Hack Ideas Thread

[GoldenArc]

A place to share ideas for hacks, whether it's to get feedback or to give somebody a challenge. I'll get the ball rolling...

• A racing game where you play as characters from EarthBound;
• A Pokémon game where you travel through time to solve problems.

Feel free to contribute however you like.

 

[SCD]

Darkstalkers 3 (Sony PlayStation): I recently found out that Donovan has his newer improved sprites from Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2 in this port, but they only appear if you choose the D.F. Power mode, I would like to see someone make them be his default sprites.

Vampire Savior (Sega Saturn): A hack that will add these improvements to it:

Give Donovan his improved sprites from Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2.
Fix two text errors in the English mode version of these two endings:

In J.Talbain's ending, change John to Jon.
In Hsien-Ko's ending, change Lin-Lin to Mei-Ling.

Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service (Sega Dreamcast): A hack that will add all of these improvements to it:

1.Translate the game to English.
2.Give some of the fighters their English names.
3.Have the CPU use the default palettes for all the fighters, instead of the alternate ones. Change Hard Punch to Light Punch.
4.Change the palettes for the player select screen to the ones from Vampire Savior 1, it's using the ones from Vampire Savior 2.
5.Switch the palettes for the background stages to their original ones (except for Revenger’s Roost), the only time it should use the alternate palettes is when you fight the Mid-Boss and the secret Oboro boss fight. The original palettes are in the game, you can only access them in versus mode by holding down start and pressing any button while selecting any stage.
6.Give Donovan his newer sprites from Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2, I think they might be in the ROM.

Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (Sony PSP): A hack that will add all of these improvements to it:

1.Change the name of Jedah's stage back to being called "FETUS OF GOD" once again.
2.Restore the "DOWN!" text that's suppose to appear after you won a round.
3.Have the CPU use the default palettes for all the fighters, instead of the alternate ones. Change Hard Punch to Light Punch.
4.Change the palettes for the player select screen to the ones from Vampire Savior 1, it's using the ones from Vampire Savior 2.
5.Switch the palettes for the background stages to their original ones (except for Revenger’s Roost), the only time it should use the alternate palettes is when you fight the Mid-Boss and the secret Oboro boss fight. The original palettes are in the game, you can only access them in training or versus mode by holding down start and pressing any button while selecting any stage.
6.Give Donovan his newer sprites from Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2, I think they might be in the ROM.

Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection (Sony PlayStation 2): A hack that will add all of these improvements to it:

1.Translate the game to English.
2.Give Donovan his improved sprites from Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2, for the arranged mode of Vampire Savior 1.
3.Give Vampire Hunter 2 the unused Night Warriors 2 title screen:

 

[Bahamut ZERO]

Excite Bike - a hack where you can pick the color of your racer with select button before you choose a track

Harvest Moon GBC - Fix the bug where the harvest sprites keep your tools they're supposed to upgrade. I think this could be done by making their "Wait 24 hours and talk to me" requirement be tied to in-game time rather than irl time, as well as make it so they only offer to upgrade one till at a time

Land Forger - A minor update to this otherwise perfect Super Mario Land editor that allows it to read graphics directly from the rom, allowing for more ease when working with heavily edited tilesets

 

[Bjankins1]

There’s are some hack ideas for games on genesis

Captain America and the avengers
- add unused continue song and main menu song from arcade back into the genesis version
- Add Arcade SFX back in that are missing
- if someone is good enough, redrawing backgrounds to make them closer to the arcade game

Mercs
- 2 player put back in

Midnight Resistance
- Arcade Colors Restored
- 2 player added back in

Smash TV
- 6 Button Support
- Arcade Colors Restored
- Missing screens like the game show host


I’m sure there’s more that could use a lot of love

 

[Recca]

Shining Force: Make it so that character/unit stats don't lower upon promotion. I'm glad that they did away with this feature in the second game as it was quite annoying and made level grinding even more tedious than it needed to be.

 

[SCD]

I would like to see the 0xED hex editor get an unofficial update, so it will work properly on the newer operating systems of the iMac.

F-Zero (Super Nintendo): A hack that will replace the results music with the one from F-Zero 99.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara (Arcade & Sega Saturn): A hack that will change the green blood to red.

Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Nintendo 64): A hack that will add these improvements to it:

Restores the title screen music from Castlevania 64.
You can jump while holding the nitro.
When you load your save, the upgrades for your weapons are still there.

