So, yeah. I’m one of the chosen ones that got the Faceball ROM early. Just to prevent misunderstandings: I got the ROM early because I’m a nice guy. I don’t do this for money or to get a free copy. I will buy both, the normal and the collectors edition. The original version is a really great game. I played through it multiple times and I think it is easily worth 100$.
I spent the last 4 or 5 days hacking around in the ROM and have already discovered allot of things. It is my first ROM hacking project, so I needed some time to figure everything out. I focus on changing the gameplay and don’t try to fix the typos. Special thanks go to Greg Stevens and HorvatM who pointed me at the right tools. The Sacred Tech Scroll from Guy Perfect made things allot easier for me. He also took the time to explain me how to write asm statements and get them into a ROM (even though he didn’t know what he was helping me with).
That said. manipulating the ROM is fairly easy. After 2 days I could already do things I would have thought are not possible. I can’t wait for what guys like HovratM or Greg Stevens can pull of. So here is what is possible so far.
There are 14 mazes in the ROM which I can freely modify. Meaning I know how to:
– change wall positions
– change wall types (I was hoping to find a mirror wall-type as there are some hints in the game that this was planned but it seems like they didn’t make it into the code.)
– change enemy start position
– change enemy strength
– change enemy drop item
– change enemy attack behavior
– change enemy movement behavior
– change enemy escape behavior
– how to attach a shield to an enemy
– some other stuff I can’t remember right now
– oh yeah, there is a Facball enemy I can use
I also think I know where the items that simply lie around in the levels are stored, but I didn’t play around with that yet.
On top of that I figured out how the mazes are loaded. This allows me to create completely new ones, put them somewhere in the ROM and load them instead of the existing ones.
As I said before, there are only 14 mazes. This means if I manipulate maze 1 it changes for all 4 stages. However, I figured out where the selected stage is stored. After that I wrote some code that is executed instead the original maze-loading code. This allows me to load what ever maze I want and yeah, this means I can have 56 different mazes in the game.
However, I only tested this in a very simple way.
OK, that it for now. Ask questions if you want to. I will keep the updates coming.
While you’re at it Thunder could you hack the big “N” and get us the two lost games?
I have always believed that some of the two dozen games listed on “unreleased” existed on N’s computers. If they are so committed to having nothing further to do with the Virtual Boy, then why in God’s Universe would they not release whatever they have? In the late nineties or very early two thousands, I contacted them; at first ignored, the only response I got is “NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO RELEASE ANYTHING”. Seeing as how many people own MULTIPLE platforms, it would be nothing but good PR to release whatever games they had (easily including Dragonhopper & Zero racers), promoting good will and future sales of other products. But noooOOOooo, illogical attitudes aren’t just for politics.
colesonwilson wrote:
What’s your address? I’ll have the original unfinished ROM in your mailbox on April 1.
I wrote a very polite letter to Nintendo around a month ago, saying how I am a long time fan of their games, and asking about any info for Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers, and if so, contact these people on Planet VB(KR155E, DogP and Bigmak).
The first response I got basically said “Roms are illegal, so we cannot help you”. Very short and disappointing.
Today, I surprisingly got another letter back. It was from a different person, and it was very polite. They appreciated me enjoying their games, but unfortunately, they have no info on either of the two games. They hope that I continue to enjoy my Virtual Boy, and they gave me some free stuff (Pokemon bookmarks).
I guess Nintendo doesn’t have any info? Well, at least I am more than content with all the VB games I have. Good luck everyone! 🙂
segagamer99 wrote:
I wrote a very polite letter to Nintendo around a month ago, saying how I am a long time fan of their games, and asking about any info for Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers, and if so, contact these people on Planet VB(KR155E, DogP and Bigmak).
The first response I got basically said “Roms are illegal, so we cannot help you”. Very short and disappointing.
Today, I surprisingly got another letter back. It was from a different person, and it was very polite. They appreciated me enjoying their games, but unfortunately, they have no info on either of the two games. They hope that I continue to enjoy my Virtual Boy, and they gave me some free stuff (Pokemon bookmarks).
I guess Nintendo doesn’t have any info? Well, at least I am more than content with all the VB games I have. Good luck everyone! 🙂
Well, maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. It’s more likely the “official position” is not to have any info.
However, the Japanese people are very “honor based” — so I would strongly encourage you to write back and thank the second person for his kindness. That will ONLY promote good interaction. The “bookmarks” was a very good gesture.
I had a broken watch once (lcd was snapped), and wrote to Japan — they sent me a new one; unfortunately, it was just in a tiny zip-lock bag in the return letter, and arrived snapped too. They replaced it — so just for fun I sent them a “thank-you” letter, with a laser hologram to express appreciation. It impressed them, they then sent me a whole new watch module. Mind you, I wasn’t AFTER anything, just wanted to express appreciation and honor them for their response; I met them on their level, and they honored me back!
There is a saying, “People are alike all over”.
🙂
PS — if you send him something BACK, a little gift, hologram or something inexpensive that an adult Japanese person could find useful, it will blow him away; don’t expect anything from it, just have fun “returning the appreciation” and the honor. He took the trouble to write to you, and to get the bookmarks and put them in an envelope for you.
Just a simple short note — “You honored me by your reply, I just wanted to express my appreciation for your trouble and the gifts.” He will very much relate to the word “honor”. Best to leave the first response alone, it’s pretty clear the first person will HEAR about your “thank-you”.
vb-fan wrote:
However, the Japanese people are very “honor based” — so I would strongly encourage you to write back and thank the second person for his kindness. That will ONLY promote good interaction. The “bookmarks” was a very good gesture.
It was U.S. Nintendo. I have sent a copy to Japan as well, but no response so far. I probably should write back though, but they want email.
I would still write the thank-you note; whether he’s Japanese or American (or both!), he’ll appreciate the sentiment; sadly social skills are rare nowadays…
I looked into how the game loads the BGMaps today. I can see how they are loaded and where they are in the ROM. I can even change elements by playing around with the values. However, the Maps a stored in a compressed format in the ROM. Repeating values are for example only written once into the ROM followed by a number that tells the game how often they are repeated. There is more stuff in there which I have no idea what it is good for.
I don’t know if it makes sense to fully reverse engineer it as there are other ways to change the maps.
I don’t think he’s changed anything with the ‘music’. From what I understand, he just changes the ‘pointer’ that starts the song..to another song located in the rom.
Well… during the last days I looked into how BGMaps are loaded. I did this because I wanted to have the hidden image I found in the ROM back in the game.
My first idea was to copy the respective part of the BGMap to another part in the ROM. This didn’t work out because of the way the BGMaps are stored in the ROM.
The next idea was to copy around the BGMaps after they are loaded. That’s not to complicated. However, it would have been a bigger piece of asm code to write (and I’m getting sick of writing asm).
While writing that code I realized I was thinking way to complicated. I realized that I can simply manipulate the World-Attributes instead of hacking around in the BGMaps. Took me around half an hour or so to find the place in the ROM where the world attributes are stored (0x1D3870) and change the respective values. In the end it was just changing 2 bytes and the hidden image was reactivated.
I looked into how the game handles the GamePad inputs. It took some time but I figured the basics out. This allowed me to change how the games handles strafing. Usually you had to press left or right on both d-pads at the same time to strafe. I changed it that way that the right d-pad turns the player while the left d-pad allows him to strafe. This is much more convenient.
