Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (she/they🏳️‍⚧️)

Public Key

npub135xx0y770mwjtvlxln7jun5mxqwwctr72aafmnczglny6lpuwdlqlkgtu7

NIP-05 Address

foone@digipres-club.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsg6rr8j008ahf9k0n0elfwf6dnq88v93l9w75aeupy0ejd0s78xlspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qdc3xel

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub135xx0y770mwjtvlxln7jun5mxqwwctr72aafmnczglny6lpuwdlqlkgtu7

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Last Notes

2025-05-19 00:21:01

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@nprofile…j44p I think it was relatively easy to port DOS games to the FM-Towns, because of how it's nearly a PC-compatible. Just a guess, though

2025-05-12 20:20:23

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@nprofile…vrvm is the way "switch to linux"?

2025-05-10 14:40:54

T-shirt idea:
The only "binary" I believe in is x86 machine code

2025-04-24 23:20:27

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(I only get one of the planes)

2025-04-24 23:20:15

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ugh, with a 640x480x16 fucking-planar mode, I can't just easily do a memdumpbin a000:0 10000 to get a copy of the current screen's VRAM

2025-04-24 23:09:21

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@nprofile…uacs strange. I think my firefox might just be broken

2025-04-24 23:08:59

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this set of FIDBs helps with that, btw. Real handy if you regularly reverse engineer 16-bit dos applications.
https://github.com/moralrecordings/ghidra-fidb-dos-win16

2025-04-24 23:06:33

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oh good, I just missed how putimage/getimage was being compiled.
It's at least using BGI's slow blitter, rather than manually plotting every pixel through BGI's slow pixelplotter.

2025-04-24 23:05:52

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(I'll make a real version once I have a chance to install print studio onto my PC with a dot matrix printer)

2025-04-24 23:00:42

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> LOOK
There is a sign on the wall
> LOOK SIGN
The sign reads "It has been zero days since x86's segmented addressing has made foone's day harder"
The sign has no way to increase the number: it's a static unchanging piece of paper.

2025-04-24 22:58:03

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address 3000:4c2e in DOSBox maps to 2C03:0E2E in ghidra.

2025-04-24 14:58:01

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it seems playable on chrome, but firefox barely lets you move the mouse where. that's a shame

2025-04-24 14:40:16

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I put it on the internet archive but it seems to be unplayably laggy in-browser:
https://archive.org/details/mahjong_soup

2025-04-23 13:52:22

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The creator of this one is truly an evil person
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/387/602/353/017/813/original/6c0e367e7c534064.png

2025-04-23 13:39:33

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that's Carol Alt, Cheryl Tiegs, and Christie Brinkley.
thanks to @ann3nova@corteximplant.comm

2025-04-23 13:35:37

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who thought this tileset was a good idea? because they were very wrong.
it's tiled "Carol, Cheryl and Christie" and I have no idea ho those women are.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/387/535/288/676/045/original/ed065541468b16b1.png

2025-04-23 08:07:29

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The cool thing about this game is that there's a ton of user-made tilesets for it that have been preserved on old BBS-shovelware CDs.
And it's all this lovely amateur pixelart so naturally I gotta collect it.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/386/241/981/886/738/original/b3873fcd2c604a1e.png

2025-04-23 08:05:03

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This isn't to be confused with Mah Jongg by Nels Anderson.
I'm also hacking that one, but not in THIS thread.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/386/236/192/826/514/original/93f2407db275aa25.png

2025-04-23 08:03:46

So I'm hacking on Mahjongg VGA by Ron Balewski.
Like you do.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/386/230/687/555/656/original/cecbfc3ed22e422d.png

2025-04-07 19:22:21

Playing games on my original-software IBM 5150 PC and calling it "ms-dos gaming" solely to bait the kind of nerd who will "well actually..." about how it's actually PC-DOS gaming

2025-04-06 01:31:20

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@nprofile…2lws sigh, computers taking jobs away from hard working K/S shippers

2025-04-05 21:13:52

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@nprofile…vrvm I think I'd need to do a modified PCB, so that won't help, but thanks!

2025-04-05 20:41:53

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@nprofile…vrvm that looks like exactly what I need

2025-04-04 23:29:15

I want an NEC V20 (an 8080 clone) on a USB stick. This doesn't exist, so I'm gonna have to make it

2025-03-22 05:15:13

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I am at neptune
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/204/375/431/170/540/original/2d7d109dffcf0439.png

2025-03-10 19:27:12

I wonder if there's a native powerpc windows Doom port

2025-03-09 23:06:08

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@nprofile…3zm9 I looked into that, but before then I needed to install some support files to enable treble to work properly, and those are per-device. and there's not one for my device

2025-03-09 22:54:22

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@nprofile…3zm9 yeah but I don't yet have a boot.img to use magisk to patch.

