Super Metroid ripping project

[puggsoy]

Here's what I understand (through Google and Wikipedia) about the whole engine-inheritance deal:

Zero Missions uses a rebuilt version of Fusion's engine.
Fusion uses a modified Wario Land 4 engine.
I don't think Wario Land 4's engine is inherited from anything.

However, Fusion was made by the same development team as Super Metroid, and it apparently resembles it a lot.
In any case, the fact that all 3 games are GBA games pretty much says that it's very unlikely the ROM is structured similarly, let alone similarly enough to only have to tweak these programs. However, another program that rips the graphics from one of the games could maybe be modified to work with the others.

Also looking forward to tomorrow, which is possibly tonight my time.

[Raccoon Sam]

Well, GBA and SNES use different graphics formats _and_ tile formats altogether so I wouldn't count on it.
also time zones, it's 9AM here right now and I get out around 5PM. See you then :V

[puggsoy]

Not to nag or anything... just wondering what's up. No hurry of course but yeah, this is just a reminder in case you forgot or something.

[Raccoon Sam]

thanks

well
• i'm ULTRA lazy
• i procrastinate 'evvvry day
• i'm a sir

i can direct you to this. It's a tilemap rundown by someone else. Reading it might shed some light on the situation. Also apparently, the last byte holds some more info:

The last byte (flip byte) actually contains a lot of different things: Priority, palette, tiles to use, and flips.

Horizontal flip: Add 40.
Vertical flip: Add 80.

Priority: Add 10, 20, or 30. Higher = Closer to the foreground. This is typically unused and handled by a byte in the enemy data.

Palette: Add an even number from 2 to E. Again, typically unused and handled by the allowed enemies list or something else.

Name table: Add 1. I don't fully understand how this bit works as I've never had a need to mess around with it, but it changes the tilesheet used by the enemy. I have no idea why it's called the Name table.

i don't even know what PIECE is for. Maybe for multi-part sprites like Samus Ship/Kraid or Phantoon?


ALSO
apparently Grime has already documented every goddamn DURAT in the game. All DURATs are two bytes away from FRMPT. Maybe that helps?


If you can list all the problems you guys have right now I could try and take a shot of solving what needs to be done.
sorry :c

[puggsoy]

I'm a tad confused by what it means by "add", but I assume that, as an example, "add $80" would mean check bit 7?
If that's the case, then the only thing I don't understand is what he means by "Add $1 if the tile loaded is moved negatively to make it wrap around" when SadFish talks about the multiplier bit.

I really wish there was a way to know where the frame infos are and how many frames there are. I've noticed that every time I give the program an incorrect FRMPT, not only does the frame look horrible, but it takes a noticeable chunk of time to load (due to it reading lots of random bytes). I can also imagine scenarios in which could essentially bomb the program, so I'll have to be able to check for that sort of stuff.

[Raccoon Sam]

Yeah exactly, 'add $80' is just another way of saying 'set bit 7'.
Adding $1 would mean setting bit 0.. but uh, 'wrap around'? wtf

And I totally understand the frustration if the program reads stuff wrong, but honestly to my knowledge there isn't a way to know the exact number of frames except that DURAT table Grime did, I guess. :c

[puggsoy]

After a long while of forgetting about this, being busy with other things, and being just plain lazy, I'm getting back into this. I talked a bit with some guys on the Metroid Construction IRC and after getting a more up-to-date version of Grime's enemy duration list and some discussion about it, I've decided to start listing the location of every single FRMPT in the game (for enemies, at least). Grime's list has most of the DURATs, but it's not complete, and some of them aren't even DURATs but other delays. For example, for Kzan he just gives the delay for floating back up, which isn't a frame duration but just an AI value. Besides, since such a list doesn't exist yet I'm sure it'll be another handy chunk of info for the Metroid hacking community.

So yeah, I'll be looking for the ones that Grime didn't get and list those, along with those accompanying the DURATs and that Grime did get. Once I have that I can use them in my program and you won't have to manually search for them. I might even give the animations descriptions, that'll make it easy to find the ones you're looking for

[Ton]

Totally forgot about this. Can't wait for more!