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Unusual Hack Ideas

Started by Salanewt, 23, September, 2016, 11:31:26 PM

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Salanewt

This could be anything you can think of or want to work on, from mechanics or other specific changes to full hacks. Or even anything else you want to discuss but which you feel may not be common ideas!
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#1
Another topic that should be pinned? :P (Funny part being there's nothing here worth reading yet.)

Hack Idea #1 : Simplify the mechanics: Instead of having Elemental powers, just have Fundamental powers. Since the elements weren't reborn yet. - And then one by one, as the lighthouses are lit, have these elements "unlocked"... (Perhaps with different functionality since these wouldn't be the main game feature?)
That idea needs some refining to make sense, though.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Salanewt

For what?


Oh yeah, something I've thought about doing is to see if a contextual utility could work (basically like context-sensitive buttons in Conker's Bad Fur Day, but a little different). The downside is you would probably either need to base an entire hack around it or have the possible uses for it be fairly similar, or else it may not mesh well with other puzzles.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Luna_blade

Fundamental powers souns like a great idea!


I've got an unusual idea: make a tactical RPG out of Golden Sun (like FFTactics or Ogre).
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

QuoteFundamental powers souns like a great idea!
Yeah. And the final boss should be at Mt. Aleph instead of Mars Lighthouse.

QuoteI've got an unusual idea: make a tactical RPG out of Golden Sun
Sounds like my idea from the cbox. XD

Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

leaf

Nothing wrong with making a tactical RPG based on GS... however, there is something *very* wrong with trying to do that *in the golden sun engine*.
[spoiler=quotes]
[9:00:50 PM] Randel Peltier: Ok...what did I do last night?
[9:01:19 PM] Kain: Something boring, repetitive, and lasted for about sixty seconds.
---
[10:45:08 AM] Salanewt: But yeah, the elemental phalluses are being... Stroked up by Saturos and co., and the energy will go towards... Mt. Muffin, where the Golden Climax will arise.
[7:28:42 PM] Salanewt: An added bonus is that Isaac and co. were trying to stop Saturos and co. because their beliefs state that Mt. Muffin should remain a virgin.
---
[9:54:21 PM] Randel Peltier: Guess the number in my head an you get to pick what I say. Number between 1-10
[9:54:28 PM] leaf: 11
[9:54:36 PM] Randel Peltier: @#$%!
---
[8:38:13 PM] Randel Peltier: Shes like this queen up on a pedastal that I have yet to court.
[8:38:29 PM] Kain: You've tried courting her.
[8:38:43 PM] leaf: and failed spectacularly
[8:38:44 PM] Randel Peltier: Ive tried...shes the best dating game ever.
---
[12:24:35 AM] Salanewt: I need to find a picture of a naked person to put on the Christmas tree next year.
---
[2:19:06 PM] Zeadra: wait... Rief's a guy???
---
[1:09:57 PM] Zeadra: well if you want to know if its a new effect or something weird, just check GS1, if side step is there maby it is the nimble dodge thing
[1:10:35 PM] Kioll: For once, you've contributed something useful.  o.O[/spoiler]

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#6
Very wrong? Not really... "Not smart." would make a bit more sense. - After all, one could still strip away half of the engine or so, and grab pieces of code from whatever tactical game you want.... (etc.)

Even so, programming is an art... Having a mindset that, for example, there is only one "right" way to do something is a bit wrongfully thought.. so I say the question is which way is the smart(est) way instead. (For what we would find most desirable.)

Whatever you do, you can be sure it most certainly isn't going to be perfect... (And I don't think art works that way?)
Can one even find the perfect balance between these:
Taking the long way vs. taking shortcuts.
Paying attention to trivial detail vs. cutting corners.
Being Mr. Slow Poke vs. being too fast.
Etc.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

leaf

Do you do this intentionally or are you just naturally a moron? It would be easier and take less time to code your own engine from scratch than it would be to attempt to hack a tactical combat engine into golden sun.

I never said there was only one right way to do things, but there is *absolutely* a wrong way to do them. For example, if you try to solve something recursively that would be faster to process, easier to read, about the same amount of code, and consume less memory to solve iteratively, you're doing it wrong. There might be a hundred different ways you could write that same function, all of which solve the same problem while optimizing for different things, but if something is outclassed in every possible way, then it's wrong.
[spoiler=quotes]
[9:00:50 PM] Randel Peltier: Ok...what did I do last night?
[9:01:19 PM] Kain: Something boring, repetitive, and lasted for about sixty seconds.
---
[10:45:08 AM] Salanewt: But yeah, the elemental phalluses are being... Stroked up by Saturos and co., and the energy will go towards... Mt. Muffin, where the Golden Climax will arise.
[7:28:42 PM] Salanewt: An added bonus is that Isaac and co. were trying to stop Saturos and co. because their beliefs state that Mt. Muffin should remain a virgin.
---
[9:54:21 PM] Randel Peltier: Guess the number in my head an you get to pick what I say. Number between 1-10
[9:54:28 PM] leaf: 11
[9:54:36 PM] Randel Peltier: @#$%!
---
[8:38:13 PM] Randel Peltier: Shes like this queen up on a pedastal that I have yet to court.
[8:38:29 PM] Kain: You've tried courting her.
[8:38:43 PM] leaf: and failed spectacularly
[8:38:44 PM] Randel Peltier: Ive tried...shes the best dating game ever.
---
[12:24:35 AM] Salanewt: I need to find a picture of a naked person to put on the Christmas tree next year.
---
[2:19:06 PM] Zeadra: wait... Rief's a guy???
---
[1:09:57 PM] Zeadra: well if you want to know if its a new effect or something weird, just check GS1, if side step is there maby it is the nimble dodge thing
[1:10:35 PM] Kioll: For once, you've contributed something useful.  o.O[/spoiler]

