Lunar Magic suggestions and discussion (LM v2.52)

I've notice how Lunar Magic alters the layer 1/2 tilemap to have it NOT be 2x2 screens big on the S-PPU vram register tilemap, and the way it loads the blocks graphics onto the screen when the player moves the screen (it made the layer 1 “screen” be 2x1 sized).

But there is a problem that only happens to advance ASM hackers that involve positioning the screen out of bounds, more specifically, having its X position negative.

I was thinking of making it load the graphic tile #$0025 instead of random garbage tiles (So I rather have cutoff on the level edge rather than garbage appearing in-level). These garbage tiles can appear even within the level borders when the screen scrolls around while having being part in the level. I'm developing a special quake patch that involves actually moving layer 1 around (both vertically and horizontally), and am concerned about possible loading invalid tiles in the play area should the screen goes past the left (and/or the top) boundary of the stage.

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Give thanks to RPG hacker for working on Asar.

I just noticed theres only a 8x8 for 2bpp animations. Wouldn't 16x16 or # rows of 2bpp animation fit?

Has there been any more consideration to allowing the gradient shortcut to be keyed off HSL rather than RGB (or have it as an option)?

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.

Still a fair bit of configuring for something relatively minor, so yeah, probably won't add it.



Might put it in as an option at some point, but until then those that really need it can insert a jump themselves.



Alright, maybe start looking around $0586F7 then.



As the help file mentions, you can use the line types normally meant for 4bpp tiles to do 2bpp tiles as well. They just end up transferring twice as many tiles, as one 4bpp tile = two 2bpp tiles storage wise.



No, there are other specialized tools if you want to do different kinds of gradients.

Since I've been starting to post on 2ch and romhacking!Twitter recently in order to stay in contact with JP hackers more easily (their community is a fractured mess right now due to VIP6 drama and I'd love to help them out), how about adding a Japanese language option for future Lunar Magic releases? Work alongside someone from the site to give you accurate translations, you don't even have to like, share any of the code with 'em whatsoever.

A lot of JP hackers seem to not be very good at English, that being part of the reason most of them avoid posting here, and the main reason most of 'em still use older versions seems to be due to Japanese patches, I believe. The latest version to get one is 2.01 which can be found over yonder.

Japanese translations of SMW tools would make accurate SMW hacking more accessible to them, I believe. But I'd just worry about LM for now, I don't wanna force too much work onto people.

Sorry if I'm asking for too much, I just don't want foreigners to get shafted from romhacking due to their lack of English skill.

Have a boy.

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Hack・Ports・ASM・"Uploader"

LM wasn't built with translation to other languages in mind, and I don't want to spend a lot of time changing that. But if they don't mind only a partial translation released as a separate build (perhaps just for the sprite/object tooltips, menus, and static dialog text), then maybe something could be thrown together.

I just noticed what seems to be a minor bug with custom sprite tooltips. If you have a custom sprite in slot E0, the "It's currently set to go (counter)clockwise" text will still appear even if you have a custom tooltip (and even if you have the extra bits set to something other than 0). This may be true for other sprites numbered E0-FF as well, but I'm not sure which others it would apply to.

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.

That's odd... alright, I'll look into it.

Why won't you release LM's source code?

I'm impressed by how attached you are to this tool after 18 years. I think anyone else would've passed it on to the public, to someone else, or at the very least would've allowed people to help you out in occasions.

Nothing stops the existence of official builds, and the staff is responsible enough to not let unreliable stuff run rampant, so that isn't a good reasoning. There's also that Git thing that allows forks and stuff I always thought it's pretty fascinating and cool how organised it is.

Tool's yours obviously but I feel it's egoistic of you to stay as the only one who can do anything to it. For instance, I've wanted NGHE for years and you are the only reason it hasn't happened. It's just a hobby blah blah blah. But regardless, why would you be like that?

Your baby's 18 years old already. It's an adult. It's time to leave the house and the parental care.

