Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Positionable Composite Map Triggers

The first draft of this is in, with a few hundred new bytes of som-code generated by the editor if you change the composite maps.  Triggers can now be placed freely, rather than dealing with tile types.  After hours of crashing, it plays smoothly now and behaves at least somewhat like the original.

Waterfall maps work fine... I can play to Potos and kill the Mantis Ant.

Potos Inn takes me to Northtown.

Huh.  Close enough?

Edit:  Found what's causing this.  Fix tomorrow.

16 comments:

RetroHelix said...

You did it! Great work.

manafreak said...

Great News! This should make Things easier :-)

Anonymous said...

I've been following this project for a little while now, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to put in a weapon sprite viewing function next.

Or better yet, open source? :D

Mop said...

Open source isn't happening for a while, and it's for your own good, it's a complete mess at the moment. If you want to contribute, feel free to send specs for stuff you've found and I'll add an editor for it as time and priority permits.

I can bump up the priority of weapon sprite editing, it's something I've been thinking is really lacking as well. No research has really been done on this so it will be all new stuff and probably take a couple weeks+ to get working.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of sprite editing, did you see the comment on the last post about the sprite editor? It would be great if the editor allowed you to edit the sprites as they are seen in-frame as opposed to individual, mixed up 8x8 tiles.

Mop said...

I saw it. I struggled to find room for everything on that screen, so it ended up laid out like that for now. I'll have to do some rearranging.

Anonymous said...

You rock!

I know I can edit the sprites in YY-CHR, but there are some frustrations I have with that app. I like to try to use the least amount of applications as possible when hacking in order to keep things organized better, so being able to edit sprites correctly in SOMedit would help a lot.

Thanks for all your hard work, MOP!

Anonymous said...

>Open Source

Ah, I did decompile, and it didn't seem that bad, although I've not really tried to get it recompiling yet.

I was planning to add the ability to save the sprites to disk.

I'm considering a bit of a SoM redux, so I was thinking about writing a fairly short demo (with original sprites), upto the mantis ant or something, to see if people are actually interested in such a thing. If it's particularly popular, I could do the same to the entire series, Final Fantasy Adventure, all the way to Seiken Densetsu 3, with new graphics.
And without the horrible changes to combat that SD3 brought in.

Which was why I'm interested in the weapon sprites ;D

But, does anyone think that would be popular?
I was thinking that it'd be pretty cool on Steam, with true drop in/out co-op.
Provided that Square won't ream me with litigation the moment I start that.

Also, I forgot to say in my first comment, the editor is pretty awesome. Great work ^^

Mop said...

I'd play that. An SD1 remake was something that came to mind for a som-hack project of my own down the line. And yeah, if you're releasing on Steam, particularly if you're charging, I'm pretty sure Squenix would have words with you.

I could add an export to png for sprites if you want. It's pretty simple in C#.

As long as you're decompiling, feel free to, you know, work on stuff and send me the diffs. :3 I intended for the in-editor docs to be technically thorough enough that no one should have to decompile to see how I'm processing something or from where, but unfortunately those are far from complete and not exactly a priority.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I was pretty confident that SE wouldn't exactly approve, but the view I was taking, is that

A: It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission ;D

B: It's not as if they've done anything in the same vein as SoM in years, other than an iOS remake of SoM. Usually companies sue you to death over profit loss, but if you're not doing anything in the same style, what loss of profits is there to blame me for?

And who even WANTS to play an action game on a touch screen? ._.

In regards to an export function, that'd be awesome ^^


If I make any changes, I'll definitely send them your way.


If Squenix has a MASSIVE issue with it though, I could just change things up a bit, keep the gameplay, the basic story, etc.
There's some level of redesign that's allowed, that makes the game "original", at least legally. I'm not sure if redoing the artwork would count for that.

Perhaps I WILL drop them an email, and ask what they think on such a matter.

RetroHelix said...

No way about releasing such a remake. Just think about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection or the romhack to CT that was halted because of Squareenix. But best luck anyway :)

Mop said...

Man, I wish Chrono Resurrection had seen at least a release. That was really impressive looking.

I do like your idea, just don't ever let it become another Graal. That game is a fucking disaster... prime example of a fan remake C&D'ed and gone wrong. I'd suggest at least doing your own art and unique elements beforehand, and making it more of an homage to the mana series, rather than a remake.

I haven't tried the SOM rerelease or most of the newer games, but from what I understand, everything since around LOM to come out of the series has been pretty shitty.

Anonymous said...

@Retro

Hmm, but it's still pretty close to the time period where they were actively doing Chrono universe based games, in the same vein as the original.

And CT hadn't been around THAT long.. So, I can really see why they'd C&D that.

The ROM version though.. Perhaps that's due to the fact that they republished CT on the GBA around then?


I'm tempted to go ahead on it though, and if they give me trouble on it, just altering enough of it to slip past their talons of doom.

Would a game with a different story line, but the same combat system be something that would appeal?

@Mop

Seriously. I played the PS2 one, Dawn of Mana, and it's just..
Nothing SoM like about it.
I found myself wondering why I was bothering to play it.
It's like the new Shining Force games, "Hey, we made this winning formula! Better change everything about it."

I've never heard of Graal. Why was it such a disaster?

Anonymous said...

Keep it going man! Really a great thing you do there!

Mop said...

Well, Graal started as a Link to the Past ripoff back in like the late 90s as "Zelda Online", and when they inevitably had to rip out all of Nintendo's content, I think they just had no good original ideas or artists, and the game just slowly became this big pile of garbage that vaguely resembled SNES Zelda. Between the hideous art, unsecured client-controlled game logic (making it ridiculously "hackable"), and piss-poor network logic in general, it was just really, really bad.

It's actually still around today, and they've since started charging for it... in an age when 90% of MMOs are free, they still want you to pay for a poorly written Zelda ripoff.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I can see why that DOES sound bad.

I'm actually just in the process of finding out if I've got any budding storyboarders on my friend lists.

I was hoping to be able to use the story, but that seems SUPER unlikely, having read about Squenix's lack of love for fan based games.

I'm wondering though, how different does the story need to be.. >___>