Graphics-hacking Aladdin (Hummer Team)

I started this God knows how many years ago, and I finally want to come back to it.

So, many of us know that there is a pirate original release of Disney's (Capcom's) Aladdin for the Famicom, developed by Hummer Team.

Which is leagues ahead of Virgin's official European release.

To the Point:

Though the game plays well and looks beautiful for a pirated game, it could use polishing. For starters, here's the faces that appear in the password screen:



Up at the top are the SNES images, below are the NES, and in the middle are my own NES renderings. Easy stuff. But now the tricky part, the sprites:


Reason being, the tiles don't seem to be organized in any way that makes any sense. Regardless, I'm going to continue working on this. If anyone is willing to lend a hand, I'd appreciate it.

Here's the ips file of my progress so far (be sure to patch this to the version that says '1995 Copyright' not '1996':
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/820 ... din016.ips

Change list:
-edited faces on password screen
-replaced text: '1995 COPYRIGHT' to: '1993 CAPCOM' (probably should read '1995 HUMMER TEAM')
-replaced standing/jumping sprite
-faster 'glide' movement

Your edits are pretty good!

Back when I was starting to know the NES through emulation I used to really like these pirate games, because they proved that the platform could do more than was generally expected from it. Soon I realized that although impressive, these ports were very sloppy, but my fondness for good looking demakes remains.

It wouldn't surprise me if they had to copy the graphics off of a TV instead of having a raw CHR dump to look at.

Make him a bit shorter and give him a large white beret with spots on it.


Switched at birth?

Excellent!
I also wanted to polish the graphics of this game (sort of what I'm doing to SMW on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfFmAOPr-kc) but never started. So I'm happy someone is doing it - and even happier to see it's being done right.

A question: I don't know how many different versions of this pirate Aladdin game exists but is your gfx mod compatible with the music hack (http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2107/)?
It would be perfect to apply both modifications to a single Rom. Thanks!

Weren't you the one who did that New New New New New Mario Bros. hack? Anyway, I liked what you did with SMW. Would you like to help out? We can split the work.

As for the music hack, if I'm not mistaken, neither of the roms listed on that page are the '1995' version, which is what I'm working with. I don't know why Gigasoft chose the '1996' version, which has the music glitch. But I patched his hack on my hack and, aside from freezing once, it seems to work alright.

If the graphics hack can be patched to either version, then there shouldn't be a problem. I might make two versions of this patch, we'll see.

What is the difference between 1995 version and 1996 version?

Here it is :

Their PRG matches each other perfectly!

And here is the CHR difference :

Aladdin 4 (1995) (Unl) [!].nes


Aladdin 4 (1996) (Unl) [!].nes


In 1996 version they changed number "5" to "6" so that they made a new version for new year!

You serious? As opposed to changing a single hexadecimal value? Talk about lazy!

The year in a copyright notice is supposed to represent the year of first publication. If it was originally planned for a 1995 release then pushed off to a 1996 release, they might not have wanted to destroy all their PRG ROMs.

So they opted to destroy all their CHR-ROMs instead?

Also, I'd make a video demonstrating the music hack, but the game controls quite weird. Aladdin doesn't run at full speed immediately, meaning you'd have to make a 'running jump' on many short platforms, which can either make you fall off said platform, or jump when you're moving slowly, missing the platform entirely. Attacking and jumping seem to have been reversed, too.

Assuming they even had any remote idea of how copyright notices work in the first place...

I looked into that version, and that's not the one I have either!

Does GoodNES have this game listed? I can't find the specific version that I have.


Apparently the 45-in-1 version (according to this page) reverses the controls.





I've found the next sprite tiles I want to change, and this is what I have to work with:

I'll be replacing it with this:

It apparently also uses the Somari engine, which explains why Aladdin has to 'build up speed' before he moves at his intended speed. Perhaps you could make it so that he always moves at 'full speed', because it makes a lot of jumps annoying, and I'm certain Aladdin moved at a constant speed in the SNES game.