2025-03-05 21:10:43

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@nprofile…w64h
it finally loaded!
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/111/875/452/047/257/original/db91fc0676f59b44.png

2025-03-05 21:04:58

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it works! I'm on the web!
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/111/852/068/712/612/original/e4543b3aa68c0499.png

2025-02-26 20:35:42

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Going by the wikipedia pinout, pins 1,3,4,5 are connected directly (on both ports) as you'd expect from a keyboard splitter.
pin 6 is connected too, which doesn't make sense (that's clock data for a mouse on a splitter. there's no mouse here)
and pins 1 and 2 are commoned together. That's keyboard data and mouse data (splitter), which makes no sense.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/072/087/913/791/795/original/a7d6403144965e2c.png

2025-02-22 22:32:40

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All keys work. I didn't fuck up any wiring!

2025-02-22 22:02:57

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I finished soldering it together. It's impossible to focus on with my camera (it's tiny and thin!) so here's a blurry photo
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/114/049/792/814/383/623/original/70372dd7b6c0fa65.jpg

2025-02-22 21:11:30

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Arg I have no solder paste. This is going to be a pain to solder

2025-01-17 07:57:16

I idly looked up how to disable an internal laptop keyboard on windows 10, and the solution people have come up with is very silly:
you go into device manager, find the keyboard, and switch it to a driver that doesn't work.

2025-01-15 03:54:33

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I now have an HTTP proxy for my keyboard. You just hit http://localhost:5000/65 and it'll send the UDP for you, so it types an "A"

2025-01-15 03:40:45

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okay I made instead a keyboard that listens for UDP packets.
if you send it a single byte UDP packet, it types that key. there is no authentication. you just need to know that you have to send it to port 8365

2025-01-15 03:10:50

well, I accidentally made a keyboard backwards. that's a new thing.
I needed a USB keyboard that responded to BT Serial commands. I accidentally made a BT keyboard that responds to USB serial commands

2025-01-14 00:50:41

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it's semi-infinite library containing one 3.5" floppy disk for every possible combination of 11,796,480 bits (1.44mb).

2025-01-14 00:49:36

The Floppy Disk drawers of Babel

2025-01-12 11:37:53

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I bought and installed this game before I turned 18. So even if there was a shrink-wrap EULA with the game discs, I couldn't agree to the contract.

2025-01-12 11:33:38

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guess I'm finding my old CDs instead of clicking this button

2025-01-12 11:33:27

oh cool, a game I bought in 1997 and 2013 just recently updated to make you agree to a Disney EULA when you download it, one that tells you not to reverse engineer it!

2025-01-09 08:21:14

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@nprofile…fwxr actually from what I've read, it's a letter in the mail these days. It had switched to BT Telemessages a while back, but since that service no longer exists (just like UK telegraphs), it's just a letter.

2025-01-09 08:09:14

an annoying thing about being an archivist/retrotech geek is that search engines all assume you mean the modern thing that's named after the old thing, not the old thing itself.
Surely in 2025, no one is thinking about actual telegrams, right? they mean the app?

2025-01-07 17:04:19

The human eye doesn't move smoothly, but in short quick moves with pauses between them.
The reason is to prevent the CGA snow that would result if the VRAM was being accessed at the same time as the image is drawn

2025-01-01 00:36:45

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I think my game is being eaten by some linux
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/750/297/812/068/059/original/3299f6e2552062b6.png

2024-12-29 15:14:59

if anyone ever says old computers are just fun and games, you show them this image so they can understand the struggle
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/736/761/195/141/725/original/66ce362576af9d35.png

2024-12-28 03:30:53

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Ghidra: I support disassembly of 16-bit DOS programs!
also Ghidra: WHAT THE FUCK IS "DS"? all segment-relative poitners are aimed at segment 0000, right?

2024-12-28 03:18:58

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ahh. so it's got a string in the EXE that's A0.ARE.
Then it has another string that's 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.
So when it wants to load area N, it indexes into the Nth item of the second string, then shoves it in over the 0 in A0.ARE and opens that file

2024-12-22 13:56:01

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@nprofile…z8a3 I know it will!

2024-12-22 13:55:48

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@nprofile…wtwk yikes and OW

2024-12-22 13:11:47

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just ONCE I want be like "time to fix this Expensive Thing" and I open it up, spot the fuse has blown, swap it, and it works. Done, fixed in a couple minutes.

