Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Releasing the tool

Hi there,

I received the Sygnal analyser ten days ago. I'm trying to setup everything to start reading signals. It's easier to say than to do it :))

I plan to release the tool to convert games in very very short time, however the tool at this moment, although it works great, it works with files (10, 20, 30,31,etc. which are inside the CD) rather than with the ISO itself so you need to extarct the files from the ISO, convert them with the tool and use an HEX EDitor to put the content back.
Another feature is that it's programmed with DJGPP =)) rolling on the floor

I was thinking about converting it to Visual C++ and make it work with ISOs, but this will eventually delay the release. Should I release it as it is?

Another thing is that if you want to convert a game for a cart that uses less memory (like i.e. SFIII 3rd Strike to work on cartridge of SFIII NewGen), then you need to create 2 cds. The first CD will contain the files 10,30,31,40 and 41 and we will update as normally, then we need to remove these SIMMS, replace them with new ones and make the second update.
After that we move the SIMMS of the second update to their rightposition (Slot 1-->Slot 2 and Slot 3 -->5 and Slot 4-->Slot 6) and place the SIMMS of the first update to the Slots 1,3 and 4.
Notice that in both updates you should have the correspondent SIMM in slot 5 although we will discard it at the end.

As the cartridge hasn't been hacked yet, this is the only way to do it. Actually it will take almost the same amount of time to make the update as with the original. The main hassle is to change the SIMMS.

If you have any comments or would like to help with the conversion to Visual C++, feel free to comment. I will also release the source probably as GPL.