JadussD
12-07-2006, 11:28 AM
While ROM hacking certainly has an aspect of purity to it, an arcane artform in which one learns through other adepts and teaching oneself how to effect change through intellect and knowledge, I think the time has come where ROM hacking could potentially be seen as the gateway to something much larger in a cosmic sense.
I have sat behind computers for many years, forsaking life, forsaking worldly pleasures for the bittersweet beauty in knowledge that is the true bride of every true computer geek.
I have discovered the esoteric, the magickal, the most wonderful and terrible truths of the cosmos, entering my brain through this device. I have received the sweetest insanity, the fractal consciousness, knowledge that all things exist, if not as a tangible physical object, than as an idea waiting to become one.
To me, ROM hacking has always been a passing interest and an abortive hobby of mine; even as I delved into the secrets of ASM, the dispersing ravens of a short attention span intervened and left me with nothing but knowledge that was not to be applied to any specific purpose. But now what has dawned on me is that ROM hacking is merely the gateway to something much larger. I think it is a true art. An art that has both technical aspects, as well as expressive aspects, like most arts. Good art is that which begets that which begets. It is the lie that tells the truth. A window into what lies beyond the consensus, objective reality. It brings the unknown into the known.
All of this, I think, is a microcosm of a general will for any stable item (such as a classic game) to be permutated into infinite different forms. It is an expression of chaos; a bringing of variation into a world that fears change. This will is beyond human, beyond life and death, beyond good and evil. It is the will to everything, the creative force that expands beyond barriers, which transforms a base idea into infinite variations on it.
As such, I think the future of chaos permutating classic games into infinite variations on the basic idea lies not just in ROM hacking, but in taking fundamental archetypes (classic games) and eliminating the dichtomy between emulator and emulated, providing a framework in which the basic archetype (a classic game, a pioneering, innovative game which was inspired; before imitators came in and cashed in on it) can be updated into a more modern form without the limitations placed on it by the idea that the change must exist only in the ROM. If the experience of an emulated game is that of a fusion between a static ROM and an emulator which interprets it, why can not the way in which it interprets it be changed? Why can not, for instance, all the sprites in a game like Street Fighter II: Champion Edition be redrawn by hand by an artist, turning the characters into ultra-detailed sprites at 1280x1024 resolution? What is stopping someone from creating an emulator which watches what the game does, based on knowledge obtained by reverse engineering the game, and by watching the state of the game calls upon a display engine which superimposes the appropriate, updated, hi-res graphics onto the game? This would be a new form of high-level emulation; one in which the way an archetypal, classic game works is deconstructed in a technical sense to provide a framework in which changes may be made to it, to update the archetype (the classic) into a newer form.
Perhaps emulators could be modified to provide a scripting language in which aspects of the ROM that have been reverse engineered and translated into objects may be manipulated on the emulation side, so that the state of the game is filtered through a series of scripts which determine the aesthetic changes that occur. Perhaps when a game is reverse engineered, it may be translated into objects which this scripting language may work with, to modify the experience that the user enjoys.
Picture a version of MAME which accepts scripts that, using whatever objects have been created to be worked with a fighting game, allows different modes to exist which did not exist in the original. Perhaps through using save states, and injecting stats into it, a framework could be made where a survival mode could be added to a classic fighting game. Perhaps via script which provides an "arcade triathalon" in which several games are played through partially, through the scripted use of savestates and the analysis of each player's progress translated into certain criteria, one could create a medium for competition in which gamers compete through a variety of games, using criteria that they choose beforehand, in order to determine the winner of the gaming session.
According to my computer geek, basement-dwelling information age understanding of philosophy, the Hegelian dialectic is a philosophical concept in which there is a thesis, an anth-thesis, and eventually, a synthesis of any two opposing ideas. For instance, changing a game on the emulation side has been the unspoken anti-thesis of ROM hacking. It is the anti-thesis of the original thesis, ROM hacking, which is opposed to it. In order to take the idea of changing the classic game experience into new heights, this anti-thesis must be introduced and thought of as acceptable. From there, the two ideas could be combined to create a game-modification paradigm in which both the emulator and the ROM are modified, thus begetting a synthesis of the two, and opening up a whole new realm of video-game based expression.