Or just make him accelerate fast enough that it isn't an issue anymore (and it feels smooth as a bonus).

Also probably "un"reversing the controls (so A = jump) would be nice, although I guess this is a CHR-ROM only hack?

No, I already hacked his "hang-glider" speed.

But I suppose I should create another topic just for this sort of stuff.

Yep, I did New New New New Mario Bros and other few hacks back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Thanks about the compliment on SMW and for the invite to hack Aladdin with you.

Right now I'll have to decline it, sorry. I wish I had more free time for it - but right now I'm finishing my first video game and all my hacking projects are on hold.

I wish all the best for your project and please keep this topic updated with images. I'm very curious too see what will happen.

EDIT (contradicting myself completely):
While I can't commit to make a full (or half!) hack, I'd be more than happy to help with small tasks. For instance I'm ripping the 3-color fonts from the original SNES game.
Hummer Team font is different so I guess it would be nice to have the original one on the NES version:


The original cursor (Genie's hand) also have just a few colors and can be directly ripped from SNES to NES:

So am I! But, honestly, mine's probably a lot simpler.


Great stuff! But first I need to straighten out which version of the rom I have so I can make sure we're all patching the same thing here.

As for my progress, here's what I've done:

Does that look good to everyone? Anyone wanna make some last minute changes? Once I hack this in, it will be a nuisance to go back and edit it again.

Also, I'm splitting up the project into two categories: gameplay mechanics and graphics.

Judging from your sentences I bet you are using "Aladdin (Unl) [p1][hM04].nes"

No idea if it is a good dump nor what "hM04" means, but its music seems good!

This is only info from GoodNES 3.23b doc :

"hM04" means "hacked to mapper 4"

My game is very simple too. It's another fake 8-bit game for Windows, simulating an original Nintendo title.


Thank you! OK, please let me know the name of your ROM and I'll keep changing some gfx after this.


It looks amazing! But I believe we still have to change the colors.
Here's my suggestion for new colors (and changes for a couple of pixels):


And this is my suggestion for the top graphics of password screen:
Hummer (above)

My conversion from SNES (below)

I found one titled Aladdin (Unl) [p1][hM04] and another Aladdin (E) [p1][hM04] (the latter being an exact match to the one I'm using).

The only difference between the two is byte 06, which reads:
'40' on Aladdin (Unl) [p1][hM04] and
'41' on Aladdin (E) [p1][hM04].


Mine too!


Yeah, we should probably go ahead and figure out the palette for the sprites first.

What are the values you're using there? I'd like to test them out.

Huh, isn't the red in that palette used for the apples? Doesn't sound like a good idea to replace it =/

You are correct; that is also the only readily available red which can be used.

Speaking of which, I would like to change Aladdin's cap to be red, which would allow us a palette with red in it. But I don't know how to assign the color of the apple to a different palette.

Pretty cool! I'd love to see more about about it.


I basically replaced 37 with 27 (for his skin) and 16 for 17 (red to brown).


Yep, this is a big problem.
However my opinion is: Hummer Team sacrificed a good-looking Aladdin to make a good looking apple. And I *personally* think it's better to sacrifice a good looking apple to put a good-looking Aladdin on screen. At least on stage 1 there are no other red objects than apple and half of Aladdin.

People would sacrifice structural integrity to make a good-looking apple.

I don't know if you're accepting suggestions for gameplay changes but I really would like to see these:
1) Make "A" button jump and "B" run/attack (like the majority of platform games for the NES).
2) Make Aladdin glide pressing "A" again (while in the air, like a double-jump mechanic) instead of using "Select".
3) Improve Aladdin's jump when he's not running (it's almost useless, he must be running to jump decently).

