Post by Midnight in Bound to the Dark World comments

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Hey, so I've been testing this hack on numerous emulators for the past hour, and concluded that it only seems to work on the recommended Mesan emulator. I understand that's the recommended, but I'm leaving this here to inform others that other emulators either don't work completely or display numerous visual errors, also so that there'd hopefully be a patch that fixes the issues I've sent in the attached images below.

A lot of the errors I'm seeing have to do with the Checksum and ROM size? I don't know much about SNES ROMs, but these emulators are definitely indicating that there are issues with the data.

SNESticle [Works almost perfectly, but the inside of buildings (House & School) displays jumbled and scrambled tiles]:

SNES9X Rom Info:

SNES9X Error:

I've also taken the time to attempt to fix these issues manually by means of Hex Editing and IpsAndSum to fix the checksum error that shows in SNES9x, but neither solution seems to have fixed the "Header ROM Size: Corrupt" and "[bad checksum]" lines in the rom info.

Even Mesen displays this when you first load the romhack? Again, I have no clue; it probably just does that.

Chromadeline53 days ago(+1)

unfortunately, this kind of thing is out of our control... the hack is a 6mb rom which is unusal for super nintendo games, and a lot of issues come from people using roms that aren't able to have the patch applied to them properly, usually resulting in the graphical issues you showed. not every emulator is built to handle 6mb roms either, which is why a lot of people have problems with snes9x

phoenixbound53 days ago(+1)

People have gotten it working in snes9x (1.61+; the latest version is 1.63 released in 2024), ares (which means that the related emulators bsnes and higan probably work too), and Mesen. You should have several options available.

The problem is well understood. This hack is an "Ex-HiROM" SNES game (not HiROM as your IpsAndSum program says), meaning its header data is stored at ROM file address 40FFB0. All the emulators that the hack works on are able to guess/recognize that, due to the ROM being massive (>4 MB) and having valid header data at that address.

EarthBound is originally a HiROM SNES game, though, not Ex-HiROM, meaning its header was originally at ROM file address 00FFB0. The hacking tool used to make the ROM bigger and change its format to Ex-HiROM doesn't clear out the old header data at that address. And for some reason, a few SNES emulators/tools/flashcarts seem to be getting very confused by that, for reasons I don't fully understand. (Apparently there have been many historical "interleaved" ROM formats that people have used over the years, though most emulators that are still being maintained today make no attempt to support them.) I've sent a few people developing Ex-HiROM EarthBound hacks an extra patch to test things out that removes the old copy of the header, including the developers of this hack, in the hopes that it'll improve the emulators'/etc ability to guess the ROM format correctly. I guess I didn't get it to them soon enough for it to be tested for 1.2 though.

The error in your last screenshot means you have the patched ROM and patch in the same folder. Mesen has a feature where it tries to apply a patch automatically to a ROM when they're named the same, so that you don't need to manually use a patching tool. That automatic patching is what's failing (it would be bad if you were able to apply the patch to the ROM twice). You can get rid of the message by moving the ROM or patch to a different folder, or renaming either one, or disabling soft patching support in Mesen.

I'm not aware of any emulator actually caring about the checksum in the ROM header being correct, or using it for the ROM format heuristics. Snes9x doesn't seem to use it, at least. I'm not sure I've even heard of snesticle before seeing this post; the only old emulator I've heard of people still trying to use occasionally is zsnes.

Midnight53 days ago(-1)

Oh, thanks. I'm working with older emulators cuz my original goal was to get this hack working on SNESticle for PS2 (which displays the same corrupt tiles as on PC). Do you suggest any ways to get it to work without issue in SNESticle? Like what could be causing the tile corruption?

phoenixbound53 days ago

If you have a copy of the Super Famicom game "Tales of Phantasia," you should see if it's possible for the emulator to play that game without issues. This hack should be mostly identical in how the ROM is laid out to that game, albeit I learned today that save data is accidentally handled a bit differently in EarthBound hacks (in ways that old emulators don't care about anyway). If it can't play Tales, then it won't play this hack either.

I was able to get the hack working in snes9x 1.60 by zeroing out all the data in the ROM at file addresses 00FFB0-00FFFF, but evidently the emulator you're using doesn't behave like snes9x did, and it's unclear how exactly it is behaving.

Midnight53 days ago

1. Tragically, ToP does not work in SNESticle so I guess I'll have to abandon getting it to work there... BUT!
2. I still have SNES9x, also on PS2, and if I can get this working in S9x, then it's *mostly guaranteed to boot on ps2.
But first, when you say zeroing out all the data in the ROM at file addresses 00FFB0-00FFFF, do you mean just replacing both 00FFB0 and 00FFFF with all zeros or something different? Cuz it's not showing any new results for me when I tried what I initially thought you meant.

phoenixbound53 days ago

Not just at the ends, but all the data in that range. FFB0 should be 00, FFB1 should be 00, etc all the way up to FFFF

Midnight53 days ago

Yoooo It works on both PC and PS2! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and help me with this.

ThatGuy_Unga53 days ago

Would this make it work on 3DS too?

Midnight52 days ago

I'm pretty sure it should. I'd imagine it'll run a lot smoother on the 3ds lol.

ThatGuy_Unga52 days ago

It works great now. Thank You so much.

juanvh24118 days ago

where did you get snes9x for the ps2? and what did you do to make the hackrom work? i'm also trying to play bound to the dark world on the ps2

itch.io

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