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8 Powers Full Version - "THANK YOU!" text

this is the place where lps are being talked about. it's important to talk about games being played on the internet.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by This Eye o' Mine »

I'm sorry if what I'm saying comes across as patronizing, because it's not meant that way. I only qualified that I don't think anybody is obsessing because I felt it was insinuated before, and I really don't think this is about the coins themselves. If you do think it is, then that's my bad. However, if I can't state something like that without being called out for it, I fear I might not be able to give any opinion without sounding patronizing.

I still fail to see how this hack specifically has been putting coins forth as a monetary reward. The levels where they were used as gimmick used the objects themselves, but not coin count itself. Sure, there might be an association between the coin object and its monetary/points/lives value, but does it really go as far as that in those levels, or is it just a matter of the thought of "I want to collect coins because they're pickups" being manipulated?

If you don't like the idea of having your resources messed with, that's fine, and I'm not trying to take that opinion away from you. The reason I called it a nitpick is because not everybody thinks that way. I brought up the point of the creator of the boss probably not caring because it's a good idea to remember that not everybody has the same goals when engaging in game design. What you see as a glaring flaw might not factor into other people's thought process. Yes, it may look bad to you, and it even looks bad to me; if you're programming anything of your own you probably should do it differently, but for all we know they really did just intend to use it as a convenient indicator for when the boss was going to do a thing, because they didn't know how to code up a proper counter of their own. If the latter, then this would indeed be a design decision. Whether they would've succeeded in that matter is another thing entirely.

And on that note I don't think I'm "not giving players enough credit". Again, this is a matter of shifted priorities and expectations. I think a lot of players wouldn't notice the issue because they just don't care about their coins (and there's a bunch of other things going on while you're playing), not because they're unobservant. Let's be honest, not everybody constantly keeps track of their coin count. Just because raocow did doesn't mean everybody will, and I didn't exactly hear him complain about his coins being gone either (though I might be misremembering).
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Sebby19 »

You know, I'm glad this debate isn't happening during a Donkey Kong game. Because then you guys would be arguing about bananas, which would be really silly and funny.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

Sebby19 wrote: 5 years ago You know, I'm disappointed this debate isn't happening during a Donkey Kong game. Because then you guys would be arguing about bananas, which would be really silly and funny.
ftfy
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Leet »

I too am disappointed there are no good DKC romhacks for which this would be an applicable conversation topic
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by Arctangent »

This Eye o' Mine wrote: 5 years ago I'm sorry if what I'm saying comes across as patronizing, because it's not meant that way. I only qualified that I don't think anybody is obsessing because I felt it was insinuated before, and I really don't think this is about the coins themselves.
the patronizing thing wasn't really about the coins so much as the really basic stuff like "different people have different opinions" and "stuff made for free tends to be wonkier than stuff made for profit"

Like there's just ... really nothing to say to that nor does it really say anything that isn't already obvious - it's basically just like stating "grass is green." In fact, in the latter case, it's pretty much always the case were people are criticizing the free stuff already knowing that because the wonky stuff about it feels like something that doesn't stem from its free nature. Most amateur stuff might not be as polished as even cheap indie games, much less AAA blockbuster titles, but spots where the author was noticeably inattentive or even outright apathetic still stick out really badly nonetheless.

Like, I think another way to put this is like, this isn't the first case of the coin count being messed with for no obvious in-game reason. That very "coins kill you" level also did that when you entered it, but the context of it is pretty different. Here, it just seems like a fuck up. There, it just seemed like a workaround to make up for the fact that whoever coded that ASM couldn't figure out how to detect a change in coin count, so they instead just went with checking if the coin count wasn't as constant value i.e. zero. That still seems a bit iffy, especially nowadays, but at least it feels like someone inexperienced doing the best they could to work around an issue. The coin counter being used as a timer doesn't come across that way at all - especially considering what we've already seen of this hack's bosses, so it's pretty obvious that people knew how to use memory addresses actually meant for timing sprite actions at this point in hack history.
others wrote: bananas
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by morsel/morceau »

This entire debate can vanish into mist with the exercise of a little imagination.