It seems like there's two possible ways to solve this dilemma; either stay with the default palette, or rebuild the graphical assets to have a more optimized color system, maybe switch colors out when they are no longer in use for anything, if at all possible. The guard, for example, would suffice just being skin tone/white/black, and you could probably layer some sprites on him to give him color. His palette could also be used for Aladdin's main body, with a sprite for his hat, waist, and shirt. Of course, you'd have to fight flicker all the time if you chose to go this way, but the game already has very few enemies moving around at once. In hindsight, it's almost exactly how the pirate game handles the colors, so I guess you could discount what I said.

From the looks of it, that palette choice doesn't fare well in gameplay:


Aladdin blends with the background.


The guard shares the same palette.


So does... whatever the hell this thing is, but, to be honest, it looks pretty good.

I'm leaning towards not changing Aladdin's red to brown. Realistically speaking, the NES's red is already sort of brown anyway.

Of course, we could also question the integrity of stage's palette for the buildings and backdrops compared to the SNES version. That's probably what I'll look into next.

I know these sidequests may not be very entertaining, but, damnit, I'd like to make a good hack.

I've suggested palette changes for Aladdin considering new colors (and graphics) for backgrounds as well.
I'm making some new tests and so far I have these mockups:

I really want to go with the middle one, as it matches the SNES color the closest, but I'm not sure how that palette would hold up to NTSC variants. Is that mahogany color value 16?


I know that might be an exaggeration, but if it were RGB, I think it would appear blood red.

I'm definitely leaning towards one of the other two, and they're not far off what the SNES had either. But they are hard to distinguish from one another. What values are you using?

This is how my mockup (the middle one) would look on NTSC:


I'm using 0F for background color, plus 07, 16 and 27.

Colors of other mockups are:
0F, 07, 17 and 27.
0F, 07, 17 and 28.

And this is my suggestion for the title screen:

Hummer (left) mine (right)

I don't know if it's possible to put this bigger Aladdin logo on screen + Disney signature + copyright screen.
Hopefully it will be possible considering there are many irrelevant graphics on this image bank.

I take that, there isn't any more desaturated red than that? (and then there's the problem of it being used for shading other objects...)

NES doesn't do desaturated.

Each color ($x1-$xC) alternates between the signal level for $x0 (a lighter gray) and $xD (a darker gray). For example, $16 (the red under question here) alternates between $10 in phases close to red and $1C in phases close to cyan. Both $0D and $1D are black, and both $20 and $30 are white. Because all colors other than gray touch either the black rail or the white rail, they are at the maximum possible saturation for the color's lightness level.

You can still take advantage of the relative vibrance of certain colors when compared to others. For instance, brown looks less saturated than pure red, even though they're both technically at max saturation.

Good news! Each stage loads a separate palette for Aladdin's sprites, so if need be, we can change them between stages to match the vibrancy (or whatever the correct graphical term is)... add contrast, there we go. But you probably already expected that.


Great! I'll hard hack those in and test them out with different palette sets/emulators/on my PowerPak. I really want to use that red but I'm skeptical about how it will turn out. By the way, which palette sets are you using?


Great minds think alike. I think the problem is running out of space in hex, but that can be resolved. I'd also like to add Hummer Team to the credits.

My apologies for not having time to do anything else today.

Yay, good news indeed. It's nice to confirm this.


The red wall background is my favourite since it's the most faithful to the Super Nintendo. But I know it may look horrendous. I'm curious to see how it will look in your Powerpak.
I'm using this image as reference for my mockups:



Nice! I really would like to correct the logo. It looks *almost* the same logo from Hummer - but this one in fact have the correct proportions (Hummer logo is way too stretched).


Take your time, it's just a hobby!

Do you have a .PAL of this? If not, I'll make one myself. Unless this is taken from an emulator?


Anywho, the time has come!

First, value 16 as the backdrop:


Not bad; not bad at all! I can live with this! This is going off the YUV setting on Nestopia. One minor quibble, though: the hue for the blue tarp shares the hue for the sky. Shame, seeing as I found a near exact hue that matches the SNES sky.






Oh God! I was right--RGB looks terrible. Bear in mind this is the same hue for Mario's overalls... right?





