Development: Porting the Ruins of Alph puzzle to Emerald

[diegoisawesome]

We all know the Ruins of Alph puzzle made by Mastermind_X, right?
http://sfc.pokefans.net/lesson.php?id=21
Well, it was made for Fire Red, and when I wanted it in my Emerald hack, I tried to port it over. I changed the LASTRESULT address and tried it in-game.

As you can see, the result was less than satisfactory, and although it did work, it did have some glitches. As you can see here, the strange coloration is one part, and the other part is that after exiting it, pressing start would give you a weirdly formatted start menu, at the botom of the screen. Exiting it and trying again would bring up the normal Start menu, except exiting this one would remove all of the tiles on the top layer of the map.

So my question is this: How can Mastermind_X's brilliant puzzle be taken over to Emerald?

[TheDarkShark]

Tutti did this for Eissturm, i think...
But he doesn't seem active here, I'll ask him if you want

[shiny quagsire]

Could you post a picture of the pallet before you touch it and after for us? I'm not sure if it's just not changing the pallet or what the deal is.

[diegoisawesome]

Originally Posted by shiny quagsire

Could you post a picture of the pallet before you touch it and after for us? I'm not sure if it's just not changing the pallet or what the deal is.

It's not just that, the start menu is glitched up afterwards too. I believe it's because the RAM areas it uses are used in Emerald already... and maybe some ASM incompatibilities too.

[Darthatron]

Originally Posted by diegoisawesome

It's not just that, the start menu is glitched up afterwards too. I believe it's because the RAM areas it uses are used in Emerald already... and maybe some ASM incompatibilities too.

It would definitely be the RAM areas, but it wouldn't be ASM incompatibilities, because that makes no logical sense.

[diegoisawesome]

Originally Posted by Darthatron

It would definitely be the RAM areas, but it wouldn't be ASM incompatibilities, because that makes no logical sense.

Well, what I meant was that you might have had to branch to different ROM locations or push and pop some extra registers.

[shiny quagsire]

I found your little problem with the palette. In Fire Red, the palette is copied via DMA to 0x05000000, which means that manually writing to that location will have it automagically rewritten over by the DMA (I personally discovered this with some of my own ASM). However, there is a palette buffer (two actually, one is for fading) in the Pokemon Games where the DMA copies from. In Fire Red, this buffer is at 0x020371f8. However, in Emerald, it's 0x02037B14. so a simple pointer search should fix that. M_X may or may not have used this buffer, so if searching the FR pointer comes up with nothing, find the main palette memory (0x05000000) and the obj pallet memory, which is 0x200 more than the background palette and replace those accordingly (adding 0x200 to the offset for the OBJ palette)

As for the menu, it may have something to do with how he preserves the palettes and tiles. What he does is he copies a big portion (or all) of the OBJ memory and the tile memory, and stores them using these #defines in his main.h file:

#define lzData2         ((u16*)0x203C000)
#define lzData          ((u16*)0x203D000)
#define save1           ((u16*)0x203E000)
#define save2           ((u16*)0x203F000)

So perhaps repoint those RAM locations to fix the menu.

[diegoisawesome]

Originally Posted by shiny quagsire

I found your little problem with the palette. In Fire Red, the palette is copied via DMA to 0x05000000, which means that manually writing to that location will have it automagically rewritten over by the DMA (I personally discovered this with some of my own ASM). However, there is a palette buffer (two actually, one is for fading) in the Pokemon Games where the DMA copies from. In Fire Red, this buffer is at 0x020371f8. However, in Emerald, it's 0x02037B14. so a simple pointer search should fix that. M_X may or may not have used this buffer, so if searching the FR pointer comes up with nothing, find the main palette memory (0x05000000) and the obj pallet memory, which is 0x200 more than the background palette and replace those accordingly (adding 0x200 to the offset for the OBJ palette)

As for the menu, it may have something to do with how he preserves the palettes and tiles. What he does is he copies a big portion (or all) of the OBJ memory and the tile memory, and stores them using these #defines in his main.h file:

#define lzData2         ((u16*)0x203C000)
#define lzData          ((u16*)0x203D000)
#define save1           ((u16*)0x203E000)
#define save2           ((u16*)0x203F000)

So perhaps repoint those RAM locations to fix the menu.

Well, to start with, this isn't the only problem. Being designed for a standalone ROM, it doesn't fade in and out nor play a jingle. Besides this, the routine needs to be rewritten to use the in-game methods of storing data, such as the LZ data and palette data. Basically, the source is amazing to finally have so these issues can be fixed.

[SBird]

I had this problem too, together with some other problems, the thing is that Mastermind_X used the direct palette RAM at 0x05000000, but as you know maybe Pokémon backstores the Palettes in the WRAM. The data is copied in the DMA3 line and you want to turn that off. I can only give you the adresses for the german ROMs and what you want to change, it might be similar to the english ones:

Firered(BPRD):

Disable: 0x02037AC0 = 0x80
Able: 0x02037AC0 = 0x40

Emerald(BPED):

Disable: 0x02037FDC = 0x80
Able: 0x02037FDC = 0x40

The Firered ones were researched by driver and published in his research note files.

You want to find the offset in the routine and change it.
As I tried that I had some problems with the OAM stuff. The sprites were all bugged and I wasnt able to end the code correctly, I think some layers and also the OAM was bugged, I wasn't able to solve that though.
Hope I could help and maybe I also find an answer to my problems

~SBird

[ElitePokes]

I hope you find a way to make this puzzle for emerald to play it on crystaldust xD