One day, Mario met Yoshi. Yoshi said "Give me all your money and we can play a game". Mario said "All right." Yoshi said "Here is the game. I will walk back and forth and throw things at you. For each thing I throw, you will earn a coin. When you have ten coins, you can purchase a baby yoshi from me which can deal me damage." They played the game. Mario won. Yoshi died. Mario's initial outlay is liened to the funeral costs.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by This Eye o' Mine »

For what it's worth I brought those things up as background because they were relevant to my point. It's confusing if you start talking elaborating on an aspect of something without making sure the others in the conversation are on the same page, even if it's something that's obvious.

And yeah, even if it was intentional to use the coin counter as an indicator for when the boss is going to spawn something useful (which I would say is a real possibility) then this wasn't the most effective or pretty way to do it. Even just having the counter count down to 0 instead of up to an arbitrary value would've been clearer. Still, it would've likely been the easiest way, since using something other than a thing readily available in the hud already would require you to code up a custom counter, and that might've been way out of this creator's league.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Piesonscreations »

What's the deal with coin counters!?
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by Alice »

Ashan wrote: 5 years agoNot necessarily, it's pretty easy to insert custom sprites but rewriting how it works requires more technical know-how.
I was able to insert custom blocks and sprites in my shitty MaGL2 level as a 16-year-old with practically no programming experience but I wouldn't have known how to modify them. Hell, I might not even know how to do it now without assistance
Inserting a sprite or block is easier than a custom boss though. Even using that pre-made custom boss patch takes a lot more work than simply inserting a sprite or block and to my knowledge that should be more than enough to be able to work around this issue.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by Mandew »

Alice wrote: 5 years ago
Ashan wrote: 5 years agoNot necessarily, it's pretty easy to insert custom sprites but rewriting how it works requires more technical know-how.
I was able to insert custom blocks and sprites in my shitty MaGL2 level as a 16-year-old with practically no programming experience but I wouldn't have known how to modify them. Hell, I might not even know how to do it now without assistance
Inserting a sprite or block is easier than a custom boss though. Even using that pre-made custom boss patch takes a lot more work than simply inserting a sprite or block and to my knowledge that should be more than enough to be able to work around this issue.
Not so. Writing a counter on, say, layer 3, requires learning how to deal with VRAM, DMA, and the Layer 3 tilemap. It also requires a way make the code run during the level -- which, back in 2012, was always kind of awkward.

Using DMA to write anything to VRAM requires doing so during a Blank period. That means one has to make a hijack in the game's NMI or IRQ code - with no easy way to revert it if something went awry. And that hijack would be run through every frame of the game -- NMI and IRQ code is global. A very big waste of precious V-Blank time for one tiny counter in one instance in the entire game. And no, a Sprite cannot do this. Sprites never run during NMI or IRQ -- they can only manipulate Work RAM values, like the Coin Counter.

Nowadays it's feasible with UberASMTool making things a lot easier and friendlier in that aspect -- nevertheless, dealing with VRAM is leagues above inserting a custom boss sprite.

And if we're talking about the coin counter bits being *removed* from the Boss Sprite's code -- that would require actual knowledge of ASM and exploring into a mess of non-commentated, misaligned and mislabeled code.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by Super Maks 64 »

Mandew wrote: 5 years ago Not so. Writing a counter on, say, layer 3, requires learning how to deal with VRAM, DMA, and the Layer 3 tilemap.
https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=nmap&m=smwram#7E0EF9
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Time for the player to change through palettes

Post by Alice »

Mandew wrote: 5 years agoNot so. Writing a counter on, say, layer 3, requires learning how to deal with VRAM, DMA, and the Layer 3 tilemap. It also requires a way make the code run during the level -- which, back in 2012, was always kind of awkward.

