Official release of unofficial Boost Ball item for SM.

2008-09-28 01:22:26 pm

Quote from Zhs2:

I was reading all of the above posts, and people were saying, "Hey, xkas wouldn't patch the rom," and stuff like that, so hence I posted... (I'm looking at Bioniclegenius and Firephoenix0.)

Xkas will not give you an error if you use the wrong version. It will just not change the ROM at all. Those who were saying that xkas didn't change the ROM generally need to do one of these two things:

1. Make sure the xkas is the correct version;
2. Make sure their rom is named SM.smc.

I'm saying this also 'cuz I'm not too sure InsomniaDX would want ya to recommend using the .ips...

I actually have a pre-release version of the boostball because I'm the one that originally requested it being made. So currently, I have a semi-outdated version of the boostball. Now, I know I have the right xkas and files because I used the same xkas files to patch the pre-release to my rom. WHy it doesn't seem to want to be working now is beyond me though I did run some experiments with headers and it turns out that ZSNES crashes on a headered rom with boostball applied. However, Volta is currently unheadered so I have no clue why it isn't working, and from what I've gathered talking with him on IRC, Insom can't think of a reason either.

Maybe I'll just have to keep the pre-release version in my hack. It's not terribly outdated, the final is mostly minor bug fixes from my version.

[quote="Zhs2"]
I was reading all of the above posts, and people were saying, "Hey, xkas wouldn't patch the rom," and stuff like that, so hence I posted... (I'm looking at Bioniclegenius and Firephoenix0.)

Xkas will not give you an error if you use the wrong version. It will just not change the ROM at all. Those who were saying that xkas didn't change the ROM generally need to do one of these two things:

1. Make sure the xkas is the correct version;
2. Make sure their rom is named SM.smc.

I'm saying this also 'cuz I'm not too sure InsomniaDX would want ya to [i]recommend[/i] using the .ips...
[/quote]
I actually have a pre-release version of the boostball because I'm the one that originally requested it being made.  So currently, I have a semi-outdated version of the boostball.  Now, I know I have the right xkas and files because I used the same xkas files to patch the pre-release to my rom.  WHy it doesn't seem to want to be working now is beyond me though I did run some experiments with headers and it turns out that ZSNES crashes on a headered rom with boostball applied.  However, Volta is currently unheadered so I have no clue why it isn't working, and from what I've gathered talking with him on IRC, Insom can't think of a reason either.

Maybe I'll just have to keep the pre-release version in my hack.  It's not terribly outdated, the final is mostly minor bug fixes from my version.

Bioniclegenius

2008-09-28 05:01:31 pm

Fear Me! (Or else...)

Ah, can't believe I missed something so obvious. I didn't notice that I was supposed to be using a newer version of xkas (Sorry!). That would make a difference... Thanks, all!

Zhs2

2008-09-28 05:05:14 pm

Yo.

No, no, no. You're supposed to use an OLDER version, Bioniclegenius. It's not new at all. Hence the "DISCONTINUED" I mentioned in the above post. Read more carefully, ok?

BTW my fault for not saying older version, but meh.

Bioniclegenius

2008-09-28 05:06:46 pm

Fear Me! (Or else...)

Sorry, went back to it after I posted. Noticed that, but didn't think it worth to come back and re-post. Anyways, it's working all right now grin new

! I'll stop bothering you people now.

byuu

2008-09-28 06:22:22 pm

Saw this in the referral log, sorry to be nosy.

I'm always looking to improve the newer xkas to be more useful. May I ask what you prefer about the older version? Perhaps I can add it to the newer one as well.

If it's just familiarity, I understand. I'll keep the older version up as long as reasonably possible. I was forced to make a bunch of changes to accommodate multiple targets and unambiguous parsing, so the new one unfortunately cannot be backwards-compatible.

If you'd prefer to discuss elsewhere, or you want to request features at any time, my e-mail is setsunakun0 at hotmail dot com.

Also, it's all public domain; if you'd prefer to distribute the xkas v06 binary with your patch, you are more than welcome to. Lastly, thanks for using the assembler! Seeing how others use it is where I get most of my inspiration for improvements from.

Acheron

2008-09-28 11:51:17 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Whoa, it's byuu, how cool is that?

Personally I use xkas 0.06 because it's what was recommended to me. :| Lousy reason, I know. Maybe since you've mentioned it I'll learn the syntax of the newer one.

Besides that, I can only think that some of Kejardon's .asm files use 0.06 format, so it'd be a bit of a pain to compile in the new one. Looks like Insom uses it too, actually. You'd want the opinions of one of those two for the specifics, I think--hopefully they'll chime in on this.