2024-12-22 13:11:10

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The last time I can recall having to replace any fuses was in an S100 machine, and the fuses hadn't even blown: The thing had been moved roughly and some thin glass from the 70s had been shattered by a spare circuit board stored in the case

2024-12-22 13:10:10

Fuses disappoint me. They're good idea and all, but...
I've been repairing electronics for over two decades, and it's just never a fuse. I'm always opening up broken shit and there's a big fuse right there and it's fine. It's always fine!

2024-12-22 00:44:27

so I've been idly designing a "ultimate workbench keyboard", a sort of keyboard that's designed to be usable with anything from bluetooth/usb/ps/2/xt/etc with easy software-defined additions for new protocols, right?
It's got a small screen for configuration and such, but I recently thought it might be handy to put TOTP/HOTP support, and have it just type out the codes for you.
But I thought of a worse use: a sim slot, for receiving SMS messages. THE ULTIMATE 2FA KEYBOARD!

2024-12-21 02:51:15

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yeah I think Cl*udfl*re has something to do with this. Today and yesterday I've hit sites that do the "just a moment while we verify you're human" interstitial with the checkbox, but when I click it, it spins for 5 seconds, and then reloads the page to the same "verify you're human" page. I can do it repeatedly and get nowhere

2024-12-19 08:49:44

I saw a job listing that said they're looking for someone who is up to date on "modern technologies" and then mentioned a database from 1996
I should apply from my Windows 95 machine, to prove I am up with the times

2024-12-16 01:06:25

mechanical keyboardists first went wrong when they decided the model M was the best keyboard ever made and the new ones ""don't count"
but the second way they went wrong is by calling a full keyboard "100%", so they can make smaller ones and call them 60% or 40%. That's wrong. They're going in the wrong direction

2024-12-14 01:03:08

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It's about material conditions and trauma, no one is born wanting to commit this kind of evil against their fellow man. We can help these people. We can reach them. We can save them from themselves.
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/648/476/639/521/640/original/a22f1da158ad5be0.jpg

2024-12-14 00:59:08

when I am queen the people who design hardware that hides screws under little rubber pad will be first into counseling so we can find out what went wrong with their live and help them improve so that they never commit such horrid anti-social acts ever again

2024-12-13 00:22:33

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(according to the FSF, sticking a GPL-EULA in your installer is wrong but not illegal to do, because it's legally meaningless)

2024-12-13 00:22:06

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which is not required for GPL. You don't need to agree to the GPL to use GPL software: "agreeing" grants you no extra rights. You already have a right to run GPL'd software.

2024-12-13 00:21:34

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and the other reason is that installers often have a "license page" template, which is intended for commercial software that uses a EULA you have to agree to before installing it.

2024-12-13 00:21:05

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what's happening here is that there is a requirement to alert the user that the code is GPL-licensed: You want them to know they have extra rights!
But you just need to tell them. You can say "hey this is GPLed, read LICENSE.TXT for more details" on the front page.

2024-12-12 22:45:16

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we've had popes dug up, put on trail, and retroactively de-poped, has anyone been retroactively poped?

2024-12-05 01:42:21

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removing the keyboard is easy! just
1. remove the back cover
2. the battery
3. all the RAM
4. the SSD
5. WLAN card
6. CPU heatsink
7. power adapter port
8. screen. you gotta remove the screen.
9. the main motherboard? fuck it.
10. take out the bios battery. yeah, that one has to go too.
11. remove the separate board for the power-button/fingerprint thing
12. disconnect two ribbon cables
13. 19/21 screws depending on color.
14. five more screws because fuck you
15. and you're done!

2024-12-04 00:23:47

if I ever mysteriously become a billionaire, the first thing I'm setting up is an organization to fund weird reverse engineering nerds to take apart old games/software and make them work on modern systems & figure out how to mod them if necessary

2024-12-01 00:37:24

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@nprofile…52rv thanks!

2024-11-28 23:24:10

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@nprofile…68wu evil! I refuse to imagine the notable features of an Evil Foone

2024-11-27 23:49:19

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@nprofile…hwv6 no need, I got it working

2024-11-27 23:04:10

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am I going to have to do /etc/hosts nonsense just to play my ancient local minecraft game?

2024-11-27 23:03:35

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also google is kinda useless. it didn't tell me that skins.minecraft.net has been deprecated for like 6 years, but the host was up, and now that the host is down it's broken some old modpacks that had a fallback that still expects skins.minecraft.net to resolve, even if it doesn't work

2024-11-26 04:23:15

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WHAT IN THE BORLAND TURBO C PLUS PLUS IS GOING ON HERE?

