freem Status Update - June 2021

It's been a while since I've given an update on the status of various projects. While I post updates on Twitter from time to time, not everyone goes there, and I've become a bit disillusioned with it as a communication platform. Thus, I'm posting this on my website instead.

Over the past few years (starting some time in 2018), I've come to terms with my work process, and have accepted that I need multiple active projects in order to combat burnout. The primary downside to this method is that some projects end up getting neglected for long periods of time. Some projects can even fall off the list entirely. While it's not impossible for a forgotten project to re-appear, to date, only one has seen a revival and release.

Important Notice: None of the projects below have a defined release date, which is intentional. These things take time, and I'm (usually) the only person working on them. Combine that with the "split time between projects" methodology, and it becomes near-impossible to pin down a release date.

Notice 2: There are other various projects I'm not including here, because I don't have the time to recap everything.

Table of Contents

Tracklayer

Tracklayer is a NES game originally written as a late entry for Curdle Jam 11. A month or so later, I decided to do some more work on it, as the game jam version allowed you to play forever with no consequence.

I added ambient track decay (requiring you to go back to the track tile and press a button to "repair" it) and a few obstacle types, and the game started to feel "fun". However, there's still no sound, no press-and-hold cursor movement, and many issues related to updating the display of the track tiles...

This probably wouldn't pass Nintendo's lot check (or a modern homebrew publisher's QA, for that matter).

Mega Man X Doom (temporary title)

Some time in May 2021, an idle thought entered my mind: "What would Mega Man X be like if it was in the Doom engine?"

Of course, it's not an original thought, but that didn't mean I couldn't look into doing it myself. The thought lingered while I was working on Tracklayer, until I could no longer ignore it.

May 25, 2021 is when the initial work "started", gathering materials and creating resources that I would need, including a status bar and some faces:


Unfortunately, I had to get out of town shortly after, and didn't think to bring that work with me. On June 12th, I decided to say "screw it" to the resources I had left at home and started to earnestly work on the project, targeting GZDoom v4.6.0 and truecolor rendering (because I didn't want to deal with making a PLAYPAL this early on, without knowing all the colors I'd need).

At this point, there are a very small amount of things implemented, and most, if not all of them, are incomplete. It feels fun to run and jump around the test map, but there's barely anything there, other than some sector tests and the Firing Range.

ZDoom also gives me the option of having the full-screen HUD be different from the standard bottom-of-screen HUD, so I decided to replicate the original game's interface.

Of course, this project needs a new name, but that's always a tough task.

This project was also an excuse to play Mega Man X again, because it's always good to have one of those.

VPW Studio

News on this project is possibly why you're here, as I've been mostly quiet about it for the past few years.

For those who don't know, VPW Studio is a tool for modifying the various AKI Corporation wrestling games. Work started on it in 2018, alongside the development of Virtual Pro-Wrestling 2 freem Edition.

Since then, only a few people have had access to the program. The limited release is primarily so I don't have to be tech support for every single person who wants to make a project. The other reason for a limited release is that the program still isn't "user-friendly". You need to know what you're doing in order to use it, and there's a lot of non-obvious things that need dealing with. Sometimes, you even need to do manual edits with a hex editor to change things.

There's a chance you've heard these reasons before.

You might not even care about any of this and just want me to release it anyways. The problem with that is that I do not have the time to be tech support for everyone (see all the other projects in this list, on top of other obligations that aren't mentioned here). Having completed documentation is supposed to help fix that, but from experience with previous projects, I know some people don't ever bother reading the manual. Also, the program keeps changing, so I'd rather just wait until things get closer to completion before I start writing the manual... Kind of a problem.

As it stands, the program has been progressing slowly, as there are a large number of issues and unimplemented items. Developing an editor for a game (or series of games) kind of goes in tandem with reverse engineering it, as sometimes, you won't know what specific data does. Other times, data structures change between games, which means any editing tool you make has to take all the different versions into account.

Development of VPW Studio tends to pair well with hack projects, and with VPW2 having been tackled already, I felt a need to work on the next big portion of the program...

