Long over-due update!

My old hack is toast, but this just makes way for my new hack. A Fallout-themed Earthbound ROMhack.

[Progress Report #1]

Yay! an update! Yes it's been a long time since my last post. Don't worry though, this hack is still being worked on. Although it really wasn't until recently that I began to get a lot more motivated. Thus you have this blog post.

In the past few weeks I've been able to write down several pages worth of notes about EB-Fallout. I have created a decent list of "features" I want to implement. Such as replacing the ATM card with a Pip-Boy, complete with a journal and area maps. Which can be upgraded later with additional features. As well as changing some status-ailments to more fit into the Fallout universe. Like changing the sunburn status to radiation sickness, and have specific "radioactive" tiles that inflict said sickness. I don't want to give away too many of the features I intend to implement. I do want some element of surprise.

The story is going to revolve around the idea "What if the events in Fallout were to happen in the Earthbound universe?" Most of the cities/towns you knew in Earthbound are either no more, or changed dramatically. You start in Onette, and as you fly over the town you recognize certain landmarks. Unfortunately everything is destroyed, nearly reduced to rubble. Fortunately before the bombs dropped the people of Onette were able to escape to a vast Vault-Tec vault. That vault was Vault 52.

You as the main character are a resident of Vault 52. Events eventually force you to leave the safety of your Vault in order to save your family, your Vault, and maybe...the entire world!?

There is still quite a lot to do still. Things on the current to-do are, custom tilesets, NPC sprites, alter ATM card into "pip-boy", MORE BATTLE SPRITES. Right now I need to research Rufus' "more flags" patch which creates a ton of usable flags in the expanded portion of the ROm. A good majority of the features I have planned hinge on this patch. Although luckily I'm almost 99% sure the patch works fine and I should be able to use it to add many, many more flags.

Last but not least, here's some battle sprites that I have completed. You didn't think I would make a blog post and not post some pics did you?

Bloatfly:

Eyebot:

Mark 1 Turret:

Mr. Handy:

Rad Roach:

Securitron:

Spider Mine:



A couple WIP battle sprites:

WIP Centaur:

WIP Molech:


That's it for right now, check back later for more updates!

This project is not dead!

I know I haven't updated in forever, but I guess that's what real life does to you (like getting married). I recently had an injury to my hand and it kept me out of work for about 2 weeks. Suffice to say I had some free time to work on my hack. Unfortunately it's nothing I can really show currently, it's mainly further progress on hacking Onett's map. I do plan on finishing hacking Onett and releasing a demo IPS fairly soon. So look forward to an update fairly soon.

CD Player is finished!

I finally finished my CD Player item I created for Earthbound, if you haven't read below , it's an item that allows you to listen to any music track at basically any time, even in-battle. I uploaded the IPS patch to Starmen.net you can find a link right here--> CD Player Topic on Starmen.net

Also here's a video of me going through all of the music tracks, there's a few 0_o

Ran into some problems...

Thankfully now they are fixed though. I ran into a problem with the control code I was using to create the main menu for the CD Player. It says in the control code lexicon that the code [09 XX YY YY YY YY] can have up to 255 text pointers, but for some reason it would stop at the 63rd track/text pointer. I didn't know what to do at first but with a little bit of thinking I came up with the idea that instead of the 63rd pointer being a song track I would make it a jump pointer, to "jump" to an entirely new text area and open a new window with tracks 64 through 109 with the last pointer in the new window being a jump pointer jumping back to the beginning.

I don't know if anyone reading this is going to make any sense out of the above paragraph but suffice to say the CD Player Works past 63 tracks now, I'm up to 109 tracks currently. But I am confident that I will complete this early tomorrow and release an IPS patch accordingly.

Until then here's a video for your enjoyment. Unfortunately it can't be hosted on YouTube(because of maintenance) so I just uploaded it with Blogger so sorry about the size of the video. I'll upload it to YouTube tomorrow when I wake up.

Edit: here's the video, now on YouTube.

A quick update...

I was testing out some of the newer tracks I added to the CD Player when I got to thinking if this would work in-battle. So I started up Snes9x and tried it out, but it didn't work. I started up PK Hack and figured out why it didn't work, the CD Player was set to be a "Key Item" so I changed it to an "Inedible Food Item" and now it works great in-battle. Check out the video down below for a sample.

Trying out new things...

Sorry for the long wait between posts, but my internet was down for a couple days and I've been working on a little control code project for my hack. Its for a new item I made called a CD Player, it allows you to change the music you're listening to while you wander around exploring Earthbound. It works best when your in a wide open space, because when you go through a door it will change back to the music for that map sector. It's not a big deal, I mainly made it so you can listen to any music track anytime you want. Here's a little preview video of the CD Player in action.