2024-11-22 02:37:36

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@nprofile…pqrf I've said before that one of the nicest thing about the idea of having a robot body would be that the designer would be a known person who you can go throw rocks at until they fix it

2024-11-19 23:28:57

there's a certain level of sadness you have to reach to learn how to do a for-loop in batch scripting
bash? sure, that's normal. but if you want to iterate over some files on a windows command line? you're a sicko

2024-11-19 01:26:22

I'm currently unemployed, mostly bedridden, and trying to find a new doctor who* is actually interested in treating me. It's a whole thing.
If you could donate a couple dollars, that'd really help me. Thanks so much.
* Not that one. A time machine is not required, though I wouldn't say no to one.
https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing
#mutualaidreqest

2024-11-18 00:42:51

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frame 766 is the earliest you can press A for New GAme

2024-11-18 00:40:07

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673 for the main menu.
yes I'm doing this manually

2024-11-18 00:33:54

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@nprofile…68wu hmm. I think that might have ended up as C:\Program Files\mGBA? Which my user doesn't have permissions to write to

2024-11-18 00:30:42

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I manually did it: The first frame you can push "A" to skip the logos is 622.
621 is too early.

2024-11-18 00:23:34

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I'm always disappointed in computers ability to let me be brute force stupid.
I have to write my own code to be stupid, which surely defeats the point

2024-11-18 00:21:36

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why can't I bisect my TAS for the GBA rom about donald duck

2024-11-18 00:20:06

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@nprofile…68wu speaking of screenshots, where do they go?
I tried emu:screenshot("filename.png") but filename.png doesn't seem to appear anywhere (not in the screenshots folder I set in paths, or the same as the rom, or C:\) so I have to do an absolute path

2024-11-18 00:10:52

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you never know when the next time you'll need to optimize time-to-donald-duck-speaking on some GBA game

2024-11-18 00:10:29

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why do things manually that'll take maybe 5 minutes when you could spend an hour writing automation to do it for you in 30 minutes?

2024-11-18 00:10:04

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now I need an algorithm to push these numbers smaller while still getting the same result.
like, play the rom, run this, take screenshot at frame 2000. then try lowering one by 5%, re-run, see if we get the same screenshot.

2024-11-18 00:09:08

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best way to make a TAS:
if frame == 730 or frame == 816 or frame == 930 or frame == 1090 then
press_a()
end

2024-11-17 23:38:51

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though I may just jam a crappy pseudo-TAS into my lua script. easier than getting a fake keyboard, especially since I physically cannot get to my fake keyboards right now

2024-11-17 23:36:14

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I can replace that with my old standby... a fake keyboard!

2024-11-17 23:35:39

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maybe I'll move my process to native mGBA. I've been using bizhawk so far for TAS reasons, but my "TAS" is just "press A/B/Start a couple times until you get to the dialogue"

2024-11-17 23:26:25

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My current hack changes the background color, skips an unskippable 1:30 cut scene, and I froze all sprites at animation frame zero.
But it's not enough!

2024-11-17 22:59:25

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but I'm doing the second best thing to scripting: INJECTING ARM MACHINE CODE!

2024-11-17 22:59:09

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I wish I could script emulators worth a damn. They all seem to approach scripting from an almost antagonistic direction, like scripting is evil or something

2024-11-17 22:44:41

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It's amazing how much stupid automation you can develop when the alternative is manually editing 240 sprites

2024-11-17 11:46:05

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I need to get a better arm assembler. I keep using an online one and it is generating stuff that the GBA can't handle

2024-11-17 11:03:08

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naturally squeenix helpfully included a sprite viewer and then forgot to make it load the palettes correctly
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/497/953/830/178/925/original/6e281180febd5411.png

2024-11-16 01:23:40

just watched an intro to a video game pretending to be a windows 95 pc.
the creators clearly understood:
1. that 90s computers often made floppy drive noises while they booted
2. that windows 95 had that famous startup screen with the spinning bar at the bottom
but they did not understand:
3. how these two things were related to each other, in time.
apparently the BIOS checks the floppy drives WHILE windows is booting!

2024-11-15 04:03:45

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Found it! I scanned through tiles until I found matching ones, scribbled over them, then ran the game until I saw them defaced in game.
(I altered the defacement color in post, however, for visibility reasons)
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/484/972/167/433/328/original/1dbc46580d3168d8.png

2024-11-15 03:37:56

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there's a COPY of the tileset I'm looking for at 0x144C538. evil. I assume it's there for something like an altered version of this scene later, or it's a second room that was made by copying this one and altering it.
but it's an annoying red herring