Calling All NES Hackers!

[Another World]

What can be done when your only means of hacking is a hex editor? Simple, you can remake Shenzhen Nanjing's Final Fantasy VII release into something that closely resembles the PS-1 classic. Lugia2009 has been hard at work demaking sprites, locations, maps, menu items, music, and more. The result is an English translated masterpiece done with little more than a hex editor. The current project is estimated to be around 75% complete. One missing element is a reworking of the battle system.

Rather flawed from the original Chinese game release, the battle system has remained untouched. At one point a developer mentioned writing a custom battle system, but these plans fell through. Lugia2009 thinks he knows where the battle system is but is not sure how to go about hacking it.

Do you have real NES hacking skills? Have you written in ASM or are you familiar with NES coding? Have you produced a significant NES hack of your own? Drop on over to the project post via the link below and get involved. The community would love to see this hack brought to its full potential, and the missing team member may be you!

Project page

 

[matt382]

If I remember correctly, I'm sure there's a member from the FF7 PC hacking site qhimm who was looking into recreating the FF7 Nes engine. Not sure if they're still working on it though.
Anyways, reworking the battles on this game would just top it off for me

 

[Covarr]

If I remember correctly, I'm sure there's a member from the FF7 PC hacking site qhimm who was looking into recreating the FF7 Nes engine. Not sure if they're still working on it though.
Anyways, reworking the battles on this game would just top it off for me

Same project. halkun's contribution can be seen in that thread, though he hasn't logged in there in nearly a year, so he may have dropped out of it.

 

[shakirmoledina]

quite amazing there. damn hacking can be fun. just want to cheer the hackers on whoever they may be! Respect!

 

[Relys]

So a whole bunch of "ideas guys" want a coder to do all the hard work for them?

I'm fluent in C++, Java, ASM, VHDL. No, I will not do your hard work for you while you make sprites.

 

[matt382]

So a whole bunch of "ideas guys" want a coder to do all the hard work for them?

I'm fluent in C++, Java, ASM, VHDL. No, I will not do your hard work for you while you make sprites.

I wouldn't exactly call them "ideas guys". A lot more work has been put in than just replacing sprites.

Also, I think most of the work so far was done mainly by one person, if I'm correct?

 

[koji2009]

What exactly is wrong with the fighting engine? And it seems to me if they had planned to just hack the Chinese rom to such an extent, why didn't they just make a new one from scratch? Hell, use all those sprites you just made and put them into something like RPG maker instead of intentionally limiting the audience and screwing around with "dirty" code that barely manages to work as is on real hardware.

 

[Another World]

So a whole bunch of "ideas guys" want a coder to do all the hard work for them?

I'm fluent in C++, Java, ASM, VHDL. No, I will not do your hard work for you while you make sprites.

the entire hacking project is being produced by 1 person. with a little bit of help from the community who have mostly debugged problems and provided some sprites. it was a learning project for him and unexpectedly turned into something much larger. he is not a coder and thus he can not do any asm code, which is probably what would be needed to fix the battle engine.

please understand that it isn't like the game was already there, that he changed 1 or 2 character sprites, and now he wants someone to re-code the entire thing for him. as for the game itself, he hasn't left in one single original bit of content. everything from the overworld map, to the characters, to the english translation, to the buildings have been changed to match the ps1 classic. he has spent time matching shapes, sizes, colors, etc. He already has a year into this project.

i am not trying to belittle you or any coder when i say that after reading 35 pages of posts it is clear that what he has done to hack this 1 game would outweigh the few weeks it would take an accomplished asm hacker to rework/balance the fighting engine.

What exactly is wrong with the fighting engine?

the game code runs just fine on any emu that supports the pirate mapper. i'm not sure if you are familiar with Shenzhen Nanjing but they have produced some pretty amazing games. the flaws always reside in their assumptions towards how gamers will react to the final product. the ff vii battle engine works but has balance issues, doesn't support all mana, etc. i do not recall all of the the problems, they were buried within the 35 pages of posts at romhacking.net. basically it doesn't perform like the ps1 engine and there were enough issues for the guy hacking the rom to seek out a coder for help.

-another world

 

[h8uthemost]

So a whole bunch of "ideas guys" want a coder to do all the hard work for them?

I'm fluent in C++, Java, ASM, VHDL. No, I will not do your hard work for you while you make sprites.

So...why did you even post then?

 

[Rydian]

No, I will not do your hard work for you while you make sprites.

Professional sprite artists around the world would slap you.

 

[alphamule]

Sprite comics are the height of the web comic artform! (LOL not serious)

 

[Rydian]

"Professional sprite artists". As in, the people who professionally, as their job, for money, make the original sprites in games.

 

[Walker D]

I didn't know that Lugia2009 also started to work on Lei Dian Huang: Bi Ka Qiu Chuan Shuo ( the nes pokemon yellow)

I was looking for some progress on this game, but now I found it ^^

Link : http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=14071.0

 

[Critica1]

Just jumped into the project after reading this hmmmm....

Terribly programmed game by a chinese company, but most notibly cool for a PS1 game (let alone FF7) to try and go back to its sprite roots.

6502 assembly looks very interesting to learn and their are so many guides on how disassemble and write functions (even S/NES documention) for the language. The documentation is well supplied.

Seems like a cool summer project.

 

[alphamule]

"Professional sprite artists". As in, the people who professionally, as their job, for money, make the original sprites in games.

I thought the last one died out when South America split off from Africagames went 3D. Then I saw the "Too many authors" webcomic and realized that they just evolved into birdswebcomic authors. These dang upstart mammels3D artists are going and being interesting, though.

 

[Rydian]

Pokemon?

 

[alphamule]

LOL. Yeah, until a few years ago they were still using stuff that looked like it came from a NES/SNES/Gameboy? Screenshots of Black/White look like they're at least 'pre-rendered' like in the old Donkey Kong Country games.

 

[Rydian]

They're still pixel sprites, they're just now split into different sections for movement. 649 pokemon as of B/W (which came out in the US last year), all needing at least one unique sprite... some of which have alternate sprites depending on their gender or other special situations. Also did I mention they need both front-view and back-view sprites? And yes, the alternate forms as well need a back-view sprite.

And that's not counting all the other games released recently using any sort of pixel/sprite graphics, such as the variety of puzzle game, and classic RPG-style games such as this.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kemco.wws.soe&hl=en

If you think there's no longer any sprite art going on, you need to open your damn eyes.

 

[alphamule]

Well you took the funny out of my comment. And yes, it's like a modern-day dinosaur.