If this makes any sense at all to anyone, FUCKIN' A MAN.
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I have sat behind computers for many years, forsaking life, forsaking worldly pleasures for the bittersweet beauty in knowledge that is the true bride of every true computer geek.
I have discovered the esoteric, the magickal, the most wonderful and terrible truths of the cosmos, entering my brain through this device. I have received the sweetest insanity, the fractal consciousness, knowledge that all things exist, if not as a tangible physical object, than as an idea waiting to become one.
To me, ROM hacking has always been a passing interest and an abortive hobby of mine; even as I delved into the secrets of ASM, the dispersing ravens of a short attention span intervened and left me with nothing but knowledge that was not to be applied to any specific purpose. But now what has dawned on me is that ROM hacking is merely the gateway to something much larger. I think it is a true art. An art that has both technical aspects, as well as expressive aspects, like most arts. Good art is that which begets that which begets. It is the lie that tells the truth. A window into what lies beyond the consensus, objective reality. It brings the unknown into the known.
All of this, I think, is a microcosm of a general will for any stable item (such as a classic game) to be permutated into infinite different forms. It is an expression of chaos; a bringing of variation into a world that fears change. This will is beyond human, beyond life and death, beyond good and evil. It is the will to everything, the creative force that expands beyond barriers, which transforms a base idea into infinite variations on it.
As such, I think the future of chaos permutating classic games into infinite variations on the basic idea lies not just in ROM hacking, but in taking fundamental archetypes (classic games) and eliminating the dichtomy between emulator and emulated, providing a framework in which the basic archetype (a classic game, a pioneering, innovative game which was inspired; before imitators came in and cashed in on it) can be updated into a more modern form without the limitations placed on it by the idea that the change must exist only in the ROM. If the experience of an emulated game is that of a fusion between a static ROM and an emulator which interprets it, why can not the way in which it interprets it be changed? Why can not, for instance, all the sprites in a game like Street Fighter II: Champion Edition be redrawn by hand by an artist, turning the characters into ultra-detailed sprites at 1280x1024 resolution? What is stopping someone from creating an emulator which watches what the game does, based on knowledge obtained by reverse engineering the game, and by watching the state of the game calls upon a display engine which superimposes the appropriate, updated, hi-res graphics onto the game? This would be a new form of high-level emulation; one in which the way an archetypal, classic game works is deconstructed in a technical sense to provide a framework in which changes may be made to it, to update the archetype (the classic) into a newer form.
Perhaps emulators could be modified to provide a scripting language in which aspects of the ROM that have been reverse engineered and translated into objects may be manipulated on the emulation side, so that the state of the game is filtered through a series of scripts which determine the aesthetic changes that occur. Perhaps when a game is reverse engineered, it may be translated into objects which this scripting language may work with, to modify the experience that the user enjoys.
Picture a version of MAME which accepts scripts that, using whatever objects have been created to be worked with a fighting game, allows different modes to exist which did not exist in the original. Perhaps through using save states, and injecting stats into it, a framework could be made where a survival mode could be added to a classic fighting game. Perhaps via script which provides an "arcade triathalon" in which several games are played through partially, through the scripted use of savestates and the analysis of each player's progress translated into certain criteria, one could create a medium for competition in which gamers compete through a variety of games, using criteria that they choose beforehand, in order to determine the winner of the gaming session.
According to my computer geek, basement-dwelling information age understanding of philosophy, the Hegelian dialectic is a philosophical concept in which there is a thesis, an anth-thesis, and eventually, a synthesis of any two opposing ideas. For instance, changing a game on the emulation side has been the unspoken anti-thesis of ROM hacking. It is the anti-thesis of the original thesis, ROM hacking, which is opposed to it. In order to take the idea of changing the classic game experience into new heights, this anti-thesis must be introduced and thought of as acceptable. From there, the two ideas could be combined to create a game-modification paradigm in which both the emulator and the ROM are modified, thus begetting a synthesis of the two, and opening up a whole new realm of video-game based expression.
If this makes any sense at all to anyone, FUCKIN' A MAN.
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