 

[Vanya]

Guess I'll repost this from the previous forum here:

Hi all! I decided it was time to start documenting this idea to organize my thoughts and get some feedback and advise.

Concept

A stage expansion for the original 8-bit Casltevania that extends the game and adds some new content.

Intended Changes

• Swap around 2 bosses.

• Split Block 4 (Stages 10 thru 12) into separate levels and pad them with some new stages.

• Split Block 6 (Stages 16 thru 18) into separate levels and pad them with some new stages.

• Add 2 extra bosses for the new blocks.

• Add a new song.

It would end up looking something like this:

• Block 1 (Stages 1/2/3) Phantom Bat, "Vampire Killer"

• Block 2 (Stages 4/5/6) Queen Medusa, "Stalker"

• Block 3 (Stages 7/8/9) The Mummies, "Wicked Child"

• Block 4 (Stages 10/A/B) Gillman, "Walking on the Edge"

• Block 5 (Stages C/11/12) The Wolfman, (if I can get permission) "Howling Hybrid"

• Block 6 (Stages 13/14/15) The Creature & Hunchback, "Heart of Fire"

• Block 7 (Stages 16/17/D) Death, "Out of Time"

• Block 8 (Stages E/F/18) Dracula, "Nothing to Lose"

So stages A thru F would be brand new ones.

As far as game play, I would like to consider making some alterations based on some of the early design documents found in the "History of Castlevania" digital book that came with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.
I think this would mostly consist of adding new power-ups and sub-weapons and switching around how some of them work.
If I wanted to get really crazy, I'd want to try adding in the diagonal whip attacks, but just expanding the stages and adding 2 bosses seems like a huge endeavor.

Bogaa gave me some good input already that I'm going to look into info to start things off.

But if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to post!

EDIT:

From GoldenArc:

This looks promising.

I know there are a couple of docs about music and enemy data (archived by RHDN). And you might be able to learn a thing or two from the hacks of Optomon, Dr. Mario, et al. Chorus of Mysteries and Holy Relics have a lot of changes.

Also, Castlevania Modding is a good resource. But you might want to check NesDev for technical info.

As far as game play, I would like to consider making some alterations based on some of the early design documents found in the "History of Castlevania" digital book that came with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.

Sounds interesting. What kind of ideas did they have?

Never answered this directly, but the first thing that stood out was that early planning seems to have included both a diagonally-upward whip lash and a diagonally-downward whip lash. These were possible because the original controller layout was rather different. There was no jump button,but like Vampire Killer, you would have pressed up to jump. And it seems like attacking involved pressing 'A' + a direction for the whip and 'B' + a direction for sub-weapons. Some of this remains in Vampire Killer in the way that the Holy Water and Time Freeze are used.

A lot of the power-ups were different or entirely unused.
The wall meat was originally a speed up item dropped by monsters (similar to the Boots in Vampire Killer).
The "Cross (small)" is basically the rosary, but as a sub-weapon and it specifically doesn't work on bosses.
The classic POW item from many previous Konami games was an enemy drop that restored health (similar to the Red Crystal Ball in Vampire Killer, may have been mixed up by the wall meat item above).
Garlic was a "Limited Item" (instantly used upon pick up) that "Keeps enemies away" (similar to the Silver Cross in Vampire Killer).
Pistol with Silver Bullets was a sub-weapon specifically for werewolves (which didn't even end up being in the game).
The stake (which ended up being used in CV2) was a sub-weapon required to defeat Dracula.
The Transformation item allowed you to turn into a werewolf for a few seconds.
Guardian Spirit (bird) pretty much worked like the falcon in 8 Eyes but with limited uses.
The "Pocket Watch" was an enemy drop that "Adds time to the game timer (or stops it for a period of time)".
The "Bible" sub-weapon would make the player "invincible" as opposed to making you invisible like the "Limited Item", "Invisibility Potion".
And lastly, "Excalibur" is the same as the "Cross (small), but it is effective against bosses, too.

From Bogaa:

Here are the responses from the previous forum...

Since I was mentioned I had like to make my inputs more clear on the idea. It is possible to add new entry for doors, checkpoints, secrets and entities.. (What would make a new block)
You could do that in the disassembly where it should also be no issue to move things to make the space for it.