Next, the same thing, but I changed the sprite outlines to pink (hey, it worked for Link):



Notably, as you can see on the right, the two hues blend together in RGB (in YUV as well, I guess).




Lastly, 017 as the backdrop:

Looks nice in both cases.





And now... the moment of truth a single instance of an individual's consumer TV settings with arbitrary HSV adjustment that could quite possibly match no one else's:

Value 16 Backdrop:

Looks perfect! The torqouise blue works well for both the tarp and sky as well.



Even my pink sprites kinda hold up well.





Value 17 Backdrop:

Hardly a difference! Which makes me lean towards value 17 seeing as it's not as drastic as a change and works well with most palette sets. But my new concern is changing the sprite palette hue of 37 -> 27. The guard just doesn't have the contrast he originally had.

Either way, I think it's safe to say we can go on ahead with changing sprite tiles; they're not dependent on the palette changes we'll be making. Plus, I want to try this test again with better Aladdin sprites.





By the way, guess what was also on my Power Pak?


Now if you'll excuse me, my computer has politely requested that I restart it for the last hour.

I think the background palettes here look the best of all the mockups. The best way to feign a colorful image on a console like the NES is to use a lot of colors that stand apart from one another. That said, I think the sky needs to be bluer to stand out better; we're going to have to balance color accuracy with color appeal. I'm not a fan of how the guards look, they practically blend in with the background. I think the standard sprite palettes looked the best.

Silly question: how many NES/Famicoms use RGB output anyway? Also don't most games look horrible with RGB anyway? =P

Sharp's Famicom Titler and Famicom/TV combo units are the only official consoles I'm aware of that take Famicom cassettes and contain the RGB PPU. The Titler produces S-Video; I imagine that the TV's video looks like a PlayChoice.

Let's not forget many people who are now buying the NESRGB kit. I wouldn't say the games look horrible at all, unless they had horrible art and were hiding behind NTSC artifacts.

I know I'm going to be excitedly replied to, provided with a bunch of examples of games' art assets which were designed for NTSC artifacts, but I still think it's comparable to cooking a meal expecting people to eat it weeks later after it has been sitting out. NTSC is a turd.

I like the appearance of 0x16 as the backdrop with the brown outline. If you'd like me to test it on an RGB NES I'd be happy to.

This is the palette for YUV mode in Nestopia. I forgot to mention that, sorry.
And wow, pretty cool post Jedi QM!! Thanks for so many screenshots. Now I think that 17 for the background is best option.

About the guard colors, I'm sure we'll find a nice solution. This is one of my favoite things about hacking (+homebrewing +indie gaming): while these companies had small schedules to finish their jobs we had all the time in the world to make a nice, polished work.

By the way can you put .IPS patches for these latest tests here? I'd like to test them on Nestopia NTSC mode.
Thanks!

True, but as far as I can tell, NESRGB defaults to a YUV-based palette that approximates each of the NTSC NES's solid colors, not the 2C03 palette.


I'll just leave it at an analogy: Beer, wine, and cheese take time to mature.


Yet when George Lucas tried finishing his own Star Wars original trilogy, fans female-dogged incessantly.

Yeah, this is the thing. The problem is that the 2C03 palette is not even remotely similar to the original one (even gray shades aren't safe), so basically everything will look horrible no matter what. If you get RGB with a palette closer to what it should be then that is fine.

Castlevania II comes to mind as the perfect example to avoid. I wish I had side-by-side comparisons, but I recall the colors looking horrible on my NES but agreeable on emulators. (this game was a very unique experience for me, because I played through it both on hardware and on emulator when I was away from home, transferring the passwords)


Did you not see the hardware screenshot?

It looks perfect here.


Could you possibly test both? Here are the ips files:

07 16 27
07 16 27 (pink sprites)
07 17 27

I used the rom titled Aladdin (E) [p1][hM04], though Aladdin (Unl) [p1][hM04] should work as well. Then again, you might not have any problems applying it to the mapper 90 versions either.


