Hacking About Super Mario Advance 4's release

[Garblant]

We should have a patch of SMA4 that has all of the effects of each card in a menu located in world-e...

 

[ShadowOne333]

Well I'll be sure to let my friend know about the requests so far, but I can't promise anything.
The main objective is still the new code to implement the levels without using the ROM dump from the Wii U's VC as the base so that we can give all those anti-piracy a-holes the middle finger.

Once that is done I don't know if he'll want to continue with any of the requests of not, since he has quite some projects on his shoulders right now besides this one.

 

[FAST6191]

How do you imagine that copying the levels from another source, or indeed manually remaking them using them as a reference, is going to bypass the copyright concerns?

 

[Hiccup]

Because people sometimes have arbitrary requirements

 

[ShadowOne333]

How do you imagine that copying the levels from another source, or indeed manually remaking them using them as a reference, is going to bypass the copyright concerns?

Copying the levels? What the hell?
You do realize that even the oriiginal GBA cart had the levels, right?
The levels have been there all along, it was just a matter of unlocking them in game, which some .sav files provided previous to the VC release, and I highly doubt even a save file is copyrighted since those are being distributed even in GameFAQs. And I don't think the save files had the whole 30+ levels stored in there, so yeah.

 

[piratesephiroth]

Copying the levels? What the hell?
You do realize that even the oriiginal GBA cart had the levels, right?
The levels have been there all along, it was just a matter of unlocking them in game, which some .sav files provided previous to the VC release, and I highly doubt even a save file is copyrighted since those are being distributed even in GameFAQs. And I don't think the save files had the whole 30+ levels stored in there, so yeah.

Niope. I'm pretty sure the levels came from the cards.

 

[VinsCool]

Niope. I'm pretty sure the levels came from the cards.

From what I heard, they came from the cards, saved into the savefile.

 

[FAST6191]

I am aware of the save file stuff, I was under the impression that such things were in the save (hence the issues with loading them all and having full saves not overwrite things).

If it is a matter of activating a flag somewhere in the game and you wanted to make it a ROM patch rather than a save or RAM patch or something then that would be fine, though we could argue things there (the on disc dlc stuff and am I allowed to have an ultimate version of windows when my machine only came with home as it is all there, just needs to have the switch flicked) it is accepted around here and most other places.

If we are going by even a general reading of the copyright rules then the extras are paid extra content. That means gamefaqs would be in the wrong at some level, which I find amusing as they would not even host saves made from flash carts or emulators at various points (had to have the little datel save header for DS games). Doubtless you will be able to find me linking it in the past (some mods and former mods and I think some irc peeps hosted a site with it on once) but if we are playing it safer these days then whatever saw you fall foul of it before is not going to change here.

 

[piratesephiroth]

Super Mario Maker is better anyway.

 

[Pecrow]

Super Mario Bros 3 is my TOP favorite Mario game of all time!.. but I just had to view a video explaining the difference between Super Mario Bros 3 vs Super Mario Advance 4 Super Mario Bros 3. lol

 

[gamesquest1]

afaik the dot codes contain the level, its just stored to the save once scanned.....so not so much "on disk dlc" as sideloaded dlc

but lets face it, most people using said patch would probably not have legally dumped their own rom making it all a bit silly anyway, the real official patch is out there, if people want it im sure they will find it

 

[CheatFreak47]

Copying the levels? What the hell?
You do realize that even the oriiginal GBA cart had the levels, right?
The levels have been there all along, it was just a matter of unlocking them in game, which some .sav files provided previous to the VC release, and I highly doubt even a save file is copyrighted since those are being distributed even in GameFAQs. And I don't think the save files had the whole 30+ levels stored in there, so yeah.

Actually, No. The GBA Cart didn't have the levels in it, that's why the VC rom is 8MB and the original rom is only 4MB. and that's a known fact that can be proven conclusively. The GBA game has 128KB of FLASH where it stored up to 32 levels from Level Cards, it also of course had the save files, and other such stuff. The main reason this VC was so cool is because it allowed All 38 levels to be played without any save file manipulation because the levels were hardcoded into the rom itself, and the VC version no longer makes use of the portion of the Save Flash that contained the level card data.