Since the tables you like to address are all editable in staks it would make the tool unusable for the new block. In the game.ini file of steak you can address the location of existing tables but adding new entry like you suggest did never work for me.

You said you would feel comfortable to work on a new editor with game-maker to overcome the tool problem. A new editor will give a lot of opportunity for many things.

Making this changes as your first take in assembly seems too much. Would not recommend that at all for learning! Making a new editor for a new game seems more reasonable since you just look for the data to edit and you would not need to worry about all the things you can break while adding new things. Better focus to make a boss or item to see how that goes.

Instead of making all this changes in the last bank. I would just work on bank 5 and give the scenes and blocks more space to make larger areas. Then you will just have to update the enemy tracker data, cam-lock table and the stake game.ini for the new locations of the level data. In this scenario you could keep using stakes what will be a big help making changes to the levels.

In case you need inspiration how to edit enemies and bosses I share my hacks with the src files. You can ignore the music and MMC5 stuff.. in case you had like to use FamiStudio-Engine. This would not be possible in the vanilla game since I needed to add SRAM. You would at last need to convert to a mapper that supports SRAM. Or work with the original music engine. A other option is to just use my hack as a starting point. It is easy to remove all the code for the bosses and use a vanilla ROM to start fresh. Then making music is as easy as exporting from famiStudio and assemble along a new project.

 

[Bahamut ZERO]

Final Fantasy Legend 3 - a hack that skips all non-essential text in battle other than status effect alerts, speeding up the pace of battles

 

[SCD]

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (Game Boy Advance): A hack that will add all the improvements from the Japanese version to the international versions.

 

[Bahamut ZERO]

Super Mario 64 - an addendum patch for SM64 Chaos Edition where you have infinite air and don't take poison damage.

 

[GoldenArc]

A half-serious Streets of Rage hack with old Yu-Gi-Oh! characters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HM9tyNkUAg

 

[Vanya]

Final Fantasy V expanded with space for new classes, commands, spells, and equipment.

 

[Vanya]

Here's another random idea.
I've heard that Zelda II wasn't developed with the intent to be part of the series.
A hack that strips out all the LoZ might be interesting just to see how the blanks are filled.
What sort of feel would the game have entirely on it's own merits?

 

[GoogieToons]

I would love to see Game & Watch games into NES ROMS with Nesmaker.

 

[DewHenson78]

ok heres a random idea mostly for the new donkey kong country nes editon by the jabu mostly to combine it with the vcr7 Romack of the bootleg donkey Kong country mostly in the music department along with the demake opening and ending etc.

 

[slidelljohn]

I would like to see snes level editors start using the full features of the ppu in the snes. The snes ppu supports up to 128kb of vram but nintendo only installed 64kb. All snes level editors only support 64kb of vram
when they should start supporting 64kb and 128kb of vram. If you upgrade your vram in your original snes 2 chip console then you will have 128kb of vram working on original hardware. Imagine if something like lunar magic supported 128kb of vram. I can convert the snes games to use the extra vram if the snes level editor developers add the support for the 128kb of vram.

I would also like to see snes final fantasy 3(6 in japan) use animations for enemies like how snes treasure of rudras does.

 

[DewHenson78]

ok so i got a romhack idea for fire emblem 1 on the nes mostly a nes script port from the offcial fire emblem shadow dragon the the blade of light switch release however the title screen would have to be different and if possible would have to be based on this custom logo i made im unsure who made the fire emblem font like this the subtitle font i had to improvise and etc without the Japanese text behind it like the official logo did

 

[DewHenson78]

my second idea is mostly for these 3 games one for earthbound on snes along with the other 2 for gba

heres the logo for references and yes i gave the US ones new subtitle names and etc

 

[DewHenson78]

and of course earthbound beginnings and the other 3 utilizing the spacebound fan made European name title

 

[Simone D. Alemanno]

Here are my hack ideas so far:

1. An improvement patch for the Sega Genesis port of Super Mario Bros. (the one released in 2010 by Mairtrus) that enhances the game with features such as fixing the bug with Lakitu's eggs being thrown incorrectly, separated Fire Mario/Luigi color palette, sprite edits here and there, region lockout removed, etc.
2. A patch for F-Zero that unlocks tracks that are available only in Grand Prix mode. The existing hack (from 2007!) has some serious issues and therefore I don't recommend using it.
3. 50Hz to 60Hz patches for Super Nintendo games that still haven't gotten one.