I feel that's because, at this point, George Lucas had too much control over his IP. Realize that the original trilogy was the work of many individuals with differing perceptions on how the films were to be. It may have been Lucas' brainchild; but he, alone, didn't make it come to life.

That took me longer then it should have to figure out if that meant a positive or negative reaction. It made sense once I understood that "female-dogged" was a literal replacement for a vulgar slang word with an added past participle. I think "whined" would of communicated better.

sorry, I know I'm off topic.

I hate to say it, but I actually prefer the original palette here... please excuse the moire artifacts from the camera on the monitor.

Original:



07 17 27 (second favorite for me):



07 16 27:



07 16 27 (pink sprites):



The dark teal sky / tarp cover I think is too dark. It is hard to tell from the photographs, but I think the first looks much better. I do like your sprite palette from 07 17 27, though, maybe if you used that with the original backdrop palette?

Also, a comparison of the NESRGB composite vs NESRGB's... well, RGB (the luminosity shift is a result of the adjustments being offset for one versus the other, that's not the point of the comparison):

After playing all these different versions I tried to make more tests. And from all these new tests I've had a winner.
I guess this is how stage 1 backgrounds and colors should be: http://www.mediafire.com/download/c5l43 ... ESTION.ips

Lovely--after I begin ramping up a stride with this project, life kicks in. My entire weekend has been monopolized helping someone cram for a test. Not to mention it's election time, and I've yet to open my balloting mail. I may be taking a few weeks off from this project.


These images are further making it harder to judge. I like how the value 16 looks for the buildings, but, like you said, the blue may be a little too dark.



Are you kidding me?


There wouldn't be any contrast. (except we'd change the outline of the sprites to red)



I agree with the red border for the sprites, but at this point I'm contemplating going with a lighter value for the skin tone.


Either way, I noticed some building tiles with an inconsistent palette.

You're probably right. I'm not a big fan of NES' light colors (they're way too close to white) but maybe it's the choice for Aladdin's skin.


Yep. Maybe we can put some different tiles there (like windows or something).
And I converted a few graphics from Super NES. Above are the hummer team gfx. My suggestions below:

I'm more concerned about Razoul's skin (at least I think that's supposed to be Razoul).


Good work!

I'll put these in when I see fit; I think they may need to be copied over for every stage. (Also, I find it funny there's a turkey in there. This game has jar turkey.)

My suggestion for Game Over screen. Hummer (left), mine (right):


Edit: Now I want to change the first Game Over screen. This one:

But I simply can't find the address for these palettes.
Any help to locate them is welcome!

Looks good; I hope you're keeping track of these changes, because I'm still only concerning myself with the player sprites right now.


That looks kinda dark. How does it compare with the SNES palette?

Anyway, here are the two previously hacked in sprites from, like, 2005:





I'm willing to rehack them in if you'd like to make any changes. I'm leaning toward leaving the pixel above his eye brown/red instead of black (and all the sprites should be consistent with this, I guess).

Yes, I am.


It's very dark indeed. I want to make colors (like blues from Genie's skin) lighter but I still can't find these palettes.
It's easy to change colors from the entire game *EXCEPT* palettes from this screen. It's driving me crazy...


They look fantastic!
By the way I tried to insert my password mockups on the ROM and it worked:


I won't change the hands because they're much bigger on SNES.
I also changed colors for the icons of each character (your GFX are untouched because they're perfect IMO).
I believe it's easier to memorize passwords with these new colors but I can revert them if you don't like. Just a suggestion.

Again, everything's looking good. I'd like to see how those tints look using different palettes.

(also, I don't know if you noticed but Jafar's face there has a duplicated tile. I fixed that already, though)

By the way, I've been busy with a bunch of things this holiday season. So I probably won't be able to continue this again until the next year.

So until next time!

Any updates on the hack? I hope that you guys still continue hacking this

I was never contacted to work on it again - so I guess the project is still dead, sorry.

How about changing his belt from light red to dark red.