WWF? Some Mercy

There's a quote from the beginning I need to repeat:

"While I post updates on Twitter from time to time, not everyone goes there"...

and here's why:

YouTube comment from 3 weeks ago: He literally said he absolutely will NOT be doing No Mercy

If you weren't on Twitter or the VPW2 freem Edition Discord server, you likely missed the announcement and confirmation of this project.

So, "WWF? Some Mercy". A freem-created ROM hack of WWF No Mercy.

This has been an internally contentious project from the beginning.

VPW2 freem Edition only existed because it was something I had wanted for about two decades. Some Mercy's reason for existing is nothing like that, so it's been a less attractive project for me to tackle.

I keep telling myself a few things to keep me motivated:

However, there's been a few bumps along the road.

The hack was originally going to star only 30 characters. I later realized that Survival Mode would select all the slots I was going to ignore, so I needed to add some more characters. Eventually, the roster grew to 46 playable characters, with some clever accounting being done to cover a large amount of otherwise to-be-ignored/unselectable slots.

Aside from that, the number of internal differences between VPW2 and No Mercy is large. While others have documented things in the past, there are still things that have yet to be found.

This is going to take a while and isn't aiming to be a super-project like VPW2 freem Edition was. Don't set your expectations too high.

Eldpack Continuation Project

Eldpack is a texture pack for Minecraft, created by Eld. Eventually, he moved on to bigger things, and the texture pack became a community-based effort.

A while back (I don't remember how long at this point), the GitHub repository for the Eldpack Continuation Project was passed on to me.

Along with the help of various contributors, we've been working on getting support for the items, blocks, and mobs added to the latest version of Minecraft (v1.17 as of this writing).


I'm not sure when an actual release will happen, but until then, you can clone the repository or download a zip file and manually install the pack if you want to see the latest changes.

Williams/Midway Arcade Stuff

Back in April 2021, "Historical Source" released the source code for various Williams/Midway arcade games, including NBA Jam Tournament Edition and 2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge. This required immediate attention.

Upon first glance, it also looked like the original NBA Jam source code was included as well, but this was merely NBA Hangtime being built in the same tree, before being split off. Guess someone will have to disassemble the original NBA Jam at some point. The existing TE source makes it easier, though...

...which brings to mind the NANI Edition of NBA Jam Tournament Edition. The NANI Edition was not included with the released archives, as far as I could tell. That meant I would have to spend time with a disassembled listing and try to piece everything back together. Luckily, the NANI version was based off of the last released version of Jam TE, which is the source code that was made available.

After some searching, I found a thread on the VAPS/KLOV forum where nazerine eventually reverse engineered the hardware and produced PCBs...

That's about where my research stopped, as the NANI changes were a bit larger than I had originally anticipated, and I didn't feel like trying to hack up MAME to include the hardware. Maybe one day.

Eventually, my focus turned to the image files. Though Jam TE didn't include any tools, the Revolution X and NBA Hangtime repositories did. All the tools were written for DOS, so you'll need DOSBox or some other way of running them.

Being a lazy person, I didn't want to hop into DOSBox every time I wanted to check out the contents of an .IMG file... So I started to write a tool.

Eventually, I was informed that you could use TiledGGD to view most of the image data in the .IMG files, so work on "wimgtool" stalled a bit.

The .IMG files are not the end of the line, though. The data that gets burned to ROMs is generated by one of the tools ("LOAD2", to be precise). There were two versions included, with "LOAD20.EXE" containing debugging symbols... in Microsoft CodeView 3.14 "NB02" format. Not exactly the most common format.

I tried throwing LOAD20.EXE at various disassemblers that claimed to support CodeView format debugging symbols, but none of them were able to figure out what to do. I came across a post from angrylion with some helpful information. After obtaining a proper version of CodeView, I was able to extract some of the symbol information... but that's where progress has stopped for now.

Most of the documentation I have is in a gist on github.

Retro Console Dev

This is a multi-project entry, and even though Tracklayer could belong here, it deserved a separate entry.

