Hello, I'm Alejandro, It's my first post on this site, so I hope this wouldn't be a mess.
Short summary to get to the point:
I'm a YouTube user who likes F-Zero hacking, I made a Fuzee tutorial with more information, explaining things that weren't present in Tony Thai's tutorial, blah blah...
I'm that person who have ideas to improve F-Zero hacking but can't make the work himself due to the lack of knowledge of ASM hacking, LUA script, that coding stuff.
Some people know me, some don't, so that's why I'm introducing myself.
Now, I have some ideas to improve F-Zero, these may or may not be possible, or even stable, so I will just point them out here.
1.
Sprites layering
While seeing how far the vehicles go until they dissapear, I noticed that the distance between sprites while going near/far is not accurate as it should be. The amount of pixels that make the 3D ilusion don't align properly, making the vehicles bigger or smaller when they are in a specific position.
Refer to this image for better clarification:
The space in-between the red lines are where the sprites changes (The blue line is where the background starts), if you look at the lines at the top, you will notice these aren't alingned in a way that would make a proper perspective from the sprites to change, they look messed up.
I tried to fix the space between the red lines, it would seem something like this:
I think these are better positions to put the sprites at the distances (Note: I edited
Golden Fox's sprites a bit to make it look better).
I don't know if it is possible to change these positions, but if it is, that would be a nice improvement.
2.
Fuzee missing tiles
Some people know that Fuzee works in a format that is not very accurate, something like 8x8 tiles when they are made by 4x4 (Sincerely I don't remember, just putting this to let you know what I'm talking about), and by that I mean when you get to Tile editing mode (Space + Right click on a tile) it appear a tile that might be the same when working with Electric barriers, but not every combination is there, I noticed that
White Land II (And probably other courses) has one or more tiles that don't appear in Fuzee, take a look to this image:
Left: My F-Zero hack, Right:
White Land II.
Look how Fuzee lacks of the Electric barrier that the original game has (The Electric barrier at the corner), maybe it is in Fuzee, but you would need to search for it manually, as well as other tiles.
What I mean with this is Fuzee may lack of tiles that are in the original game? If so, is there an easy way to implement them?
Or people can just make custom tiles, as CatadorDeLatas explained before, but I don't know if there is an easier way to make them.
3.
Fuzee small pointers
When you edit the AI dots in the Pointers, sometimes these small pointers will appear:
These appear disordered and it seems to be a glitch.
And when you open a ROM with edited color palettes, they will appear as well but in this case it will appear in order of one of the regions of the original edited ROM.
Both ROMs in the images are the same, and the second image shows Region 7-1 AI path.
It seems that these pointers can't be edited, I tested a ROM hack with these pointers showing, but nothing seemed to change in-game.
4.
Custom Records screen
As you might know, F-Zero hacks are more edited courses rather than graphics, this can affect the Record screen, where the order is not the same as the orders of your courses, it just shows F-Zero's original courses order, until selecting one from the menu.
It would be nice if someone can create a program which would be able to edit the Records screen, as well as the Ending and Credits texts, even through these last 2 things require actual coding, because the Record screen is just graphical appareance.
5.
CPU degree
Sometimes the CPU's facing is not very accurate, when facing the same way as the player, they face that way for the entire screen, when they should only do it when they are near of the middle of the screen, the Starting line aligment is clearly an example of this, where the vehicles at the extremes are facing forward, not a little to the side.
This also happens when pressing L/R while driving forward, mostly when going in reverse.
This happens because the CPU sprites changes too soon when the player is on an specific degree, it should change at the middle of the degree where an specific sprite will show, but it does in a inaccurate degree position.
The farther the CPU is, the more inaccurate is:
Here, the
Golden Fox is supposed to face at 180° degree (South) but it is like it is facing 165° or something like that.
You can also notice that when you finish a course in Practice mode with a degree (like 5°, 10°), the vehicle will face to the side instead of its driving facing.
Maybe this happens not only for degree settings, but for lack of sprites for the vehicles.
6.
Custom animated horizon backgrounds
While messing with cheat codes I noticed the horizon has the capacity to change sprites/palette colors, this means it is possible to implement animated horizon backgrounds?
Look this example:
The 1st background layer (Which moves along with the floor) changes palettes, I don't know about the 2nd background layer, I thought this may help someone to research this behiavor in the ROM and possibly make animated horizons.
Also, I noticed in
Death Wind there is a sprite in the horizon that appear and disappears depending on the degree you're facing, at the west of the course, I don't see that this happens in other courses.
Look closely at the pointed mountain, a fragment of small mountain appears and dissapears at the bottom.
7.
Sprites fixes
Althrogh F-Zero sprites look fine, I noticed some sprite's colors can be improved, sometimes some sprites have black pixels or white pixels somewhere the sprite, and it doesn't look completely good I think? there is also some sprites that have transparent pixels in them, For example,
Fire Stingray and
Golden Fox's jumping sprite.
I also noticed that CPU sprites are different from Player sprites, as mentioned above, some of them have transparent pixels/different color in specific parts.
Left: CPU sprites, Right: Player sprites.
8.