When the CD Player is complete I will make an IPS patch for it so you people can use it with a clean Earthbound rom. It shouldn't take me very long, expect an IPS no later than tomorrow, but I should get it done today.

Took a little longer than expected

Sorry to anyone who cares, but I didn't get the new video uploaded last night. I was trying to merge an older rom with the item name hacks on it with my current hack. So I was making some partial ips patches to apply to my current hack, but I didn't know how to make a partial patch for the expanded ROM text area. All it took was a bit of thinking to remember that I was just being stupid (to make a partial patch of the expanded text area you have to set it to the beginning memory address and the end memory address of the expanded area).

Suffice to say I got that done and I added in my custom battle sprites that I've made for Oceanside. I uploaded a new preview video to Youtube, you can find it at the bottom of this post, or in the video bar on the right side of this page. I think I'm going to continue to use Youtube to host my videos instead of Blogger, mainly because their videos don't have a full screen option.

Note: I still have to tweak some of the enemy actions so their battle text goes with the enemy better, but that won't be too difficult. Also a couple enemies from Mother 3 are in this video, but there's gonna be a lot of monsters from Mother 3 in my game so be prepared for spoilers even though they're small.

To-Do list for Onett/Oceanside...and maybe some screenshots.

I promised I would do a current to-do list for Onett/Oceanside so here it is.

1. Script hacking - relatively none at all, maybe 1%
2. Map hacking - need to redo Giant step (inside), need to redo most of southern Oceanside (police station, arcade, bakery, road to Twoson...etc.).
3. Redesign Pokey's character, including sprite.
4. Redesign Ness' Sister's character, including sprite.
5. Redesign Frank's character, including over-world sprite .
6. Design Frankystein MkII's replacement sprite.
7. Redesign Mayor Pirkle's character, including sprite.
8. Redesign Mani Mani.
9. Redesign Photoman, including sprite.
10. Redesign Teddy Bear sprite.
11. Redesign Magic Butterfly sprite.
12. Replace/Alter Battle w/ police and Captain Strong.

It's a decent amount of stuff to hack, but I have a decent amount of "free" time to work on it so I would expect an IPS in about two, maybe three weeks tops.

I'll leave you today with some pictures of some of the completed sprites I've done so far.

Ness' replacement sprite.


Ness' Mom's replacement sprite.


Captain Strong's replacement sprite.


Lier X. Agerate's replacement sprite.


Buzz-Buzz's replacement sprite.


The Meteor's replacement sprite.


A new sprite to replace some of the cops.


This is just the beginning folks, I hope to accomplish quite a bit more in the next couple of weeks. I might also upload another longer preview video with the new battle sprites and item names a little later tonight, so check in later, you might be surprised.

Quite a bit of progress...

This post was supposed to be my WIP to-do list, well unfortunately I left my notebook that has the list in it at work, so this will be an update on the current progress to date.

1. Ness' sprite changed
   
2. Buzz Buzz sprite changed
3. Captain Strong sprite changed
4. Meteor sprite changed
5. Completely new NPC sprite
6. Lier X. Agerate's sprite changed
7. Ness' Mom's sprite changed
8. Landscape of Northern Onett "drastically changed"
9. Onett now called Oceanside
10. "Sharks" Changed to "The Arcade Ninjas"
11. Completely renamed items, about 75% complete
12. Created several pieces of graffiti that will be plastered in various spots, only implemented one so far.
13. Altered the red truck sprite with a different advertisement on the side.
14. Implemented new window border design, about 33% complete.
15. All new logo screens, all 3 replaced.
    

There's probably more changes that I'm forgetting right now but these are the major ones. "Onett/Oceanside should be complete in a week or two and a demo IPS patch will follow, so keep your eyes peeled. Tomorrow I should be posting the to-do list for the changes I'm doing to Onett/Oceanside.

Also any ideas for potential new graffiti for the game would be appreciated, but please make it Earthbound or Starmen.net related.

Here's a preview video of the game..this is a W.I.P. mind you, it doesn't show the new monsters or items.

1st post of hopefully many...

Well first of all I've never had a blog before but I figured I would start one and dedicate it to my Earthbound rom hack. I first started this hack over a year ago and it hasn't progressed much until the past couple months. I have gotten the PK hack bug again(for those who don't know PK hack is the name of the one and only Earthbound editor). I will be posting any and all updates here as they are completed, the next the I'll post is a WIP to-do list for the 1st town and several other things so keep watch.