Kejardon

2008-09-29 12:09:33 am

Embarrasing Fact: Power suit made by lowest bidder

It's basically a matter of familiarity. I can get xkas 0.06 to do just about anything I need it to do, and I don't want to relearn / reformat stuff.
Maybe when I finish Insanity and don't have ~100 text files already written for 0.06 I'll pick up the new version. :P

byuu

2008-09-29 02:07:03 pm

Ah, yes. I can definitely relate to that.

I have about ~100kb of code using the oldest xas from ~2000, and another ~200kb with xkas v0.06. I have no intentions on porting that to v0.12. And yeah, if v0.06 does everything already, no point in learning a new version.

Thanks for the reply. I know Nightcrawler specifically didn't want to use the new one simply because I use // for comments instead of ; *
Just wanted to make sure there wasn't a big concern like that from anyone else.

(* before, I had an ambiguous grammar with foo: nop : nop -- it was LL(2) (note the dual purpose of ':') and did not allow multiple labels per line. It is now foo:; nop; nop which is LL(1), and can express anything and everything on a single line, eg, "-; cpx #$20; bcs +; stz $2116; bra -; +", if so desired. Semi-colon was the only character not used by any instruction sets that looked reasonable as a separator.)

P.JMan

Edit history:

P.JMan: 2008-09-30 10:48:55 am

2008-09-29 04:39:03 pm

I like Big Butts and I can not lie

Hey byuu!! I've been using your 0.11 version (ooh, update), couple of things that were bugging me the other day:

db, dw, dl, dd are case sensitive, I seem to be writing all my opcodes in all-caps, so naturally I always write DW or DB a lot
When xkas gives an error, it gives the line number (does this ignore comments?), but it doesn't when giving a warning, I get a lot more warnings that I get errors, so it'd be more useful for me to have those pointed out for me too
The fill commands only support bytes, I'd really appriciate either supporting other datasizes or a "write every nth byte" parameter
Is there an "assume 16-bit accumulator/16-bit indices" function? That's burned into my head from writing .w so much
Defines and labels could do with more charactor support, dashes and pipes for example
The documentation needs some work, some of the stuff is confusing (namespaces!) or just need more info (the fills took some experimenting), I don't think all the functions are listed there either
Maybe I'm asking a lot here, but could you implement no$gba's 80x86 styled syntax? It's much easier to read and it's my natural coding style
ARM support! (that's a tricky one I know hehe. Not that I actually expect this very soon at all of course)

Hey byuu!! I've been using your 0.11 version (ooh, update), couple of things that were bugging me the other day:

[list]
[li] db, dw, dl, dd are case sensitive, I seem to be writing all my opcodes in all-caps, so naturally I always write DW or DB a lot[/li]
[li] When xkas gives an error, it gives the line number (does this ignore comments?), but it doesn't when giving a warning, I get a lot more warnings that I get errors, so it'd be more useful for me to have those pointed out for me too[/li]
[li] The fill commands only support bytes, I'd really appriciate either supporting other datasizes or a "write every nth byte" parameter[/li]
[li] Is there an "assume 16-bit accumulator/16-bit indices" function? That's burned into my head from writing .w so much[/li]
[li] Defines and labels could do with more charactor support, dashes and pipes for example[/li]
[li] The documentation needs some work, some of the stuff is confusing (namespaces!) or just need more info (the fills took some experimenting), I don't think all the functions are listed there either[/li]
[li] Maybe I'm asking a lot here, but could you implement no$gba's 80x86 styled syntax? It's much easier to read and it's my natural coding style[/li]
[li] ARM support! (that's a tricky one I know hehe. Not that I actually expect this very soon at all of course)[/li]
[/list]

byuu

Edit history:

byuu: 2008-09-30 06:30:58 pm

2008-09-30 06:19:53 pm

Quote:

db, dw, dl, dd are case sensitive, I seem to be writing all my opcodes in all-caps, so naturally I always write DW or DB a lot

Yeah, case insensitivity is good. Right now, I use operator== with my string class, which means all of the code is written as: if(command == "db"), much easier to understand than if(!stricmp(command, "db")) ... but yeah, I need to go with the latter.

Quote:

When xkas gives an error, it gives the line number (does this ignore comments?), but it doesn't when giving a warning, I get a lot more warnings that I get errors, so it'd be more useful for me to have those pointed out for me too

Ignore comments? Not sure what you mean by that. All comments are stripped, and the line numbers should always be the actual file line numbers.

Yeah, I need more verbose warnings, especially for failed math evaluations.

