I did some stuff in April, but not what I was planning on.
- Polished up the NeoGeo hitbox script
- Found a better way to disable the music from the CPS1 SF2s, for preparing combo clips
- Started, and eventually finished, developing background removal techniques, for hitbox or sprite ripping
It's like those logic puzzles that suck you in even though you know they'll take too much of your time. Except in this case you need to know assembly and there's no solution printed upside down at the back.
This meant spending a lot of time with MAME's debugger, and I picked up some new tricks: temporarily rewriting the code in ROM to alter the behavior, and converting the writes to MAME's XML format, which can be distributed to users as "cheat codes". It'll be useful in future research.
I wanted to install those arcade parts and do some work on Macrolua & Transcripter but never got around to any of it. Plus I didn't get any closer to learning C++. Gonna have to hit that.
This month's banner was from the end scene of Crystalis, aka Godslayer, the 1990 NES game from SNK. It's a superb action-RPG with good controls, a good soundtrack, a good story and translation, and fast-paced combat centering around swords of various properties. Although grinding is required (enemies require a minimum power level to be damaged), it's over with quickly, and the maximum level is kind of low, preventing you from making things too easy for yourself. In this way the difficulty is tuned similar to Ys or Wonder Boy in Monster World, making it feel more action than RPG.
The names of the characters Clark, Ralph, Asina and Kensu make (unconnected) references to the earlier SNK games Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldiers. These names would become a lot less obscure after the King of Fighters series debuted with '94. Athena's first appearance was as the titular character of her 1986 arcade game, the NES port of which rightfully earned a place on Seanbaby's 20 worst NES games of all time. However, Athena's weapon upgrade system probably had some formative influence on the sword upgrades of Crystalis.
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