Interest for hitbox viewers perhaps?

2013-08-24 01:24:06 pm

Ciento Dos Huevos

I've got graduate school I just paid for and a couple of items I'm looking to purchase for my electronics hobby and I've been kind of throwing this idea around but was never sure. I was thinking of offering reverse engineering services for games such as hitboxes, damage/encounter formula's for a modest donation in return ($10 a game would be ideal). I'm just not sure how people would feel about this, I do enjoy reverse engineering games, but my time is becoming precious and having some monetary reward for these would be great for me and I can spend it towards my hobbies and help with school.

I'll wait for feedback on this and if it's on a sour note, just delete this thread, but if there would actually be some interest in this, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I can't do 3D hitboxes, for one it's difficult, and the lua capabilities on emulators don't really allow for you to create a 3D box within the same 3D space the game is using. It'd have to be a system I have debugger access to.

Feedback appreciated.

Thread title:

I've got graduate school I just paid for and a couple of items I'm looking to purchase for my electronics hobby and I've been kind of throwing this idea around but was never sure.  I was thinking of offering reverse engineering services for games such as hitboxes, damage/encounter formula's for a modest donation in return ($10 a game would be ideal).  I'm just not sure how people would feel about this, I do enjoy reverse engineering games, but my time is becoming precious and having some monetary reward for these would be great for me and I can spend it towards my hobbies and help with school.

I'll wait for feedback on this and if it's on a sour note, just delete this thread, but if there would actually be some interest in this, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I can't do 3D hitboxes, for one it's difficult, and the lua capabilities on emulators don't really allow for you to create a 3D box within the same 3D space the game is using.  It'd have to be a system I have debugger access to.

Feedback appreciated.

Geoff

2013-08-25 09:39:57 pm

I might be interested in seeing how collision detection works in a game, would that be something you could do?

zewing

2013-08-25 09:48:15 pm

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

I got a few games I'd like hitbox viewing in. Are you making it so that the game would always have hitboxes displayed? I'd still be interested lol

ConHuevos

2013-08-25 10:05:31 pm

Ciento Dos Huevos

Quote from zewing:

I got a few games I'd like hitbox viewing in. Are you making it so that the game would always have hitboxes displayed? I'd still be interested lol

Of course it'd be through emulator, so toggle-able

Quote from TheFearowofTime:

I might be interested in seeing how collision detection works in a game, would that be something you could do?

Yes, assuming I have access to a debugger and it's not a 3D game.
.

Mr. K

Edit history:

Mr. K: 2013-08-26 04:34:32 am

Mr. K: 2013-08-26 04:31:17 am

Mr. K: 2013-08-26 04:30:17 am

Mr. K: 2013-08-26 04:26:02 am

Mr. K: 2013-08-26 04:24:05 am

2013-08-26 04:23:19 am

Yes

This is an absolutely fantastic idea and $10 per game is more than reasonable for the amount of expertise it takes to pull off something like this. For anyone who doesn't know how this works, this makes use of a feature called Lua Scripting that's available with certain emulators. ConHuevos would provide the script that would show hitboxes and you can toggle it on and off after you load the game and script into an emulator.

You might have a very good idea of what the hitboxes are from playing a game a lot, but seeing the visual representation of things can be surprising helpful sometimes. It's also invaluable in knowing exactly what regions of certain enemies are vulnerable. Here are some notable examples.

Contra III
The hitbox viewer shows how small the vulnerable area of your character is and how small the hurtbox is of the grey orbs. In this case, the two never overlap.

Castlevania Bloodlines
The character's hitbox and the hurtbox of the gear blade is shown. As long as Morris doesn't touch the dots, he can pass through the gear unharmed.

ConHuevos will also probably post about what systems this service will be available for. This tends to work best for older consoles. Current and/or newer gen console emulation doesn't tend to be as great and Lua support is also limited.

This is an absolutely fantastic idea and $10 per game is more than reasonable for the amount of expertise it takes to pull off something like this.  For anyone who doesn't know how this works, this makes use of a feature called Lua Scripting that's available with certain emulators.  ConHuevos would provide the script that would show hitboxes and you can toggle it on and off after you load the game and script into an emulator.

