Dream Weaver
New member
Hi all! 
Apologies if this is a daft question, but here goes... I’m a complete noob, see, and want to get into some serious SNES-based ROM hacking. I’m reading and re-reading as much as I can on the subject, and eventually it’ll all start to pay off and make some sense, but until such time, my question is this: if I want to create a ROM hack or ROM-hacking tool for a particular game, say SMB3 on All-Stars, while I’m still trying to get my head around the basics of ROM-hacking, is there much point in me spending time using the ZSNES cheat-finder to map (relevant bits of) the RAM, eg Map pointers for Stages?
In other words, with the right tools and skills some time in the future, would I be able to use the RAM data I’ve accumulated to locate the bits of ROM that point to it?
Obviously a basic familiarity with the RAM would be useful in a general sense, but I mean more in terms of reverse engineering from the RAM directly to the appropriate bits of ROM, so to put it (yet) another way:
On SMB3 the RAM pointers for enemies within a stage are in consecutive groups of 3, like so:
7E1B41XX = enemy select (for enemy #1)
7E1B42XX = x-axis start coordinate (for enemy #1)
7E1B43XX = y-axis start coordinate (for enemy #1)
With this information, and knowing the particular hex values for enemy #1 within a given stage, could I enter said stage, and then use a tool to see which ROM is (currently) pointing to this RAM, and if the enemy was, say, a “Dry Bones”, thereby find out where the ROM for Dry Bones is...??? (Or, at the very least, find out the ROM address that selects this enemy as Dry Bones, and thereby edit said ROM address to change it to a Ghost, Thwomp, et cetera?)
As I say, sorry if this is a daft question, but it would be good to know if I can get on and do something useful while I read up on ‘proper’ ROM hacking...
Cheers!
Gethin
Apologies if this is a daft question, but here goes... I’m a complete noob, see, and want to get into some serious SNES-based ROM hacking. I’m reading and re-reading as much as I can on the subject, and eventually it’ll all start to pay off and make some sense, but until such time, my question is this: if I want to create a ROM hack or ROM-hacking tool for a particular game, say SMB3 on All-Stars, while I’m still trying to get my head around the basics of ROM-hacking, is there much point in me spending time using the ZSNES cheat-finder to map (relevant bits of) the RAM, eg Map pointers for Stages?
In other words, with the right tools and skills some time in the future, would I be able to use the RAM data I’ve accumulated to locate the bits of ROM that point to it?
Obviously a basic familiarity with the RAM would be useful in a general sense, but I mean more in terms of reverse engineering from the RAM directly to the appropriate bits of ROM, so to put it (yet) another way:
On SMB3 the RAM pointers for enemies within a stage are in consecutive groups of 3, like so:
7E1B41XX = enemy select (for enemy #1)
7E1B42XX = x-axis start coordinate (for enemy #1)
7E1B43XX = y-axis start coordinate (for enemy #1)
With this information, and knowing the particular hex values for enemy #1 within a given stage, could I enter said stage, and then use a tool to see which ROM is (currently) pointing to this RAM, and if the enemy was, say, a “Dry Bones”, thereby find out where the ROM for Dry Bones is...??? (Or, at the very least, find out the ROM address that selects this enemy as Dry Bones, and thereby edit said ROM address to change it to a Ghost, Thwomp, et cetera?)
As I say, sorry if this is a daft question, but it would be good to know if I can get on and do something useful while I read up on ‘proper’ ROM hacking...
Cheers!
Gethin