MagicEngine

[ccovell]

Hey folks, it's me again.

This one's really cool. I'll paste in what I wrote in the text file included with the IPS patch, available below.

A long time ago, I was playing this game on my SGX system, and I was fooling around with the expansion connector in the back by running a screwdriver across the pins. Of course, that's kind of a foolish thing to do, but one time when I was doing this, the game didn't crash, but a bunch of numbers appeared on-screen instead, and there was a cursor I could move around. I had found a map editor in Daimakaimura!

I wanted to find this map editor again, so I hacked my way through the game code. After a long time searching, I finally found some code that enables a debug menu, and some other code that draws this menu. After a bunch of hard work, I had this menu working in the game once again. It isn't normally accessible in the original game.




A quick explanation:

Move the cursor with U/D. Press I or RUN to confirm. Press II to cancel an option.

> GAME START starts the game as normal.
> STAGE SELECT allows you to select your starting stage.
> BG test is the aforementioned map editor. I don't understand it fully, but it lets you view only the background data for each level. The Pad moves a cursor around. Pressing I or II moves the cursor around more quickly. Holding Select+U/D/L/R alters the window/2nd background layer settings, sometimes masking the background. Pressing Select+I opens up the gate at the end of the level, but it also makes the gate appear at other points in the level. RUN exits the BG test.
> Sound is a regular sound test, as far as I can tell.
> SP test loads up a stage, but only shows the sprites in the stage. For some reason, only the sprites for stage 1 are shown. You can upgrade your armour (or change into a duck) by pressing RUN, and you can take away your armour by pressing Select, which also changes your current weapon.
> ENDING displays the ending montage (minus the music).
> OPTION takes you to the regular options menu available in the game.

This is just a hack, so it's by no means polished or fully working. If anyone else wants to improve upon it, be my guest!

And here's the patch in IPS format. Be sure to read the instructions.
http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/data/Daimakaimura_Debug.zip
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[Tomaitheous]

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[stevek666]