Custom map positions
As we know,
White Land I and
II are different courses in the same region, but the player/CPU dot are re-positioned in these courses, in Fuzee is not possible to make a custom aligment for the minimaps, how the developers managed to center them?
9.
Fuzee filler CPU color glitch
When setting the AI dots in diferent parts in the AI pointer, it may glitch some of the non-main vehicles, (I call them snail vehicles because
browns are slow and have look-alike colors, they look like shells and also it looks like they have eyes) changing their colors.
For example, a
Purple snail vehicle drives from a splitted area in AI dots, it goes offscreen (forward), then it reappear
green, and vice versa.
There is also a rare case where while going reverse passing after a byway path or a split area with AI pointers, a
brown snail will take count in the rank system, like if the snail is going in one of the first places, I don't know if is a color glitch, or the vehicle ID glitches to introduce it in the ranking.
10.
Free camera mode/follow AI vehicle, test
Some of this may be things from a debug mode, where you can control the camera.
Is it possible to control the camera? I know is not really a camera, but you know what I mean.
For instance, after the final race in a league:
Since you don't have any control over the vehicle, the player can press Select and navigate through the course, or stick with any AI vehicle in the course, while you can rotate the camera around the vehicles.
After a race:
When finishing 1st place, the camera rotates around the vehicle, while showing the course times.
Landscape mode:
Entering any course, no vehicles in the region, explore the region freely, but not as a vehicle, no vehicle shadow, just a camera moving freely through the course (I know this will not work for normal game, as the player may "notice" the region repeats, this is like a debug mode where you can see the course).
Don't take seriously these ideas, unless you want to make them, especially the rotating camera while finishing 1st place plus showing lap times (And the landscape mode, my favorite since I make videos and I feel like moving the camera through a custom cour-
I better shut up about this, if I want something I should make it myself!).
I actually have some idea on how this would work, when you finish 2nd/3rd place, plus freezing the timer (7E00CDXX), the camera follows the player/AI vehicle until you un-freeze the timer, then you can freeze it again, where the camera stay still, but it still can follow the vehicle when it is near, like in the 1st place sequence, when the camera stops following the vehicle, but it follows the vehicle from the area where is held still, if the timer is frozen, the camera will follow the vehicle in an X axis.
11.
Custom course names
As mentioned, making custom names for the courses, might be a good idea, since with many hacks, there will be like 4 different "
Mute City I" and likewise with other courses.
I know the big font are compounded of 4 sprites, thus making a letter, so I don't know if there is a way to actually make it easy.
12.
AI vehicle hitboxes offscreen
As some of us know, CPU don't seem to have hitboxes active when they're far/offscreen with Land mines and Dash plates.
I know to implement hitboxes is necessary to expand the ROM, but I'm afraid that in some F-Zero hacks people set dash plates next to long jumps, making them to fall and exploding (with patches) thus making an unstable race.
13.
F-Zero 2 vehicles patch fixes
Since there is a patch made by Fennor Virastar that allows to drive as F-Zero 2 vehicles in F-Zero and vice versa, this might make people want to get their favorite vehicles right, because I noticed some player sprites that aren't correctly conected/positioned, not mentoning the pipe positions/numbers.
So Fennor Virastar, if you are still into F-Zero hacking, it would be nice if you can improve the sprites, or even CatadorDeLatas, or anyone that knows how to edit sprites, since I have Windows 10 and can't seem to find programs compatible with my OS. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing you to make it or whatever, I'm not trying to being rude in any way).
14.
CatadorDeLata's patches
Hey, I like your patches so much, thanks for making them!
Althrough, I've found some bugs in your "AI explode when falling" patch (I think is the penultimate patch you made), once I was testing my hack,
Golden Fox was in 1st place, (I think I was in 2nd place), it probably fell down in a long jump with dash plate (haha, yeah... the thing I mentioned above) and exploded, but then there was a
Purple snail in 1st place, like, why? I assume
Golden Fox exploded since I was in 2nd place, then a
Purple snail vehicle appeared in
Golden Fox's position.
I'm sorry for not having actual proof that that happened, and I know you said your patches still have bugs, I'm just mentioning it so I thought it would help you to fix the possible bugs that your patch still has.
Also, the player vehicle still doesn't has the falling animation when falling of course in
Mute City and
Port Town, althrough I think the falling animation should be in every region, since the courses are high up from the floor, why the developers didn't set them? I think they cared more for the cities and forgot to add it to the other regions... You can still explode instantly after a jump by landing on a wall.
There is another thing that may possibly be a glitch, I was playing with one of your patches (I think the New mechanics patch) and I activated some cheat codes and this happened:
I don't know if that happened because of the cheats, or it was a glitch on the patch, because it didn't happen in the original F-Zero, anyway it may not be so important.
As I said in the beggining, I'm that guy who have ideas but can't make them himself due to the lack of knowledge of ASM and hacking, so I try to help the F-Zero hacking community the best as I can, and please don't take my ideas too seriously, I know there might not be possible to do some of them due to the game limitations, your knowledges or time reasons.
Althrough, I still can do some things, like messing with a hex editor, or changing color palettes (through programs), simple stuff.
Check out my YouTube channel in your meantime, I have some F-Zero stuff there
Fuzee tutorial (F-Zero hack editor) made by me!