I do agree that Romhacking.net should pull it's head out of it's own ass, and was just being a baby about the whole "lol well nintendo did the hacking" bs, but it's their site, they can do what they want. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What SMA4 really needs is a fork of the VC hack that re-implements all ecard functions into a sort of menu that replaces the Scanner option, and removes the sector of save data that used to contain level cards, as the VC version has the levels hardcoded into the rom, and doesn't even read them from the Save Flash.

As it stands the game has horrible bugs when played on a 3DS because of it's unbelievably picky save file setup. (which is something I and a lot of others would deeply appreciate if it could be fixed.)

I was proposing your friend look into making the game save a 64KB Save Flash with the level card data removed so that the save file doesn't corrupt all the time when it saves.

Doing those two things would basically make the "best" version of SMA4: SMB3, but the chances of that happening are rather slim I'd imagine.
If your friend has a passion for this game and knows ARM Assembly, make sure you pass this message along to him.

A "fixing the game" patch for SMA4 is something that is sorely needed.

afaik the dot codes contain the level, its just stored to the save once scanned.....so not so much "on disk dlc" as sideloaded dlc
but lets face it, most people using said patch would probably not have legally dumped their own rom making it all a bit silly anyway, the real official patch is out there, if people want it im sure they will find it

The patch isn't just out there, it's linked in the original post, this is basically the only host for it right now.

 

[VinsCool]

The patch isn't just out there, it's linked in the original post, this is basically the only host for it right now.

I still have the original files hosted in my MEGA folder, if anything.

 

[Wanderer0891]

Seeing as this thread is active again, I'll post this here in case it is of use to someone:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/super-mario-advance-4-vc-save-file-injection.427579/

I was able to use Saviine and a hex editor to dump my SMA4 save in order to load up some e-Reader stuff like the e-switches.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

So i just wonder why isn't this on the 3ds eshop. Thanks nintendo. From what i read the wii u super mario advance 4 games had e reader levels i never played cause i never bought one. Would been nice to have. I'll have to consider buying it sometime. But this should also be on 3ds, along with the mega man battle network games.

 

[piratesephiroth]

So i just wonder why isn't this on the 3ds eshop.

Because they never updated the AGB_FIRM to accept those large save files.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Because they never updated the AGB_FIRM to accept those large save files.

I thought someone said that the levels are injected into the game rom file, so the extra save data it uses normally is unnecessary.

 

[CheatFreak47]

I thought someone said that the levels are injected into the game rom file, so the extra save data it uses normally is unnecessary.

Yes, read my post above for an explanation on that. I'm asking ShadowOne if he can have his friend hack the game so it not longer saves the portion of data dedicated to Level Cards so the game will function properly on a 3DS.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Yes, read my post above for an explanation on that. I'm asking ShadowOne if he can have his friend hack the game so it not longer saves the portion of data dedicated to Level Cards so the game will function properly on a 3DS.

I was reading all the comments even your long one. Still if is possible, i just thought it would be on eshop by now. But then i remember something, the wii u game ports for gba games were done by The M2 company who does marvelous ports. But none of them on 3ds were by them on gba. That explains things to me clearly. Still is proven possible obviously but is not done officially is my concern. So i have to ask, are any games gba games on wii u also exist on 3ds and are there any noticable differences?

 

[AtlasFontaine]

I was reading all the comments even your long one. Still if is possible, i just thought it would be on eshop by now. But then i remember something, the wii u game ports for gba games were done by The M2 company who does marvelous ports. But none of them on 3ds were by them on gba. That explains things to me clearly. Still is proven possible obviously but is not done officially is my concern. So i have to ask, are any games gba games on wii u also exist on 3ds and are there any noticable differences?

It isn't in the 3ds eshop because Nintendo didn't sold any GBA game that wasn't part of the ambassador program.