Before these d-pad patches, many have searched for the answer to that very question, often ending with the following result:
ROM Hack Legend of Zelda Spirit Track D-Pad Patch
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Then they ought to have searched better. These are far more refined but other ones have existed for quite a while, as have guides to hack in support in the first place (though such a thing does require so not inconsiderable hacking skills).Before these d-pad patches, many have searched for the answer to that very question, often ending with the following result:
I was not trying to lump anybody in this thread in with those from the original threads -- in said threads they were saying things like you shouldn't be doing this, the creators made the game and you should be playing it like that.
Touch controls are useful, and useful for more than just having some of the better menu systems outside something I have a mouse and keyboard with. The trouble comes with many a DS game having awful touch things crowbarred in because Nintendo said they had to (not sure about later but early on they had to have a touch element), and even worse in some cases touch controls made to the exclusion of dpad controls.
I have had great times with touch games on the DS ( http://gbatemp.net/threads/links-to-various-gbatemp-features-over-the-years.352851/ should feature no small amount of them and I genuinely do like Doodle Hex), however I am going to have to join the others and say I am not so sure it works for directly controlled platform/action like Zelda. They made it functional and more or less playable but this makes it better.
You say Kirby and that is a fun game, however it is not direct control as much as giving you a few seconds in which you can also correct yourself. Also arkanoid had that paddle controller.
Touch controls
Things they are good at
Normal game menus
As a keyboard of sorts.
Camera control, even full analogue style camera control.
Allowing me to play ScummVM (it took far too long for adventure games to start appearing in earnest).
In game map selection (I want to zoom in on this rectangle I just made)
In game reasonably complex menus -- no crazy button combos or hitting A nine times, just tap or drag.
Tap this spot quickly and accurately (think the multiplayer tile matching speed game in NSMB)
Simple gestures/accuracy following (think trauma center)
RTS games
Turn based games (think advance wars)
Rhythm games
As a simplistic alternative to left and right/one axis movement, or as some kind of crude analogue controls. These can even be for things that can be described as twitch games.
As little more than a glorified button, however you are then able to turn it very quickly into more complex controls without having to remove a hand from the buttons or dpad (not that left handed people were well catered to).
As a screen abstraction. Those games where I control a crosshair seen on the upper screen but on the touchscreen, does well if it is the sort of game that needs it.
Related to the above three would be I once played a shmup (veggy world I think) that fired when you touched the screen but moved the crosshairs using the middle of the screen as the middle of the circle for the fire (dpad then did movement). Worked quite well actually.
I even like some... jank I guess. I once played a game based on a girl's book series* (and I think it was in French as well) and it had a driving section in. The touch screen did gears, steering and something else. It was bastard hard but it did half amuse.
*not that I feel any need to justify anything but it was the "latest ten games" part of a review.
Not good
Games that were traditionally played with need for timing on a joystick or dpad.
Complex/accurate gestures, think the first Castlevania seals or don't if you don't want the memories to come back.
Full analogue joystick emulation. No Mario 64 port that is not acceptable, good effort though.
Touch was way more than just a net positive and we will probably see it on everything that even hopes to compete until games get pumped directly into our brains, or someone figures out how to track our fingers/read our thoughts. However to ignore the limitations and examples thereof would be bad.
Assuming this is not a case of wrong thread didn't cracker already have a touchscreen - dpad hack tutorial ( http://s462158067.onlinehome.us/docs/sfchacktut.html )? I can not imagine this uses terribly different logic.
Edit. Some point in 2016. Old and new sites are down but https://web.archive.org/web/20110604163902/http://crackerscrap.com/docs/sfchacktut.html still has it.
That's true, but I was referring to d-pad patches in general, not Greiga's specifically.
Man I didn't knew this (only the DS Hooking page)... lol
Great !!
Fast, talking about tutorials, do you know a good IDA pro guide applied to arm asm ?
Edit : BTW. Why cracker always hook in arm7 IRQ ? Is this the case too for this zelda's hack ?
I would guess because the ARM7 in commercial games is largely the same each time (see ARM7 fix/swap and all that) and is usually not the most demanding bit of code either. This saves the aggro of then having to find a brand new hook for each game (remember a lot of those was born off the back of trainer making and what ultimately led to DSATM/GBAATM) and you can reasonably sure that it will have some resources available.
IDA for ARM guides... nothing that specific. Have a look around the various presentations of the likes of C3 and you will probably get some good worked examples of IDA in general. I tend to squeak by with the freeware tools and emulators for most hacking work.
Mind you it might be worth having a look through mobile phone hacking forums -- basically all phones these days use ARM after all and the newer versions they use are not different enough that it changes the whole reverse engineering game.
IDA for ARM guides... nothing that specific. Have a look around the various presentations of the likes of C3 and you will probably get some good worked examples of IDA in general. I tend to squeak by with the freeware tools and emulators for most hacking work.
Mind you it might be worth having a look through mobile phone hacking forums -- basically all phones these days use ARM after all and the newer versions they use are not different enough that it changes the whole reverse engineering game.
Thanks for history and advices fast. As always, you share a lot of knoweldge and kindly answer gbatempers.
I still prefer hooking directly in concerned arm9 opcodes. Cleaner way IMHO.
I still prefer hooking directly in concerned arm9 opcodes. Cleaner way IMHO.
Oh yeah there are more elegant methods. However it is pretty bombproof really (no access downsides, no latency concerns really, potentially fewer chances to be worried by an interrupt, fewer chances for you to have worry about squeezing that little bit more out of a vblank, fewer chances that you are going to have to manage your own stack*....) and where you or I might have to go hunting for a few hundred bytes or losing some sanity checks to do something in it is already done and being tested.
*how often is the ARM9 in a branch state which leaves you to have to pop or otherwise restore registers, fix any flags and restore stack/return pointers if you decide to have a slightly more complex function rather than just popping registers and issuing a return.
*how often is the ARM9 in a branch state which leaves you to have to pop or otherwise restore registers, fix any flags and restore stack/return pointers if you decide to have a slightly more complex function rather than just popping registers and issuing a return.
Releasing the source code for this for whoever's interested. Don't want to accidentally lose it and have it go to waste.
https://github.com/StraDaMa/Legend-of-Zelda-Spirit-Tracks-D-Pad-Patch
https://github.com/StraDaMa/Legend-of-Zelda-Spirit-Tracks-D-Pad-Patch
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Eh, hello, Greiga Master.
My nickname is WindowsTiger.
I need your help but I don't know how to contect you(Because I am korean, so I am very week with English) So write at here.
I am localizating rhythm heaven silver to korean
But i have few problem's with editing graphics.
I talked with 'What', and he said he did only text and you did graphic edit
so i request your help
will you help me?
My nickname is WindowsTiger.
I need your help but I don't know how to contect you(Because I am korean, so I am very week with English) So write at here.
I am localizating rhythm heaven silver to korean
But i have few problem's with editing graphics.
I talked with 'What', and he said he did only text and you did graphic edit
so i request your help
will you help me?
I'm necro bumping pls no ban.
I have this same question. Tried applying both, only comes out with one.
I have this same question. Tried applying both, only comes out with one.
Download link in the first post was updated to include patch for EU support.
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Or, I also heard that if you use flash memory, it can act as more "RAM" at least windows tell me when I stick a flash drive into it. -
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I can think of the design teams process another joystick and no audio or a joystick and mono audio -
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