Quote:

The fill commands only support bytes, I'd really appriciate either supporting other datasizes or a "write every nth byte" parameter

I'm not sure why you'd need this. Can you give a real example of where it would help, and nothing else would be more appropriate? Making it multi-byte would require tricky syntax. I absolutely cannot stand fill x, y. Which one is the value, and which one is the length? Have to consult documentation to find out. That sucks big time.

Quote:

Is there an "assume 16-bit accumulator/16-bit indices" function? That's burned into my head from writing .w so much

No. I tried adding assume for m, x, d and db to xkas v0.06 and it was a disaster. It's impossible to track the state of P, eg "sep #$20; lda #$00; plp; lda #0" <- now what? Or: "lda #0; rts; newfunction: lda #0" <- now what?

I would use ldc #0 as a hidden mnemonic (technically the lower 8-bits is A, upper 8-bits is B, and the two combined is C), but there's no equivalent for X and Y.

When I used these for my own code, I found it increased the number of mistakes I made greatly, and made the code harder to read in the future, not being able to tell what lda #0 did without reading above. I recommend using hex form when possible. lda #$00 and lda #$0000 are unambiguous.

Quote:

Defines and labels could do with more charactor support, dashes and pipes for example

It's possible, but I've never seen an assembler do this. Dash, at least at the start, would be tricky, it would match the unary negation operator.

Quote:

The documentation needs some work, some of the stuff is confusing (namespaces!) or just need more info (the fills took some experimenting), I don't think all the functions are listed there either

If you mention what confuses you, I can try an elaborate, definitely. namespaces are just another level of code partitioning. Think of namespaces as the upper level, labels as the middle, and sublabels as the lower level. namespaces group multiple functions, labels group whole routines, sublabels help you with loops. They work almost like C++, only they don't allow nesting.

But you can use them however you like. Funny story, the Mother 3 guys use labels for namespaces, and sublabels for labels. Looks kind of like C++ object-oriented code.

Quote:

Maybe I'm asking a lot here, but could you implement no$gba's 80x86 styled syntax? It's much easier to read and it's my natural coding style

Never heard of this before. It's possible.

Quote:

ARM support! (that's a tricky one I know hehe. Not that I actually expect this very soon at all of course)

Of course, anyone is free to add this. It's way too complex for me. Even THUMB support is causing me lots of headaches about "pools" and all this crap, because the language itself is pure shit. ARM engineers should be ashamed. I know, I know, they only cared about making it nice for higher-level compilers. That much is painfully evident.

[quote]db, dw, dl, dd are case sensitive, I seem to be writing all my opcodes in all-caps, so naturally I always write DW or DB a lot[/quote]

Yeah, case insensitivity is good. Right now, I use operator== with my string class, which means all of the code is written as: if(command == "db"), much easier to understand than if(!stricmp(command, "db")) ... but yeah, I need to go with the latter.

[quote]When xkas gives an error, it gives the line number (does this ignore comments?), but it doesn't when giving a warning, I get a lot more warnings that I get errors, so it'd be more useful for me to have those pointed out for me too[/quote]

Ignore comments? Not sure what you mean by that. All comments are stripped, and the line numbers should always be the actual file line numbers.

Yeah, I need more verbose warnings, especially for failed math evaluations.

[quote]The fill commands only support bytes, I'd really appriciate either supporting other datasizes or a "write every nth byte" parameter[/quote]

I'm not sure why you'd need this. Can you give a real example of where it would help, and nothing else would be more appropriate? Making it multi-byte would require tricky syntax. I absolutely cannot stand fill x, y. Which one is the value, and which one is the length? Have to consult documentation to find out. That sucks big time.

[quote]Is there an "assume 16-bit accumulator/16-bit indices" function? That's burned into my head from writing .w so much[/quote]

No. I tried adding assume for m, x, d and db to xkas v0.06 and it was a disaster. It's impossible to track the state of P, eg "sep #$20; lda #$00; plp; lda #0" <- now what? Or: "lda #0; rts; newfunction: lda #0" <- now what?

I would use ldc #0 as a hidden mnemonic (technically the lower 8-bits is A, upper 8-bits is B, and the two combined is C), but there's no equivalent for X and Y.

When I used these for my own code, I found it increased the number of mistakes I made greatly, and made the code harder to read in the future, not being able to tell what lda #0 did without reading above. I recommend using hex form when possible. lda #$00 and lda #$0000 are unambiguous.

[quote]Defines and labels could do with more charactor support, dashes and pipes for example[/quote]

It's possible, but I've never seen an assembler do this. Dash, at least at the start, would be tricky, it would match the unary negation operator.

