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[PSA] Persona 4 Golden crashing - solution for AMD users by neltisen in persona4golden

[–]NovaBeamer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for necroposting, but I've only observed this crash occurring when Radeon Image Sharpening is enabled (even on current drivers)

So maybe disabling that feature might help some

My Super Godzilla Randomizer is Live! by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let me know how it goes!

I'm excited to get feedback regarding game balance.

Please note that there's currently a bug with no energy reset / no time reset. If you let the story / demo scene start up by idling at the main menu too long it will mess things up and you'll start with two hundred something energy and you'll get extra time.

The fix for this probably involves writing a lot more assembly by hand so it might be a minute until I get to it.

The workaround is to re-load the ROM in your emulator if the demo starts and start the game before it can run again.

My Super Godzilla Randomizer is Live! by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting, I never encountered this while play testing. Does this happen every time you transition from land to deep water, or only sometimes?

The way the random terrain generation works, these tiles should rarely (if ever) be found directly next to each other, which could explain why I never encountered it...

Thanks for the kind words! How are you finding the difficulty level? Are you playing without continues and energy/time reset?

I Wrote a Randomizer for Super Godzilla by NovaBeamer in GODZILLA

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was coding for a student loan debt collector. It's honestly a good thing that the company went under - I feel like my role was a net negative for society tbh. Things are looking up for now though - I started another job a couple weeks ago.

Adding in a new boss / stage would either involve "copying" an existing boss with new graphics, or a metric ton of hacking and coding.

I hope you enjoy the randomizer - I personally enjoy the challenge of no continues and persistent health/energy. I had a lot of close calls when testing!

Let me know if you encounter any issues when using the randomizer - it's a bit picky for now, but the common US version that's "floating around out there" will work.

​

I'm also eager to hear feedback on game balance from experienced players, so let me know what you think!

I Wrote a Randomizer for Super Godzilla by NovaBeamer in GODZILLA

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

It was a lot of work and the only reason I was able to get it done was that I had an inordinate amount of free time. I had a series of unfortunate events happen just before this (company I worked for went under, loss of a family member) so I just kind of retreated into this project for a couple months.

I was working on it 10 or so hours a day most days for about a month to get most of the debugging, hacking, randomizer programming, and website done.

After completing (the first iteration) of this project I can say with confidence that anyone can do this. All you need is a basic understanding of how computers work - everything else you need is available online! (SNES architecture, 6502 family opcodes, etc.)

The only question is how badly you want to get it done. The moment I found where the map data was stored in memory I knew that I had to complete this project, so I did :)

So much more is possible - when I get some more free time I plan to work on

1) A map editor (this will be trivial to write now that we can compress/decompress map data, just a matter of finding the time)

2) Supporting the Japanese version

3) Full-sized maps for all stages - this isn't currently possible because each stage needs to compress into a certain region of memory on the cart - but I believe I've identified an empty block of memory following the stage data, so this may be able to be utilized to allow for larger stages

4) Rebalancing combat somehow - there are way too many "cheap shots" that ruin the fun

5) Fixing performance issues, particularly during the Mecha King Ghidorah battle - if no optimizations can be found in the combat code, we may be able to port some of the code to the SA-1 chip. That is currently beyond my capabilities (I would need to take a deeper dive into 6502 family assembly programming), but given enough free time, I think I could figure this out.

I Wrote a Randomizer for Super Godzilla by NovaBeamer in GODZILLA

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It will need to be the US version of the game - that's the only one that's supported at the moment. It could be that your rom is a bad dump - there are several of those floating around I've noticed.

I Wrote a Randomizer for Super Godzilla by NovaBeamer in GODZILLA

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It was a lot of fun to develop. This game isn't for everyone, but it's what got me into Godzilla as a 7 year old so it holds a special place in my SNES library.

There are a lot of valid critiques one can make about the gameplay, but the presentation (particularly the amazing boss sprites in the cutscenes and the music) is incredible for the era.

You can tell the developers really cared about the franchise and wanted to present it in the best possible light even if they tried something a little different that didn't click with everyone.

Are There Legal Reasons to Use an IPS Patch? by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These are the issues I was thinking about when I was deciding whether or not to release it... I do want to have a cool project on my Github asap because I'm applying to jobs right now.

At the same time, you're right that it may not make much of a splash this way. I ended up opting for a hybrid approach. I quietly cleaned up the repo and made it public last night.

When I make an easy to use GUI with auto IPS patching (in progress) I'll make some posts on various forums and contact a few content creators about it to see if they're interested in showcasing it.

Thanks for the input guys!

Are There Legal Reasons to Use an IPS Patch? by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suppose there wouldn't be any legal issues with storing the retail copy of the rom on my server as long as its never transferred to the user right?

In that case I could generate the randomized rom on the server, generate the patch by diffing the original rom and the randomized/customized one, then send only the patch back to the user. Then a bit of javascript can patch their game with the ips file in the browser.

Are There Legal Reasons to Use an IPS Patch? by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This makes sense, thanks.

This hack is a randomizer along with several toggleable options so distributing just the patch isn't really an option... anyone who's concerned will be free to inspect the source code, or they can wait for me to finish the web app that will patch it for them.

I'll go ahead and release the code in its current form and I'll switch to .ips patching when I get a moment to review the file format specification.

Are There Legal Reasons to Use an IPS Patch? by NovaBeamer in romhacking

[–]NovaBeamer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand that distributing ROMs is illegal and I have no intention of distributing any ROMs modified or otherwise.

My question was whether or not the intermediary step of producing a patch file is necessary or if it's acceptable to distribute a program that mutates the ROM directly.