You might have a very good idea of what the hitboxes are from playing a game a lot, but seeing the visual representation of things can be surprising helpful sometimes.  It's also invaluable in knowing exactly what regions of certain enemies are vulnerable.  Here are some notable examples.

Contra III
The hitbox viewer shows how small the vulnerable area of your character is and how small the hurtbox is of the grey orbs.  In this case, the two never overlap.

Castlevania Bloodlines
The character's hitbox and the hurtbox of the gear blade is shown.  As long as Morris doesn't touch the dots, he can pass through the gear unharmed.

ConHuevos will also probably post about what systems this service will be available for.  This tends to work best for older consoles.  Current and/or newer gen console emulation doesn't tend to be as great and Lua support is also limited.

Attachments:

DByMO.jpg

o0w5dt.png

ConHuevos

2013-08-28 08:50:50 am

Ciento Dos Huevos

Y's III for zewing (SNES)

Bizhawk:

http://pastebin.com/72fx03mi

Snes9x (1.43-rr or 1.51-rr):

http://pastebin.com/atDtnUfq

ConHuevos

2013-09-16 01:26:27 am

Ciento Dos Huevos

Ghouls 'N Ghosts (Genesis/Megadrive) for ChuCat

Gens-rr emulator (latest SVN build):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwu18ba78c6xcqg/Gens-RR.zip

Script:

http://pastebin.com/AwfS0XmK

Save the pastebin text to a file and give it the extension .lua (i.e. Ghouls.lua)

To load it, open gens, load the rom. Then go to Tools -> Lua Scripting -> New Lua Script Window. Under the new window, simply press browse and load the script.

RyanR

2013-09-17 07:55:33 am

Is it just 3D you have a problem with, or is it newer consoles?

Would you be able to do this for a new 2D game?

ConHuevos

Edit history:

ConHuevos: 2013-09-17 09:53:44 am

ConHuevos: 2013-09-17 09:52:42 am

ConHuevos: 2013-09-17 09:52:27 am

2013-09-17 09:51:56 am

Ciento Dos Huevos

Possibly, depends on the game and tools available. I've done hitboxes for PC games that are 3D and use a 2D plane view, such as guilty gear and cave story writing my own direct 3D hook or using an overlay.

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?15441-Guilty-Gear-XX-Reload-Accent-Core-Accent-Core-Collision-Box-Viewer

Ghostwheel

2013-09-19 03:47:08 pm

The artist formerly known as Qxy

Not a lot of reverse engineering on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA) has been done, so I'm interested in any help you can offer.

The pseudo-3D nature of this game would make hitbox viewers for this game tricky, but the "depth" of a hitbox on certain bosses would be useful to know. If this is too much, though, I don't mind.

What I'd really want to squeeze out of this game is hard numbers. You mention damage/encounter formulas, would you be able to determine some probabilities for me? Map card drops, enemy card drop rates, and moogle pack contents are very crucial to the success of the run, and they're very difficult to determine empirically since I know for a fact that the rates are affected by a number of different factors depending on where you are in the game. If I could have a formula or table detailing this, I would be able to clean up the route with a lot more certainty. I would appreciate any help.

Of course, damage and encounter formulas are also useful, and would be helpful if they're not too much trouble.

Let me know what you can do or what you'd be willing to to do and I'll donate accordingly (at least $10 but some of these things are definitely worth more to me).

Not a lot of reverse engineering on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA) has been done, so I'm interested in any help you can offer.

The pseudo-3D nature of this game would make hitbox viewers for this game tricky, but the "depth" of a hitbox on certain bosses would be useful to know. If this is too much, though, I don't mind.

What I'd really want to squeeze out of this game is hard numbers. You mention damage/encounter formulas, would you be able to determine some probabilities for me? Map card drops, enemy card drop rates, and moogle pack contents are very crucial to the success of the run, and they're very difficult to determine empirically since I know for a fact that the rates are affected by a number of different factors depending on where you are in the game. If I could have a formula or table detailing this, I would be able to clean up the route with a lot more certainty. I would appreciate any help.

Of course, damage and encounter formulas are also useful, and would be helpful if they're not too much trouble.

Let me know what you can do or what you'd be willing to to do and I'll donate accordingly (at least $10 but some of these things are definitely worth more to me).