Using DMA to write anything to VRAM requires doing so during a Blank period. That means one has to make a hijack in the game's NMI or IRQ code - with no easy way to revert it if something went awry. And that hijack would be run through every frame of the game -- NMI and IRQ code is global. A very big waste of precious V-Blank time for one tiny counter in one instance in the entire game. And no, a Sprite cannot do this. Sprites never run during NMI or IRQ -- they can only manipulate Work RAM values, like the Coin Counter.

Nowadays it's feasible with UberASMTool making things a lot easier and friendlier in that aspect -- nevertheless, dealing with VRAM is leagues above inserting a custom boss sprite.

And if we're talking about the coin counter bits being *removed* from the Boss Sprite's code -- that would require actual knowledge of ASM and exploring into a mess of non-commentated, misaligned and mislabeled code.
I'm talking about literally just storing the player's coin value to a free spot in memory when the fight starts the loading it back into the coin counter's normal spot afterwards. That should just require locating the proper spots in the ASM to do that and locating a free spot to store the value which would be pretty simple overall. If it's using one of those boss template patches then those are fairly well commented, from what I recall, so locating the bits that run at the start and end of the fight shouldn't be too difficult. If it's a completely custom boss, which seems like it may not be the case, then this is all a moot point because the author is clearly advanced enough.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Sebby19 »

BobisOnlyBob wrote: 5 years ago
Sebby19 wrote: 5 years ago You know, I'm disappointed this debate isn't happening during a Donkey Kong game. Because then you guys would be arguing about bananas, which would be really silly and funny.
ftfy
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And I was totally thinking of Gwen Stefani's song. I would've starting quoting it during the original post, but I don't swear. Ever.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Sebby19 »

raocow, the song is called "Pokey Means Business", not Devil's Machine.

You're a fraud.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by raocow »

it's the fight against the devil machine though :(
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Sebby19 »

You could, if you want all your PSI to be reflected back.
The battle doesn't end until you reduce Pokey's HP to 0.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Mandew »

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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by Leet »

The song doesn't have an official name, so uhhh raocow is just as free to invent his own names as you are to repeat other peoples' invented names :^)
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - ...Mario "breathes" while underwater

Post by This Eye o' Mine »

Remember when I talked about that spritetool bug a couple days ago? Well, did somebody say "softlock"?

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The horizontally moving porcupuffers were also custom sprites. I know this because those also bugged out.

And yes, the demo originally cut off when going right from the final level spot you got on today, though not to the left branch.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - ...Mario "breathes" while underwater

Post by Piesonscreations »

Was going to do the water park, but decided on this one instead.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - ...Mario "breathes" while underwater

Post by Lockirby2 »

Wow, that was a classic raocow intro almost.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Music has to be altered on the overworld

Post by J. J. W. Mezun »

You guys make fun o' me 'cause o' my beautiful torah dedicated to Wario Land 3, but you guys fill mo' than a forum page o' multi-paragraph, heated rants on whether or not conspicuously putting sprite values into the coin counter, corrupting it, is either so laughably terrible that it should be shunned or merely acceptable laziness, when comrade "Revenge of the Coins" already taught us that coin counters are a vapid example o' bourgeois decadence, anyway.
Leet wrote: 5 years agoI too am disappointed there are no good DKC romhacks for which this would be an applicable conversation topic
To be fair, Donkey Kong Country is hard to hack without breaking things. I once tried to make a hack that merely got rid o' the midway & DK barrels as way to halfway implement the Game Boy Advance remake's "Hero Mode" in the better SNES version, & it made the camera not work on water levels & made "Stop & Go Station" abruptly black out in a softlock near the end.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Red berries eaten by Yoshi

Post by Ashan »

There's not much to say on the game itself so I'd rather have philosophical arguments on expected quality of romhacks
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Red berries eaten by Yoshi

Post by Mandew »

These are the kind of open debates that are fun to partake in. We all put down our points without overly insisting on them, and that's about it, really. No stakes to speak of, either.
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Re: 8 Powers Full Version - Red berries eaten by Yoshi

Post by Ashan »

At the end we'll have a vote and whoever is on the losing side gets thrown into a hole
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