I'm aware that I could not make any article dedicated for you, my patrons, this month and I'm sorry for that. I could not finish nor update my most recent projects and that I ended up leaving a gap though this month.
But the good news is that December we will likely get at least two updates and one release:
SA-1 Pack v1.40 will allow SMW hackers to make levels with much more giant sprites at the same time (Big Boo, Banzai Bill, fireworks, etc.), allowing SMW hacking to finally com...
2019-11-27 04:31:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
No, it's not SA-1 Pack, nor SMW hacking, nor SNES researching, much less SPC Studio. SnesLab means much more than you can imagine and you will understand why on this article.
"The time is flying!"
November 10, 2019. Have you noticed how fast is 2019 going so far? You are not the only who thinks that the time is apparently getting faster. The real is that we are getting m...
2019-11-10 20:44:26 +0000 UTC
View Post
And finally it's out! Thank you everyone that tested and supported me for this new challenge called Contra III!
Download: https://github.com/VitorVilela7/SA1-Root
2019-10-05 19:11:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
UPDATE: Patch was updated with two more bugs: one on the boss 2 where it now fixes the boss image projection after an image rotation (and by consequence its hitbox and laser position), fixed the top-down enemy bases view (when you press select button while playing) and the audio delay during the intro.
This version of Contra III with the SA-1 chip has all known bugs fixed compared to the Alpha ...
2019-10-01 04:34:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
The incoming new system for SA-1 Pack v1.40, the OAM MaxTile System automatically pushes the SNES sprite hardware to the limits by compressing all unused entries and discarding the offscreen tiles. With that you can have up to eight banzai bills, six big boos and much more.
SMW has a semi-fixed sprite buffer, where each object has a static mapping to it. This works great on the game, but it always gave a fixed amount of tiles you can render, which always limited each sprite to draw up t...
2019-09-25 01:33:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
The first alpha version of the Contra III SA-1 is finally out! You can download here: https://sneslab.net/sa1/Contra-III-Alpha-1.bps - This initial release is exclusive for all of my patrons!
Remember that this is a BPS patch! If you would like to learn more how they work and how to patch them, check out this article I made on SnesLab: 2019-09-08 06:27:49 +0000 UTC
View Post
On this Sunday, September 1, I'm gonna get live at 14:00 GMT-3 for finishing everything else for getting the SA-1 version of Contra III done. I will code, test, talk about current issues/challenges and once we get everything working, I'm gonna release an alpha patch exclusive for all patrons subscribed here. Don't miss it!
Link: https://youtu.be/2hJgOLkWZcA
2019-08-31 00:29:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
It's being pretty challenging for me converting Contra III to SA-1. Konami used a strategy for reducing the game slowdown (compared to Gradius III). Gradius III had pretty compact code, which made it not very hard to make the remapping process manually.
Contra III, however, Konami decided to inline the entire game code for the reducing the amount of additional calculation the SNES CPU needs to do and therefore increase the game frame rate.
That's a common trick between older syste...
2019-08-19 05:49:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
But the SA-1 chip made the main villian so strong that is imposible to beat it right now!
Jokes apart, first of all I would like to give an apology for not having a new post here for a while. As you might know, most of the my work is done via researchment and studies, which makes them hard to get interesting and publishable material. However, once I get something done the impact is way bigger... So I hope you all don't mind some gap of inactivity and then another gap of activity (when t...
2019-08-11 16:12:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
I have four main activities that I do during my available time. I noticed lately that I'm doing a bit of everything which is not very good -- without focus I end up doing producing less than the normal. For that reason I would like to have the opinion of you people to know which one I should give a more attention :D -- I'm gonna let this poll open for one week.
Details of each option:
SA-1 ROM hacking: Here is everything SA-1 related, directly or indirectly. Whi...
2019-06-24 04:20:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
Since my SA-1 Collection post I got a few game tracing submissions and had progress in other ones. Here is my results so far:
- Contra III: 100% - Difficulty: 3/5 (same difficulty as Gradius III)
- F-Zero: 100% - Difficulty: 2/5 (same difficulty as Super Mario World)
- Goof Troop: 90.8% - Difficulty: to be determined
- Secret of Mana: 0.57% - Difficulty: 5/5
- SimCity: 84.1% - Difficulty: 3/5
- Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts: 92.6% - Difficulty: 3/5
<...
2019-06-22 18:46:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
I got a full SA-1 TLR friendly disassembly format of F-Zero in three hours using my experiment disassembly system which I teased on my Twitter on the other day. WOAH! I pretty much took three months for doing the same job on Gradius III.
I was talking with Catador, one of the main F-Zero ROM hackers and he mentioned that some ROM hacks does have slowdown ...
2019-06-09 05:17:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
If you would like to reach me or join any of my community/servers, this is the post for you!
Personal:
slidelljohn discovered the cause of the little lag that the game still had after beating a boss. It wasn't that the graphics dissolving effect was too heavy for SA-1, but the code was executing twice: one time on the SA-1 CPU and another time on the SNES CPU.
It was a programming error on my part because I have designed a list of functions to be executed on SA-1 CPU and another list to be executed on the SNES CPU.... I ended up putting the same function to both lists. N...
2019-05-31 04:11:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
When I released the Gradius III SA-1 mod, some people asked me why did I name it SA-1 Root and not SA-1 Pack. The explanation is reasonably logic: the Super Mario World SA-1 version was made thinking on the ROM hacking, not for playing. It would not make sense releasing a SA-1 version of Gradius III that does only gives the speed boost but does not include any development tool together a SMW speed boost version that has a huge API and a gigantic load of development options.
However, as ...
2019-05-29 04:08:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
This is the result from the poll I made a couple of weeks ago asking about "what should be the next SA-1 converted game?"
Note that the most voted ones don't necessarily mean they will get converted and vice-versa. But it's extremely important for me since I will have some idea which games the public are most interested in currently.
Thoughts?
2019-05-25 03:07:26 +0000 UTC
View Post
Honestly, I never thought that the Gradius III SA-1 conversion would end up having a so great reception.
I have already converted Super Mario World in 2012 to SA-1 and overall the public was another: ROM hackers. And they were more concerned about the possible compatibility issues over the benefits initially, which is completely understandable. After the retrogaming community knowing the project however and the reception of the game, I was very happy hearing that people like my SA-1...
2019-05-23 04:03:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
I had no idea which icon to put here and on my blog initially. All my avatars are usually from Mario, Kirby or Touhou characters, but I had to somehow put something that has strong connection with me and something unique.
While playing a bit with Paint.NET I accidentally found that when you type "v" (v stands for vitor!) using the Webdings font, it outputs a bus icon. And hey! I like bus! Without a bus, I wouldn't be able to move though São Paulo because I don't have a car nor my famil...
2019-05-23 03:35:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
As a patreon of Vitor, what would you like to have as exclusive content or benefits?
2019-05-23 02:51:32 +0000 UTC
View Post
