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rom hacking question

Tri-Force

Philosopher Warrior
as everyone knows all files can be opened as text. no suprise right. well i was wondering if you open a rom as text and copy the right amonut of the begining (the boot code) is it possiable to copy the boot code to another rom who's boot code isni't supported by an emulator. this is just my theory right now and snice i have no idea which part of the text is the boot code i havn't been able to try it. I ask because if this is able to work then we can hack roms to be able to play in supra or ultra just by changing the code to a known one and using the known ini settings for the new game. can anyone figure this out.
 

flow``

flow``
you can check out LemAsm (from nemu.com)

it allows you to modify roms, although you might need some knowledge hacking in order to use it.
 

neoak

Triforce of Something...
well...

Practically, is impossible without modify the code. Every rom loads special codes, like compresion codecs (Evangelion64, Perfect Dark and ConquerBFD's MP3, RE2's Bitmaps and MPEGs... etc). You must understand every boot code in order to copy part of it.

(Evangelion doesn't show 2D graphics due to compression and unsupported banks of memory in emus...
 

The Khan Artist

Warrior for God
Anyway, why use a text editor? It's much better to do it with a hex editor. Or, you can get Ultra-Edit, and have it all in one. :D
 
OP
Tri-Force

Tri-Force

Philosopher Warrior
I dont know it just makes me think of that scene from the Matrox where the dude is watching the code on the screen but what he sees in his mind is red head brunete becasue he knows the code that well.
 

Cyberman

Moderator
Moderator
Tri-Force said:
I dont know it just makes me think of that scene from the Matrox where the dude is watching the code on the screen but what he sees in his mind is red head brunete becasue he knows the code that well.
Ummm.. I don't believe that's what they said..
Actually they were programed so well from the nerological data and information sent to them that's what they saw.

Now back to the subject.

Text editors are extremely limited first off.
Text is generally ASCII data which is from 0-127 this is kind of limited.

A hex editor is better suited for binary data (IE ROM CODE).

Cutting and pasting boot code though probably thought of won't work. Not only because the boot code is different for each game but what each game uses for a library of software is different.

The only thing I can think of is dissasembling and decompiling the entire code in the ROM. Using HLE to pick off Chunks of code you know are likely to be calls to library functions. Then reversing the entire rom painstakingly.

Cyb
 

icepir8

Moderator
Hex Workshop v3.11 lets you cut/copy and paste. Also you can have multiple files open. No you can't just copy a new boot code into a rom and have it work. The newer roms check the boot code version in several differrent places to make it harder to modify and of the code. Also the CRCs in the header would need recreated.

L8r,

Icepir8
 

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