[quote]The documentation needs some work, some of the stuff is confusing (namespaces!) or just need more info (the fills took some experimenting), I don't think all the functions are listed there either[/quote]

If you mention what confuses you, I can try an elaborate, definitely. namespaces are just another level of code partitioning. Think of namespaces as the upper level, labels as the middle, and sublabels as the lower level. namespaces group multiple functions, labels group whole routines, sublabels help you with loops. They work almost like C++, only they don't allow nesting.

But you can use them however you like. Funny story, the Mother 3 guys use labels for namespaces, and sublabels for labels. Looks kind of like C++ object-oriented code.

[quote]Maybe I'm asking a lot here, but could you implement no$gba's 80x86 styled syntax? It's much easier to read and it's my natural coding style[/quote]

Never heard of this before. It's possible.

[quote]ARM support! (that's a tricky one I know hehe. Not that I actually expect this very soon at all of course)[/quote]

Of course, anyone is free to add this. It's way too complex for me. Even THUMB support is causing me lots of headaches about "pools" and all this crap, because the language itself is pure shit. ARM engineers should be ashamed. I know, I know, they only cared about making it nice for higher-level compilers. That much is painfully evident.

P.JMan

2008-09-30 06:35:09 pm

I like Big Butts and I can not lie

Quote from byuu:

Can you give a real example of where it would help

Say I were to change a large chunk of a level's design in real-time, say every tile of the bottom row for about 5 screens; blocks are stored as words, so I can't use the fill function, I could use the incbin function, but I might want to change what block the row is changed to later on, meaning I'd have to change the 80 words in a hex editor; if only the fill function supported words...

Obbligato

2008-11-07 01:21:51 am

Insomnia, I grow to love you more and more. grin new

Quick question: I changed the Gravity Suit palette. At the end of a boost, the morph ball returns to looking like the old Gravity Suit.

How can I tweak the Boost Ball to reflect the palette changes I made?

SleepingSeaweed

2008-11-07 04:31:35 am

I can't get the patch, when I click the link I just get redirected to that site called adelphia.com (and it's .net in the link :-s), searching the site doesn't get me anything either :(
I tried writing the same address without the "boostball.zip" part, that directs me to the message "this account has been disabled"

Quote from Obbligato:

How can I tweak the Boost Ball to reflect the palette changes I made?

It probably uses one of the old speed booster palettes. If you have already changed all speed booster palettes in SMILE (with the palette editor for Samus), there are still quite a few speed booster palettes that aren't included in the editor, maybe it's using one of those?

CaptainCrunk

2008-11-20 06:41:10 pm

Rick Roll'd Metroid2002

Well I realize I'm someone reviving this thread (come forth! muahaha), but I just wanted to congratulate Insomnia on his great work, and keep it up.
Also, I had no problems applying the asm file maybe no one was following the instructions properly.

I guess a cool idea of practicality of this is not half pipes but morphball tunnel/n00b bridges. And I suppose you could add in a sequence-breaking feature by making it possible to mochball through the n00b tunnel instead of boosting.

InsomniaDMX

2008-11-20 11:36:22 pm

--Lawrence of Arrakis--

Oh, I assure you all, I haven't forgotten about this by any means. I'm working on an overhaul of the slope handling code when in morphball form. Instead of the usual climbing motion, you'll see a rolling motion. Samus will roll down a slope unless she puts in enough force to go up. It'll attempt to be more realistic, though still implemented through the normal physics engine. I'm not going to go the Kej route and rewrite anything. I'm just going to make a new exception for morph ball. Consequently, this will allow structures like takeoff ramps and halfpipes to work.

And yeah, I haven't worked on that all month. Bear with me though; pretty soon I'll have some time provided I don't pour it on something else.

Opium

2008-11-20 11:46:57 pm

Quote from InsomniaDMX:

Oh, I assure you all, I haven't forgotten about this by any means. I'm working on an overhaul of the slope handling code when in morphball form. Instead of the usual climbing motion, you'll see a rolling motion. Samus will roll down a slope unless she puts in enough force to go up. It'll attempt to be more realistic, though still implemented through the normal physics engine. I'm not going to go the Kej route and rewrite anything. I'm just going to make a new exception for morph ball. Consequently, this will allow structures like takeoff ramps and halfpipes to work.

And yeah, I haven't worked on that all month. Bear with me though; pretty soon I'll have some time provided I don't pour it on something else.

