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The Beginner's Guide to the SA-1 Pack

ASM Patches

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Go into Options and make sure "Use SA-1 RAM Remap for this ROM" is checked. If it is not checked than you most likely didn't install sa-1 correctly as this should automatically turn on.

ExGFX is inserted as you normally would through Lunar magic.
It won't work
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation


Originally posted by Fermín Acosta Jr.
It won't work


Now let's be specific: what won't work for you? The SA-1 insertion itself? Or perhaps one or two resources you want to add?





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Maybe should be update the SA-1 make compatible with AddmusicK and ExGFX, but three tools are working is Pixi, UberASM Tool, and GPS
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation


Originally posted by Fermín Acosta Jr.
Maybe should be update the SA-1 make compatible with AddmusicK and ExGFX, but three tools are working is Pixi, UberASM Tool, and GPS


Fermín, I'll repeat this to you: AddmusicK and ExGFX are compatible with SA-1 by default. AMK's main patches are SA-1 hybrid, whereas ExGFX is dealt with LM, that supports SA-1 by default (since version 2.20 - correct me if I'm wrong).

That being said, I need you to do a thing before attempting to add music or GFX to your ROM: patch SA-1 to a clean, unmodified, expanded to at least 1MB ROM (use the expand option in LM, File Menu) and test the ROM. If it crashes, you're inserting SA-1 ROM wrongly, and that is that; otherwise... you can proceed to add at least music and GFX accordingly and your game won't likely crash.





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But can you do full tutorial so I won't get confused
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation
Originally posted by Fermín Acosta Jr.
But can you do full tutorial so I won't get confused

Actually, it's pretty much just as simple as what he said. In fact, the SA-1 patch comes with a series of steps in its readme file:

Quote
1. Grab a CLEAN UNMODIFIED ROM. If your ROM is not clean, there's a 99.99% chance that this guide will fail.
2. Open your ROM with Lunar Magic and go to File -> Expand ROM -> Expand ROM to 2MB and confirm.
3. Place asar.exe and your ROM on same folder as you extracted SA-1 Pack.
4. Double click asar.exe
5. Type sa1.asm on "Enter patch name" and press enter.
6. Type your ROM name on "Enter ROM name" and press enter. Your ROM should be patched with SA-1.
7. Open your ROM with Lunar Magic and save any level.

So yeah. Pretty much exactly what Major Flare said. Just make sure that the ROM on which you're putting SA-1 is a totally clean one - after that, just port everything on your main ROM over to the new one, and THEN you can use AMK, PIXI, and everything else you want to use perfectly fine. Huzzah!
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Originally posted by K.T.B.
Originally posted by Fermín Acosta Jr.
But can you do full tutorial so I won't get confused

Actually, it's pretty much just as simple as what he said. In fact, the SA-1 patch comes with a series of steps in its readme file:

Quote
1. Grab a CLEAN UNMODIFIED ROM. If your ROM is not clean, there's a 99.99% chance that this guide will fail.
2. Open your ROM with Lunar Magic and go to File -> Expand ROM -> Expand ROM to 2MB and confirm.
3. Place asar.exe and your ROM on same folder as you extracted SA-1 Pack.
4. Double click asar.exe
5. Type sa1.asm on "Enter patch name" and press enter.
6. Type your ROM name on "Enter ROM name" and press enter. Your ROM should be patched with SA-1.
7. Open your ROM with Lunar Magic and save any level.

So yeah. Pretty much exactly what Major Flare said. Just make sure that the ROM on which you're putting SA-1 is a totally clean one - after that, just port everything on your main ROM over to the new one, and THEN you can use AMK, PIXI, and everything else you want to use perfectly fine. Huzzah!





But for ExGFX and AddmusicK that makes not compatible only 3 are as well powerups 3.3.4 incompatible
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation
Wait ... who told you that? As has been said already, ExGFX is part of LM, and as long as you're using the latest version of LM then it should be fine. Have you tried it yourself or are you just going off of something you read somewhere? Trust me, you should have no problem with it as long as you're inserting SA-1 correctly, so try it again on a clean (expanded) ROM for yourself and tell us how it goes.


As for the powerups tool, I'm not sure there - it's not in the tools section, so if it's not compatible with SA-1 then that's probably why. I haven' tried it for myself, but if someone knows for sure whether or not that works with SA-1 then they can jump in and confirm that.

E: Just checked, and lx5's powerups tool should very much be compatible with SA-1. There's gotta just be something wrong with your ROM, or the way you're using the patch.
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Neither ExGFX nor AMK gives any problems with SA-1, since like Major Flare said AMK is hybrid (works with or without SA-1) and ExGFX are completely handled by Lunar Magic itself which is obviously SA-1 compatible.