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#8
QuoteDo you do this intentionally or are you just naturally a moron?
Aw. I'm offended. Sorry. It's okay, I guess....

QuoteIt would be easier and take less time to code your own engine from scratch than it would be to attempt to hack a tactical combat engine into golden sun.
That is 100% true with current tools/knowledge/etc. that the majority of people would more than likely have. (But I wouldn't call either way "wrong"... (at least when not being specific... i.e.: Wrong way to be fast?)... - To some (probably very few) people, difficulty /could/ be a reason for doing it that way, but meh.... As for time? Usually it is better to be faster, so most should be having that as a goal, however... what if time wasn't really a big factor b/c they wanted to do it that way bad enough? i.e. As a learning potential.)

QuoteI never said there was only one right way to do things
I didn't say you did, it was an example.

QuoteFor example, if you try to solve something recursively that would be faster to process, easier to read, about the same amount of code, and consume less memory to solve iteratively, you're doing it wrong.  There might be a hundred different ways you could write that same function, all of which solve the same problem while optimizing for different things, but if something is outclassed in every possible way, then it's wrong.
I would say it depends on your goals/interest/etc... Since one learns by doing, anyway.... You did remind me of my attempt at writing the GS text decompression (in my editor) two different ways, though...
If your goal is to get the main project done in a reasonable amount of time, then one should be using their time wisely and not waste a lot of time micro-optimizing.
Under the theory that one has a lot of free time and enjoys wasting it on nearly-pointless micro-optimizations.... then how would micro-optimizations be a bad thing? (The alternative could be procrastination.)
(Kinda straying from the topic, but following the idea that our time should be spent productively, I could then argue to some that excessive decorating/washing dishes/manually killing ants/etc. is pointless when there is a much better alternative. And how about writing out sentences vs. typing them?  Neither way is wrong. It gets the job done. However, I'd say typing is both faster (if you know the keyboard)/easier to read/easier to manage/etc. If you get down to the specifics, though... wasting someone's paper could be wrong, and unnecessary power usage as well,... like under circumstances where it could bring others at an unnecessary disadvantage. But I suppose if we went that way, I could say hacking the game at all could be a wrong due to messing with another person's intellectual property in a way that it most obviously wasn't designed for without consent. (Maybe.) But that can be a gray area, I think.))
I figure we do what we're use to/what works for us.

Quotebut if something is outclassed in every possible way, then it's wrong.
I think this means if something under preforms in every scenario? - I wouldn't say "wrong" if it works without errors... But I would say it is poor quality.

.... .... However, thinking about it a bit more ... ... @dictionary.com's recommended practice - Wouldn't "hacking the game" at all, be the "wrong way" to making a game, anyway? (Within the minds of those who use high-level languages. - But then there's also the Hacking Community.... so it may really just depend on context... e.g. (Rhetorical) So what is the wrong way to hold a golf club, if you are actually supposed to hold it backwards as one of the rules of the competition? (Now I'm just being silly.)

But mostly, I feel like this conversation is a bit pointless at this point... And especially seeing how it is off-topic and seems to have started up a long discussion, not sure why I even brought it up anymore.........
'


Hack Idea #2 : How about Big Brother Golden Sun? XD Might be better on the DSi or later, though... whatever features a camera and can connect to other devices/internet, haha.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

charon the ferryman

#9
Fox, all Leaf is trying to tell you is that there's no point to restructure an engine that doesn't support what you want to do when you can just build it yourself. It's stupid to try to rebuild it because there's no point and it wastes a metric fuckton of time. Hell, you could probably make a homebrew GBA game that is more efficient to build out what you want than just hacking Golden Sun. When hacking GS it's best to stay in the confines of the engine and try to use it creatively instead of building out a ton of new features.

Hell that's pretty much the main reason why I'm building out Colors on my own lol

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#10
I thought I agreed with that when I mentioned "100% true"?

Yeah, homebrew would be better... (And one can just copy-paste code from the original game if needed.)

But my point was that it depends on your goals/interests... if you're interested in the challenges of unnecessary things.... (And of course you'd use tools (i.e. like your own.) for modding, when they are appropriate.) - Doing Hard-core Ironman on Runescape would be an unnecessary thing... but people do it... (Dying=The End) - so how could that be any worse.... Haha...

