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Twinkle Star Sprites: debug & dueling cakes

ekorz

ekorz

Multi Boyz 4 Pi
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This post by Sudden Desu (anyone know if he's a member here?) is worth a full read-through, so I won't go into the details here. What is relevant (to me!) is that it includes two Mame cheats I was interested in trying on actual hardware, one to enable Debug options, and another to turn the debug 'Program Menu' into a pointer to some unused code instead -- that code being a strange Dueling Cakes "Jikken Program". I thought I'd edit the program rom to enable both those things, to start, so here it is.

Patch original file 224-p1.p1 with the attached 224-p1.ips.
Path the multi file "prom" in the twinspri directory with prom.ips.
I use Lunar IPS: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/240/

To play the Dueling Cakes game, you just hold down p2 A+B+C+D during the BIOS screen.

If I get ambitious I may look into making a more polished version of this, since having the debug flag enabled can interrupt actual Twinkle Star gameplay. I'm not sure if it's possible but it would be nice to enable/disable the various flags -- debug, this Jikken Program, etc. from some menu somewhere. That way you can play the game normally, or toggle this stuff too. But that'll take some real work as I have done zero 68k assembly so far. Maybe new menu guy wants to throw me some tips :) Thankfully there seem to be a lot of resources out there already, so if I make any progress on that, I'll drop it here in this thread too.

Happy cake fighting


IMG_1639.jpg
 

Attachments

  • twinspri_ips.zip
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Of course you would be the one to want to play the hidden sentient birthday cake fighting game. :P

you should patch the ROM so it boots exclusively to Cake Fighter instead of TSS and get rid of the exit text/functionality.

Then we can make a dedicated conversion cart for it complete with label :P
 
Wow. How strange and cool. Gunna try this one out.
 
well I think I've done all the easy stuff now...

I have a build where it boots to cake fighter directly, and you can't use D to exit. Also the "jikken program exit-d" fix layer text is moved higher up the screen, and replaced with "Cake Fighter 99-99".

Now if I can just figure out how to decrement those numbers '99-99' in the fix-layer, when an impact is made, and restart the game when someone gets to 00 health, I'll have a fully functioning v0.1 to share. Good times.
 
Specials that I’ve seen:
D,df,f 1
Jump d,db,b 2
Tap 2 repeatedly
Back 2 seconds, forward 1
Down 2 sec, up 1
F,d,df 1
1+2 simultaneously

And my 5 year old had a pretty decent air juggle on me
 
… walk the stack?! Still learning to crawl … hopefully I’ll have something fun to show soon here ;)
 
Let's gooooooooooooooooo!

ezgif.com-gif-maker.gif


Progress update:
Lots of disassembly done (on both games...); it turns out that the more I disassemble, the less I need to actually program!
I can play Music during the fight
I found good hooks to handle unique damage, score, & sound effect for each type of attack
Health Bar / Score / etc. are now rendered and updated on the fix layer
The program is inserted into the main game stack cleanly

To Do:
(This is becoming super scope-creep; I keep adding things to try. But it's fighting cakes, so that's sort of the fun of it.)
Edit opening, character select, etc. so it's Cake Fighter stuff
Connect into the TSS health logic
End a 'round', have it be best of 3
Maybe render a background
bonus points: Keep some kind of score, maybe tie into the existing combo meter system
Super bonus points: actually use the power bar & bombs
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTVq5GGcvmM


+Game state loop (attract, player select, play game, score rounds, victory screen, streak count, play again countdown)
+Music from one of 6 random stages
+SFX based on your Sprite character
+life bars (you get a little bit of life back when you hit your opponent)
+score that doesn't matter
+POW! Rapid C button activates your POW meter: Max = max hearts +4 bombs. Lvl2 = +2 hearts +1 bomb. Lvl1 = +1 heart
+Bomb! (A+B+C) re-arranges the cakes to random spot on screen (because why not), and makes me laugh every time. It's defensive(?)
+made the charge moves faster (Back, Forward, P1. Down, Up P1)
+some python tools that make romhacking much faster for me :thumbup:

Anyone wanna beta test? You need a second player. It'd probably work on fightcade...

The only thing I'd still like to add is actual flying hearts on-screen when you hit an opponent, but I'm like 50/50 on spending more time on this.
 
twistedsymphony said:
how long until you add fatalities :P
Click to expand...
View: https://youtu.be/WHL9pD358Hs


That's as close as it's gonna get. I added hearts that fly out of the cakes when you hit 'em, it's satisfying. Large combos spawn large hearts. Final blow spawns this death heart.

And, I think I'm... done! I'd love to find someone who can do some art for the title screen but otherwise I don't see me doing any more. I'd even hire someone if anyone knows someone who can work with this era's tools. Anyway it's very playable in a 1v1 context, so goal achieved! I'm going to open another thread to release it and I'll link it here when I do that.
 
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