Was there a tutorial of how to hack for the msu1?

Hello...

I'm searching for a tutorial that i swear i had in my hdd, about the hacking process of games for the msu1... but i don't find nothing in google.

Really it exists?.

Greetings.

I did live hacking for Top Gear 2 but it wasn't an easy game to hack.

All my hacks are also open source if you need reference: https://github.com/mlarouche?tab=repositories

Thank you... i was watching this right now, although i'm not having a really free moment in all the day to learn well

The thing is that i could swear that i had a pdf or something with the method to hack msu1 music.

Maybe you are referring to a local copy of this page ? http://helmet.kafuka.org/msu1.htm

Thing is, there's not really a method for doing MSU-1 because every game implement music differently. Having good debugging skills, even in a high-level language, will help you reverse engineer how the music is played in the game.

One of the easiest codes I ever made was tg3k:
http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/stuff/Con/tg3k_msu.zip

there is no blueprint how to make it, only the msu resgister commands are the same. Most difficult is often to get the spc mute while sfx still work. And this is different, as each company has its own technique; also the games from the same company differ. Take smw2. smw is really easy (mute track, only 2 music banks), also sm allstars did not make much trouble, but in smw2 one bug follows the other due to the complex design.

Much luck in any case

I gave a bit of insight in this thread:
https://www.zeldix.net/t852-any-tips-for-msu1-hacking#9721

But really, learning how the SNES hardware works will pretty much open doors for you

The important is to understand the logic behind each case, so you can make good hijacks which will work along with native code.

Thank you guys, i will keep this thread for my (i hope) projects.

How difficult is msu-1 rom hacking, if i have no experience in rom hacking will this simply be to much to learn? Is it something that can be self taught from scratch?

JUD6MENT wrote:if i have no experience in rom hacking will this simply be to much to learn?

This has more to do with having concepts about how computers work, knowing math (to some extent, basic of physics too) and logical thinking.

So if you lack interest or has difficulties to work with the subjects above, then you might face a very hard learning curve.

Is it something that can be self taught from scratch?

Sure thing! You see, the whole hacking scene in virtually every computer system was made out of passion and interest from the collaborators who liked their respectives platforms, of course, while many people from the old times surely were attending to computer/EE classes or something, much of what is publicly documented about the inner working of these systems required efforts from scratch ;-)

For the SNES, anomie really took the SNES hacking scene to a new level:
http://www.romhacking.net/?page=documents&category=&platform=9&game=&author=548&perpage=20&level=&title=&desc=&docsearch=Go

And many other people also deserve credits for that

However, given this is internet, self-taughting might be very challenging, particularly because you won't have a "right path" to follow, or someone to orientate and to tell you when you're wrong and stuff like that. But that is why forums like zeldix.net exist.

I am taking a week and a half off work soon and thought this could be a fun project, i just have a lot of PTO and just going to use it to not be at work. I have very little experience how computers work so this may get really tricky if i give it a try.

To anyone that has done a MSU hack, how long did it take to figure out how to complete your first one and did you have prior experience with rom hacking that helped? Im debating that if i think i can get it figured out in about 20 to 30 hours i will give it a try, if not, i may not even bother

JUD6MENT wrote:How difficult is msu-1 rom hacking, if i have no experience in rom hacking will this simply be to much to learn? Is it something that can be self taught from scratch?

It is pretty hard, I am still learning it myself, Each game is different so you have to go many ways to do it. I was strongly assistanced by Conn, He is very strong in theat area, He has 15 year experentice in mus1, He helped me to make wolfenstine and kirby along with Pepev who did the pcms for it as well. I would go to them for more qustens on it, or Puzzledude as he has made a whole rebuilt of a zelda game rom hack. It can be, its just a matter of how well your brain works. Here are some links That I was given by many people here that are very helpful. http://helmet.kafuka.org/msu1.htm
https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=25219 These 2 really had help me the most, I hope they work for you.

JUD6MENT wrote:how long did it take to figure out how to complete your first one and did you have prior experience with rom hacking that helped?

Well, while you don't inherently need to know complexes system schematics nor follow the most impressive mathematical formulas like tetration, googolplexian or graham's number, it would be good at least to read some docs before going to such a huge undertake that it's to hack a game out of thin air, with no prior knowledge of any technical background relevant to the game in question =)

You can mostly get away with the hard stuff if you have a mind inclined to connect dots more easily than the rest of us, mere mortals.

If it was me, and I was a complete ignorant to things like truth table, number base conversion, header formatting, endianness, memory addressing, environment variables and file systems, I would take a full month equivalent of hours to barely hack a game to a functional state. \o/

But that's just me, and I'm lazy as hell xp

That said, take a look at the pages I linked to, if you get the main idea of hijacking the right places, using (dis)assemblers and what the opcodes are meant for, you may get something in a day or two:
https://www.zeldix.net/t852-any-tips-for-msu1-hacking#9721

I started back in October 2017 when attempting to MSU the regular BSZelda games (3rd and 4th quest). Conn helped me with the code on that one. Once I saw a couple of ASM examples, I had a rough idea on how to code and utilize MSU1.

The hardest part is finding how a game’s music engine works (different for every game). Some games are as simple as a track number stored in the A (accumulator) register. Sometimes the track value is stored in RAM (Ninja Gaiden Trilogy is an example of this). Other times, X or Y registers are used in creative ways to index music triggers (or track values). In the end, the code we are particularly looking at is what gets written to addresses $2140 thru $2143 (SNES sound chip, aka the SPC or APU).

Once you figure out how the game utilizes those addresses and what values start the music, the next steps involve muting the music (without affecting the sound effects). After that, using those same values as triggers to start the MSU1 playback.

Sometimes, it’s harder to find a mute. Sometimes it’s harder to find good triggers to use for starting MSU audio. It depends on the game. Conn has stated in the past that Nintendo titles are pretty easy to MSU (with the exception of SMW2). Hell, even Wolfenstein confused the hell out of me (I agree with Conn with this beast).

Overall, look at the ASM examples and do your best to understand what the SNES assembly instructions are doing. The last piece of advice, use bSnes++ as a starter and learn how to trace code. I think DarkShock posted a YouTube video MSU’ing Top Gear 2 a long while back that pretty much shows all I explained in a nutshell. Hard to follow at first, so it will take a couple of reviews to get an idea. Honestly, best way to learn is to try and learn from your mistakes.

One more thing, there are plenty of people that will help out here (including me, time permitting). So don’t feel you have to take this journey alone.

thanks guys, I have 10 days off work starting Augest 2nd just to use up my PTO that is collecting very high and I am excited to try. it would be great to get some new hackers if possible.