MegaED X 1.0 Halloween release

Finally, after a lot of work, I can release the new version of Megaman X Editor: MegaED X! I planned yhe idea to rewrite entirely the editor in C++ on  May 2010 but there were so much problems that I decided to stop. On September I decided to resume the works in this editor and after a lot of code lines and internal modules writings, I'm going to release that new version this night ( now is midnight in Italy). I have disabled some incomplete features (but they are still present in the editor) like the support of MMX2 and MMX3 because they are half-supported (they miss the decompression of tiles :\ but the other things work) and the import tool. This editor is supposed to be executed on WinNT4 and subsequents but I haven't test them yet (I'm a bit lazy :P and I don't want to create a VM with an old OS). There are features that this editor misses like the object editor, layout editor and the tools that I've disabled.

Collisions on MegaED X

It was easy to do: collision viewer.

Megaman X in... Emerald Hill!

Yes, on last 3 days I worked on this little hack. I have implemented new things on Megaman X editor like Block structure editor (32x32), Scene editor (256x256) and a simple window where you can import/export/convert palettes, tiles and other stuff and this help me to import Emerald Hill on Highway Stage. I'm able to redirect the tiles to have more free space. MegaED X still miss collision and object editor, things very important for an editor. I wanna improve some WinControl elements and clean the code (during some cleans the size of .exe was reduced of 11kb o_O now it's 86kb). I'm planning to support the reallocation of data (expanding the rom and move data) and DirectDraw/Direct3D support (now the editor use GDI that it's a bit slow). An good idea is to implement palette animation on all level but firstly I should study more the rom.

... And the video :D

Decompression and compression on Megaman X

Yes, I've implement the compression on Megaman X! Now if you edit the layout of levels or edit compress tiles, you can save and re-compress them. I think that the big work was done and now I have only tod find a way (this will be easy :P) to reallocate compress data. The compressor of Level Layout work perfectly and the GFX compressor compress the tiles but the result take more space than the original :\ for example the original compressed tiles of Highway Stage is 14.031 bytes and mine is 15.900. I know how to fix this, I need of some minutes only.

YEAH, Blue Highway Stage XD

NEWS: Now my compressed tiles are 14.031, equal to the original size =3

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I: Commenti...

E' dal 1994, anno di uscita di Sonic 3, che non gioco ad un Sonic che mi prende come i primi usciti per Genesis e MegaCD (parlo di Sonic 1, Sonic CD, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 e Sonic and Knuckles) ma finalmente questo nuovo titolo, ovvero Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I, riprende tutte le caratteristiche dei vecchi Sonic (compresa la bidimensionalità) abbandonata a partire da Sonic Adventure nel 1998, dove il simbolo del riccio blu è andato sempre più a decadere verso il ridicolo.

Argh, maledetto computer!

Beh, prima o poi doveva arrivare la formattazione. Già da un paio di mesi il mio computer dava problemi (adesso non ricordo, saranno stati bug stupidi) ma negli ultimi due giorni la mia pazienza si è assottigliata sempre di più dopo la visione di blocchi continui, rallentamenti inspiegabili (con GPU-Z vedevo l'utilizzo della GPU al 99% inspiegabilmente, anche con Aero disattivato) e problemi qua e la. Beh, posso dire che sino ad ora, con questo grande prodotto chiamato Windows 7, il mio pc è durato più delle volte precedenti: un anno e 2 mesi!!! (l'XP non lo potevo tenere per più di 1 o 2 mesi che invecchiava a vista d'occhio o Vista che nonostante la sua tenacia, dopo 5 mesi mi costrinse a formattare). 

Modello 7145: Von Nebula

E' da ormai giorni che ho il piccio di fare un piccolo salto indietro, nei periodi della mia infanzia... A farmi pensare a questo è stato un mio amico, che possiede un ripiano con sopra una quindicina di robot Bionicle e Hero Factory. Che dire... Invidiaaaaaa XD mia madre me ne comprò solo uno quando ero piccolo, il Bionicle di fuoco. E così ieri ci fu il primo aquisto... Von Nebula! Emozionato, dopo aver passato 6 ore fuori casa a divertirmi, sono tornato a casa a mezzanotte e ho cominciato a montare il robot:

Sicuramente lui non sarà il mio ultimo acquisto, è nei piani acquistarne altri e vedere di dare inizio ad una collezione. Da piccolo mi divertivo a smontare i robots e a rimontarli, unendo i pezzi e creando robot mostruosi e di certo questa abituine non l'ho persa, quindi con ulteriori pezzi a disposizione aspettatevi qualcosa di nuovo :P

Kingdom Hearts RE: Coded in... Italiano!!!

Non è una traduzione completa, ma sono stato in grado di impostare (con qualche hack nella ROM :P) la lingua Italiana l'ultimo uscito RE Coded. Per ora vi lascio solo un video dimostrativo qui nel blog e qualche screen.

MegaED X now support Megaman X2 ROM!!!

Hey guys, this is a great news!!! I'm able to load palettes, maps, blocks, scenes and layouts of all levels of MMX2!!!

This is the intro stage of MMX2. It miss Tiles support, maybe tomorrow I'll work on :). The best is yet to come...

Birth By Sleep EUR/USA and decrypted .DATs

I'm really happy today to announce that I've do my first patch on a PSP game. I've experience from 65C816 (SNES) and x86 processors' reverse engineering, and yesterday I've studied a bit of mips to do a thing... Maybe a lot of people remember when the chinese coder Hrimfaxi (aka liquidzigong) released some tools to run Birth By Sleep ISO on PSP. One of this tools is dnas_decryptor, that decrypt BBS1-2-3.DAT files to make more faster the loading screens, but this only work for JAP version. Yesterday I tried to put BBS1-2-3.DAT decrypted on my ISO (oh, I don't download games from internet, I've the original game) but the game freezed before the warning screen about savedata. What I've do? I took the EBOOT.BIN and I decompiled it. I've search the routine that load crypted BBS1-2-3 and I found a way to skip decryption process simply editing 2 bytes. This trick work on EUR and USA version of the game:
Open EBOOT.BIN (or .OLD if you use prometheus patch) and go to 0xBD00 offset. You can see 0900 8018 right? Now change 8018 in 8104 and save. If you won't to extract the EBOOT, reput it on ISO and save, you can directly edit the ISO. I've found 0900 8018 on 0x11BD30.
Surely works on Birth By Sleep doesn't stop here, I'll continue to find more stuff and I'll release all here! Stay tuned :D

MegaED X: News about Palette Editor and other stuff

Other changes were done today. I've improved the palette editor that now display dynamics palettes (If you don't know this, the game change the palettes in real-time to show more color stuff in a single level) and hold the addresses to edit them. I want to do also highlight in a level the color that have you selected on Palette Editor to recognize quickly the palette that you want to edit. I've extended the debug infos and make operable the buttons Q, W, A, S, Z, X, O, P, D and B to change various parameters that are used for the dynamics of tiles palette and objects (that are not implemented yet), to change the view between background view and level view or to display/hide debug infos.

I've found also these elements:

• Airship from Highway Stage

• Ship from Launch Octopus stage (that help you to gain an heart tank)

• Bubble sub-boss from Spark Mandrill stage