Project: Removing the infamous Event System

[P.JBoy]

EDIT: Clearly I've stopped working on this, but I found a hex tweak to allow out of order event sequencing:

Code Select Expand


$08060B10 = E016h
$08060B30 = E006h


See this video:
Event++ hack


ORIGINAL POST:
I'm hoping to start trying to crack down that Event++ system once and for all.  Will be posting progress and logs here, that way anyone who's up to GBA ASM can do their part.

If anyone's up for learning GBA ASM, they can always come onto the Metconst Discord server.  I myself, learnt ASM from these two resources while learning to make cheat codes: Basic stuff, actual ASM stuff.  In fact, everything on that site is useful.
I have a symbolic debug file for no$gba as well, helps a lot, it replaces known RAM and ROM addresses to the names in the file.  The file name needs to have the
same name as the ROM you're using.

[Quietus]

I know you're experienced enough to know your way around it all, but good luck anyway.  This'll be a milestone if you pull it off, and can't help but galvanise hacking for this game.

[personitis]

Good luck. I wish you return alive.

* person701 salutes.

[Parabox]

It's funny how you named things... Escaped planet lol.

[zephyrtronium]

This is the third time this has been attempted? As in, this time is the charm? :D!:

[P.JBoy]

Here's the first small chunk, I'm pretty sure this subroutine is called more than once throughout the game so...

[P.JBoy]

Second update, trying to figure out what those BL's do; sure didn't expect a 5K plethora of code for one of them BL's (~20 times as big disassembled).  Should really find out what 03000060 is...

[personitis]

Keep grinding PJ. Fusion would be awesome if i weren't for it's linear progression.

[P.JBoy]

Gettin' there...  I'm pretty sure it's down to 03000060 and the 'Ability data' as I've named it.

[Quietus]

Man, you're a machine.  Go, P.JBoy!  :^_^:

[P.JBoy]

Well, lets see.  I've got it so that you can fight bosses in any order and it'll give you the item it should.  Of course it still sets the event in the event counter, and that affects all the environmental states and whatnot.  Also, certain bosses/events are only accessible after doing other specific events, so that needs to be fixed :)

[P.JBoy]

Here's a video:
Event++ hack

[Parabox]

Scary. But awesome. A new generation of Fusion hacks will come to be. I hope a Doom themed one as well.

[P.JBoy]

Well, at this point, the game's perfectly non-linear, after just taking away the events; navigation rooms and grey doors just need to be removed with a level editor.  The only editing that'd still be needed is if you want to add your own events, or to still use some of Fusion's

[personitis]

Sooo wait... you cracked it?! :O WEWT! GO PJ BOI! Another suggestion is have the level editor be able to custom the event timeline in the way you want it... though that sounds like it's out on quite the limb.

[Parabox]

The only thing (in my humble opinion) left to do now is splitting the beams. It would be awesome if you could use them all seperately, not?

[P.JBoy]

you cracked it?

Well, if you were to make a proper hack that redesigned the entire map, then events wouldn't affect you.  However, smaller hacks that just change the room layout would be horribly broken by beating the bosses out of order

[personitis]

In other words, you cracked it. :D Good job PJ Boy! With no events people can be dicks and make Yakuza the first boss!

* person701 shoots self.

[Malpercio]

sweet. so is there a patch link? or a doc somewhere on what changes to make? now that the stupid event system's dead, we can finally start making actual hacks, instead of visual revamps and room layout changes, etc.

[P.JBoy]

Well, I was given a great idea on IRC to recreate a better event system, one which binds navigation rooms to their events.  I need to change any boss AIs that read the event counter to see if they should exist as well, then I'll release a patch/document

[Malpercio]

what do you mean by "binds navigation rooms to their events"?

[P.JBoy]

I was saying that the hack would leave you unable to use navigation rooms, because it gives you messages based on the event counter; e.g. it displays one message because you beat Yakuza and another when you beat Nettori, if you beat them in the reverse order, should it reverse the messages?  That can't work any other way than with the event counter system.  Then the idea appeared to have the messages tied to separate navigation units, so the message it displays would be based on which room it's in rather than the most recent boss you've conquered

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Well, I was given a great idea on IRC to recreate a better event system, one which binds navigation rooms to their events.

You're welcome. :p I hope it works out, as it'd be potentially much more awesome than leaving the navigation rooms "broken" so to speak.

[P.JBoy]

Me and my passiveness ;-)

[Phazar]

I was actually going to make a topic about this eventually, but oh well, here it is.  I was working on this over a year ago before I got bored of making no progress.  If I remember, I did attempt a removal of the first Adam command sequence in the ship, but IIRC all it did was crash the game.  Went through quite a few ROMs testing stuff out, glad you are starting to find a way to crack it!

Edit: Watched video.  HOLY CRAP YOU DID IT!!  Next you should try to remove those Navigation room doors to prevent time-wasting Adam talks.