%*+BASIC, VERY basic.... NES ROM Hacking by NPD +*%
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What to get....

A Dragon Warrior 1 ROM
Nesticle
Thingy
Hexposure
And a Dragon Warrior 1 Table File (the other file in this package)
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                         THE BASIC STUFF + TEXT HACKING

In NES ROMs arent based on regular text or numbers, they are based and values, hex values, or hexidecimals, that are weird in that you dont count, if you know a little about programming, you should be familiar with this.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20.... you count like this in ROMS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 10 11 12... 1A 1B...B8 B9 BA BB and so on

this is the whole basis of a NES and SNES ROM some of these values correspond to a picture(this isn't a totally correct way of thinking about it but it definately helps). OK so start your DW1 ROM on NESticle. Alright now pause it and press F2. What you see now is the pics that the ROM currently has loaded, or pics that the roms interprets that it needs now, needs soon, or on some ROMS, all the pics for the entire game. Some of these are characters or monster's heads, backgrounds, and other misc. pics, but there are also letters and numbers, this is the basis of text hacking. Now click on one of the numbers, there will be a popup window, now look at the numbers on the top, they're kinda hard to read but you should be able to make out one number with a  ->  #  by it, that number is pretty much useless, but then there is another number, thats the hex value, so whenever the Emulater reads that value it says, hey lets put the picture of the letter on that spot. You can quit NESticle now.

This is where Thingy, and the .tbl file come in. The table file is basically a file that says A = 01 B = A1 ,these values are different for most games, so you have to get one for each ROM, the values for which the letters are on, you can make those files on Hexposure... but we'll get into that later. OK now make sure the ROM and the corresponding .tbl file are in the same directory. Now open Thingy, type in the name of the DW1 file e.g.  Dragon1.nes   <--- that might be it, and make sure you actually put the .nes in there, ok press enter then it'll ask you for the .tbl file  type it in e.g. DW1.tbl <----- It might look something like that, and once again make sure that you actually type the .tbl in there. NOW THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM I FACED: sometimes if the file name is too long, it'll say it cant find it, just rename and shorten it, that can be a really irritating problem before you figure out whats the matter with it, and when I read my first ROMhack doc it told me to do dragonwarrior and the name WAS too long so it was really irritating to figure out why I could do it with some other ROMs but not with DW. Alright now press enter, you'll see the window on the left are the hex values, and on the right there's the handy dandy words translated from the hex values. You dont see any words because most of the ROM isnt text, on 80% of ROMs I'd say that you'd have to press S for search, type in a word, and Thingy will bring you to it, some of them you can just press the down arrow and eventually you will find some words.

Now its time to change the text!!! you should still be on the Thingy with the DW1 stuff on it. Now press S for search, and type in a word, when you are finished with the word press esc and Thingy will take you to it. Look for some words at the beginning of the game, like NINTENDO or ENIX or PRESS or START, so that you dont have to play for a while for some results. This is where we change the text: press the space bar at the start of the text you would like to change, now press it at the end of the text you would like to change. You should now be at another screen... type in what you want it to say!!! I'll get into making relative searches to do this later. For this particular table you have to type everything in caps. ANOTHER VERY IMPORTANT THING ABOUT CHANGING TEXT!!!----> you shouldn't type in more than the original amount of characters, that also includes numbers and spaces as well as any other dash or anything, you shouldnt do this because it usually screws up the game, luckily Thingy wont let you type more than there was originally so dont worry bout it if your using Thingy. Thats it, work with it for a while until you really get the hang of it, sometimes there are little quirks in games that make combinations of words single hex values, like in FF1. Save the game and see results.

Heres how to make a tbl file, open a rom, on nesticle, when you are at a screen with some letters in it press F2, click on the letter, write down the hex value for each letter, space, symbol, etc that is text. Then open notepad and write a document like the one below for each character, associated with the correct hex value. Save it. Name it what you want but CHANGE THE FILE TYPE TO ALL FILES, once youve saved it, go to its file, use the rename command, and put a .tbl at the end of it... Now its a table file!

A=00
B=1A
c=0B

etc.
But this is my favorite way to  make them. Open Hexposure, now load an NES rom that you dont a table file for. Now you see the hex values on the left, alright this part is really usefull: press F6 and a window will pop up saying "Relative Text Search" NOW type in a word from the game that you KNOW is in it, the longer the word the better, now Hexposure will try to find some hex values that would fit with the word you typed in, it will ask you if you want to build text on the info you just put in... press y for yes. It will bring you to a part it has just put together, there is usually more info compiled than the area you see now, just use the search text to find it. Put in other words and eventually you will have all the text done. Now you go to save, and save it as "Save .tbl". it'll make a popup, now type in whatever you want the table file to be named and put  .tbl after it here's and example of what you might type in there ---> DW1.tbl
the .tbl part of it MUST be in there otherwise it'll just be a useless file. Once you press enter, you got a .tbl file. This is also where you can manually put in spaces and stuff. Search for some text, manually or using the text search, then find a spot in the text where you KNOW there is a space or whatever your looking for, remember the hex value number, then go to the spot where you want it to be and type it in, when i use thingy I usually put an x where i am going to back and change it. You can only make a upper case, OR lower case table file if you do this. What you should do is just open one, copy and paste it in the other, viola! you got the upper+lower case in one .tbl file.



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                                 -------> BASIC <---- VISUAL hacking
                                            
                                       
THIS PART IS MUCH EASIER THAN TEXT HACKING

I just use NESticle, this is mainly because Tile Layer doesn't work on my computer. Also with NESticle you can see the changes as you make them. You might want to get Tile Layer also it has a nice clipboard feature so you can take several tiles and order them to make the actual pic. But anyways, to change the stuff around on NESticle, load a game, then you can pause it if u want but you dont have to, press F2 and BAM you got the tiles loaded, just like text hacking, so click on a pic, you click on the color on the right then click on the pixel you want to change, thats it. You can also change the platte by pressing F4, this gives you access to other colors, but remember when you change a color on a platte you will change every instance of that color so be careful. The Really gritty stuff I don't want to get into, it has to do with changing hexidecimal into binary, making 8 by 8 rows of 1s and 0s overlapping layers of them, adding them together and stuff.


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			OTHER JUNK THATS NOT REALLY IMPORTANT


thanks to SnowBro, where are ROM abilites end... you make handy programs to make a look like a pro!

AND FOR CHRIST'S SAKE DON'T EMULATE UNETHICLY, I ONLY EMULATE OLD SYSTEMS WHERE THE COMPANIES DONT MAKE MONEY!!!! DONT BE AN ASS AND EMULATE THE NEW ONES, THEY MIGHT MAKE A LOT OF MONEY BUT THAT DOESNT MAKE IT RIGHT TO STEAL THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can e-mail me questions tips programs or whatever at   snyapsid@sniper.com


And finally ROM hacking is pretty tuff, if something doesnt work right, use some reasoning and dont quit until you find out whats wrong, and HAPPY HACKING!!!!



-NPD