Cool! some kinetic orb cannons would be nice as well

CaptainCrunk

2008-11-21 12:07:01 am

Rick Roll'd Metroid2002

Quote from Opium:

Quote from InsomniaDMX:

Oh, I assure you all, I haven't forgotten about this by any means. I'm working on an overhaul of the slope handling code when in morphball form. Instead of the usual climbing motion, you'll see a rolling motion. Samus will roll down a slope unless she puts in enough force to go up. It'll attempt to be more realistic, though still implemented through the normal physics engine. I'm not going to go the Kej route and rewrite anything. I'm just going to make a new exception for morph ball. Consequently, this will allow structures like takeoff ramps and halfpipes to work.

And yeah, I haven't worked on that all month. Bear with me though; pretty soon I'll have some time provided I don't pour it on something else.

Cool! some kinetic orb cannons would be nice as well

LOL that's where I draw the line

Acheron

2008-11-26 12:57:27 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

I've been away for a while, but I'm glad to hear you're still on this. I hope to use it for Aegis, you know...

I continue to eagerly anticipate your work and encourage you to keep on truckin'.

rolando

2008-11-26 01:50:46 pm

Quote from InsomniaDMX:

Maybe this'll help.
If the directory doesn't have at least each and every last one of these files in it, it won't work:

do the files need to be in that order? because im trying to patch it the way it says but no luck..

rolando

2008-11-26 02:33:34 pm

are you sure you people are explaining this step by step because it seems like you people are skipping some information....

i did everything it said in these pages and its not working!.....(its getting me pissed!)

don't tell me in order to patch this i need to do some crazy stuff to it also come on this can't be that hard.......

rolando

2008-11-26 02:38:19 pm

and if i apply the patch the game won't work........

isn't there a guide on youtube or something?

Acheron

2008-11-26 03:07:51 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Don't double (or triple) post, 'tis 'gainst za rules.

Every step's been explained several times in this thread; nothing's been left out. There's not really much more advice I can offer you since you're not really describing what you're doing (somewhat hard to troubleshoot for "I did everything" or "the game won't work" or "it's not working", I'm afraid).

rolando

2008-11-26 03:17:13 pm

Quote from Acheron86:

Don't double (or triple) post, 'tis 'gainst za rules.

Every step's been explained several times in this thread; nothing's been left out. There's not really much more advice I can offer you since you're not really describing what you're doing (somewhat hard to troubleshoot for "I did everything" or "the game won't work" or "it's not working", I'm afraid).

SIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok im gonna be calm as possible trying to explain this.
i put all the files how it showed in the picture
i tried running the boostball-ms-dos batch file
and all it says is xkas_v0.6>xkas boostball.asm SM.smc

i know its not suppose to show in smile but i keep trying to test it and i keep getting the normal spring ball....
i don't know what to do.
is there like a video where they could show mw how to do this the right way....because i feel like banging my head on this keyboard.

and im sorry for posting so much but im getting F***ing pissed!

[quote="Acheron86"]
Don't double (or triple) post, 'tis 'gainst [url=http://forum.metroid2002.com/index.php/topic,1051.0.html]za rules[/url].

Every step's been explained several times in this thread; nothing's been left out. There's not really much more advice I can offer you since you're not really describing what you're doing (somewhat hard to troubleshoot for "I did everything" or "the game won't work" or "it's not working", I'm afraid).
[/quote]SIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok im gonna be calm as possible trying to explain this.
i put all the files how it showed in the picture 
i tried running the boostball-ms-dos batch file 
and all it says is xkas_v0.6>xkas boostball.asm SM.smc

i know its not suppose to show in smile but i keep trying to test it and i keep getting the normal spring ball....
i don't know what to do.
is there like a video where they could show mw how to do this the right way....because i feel like banging my head on this keyboard.

and im sorry for posting so much but im getting F***ing pissed!

Acheron

2008-11-26 04:29:15 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from rolando:

i tried running the boostball-ms-dos batch file
and all it says is xkas_v0.6>xkas boostball.asm SM.smc

I haven't compiled any patches lately, but I'm pretty sure this is what it's supposed to say. Now make sure your ROM is named SM.smc before you run xkas, then test it on a new save file, and it should work.

Opium

2008-11-26 04:45:35 pm

Quote from Acheron86:

Quote from rolando:

i tried running the boostball-ms-dos batch file
and all it says is xkas_v0.6>xkas boostball.asm SM.smc

I haven't compiled any patches lately, but I'm pretty sure this is what it's supposed to say. Now make sure your ROM is named SM.smc before you run xkas, then test it on a new save file, and it should work.

Quote from rolando:

i tried running the boostball-ms-dos batch file
and all it says is xkas_v0.6>xkas boostball.asm SM.smc

looks like he did rename the file correctly