Eh. I was just speaking my mind. I didn't mean to pressure.

On a completely unrelated note:
Can you tweak the description of the directional coins so it actually mentions it has a "time limit"? Last I tested them, they also end after generating exactly 63 coins, so pointing it out may not mislead people when they use it.

Sorry for not reading all 140 pages, but I've been wondering how Lunar Magic was programmed back in 2000? How much disassembling did it take?

If this was discussed earlier, you can just link to the page.

coughstubbornnesscough


There are some bits of information on an interview and also a brief summary on FuSoYa's own page.

http://hg101.kontek.net/fusoya/fusoya-interview.htm
http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lm/index.html

Anything else to add would be interesting to read.

Nice. So he did figure out all this stuff by himself. Impressive.

It was someone's answer last time, yes. Not mine though. Or perhaps it'd be more accurate to say, not for that question. From what I've seen people say, it sounds somewhat similar to part of what I said a few years back about releasing the source to LM's ASM hacks and the problems with supporting modifications to them. Someone possibly misremembered and decided to apply a variation of it to LM itself.

I suppose I could have corrected people on that a long time ago when I first noticed it being repeated, but outside of a few PMs/emails I haven't bothered. And as for why... see below.



While I won't answer this, I will tell you why I no longer bother discussing it much anymore.

Firstly, the decision is mine and mine alone, and whatever reasons I do or don't have is really no one else's business but my own.

Secondly, the topic has been discussed to death and back in the distant past and rehashing it serves no purpose. Whatever brilliantly insightful opinion on it you think you have, it's been said before, and likely by someone far more eloquent. Though as a note of interest for the open source enthusiasts: I was installing Slackware and Red Hat before Lunar Magic existed. Please keep that in mind the next time you feel the urge to try explaining or hinting to me for the nth time how open source works.

Lastly, and this is the rather unfortunate one, the question itself inevitably attracts people that seem to think it gives them carte blanche to misbehave. I don't think it reflects the community as a whole (at least, I certainly hope not... no one would want anything to do with a community that rotten). Yet no matter how well meaning the original question or poster, I've watched it descend into sickening nonsense pretty much every time. Even before you answer you can get everything from personal attacks, accusations of your percieved motivations, vitriol from the spoiled types that seem to think they're owed something, preaching from the more rabid open source cultists who treat software licensing as their own personal religion and how dare you violate their freedom, and all manner of complete idiocy in between. Yeesh, I still remember one guy on the old Acmlm board that claimed if I had the cure to some disease I'd probably let them all die or something because I wouldn't release LM's source. :/

Anyway no sane person would willingly expose themselves to that level of irrational hate or lunacy, so I choose not to and generally consider the topic off limits.



I guess. I'd think most people would already know of the time limit, but the 63 coins info could help people plan.

For what it's worth, I don't think anybody's motivation on this site for asking you about the source code has ever been open source fandom. Koopster and the majority of people I remember being passionate about trying to convince you have like, no interest in open source culture itself as much as the presumed benefits it would bring to the community if LM were open source.
Pretty much all of us use proprietary, closed software 24/7 without wasting a thought about it. It's just that
The only people I remember on SMWC that cared about free software at all were a user with a straight up GNU mascot avatar and another user with licensing information for everything from their layout to their avatar in their bio, which are both incredibly non-subtle.
I don't think either of them ever discussed this topic, though.

The reason people ask is because people would like to have things you don't have the time or will to do that would unquestionably be useful, like exporting more things to files (overworlds, backgrounds) and more conclusive answers with regards to whether some features would have a chance of being implemented if developed (Alcaro's larger levels patch fell to that, I think). Because if it's open then nobody could say no, at least not to a fork. Unless you say no to forks in which case RIP.
Also the possibility of you dropping support for LM eventually, leaving us with the issue of having to somehow come up with a similarly powerful tool out of nowhere or live with stagnancy. The former would be nice, but LM is so big and rich in features and tweaks to SMW that I feel like that would be an incredible pain.

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