Megaman PCE thread

[Keith Courage]

I was wondering. Does this have a save option or do you have to use passwords like the NES?

[ccovell]

MM1 had no passwords.  You had to play it all in one go.

[spenoza]

It IS the NES version.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ok, besides paralax, let's add a save system, energy refills, & 2...count em', 2 new levels lifted from the PSP's Mega Man Powered Up!  Oilman & Timeman for the winnnnnnnnnn!   J/K

[touko]

Those are just regular .NSF files without their headers.  The player is simple enough, but DPCM and short-period noise settings (the "dit"s in Quickman's stage) are not emulated.

Ok, thanks for explanations .

I think trying your player and squirrel for my next project, and see which one is most accessible for me.
Tom has a good ones too, but too complicated for my skills .

[ccovell]

OK, if you're going to use them in your productions, remember that you can't use cut-up / bankswitched NSFs (unless you hack them to do the PCE bankswitching for you.) 
Also, since my code maps PCE RAM into $0000 and $4000 to emulate the NES audio regs, you have to find an NSF that doesn't use ZP $00-$17 as scratch RAM.  Since NSFs can write to anywhere in $000-$7FF, the first $800 bytes of PCE RAM are unusable unless you know beforehand what ranges a particular NSF will use.

[touko]

Rah ok, i'll try with your .bin first.
And thank you for tips ..

[esteban]

This thread brought tears to my eyes.

Bonknuts, thanks for deciding to push this project further along. I (we) greatly appreciate it.

[SamIAm]

I just thought I'd let you know - I burned myself a copy of 0.98, and putting it in my Duo, I played MegaMan 1 for the first time in my life and beat Cutman. I had a lot of fun, and I plan on trying it again soon. Excellent work!

[Bonknuts]

OK, if you're going to use them in your productions, remember that you can't use cut-up / bankswitched NSFs (unless you hack them to do the PCE bankswitching for you.) 
Also, since my code maps PCE RAM into $0000 and $4000 to emulate the NES audio regs, you have to find an NSF that doesn't use ZP $00-$17 as scratch RAM.  Since NSFs can write to anywhere in $000-$7FF, the first $800 bytes of PCE RAM are unusable unless you know beforehand what ranges a particular NSF will use.

 I still need to add/fix the sweep emulation in my audio core. I take it that you have that working in your build?

I just thought I'd let you know - I burned myself a copy of 0.98, and putting it in my Duo, I played MegaMan 1 for the first time in my life and beat Cutman. I had a lot of fun, and I plan on trying it again soon. Excellent work!

 Glad you liked it Hopefully most people will like the upgraded version. I've thought about including the popular Megaman hack as a well, but none of the completed/finish ones seem to interest me. And some are just too difficult for my tastes.

 

Ok, besides paralax, let's add a save system, energy refills, & 2...count em', 2 new levels lifted from the PSP's Mega Man Powered Up!  Oilman & Timeman for the winnnnnnnnnn! Very Happy  J/K

Just for you PD, I *will* always keep in mind the possibility of parallax via dynamic tiles when doing the upgrade. And if it's not a lot of work, I'll put it in the game. As for the other two guys, yeah... no. Unless you find me a veteran MM1 hacker that's willing to create the bosses and levels, then we'll add it in. Hacking graphics is one thing, hacking major game engine logic is something else entirely.

 But on that note, what about an 'easy' mode? I can make Megaman's weapons more powerful and could probably make his life have more points (or the enemy's attacks be weaker) for such a mode. Saving *might* be a possibility. I did have plans to look into that at one time. I could also make a password system for it too, but is that really needed?

 Anyway, keep an eye out for Megaman hackers on the net and redirect them here. I'd love to add some new functionality or areas to the game (even bosses). 

[ParanoiaDragon]

Aw man, I was kidding about all that.  All of it would be awesome, but, especially adding in the other 2 robot masters would be a chore, no doubt.  That'd be cool if we found someone that could look at the levels from the PSP game & pixel them up & such!  Paralax, I had no hope of seeing it, mainly with it being an emulation rather then built from scratch, but, if it's doable, awesome!

An easy mode would be great, though I'm sure some people would moan that the game already had the perfect amount of challenge.  Honestly, I appreciated the easy mode in Mega Man 10, though, I sometimes wonder if it was too easy.  I still haven't beat MM9 yet though, I've had a hard time with Wily's castle.

[Bonknuts]

Aw man, I was kidding about all that.

 I know, but I put some thought into it. I mean, I'm not gonna go out of my way to do dynamic tiles in every level. But some levels could benefit from them or are dynamic tile friendly. Like Elecman's level for instance, in some areas. There are other effects possible too. Hsync BG color 0 and sparse sprites as clouds or such in the open BG areas. Because I'm redoing the sprite meta table in the game to use PCE sprites, that means the sprite table and scanline bandwidth will be more freed up for such sprite effect handling. Though, I'm think simple stuff. Nothing fancy by any means.

 

All of it would be awesome, but, especially adding in the other 2 robot masters would be a chore, no doubt.

 
 Oh, I know it would be a lot of work. But it also be pretty damn cool to have two extra bosses/levels even if the weapons obtained from them don't amount to much. All the other Megaman games on the NES have 8 levels to choose from; upgrading MM1 to that would be nice IMO. That old adage "if you gonna do something, do it right". Within reason of course. It's something I'd like to do, but it would pretty low on the list of things to do - obviously. But just imagine, two bosses that are unique to the PCE version (screw copying them from the PSP version). The idea is just so tempting that it's hard not imagining me at least trying to do it myself if needed.

An easy mode would be great, though I'm sure some people would moan that the game already had the perfect amount of challenge.  Honestly, I appreciated the easy mode in Mega Man 10, though, I sometimes wonder if it was too easy.  I still haven't beat MM9 yet though, I've had a hard time with Wily's castle.

 As much as I find the difficulty as just average for the game, I know others aren't used to it. I don't think there's anything wrong with an easy mode. I mean, if that means more people can enjoy the game then so be it. It doesn't do anything to hurt the game on normal difficulty, being selectable and all.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I just had a thought, one other thing that all the other MM's have that MM1 doesn't have, is closeup's of the robot masters.  I was thinking of a way to have it both ways.  Maybe have a close up of each bot, & when you press Run, there's some kind of animation to make it look like the bot is jumping up & back so that he's the regular sprite size ...if that makes sense?

[Bonknuts]

I did a quick sprite holder update:
I'm gonna need to change my method for hacking the sprite meta table and just hook it completely for the main character frames (I need more control on the X/Y offset as seen by the jump firing - the frame is too high up).

[grahf]

That's great! 

BTW, why not change the title screen so that it clearly says it's your hack? It might keep some of the scumbags from scamming people.