But anyway...Understanding Golden Sun's memory layout is a relatively easy one, I think.... (Except it sucks that there was a handful of different compressions. - Mainly for graphical and text data... but also included map data files.) So....


And either way... If I even did choose to work on the project in the near future, I'm imagining doing it as a cheap (possibly purposefully unfinished) hack that's just for lulz.  But I ain't decided to do that yet. (And will just put it off until I even form reliable plans for it. For the kind of "cheapness" it would be, haha.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Rolina

Quote from: leaf on 24, September, 2016, 08:21:02 PM
Nothing wrong with making a tactical RPG based on GS... however, there is something *very* wrong with trying to do that *in the golden sun engine*.
This.  So much this.

I suppose you could use FFTA as a base, but then comes the problem of figuring out how to implement it.  I mean, I know what I'd do, but whether or not it'd let me do it is another story entirely.  Diminishing area damage alone would be tricky to pull off.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#12
FFTA could certainly be an option... The problem is that I'd have 0% knowledge of its format, so I cannot judge those specifics in comparison to GS. Maybe one could still find a way to copy/paste the main things over to avoid all the other stuff I wouldn't know much about, but.. hmm...

Perhaps some of my Advance Wars studies could help...

@ Diminishing area damage alone would be tricky to pull off. : I dunno, I was thinking that would be fairly easy.  I was thinking the graphics would be a tricky part, if not the trickiest.
But as for Area Diminishing area damage, it's just a matter of either:
-Scan all NPCs and detect how far they are away from targeted tile. - I wouldn't be concerned about performance here at all. You'd likely would never have 0x100+ NPCs on a single map, and things like decompression/graphics are probably more costly anyway.
-Or if NPCs are stored on tiles, Just check the tiles themselves. (I could see this way being useful for a path-finder - And even when this is done, it's still possible NPC's X/Y could still be in their own data.)
The distance would be set in a variable, and that would affect percent damage applied.
Either way, you end up with do/for/while loops in the code.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Salanewt

The great thing about FFTA is that all attacks are more or less tile-based, and any valid targets on those tiles can potentially be hit. So, something like the Blizzard spell can hit five tiles in a + shape without needing to actually have a target in the middle tile; diminishing damage could check for the central tile and do full damage there, but then do less for the others or something. I haven't looked into the coding for that game before though. Would graphics even be an issue?



As for an unusual hack idea, I am currently trying to decide if it would be feasible to add a "take control" ability so you control enemies. Like, for example, take control of a Refresh Ball when fighting Star Magician so you can heal your own party with it.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#14
QuoteWould graphics even be an issue?
Depends on what you're doing? It's bad enough we have a very limited palette if we used Indexed pixel data. (Like what is usually the case for GBA games.)

But I was thinking more about the difficulty in creating good-looking new sprites. (The ones missing from the game(s)...)  How easy is it to make Field-compatible Battle Ability Animations while noting the available palette space, etc.?
Difficulty as in time-consuming as well.

If anybody could create a sample of such graphics we might would need, then that could certainly encourage work on the project.... (Whether GBA or PC, etc.) (Not saying that it would be done, but any amount of encouragement is good encouragement!)

@format: I was referring solely to the memory data, and not the gameplay... just to make sure that's clear.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Rolina

Advance wars wouldn't work for a FFT/TO style tactical game, but it would work for something like FE/Suikoden, where you have different troop types.  It'd be a completely different system with GS theming, rather than a character-focused tactical game.  I think AW and FE are poor fits for that, especially given we'd in all likelyhood want an isometric view.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#16
Depending on what Isometric means.... (as far as leniency goes.)
-If we mean rotating the maps to be isometric, that could be a lot of work... and seeing as you'd also will need to fill in the sides of things... I'm kinda doubting anyone is motivated enough to really be serious about such a project like that.... (But I do admit it would be cool. - And I'd love to see something like that even if just for the beauty of the graphics./Comparisons.)

-Doing Isometric movement with the same GS maps (or custom/using same tiles), though, could maybe be worth looking into... But I was think square movement if you're using square maps could make more sense. (But you never know. :P)

Never exactly said it would be Advance Wars, though, I only met that they also feature things like movement/path-finder/etc.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Rolina

...Isometric means isometric. It's the camera angle of every TRPG not named Advance Wars or Fire Emblem.  We'd not be using GS maps for obvious reasons, since... you know... tactical RPG.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

#18
Well, unless we have any graphics designers for that project. (Assuming it is [custom] GS-styled graphics...) Then I guess I'm out?(?)
I mean sure I could do the basic coding with movement/AI/Damage calculations and stuff.... But I'm not sure I'm interested in wasting too much time with figuring out complicated and time-consuming graphics at the moment....(Maybe if I ever become a skilled graphics artist? While I'm sure it's quite possible I could look into that, I'd say it's nothing more than a dream, at the moment.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

OpenGoldenSun

Oh man this is hilarious. You guys are in for a funny surprise in my next video.