You have to be doing something wrong with how you're inserting SA-1 because you're having problems with the only two things that quite literally cannot give you problems.
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Originally posted by K.T.B.
Just checked, and lx5's powerups tool should very much be compatible with SA-1. There's gotta just be something wrong with your ROM, or the way you're using the patch.

It is compatible with SA-1 - see the BLDC's Base ROM.

Fermín, I suggest you try again to insert SA-1 in your ROM; if it fails, DM me and I'll send you a BPS of a SA-1 patched one I have that should work for you.





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Yeah. It should get BLDC that has SA-1 already with ExGFX, if so, I will use as a new game so I can rename it.
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation
I guess that would work, but like we've said already, you shouldn't need to go to those lengths to get SA-1 in your ROM. It would be much easier to do it yourself, anyway - the BLDC base ROM has a million other things applied to it, so you're not getting a lot of freedom there if you don't want any of those resources there.
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I already get the unmodified ROM, and I expanded to 2 MB, I patched the SA-1 and I extracted ExGFX and GFX to ROM and it works fine finally.
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation
Quick question: is it possible to convert a standard 2kb Super Mario World save game (.srm) to work with the SA-1 pack version?

I'm poking around in an hex editor and failing. I realise the sizes are different (2kb versus 128kb) but wondering if stuff has been moved around.
Generally, no save data is moved around on a bigger SRAM size but it's a different story with enhancement chips: Since enhancement chips can't access the SNES itself, they have to rely on cartridge RAM (called BW-RAM on SA-1) and therefore the first 8 KiB (minus 256 bytes + sprite tables) of WRAM is remapped to $40:0000 (same area where SMW originally saves its data). For this reason, the original savedata is relocated to $41C000.
Originally posted by MarioFanGamer
Generally, no save data is moved around on a bigger SRAM size but it's a different story with enhancement chips: Since enhancement chips can't access the SNES itself, they have to rely on cartridge RAM (called BW-RAM on SA-1) and therefore the first 8 KiB (minus 256 bytes + sprite tables) of WRAM is remapped to $40:0000 (same area where SMW originally saves its data). For this reason, the original savedata is relocated to $41C000.
Thanks for the reply.

How does that translate to editing the .srm in a hexeditor? I don't understand the format $41C000 I'm afraid. Is there a specific hex editor that uses this display format? Thanks
$41C000 is the address on a SA-1 cart (remember we work on the SNES so we mostly use its addressing) where the SMW's savedata on SA-1 ROMs is located. But that doesn't actually matter here. What really matters is the offset: BW-RAM starts at $400000 and you can calculate the offset by taking the address where the is located and then subtract it with the starting address of the memory block.
(Likewise, SRAM starts at $700000 and the savedata is located at $7000000.)

In your case, $41C000 - $400000 = $1C000 so you have to copy the every single byte from from the non-SA-1 savedata to the offset 0x1C000 on the SA-1 SRM.

However, there is thing which I haven't mentioned: This only works if the ROM uses SMW's saving system. There is a way to save more data on SMW than it supports with SRAM Plus but that revamps the saving data. Doing a migration with SRAM Plus is a complicated change which can't be done by just copying the savedata around, it requires an understanding how SMW saves and how SRAM Plus and its SA-1 counterpart BW-RAM Plus work (not to mention you also need to patch the latter into the ROM).
Thanks again. But my problem is that I did't understand what $anything means. In a hex editor I can see the locations formatted like 00000000 or 0000C610 or 00015F30 or 0001FFF0.

Thankfully I asked Vitor himself on Twitter and he answered :)

If anyone else wants to edit a SMW save to work on SMW SA-1:

Originally posted by Vitor
Yes, it's possible. Create an empty 128 KB file (fill them with 131072 zeros). Alternatively, you can play the SA-1 SMW once and use the .srm file as base.

Then you open your 2kb srm to a hex editor, select all bytes, copy and then paste (overwrite the contents) on the 128kb sram file at offset/position 1C000.
Originally posted by 0bvious
Thanks again. But my problem is that I did't understand what $anything means. In a hex editor I can see the locations formatted like 00000000 or 0000C610 or 00015F30 or 0001FFF0.

Any number prefixed by $ is an address.
...well, technically, it's just means the number is a hexadecimal, but it's usually used to mean addresses. I'd suggest to read both of this documents to learn how asm works and most of its terminology.
Note that the addresses you see are ALSO addresses, but they're probably PC addresses unless you're using a SNES hex editor.
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ASM Patches