VTxx

V.R. Technology's VTxx platforms have interested me for some time, but I did not want to rely on the tools and library they distributed. Luckily, I'm more interested in the NES-compatible chipsets, meaning it's possible for regular people to make VTxx homebrew without needing the official tools.

A year or two ago, I had tried to deal with the 4bpp color mode of the VT03, but ended up being stumped on the palette format. After some time away, I eventually figured out why my assumptions were wrong, and figured out how to set the colors up.

That knowledge led me to create a VT03 color testing tool.

Having figured out how to make a working (in theory) VT03 binary, I started to look for some existing NES APU (sound chip) test tools, because I didn't want to code yet another $40xx writer. I found LiveNES, which supported various expansion chips via a switchable display page. This seemed like a perfect choice to modify, so I did that as well.

asm6f

Yes, I am aware that I am still the maintainer of this project.

No, I have not abandoned it. I really need to take some time off in order to handle the various pull requests and other request changes that have been made. I don't know when that will be.

Other/Uncategorized

Qurly Stones

This was Team Multitap's entry for Curdle Jam 12.

Qurly Stones is a game where you slide pieces across a table, trying to get them to land in scoring positions. You are also encouraged to knock your opponent's pieces out of scoring position, or even off the table.

I handled the programming, and some of the art as well. (Not the character portraits; those were by JazzmanZ.)

At some point, I'd like to revisit this project and give it some more polish.

Three Stooges - Crackers Only (NES)

This is the forgotten project that eventually got a release... but not yet in IPS format. Probably should fix that.

Many years ago, during one of Multitap Mugen's Three Stooges cracker runs, I got the idea to remove everything but the cracker game from the NES version of The Three Stooges. After getting the idea, I promptly ignored it in favor of some other stuff. Probably VPW2 freem Edition; I don't remember.

Fast forward to 2021, where I was looking for something to do in between other projects. I finally managed to convince myself to do it. Even if it wasn't completed to the scale I would've liked, the fact is, it's done.

(Terminally curious about what got left out? I wanted to add a high score table and change some graphics to be more Multitap-themed.)

Virtual Pro-Wrestling 2 freem Edition

It's dormant. Not abandoned, but dormant.

All the work done from the 2020/08/06 preview version to the 2021/01/28 release just felt like it was fixing minor details, and I was getting tired of the endless requests to change wrestler's movesets. It seemed like this was going to be the pattern for every release going forward.

In order to break the cycle, I had to switch focus away from the hack. That's why it's not really "finished", but it's "done enough".

I want to revisit the project and give it a "proper" final version, but any major progress on this hack requires work that's parallel to, but outside of, the main project. This process is moving very slowly, as it is one of the few tasks I cannot perform remotely at this time.

"It requires a decomp." - Wm. Francis Freem, since time immemorial

Rat Scramble

Rat Scramble is a versus maze game that I started working on a few years back. However, development stalled at some point. Part of the problem was coming up with levels that played well. There are still some important unimplemented game mechanics (primarily "knocking pieces out of your opponent").

Old/Abandoned/Whatever

Anything in this section probably isn't coming back for a while, if at all.

Virtual Pro-Wrestling 64 English Translation

Star Trinket ended up releasing a translation for this game, meaning I should be off the hook, as far as this project goes.

My old progress notes on this project:

"Work started on this project in March 2019, but progress slowed down in April.

One of the main problems is changing the game's text encoding to allow both ASCII characters (one byte) and Japanese characters (two byte). Further complicating this is the fact that the Japanese characters are encoded using EUC-JP, as opposed to Shift-JIS in VPW2.

Attempting to use ASCII text in the pause menu causes it to flicker on and off. This needs to be worked around as well.

ASCII text works for the wrestler names, as long as you don't try to edit them.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to throw this on the back burner, as the changes required are above my current skill level. Apologies to anyone who was looking forward to this being released in a timely manner."

Fire Pro Wrestling World Save Tool

I don't have a real desire to work on this, but if work resumed, I would have to take into account the many updates that have been released to the game since the last update of the tool.