hidden power up blocks (specifically hidden mushroom/fireflower blocks) can be stood upon even though they are invisible.  to make them truely invisible you might have to shift some other blocks around because the pass thru blocks are toward the beginning of each bock type.  it goes pass thru blocks  (background), normal blocks, and climbing blocks (vine and pole basically)

- hidden coin block in 3-1 (end) hides treetop

- coins next to flag in 3-1 can cause a lock up glitch   (well not true lock up since coin thing is still flashing but mario gets stuck in a ducking position if you touch the top of the flagpole

- graphic glitch in 4-1

you have to hit the pole in a certain way.. it happens a few different ways so I moved the blocks over one.

some of the other bugs were just notes to myself lol i fixed everything except the lift and hidden block issues