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Changes about ips/bps patching on SMW Hacks Section

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As you maybe know, we accepted both .ips and .bps patch formats for the SMW Hacks section... until now.

From now on, we're enforcing the .bps format over the .ips format. This means that from now on, .ips patches won't be accepted anymore, and will be instantly removed. Instead, create a .bps patch instead.

Of course, you don't have to panic if you submitted an .ips patch and it's still in the waiting section. Alcaro will take care of converting them once they're accepted, as well as every hack we're hosting right now. Big thanks to him and to his bot for taking care of converting over 800 hacks. The process is still ongoing, so if you spot any remaining IPSes, there's no need to worry about.

Why is .bps preferred over .ips? Simple: incase your clean SMW rom is unheadered, applying a .ips will not work as intended; we've seen at least three users run into that on VLDC9 alone. On the other side, .bps patches are header-aware, so you don't have to worry about your base rom being headered or not.
This hopefully will reduce cases of broken patches submitted in the smw hacks sections, as well as confusion when it's about creating patches.

For those who don't know how to create a .bps patch, here's how to do it:
- You need Floating IPS, an original SMW rom, and your hack.
- Open flips.exe, and click on Create Patch.
- Select your original SMW rom first, then your hacked SMW rom.
- Save your file. Make sure you save it as "BPS Patch File (*.bps)", as this pic shows.
- Save and you're done. The .bps outputted is what you'll have to .zip and submit in the SMW Hacks section.

Any questions or clarifications, feel free to ask!
Hopefully this reduces the amount of questions about hacks not working sometimes when patches. Nice changes, death to ips tbh
Great change. Glad to see a converter did that for all the other hacks as well.
Cool. People complained at me for using .bps patches before, but not anymore. They'll have to accept it now. And this should help others with their problems, too.
Just so you know, I'm very active on the site anymore like I was before; I'm mainly on Discord now.
Good thing I made the switch to .bps a few months ago!

Originally posted by Falconpunch
Cool. People complained at me for using .bps patches before, but not anymore.


Why would people complain about using a patch format that's actually much better than .ips? Is it because they still use Lunar IPS and are too lazy to download FLIPS?
Formerly known as nick 139
My YouTube channel
Originally posted by Pseudogon
Why would people complain about using a patch format that's actually much better than .ips? Is it because they still use Lunar IPS and are too lazy to download FLIPS?


Beats me, but that surely might be a good answer to why is that.
Just so you know, I'm very active on the site anymore like I was before; I'm mainly on Discord now.
I do have Floating IPS now, but I remember a few months ago when I was extremely stubborn because I couldn't find Floating IPS on this site (the download link didn't work for a while, and I gave up). Naturally, most people who download a popular hack don't actually frequent this site that often; they might have seen a Youtube video, downloaded Lunar IPS from FuSoYa's website, and checked in here once every who knows how long. This new policy will seriously reduce the accessibility of these hacks.

If this change is imperative, then perhaps first ask FuSoYa to host Floating IPS on his website to truly put IPS in the trash.
If that is the case, somebody needs to tell FuSoYa to update Lunar Magic to include an option to create .bps patches for hacks.
Layout by Erik557
Hi.
Originally posted by ft029
If this change is imperative, then perhaps first ask FuSoYa to host Floating IPS on his website to truly put IPS in the trash.

Originally posted by Wind Fish
If that is the case, somebody needs to tell FuSoYa to update Lunar Magic to include an option to create .bps patches for hacks.

Those might actually be the biggest bottlenecks.

Incidentally, how do you plan on dealing with submissions that (for whatever reason) include both IPS and BPS files?


 
Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg
Originally posted by ft029
If this change is imperative, then perhaps first ask FuSoYa to host Floating IPS on his website to truly put IPS in the trash.

Originally posted by Wind Fish
If that is the case, somebody needs to tell FuSoYa to update Lunar Magic to include an option to create .bps patches for hacks.

Those might actually be the biggest bottlenecks.

We survived reasonably well without any patcher at all in LM, I doubt this would be worse than that.

Quote
Incidentally, how do you plan on dealing with submissions that (for whatever reason) include both IPS and BPS files?

Remove the IPS.

Unless they're somehow not equivalent, in which case I'll rename one, slap the author with something way too old, and convert them to BPS.


Random pointless stats time: I'm done with 208 of 865 hacks. The bot has flagged 33 of them for manual inspection.

Most of them are zips that contain two IPSes; it's possible, but not likely, that one of them is for a strange ROM. But most are multi-language, or old versions (why do they exist).

The second most likely cause is unexpected filetypes. This is mostly intended to catch .exe, as they're most likely patchers (which should be removed) or other weird shit. But most of the time, it's just a weird readme - thus far, I've seen .txt, .rtf, .doc, .pdf and .html.

e: Third most likely is people scribbling random crap across the SMC header. No idea how they managed to do that.
<blm> zsnes users are the flatearthers of emulation
My favorite thing is that VLDC9 was submitted as .ips at first without even including a .bps.
Your layout has been removed.
And that's the last IPS. I added all safeguards I could think of, but if something snuck past (broken ROMs, IPSes I missed, mangled descriptions, etc), post here and I'll fix them up.

Originally posted by leod
My favorite thing is that VLDC9 was submitted as .ips at first without even including a .bps.

Jack for laziest
<blm> zsnes users are the flatearthers of emulation
What about hacks that released in 'Full hack releases'?
Are they needed to be converted to BPS format too?


The change is only being enforced on the hacks section.
But yeah with this change it's preferable to link to .bps patches when releasing hacks in the Full Hack Releases forum. Nothing is stopping you from posting .ips patches there but might as well get used to using .bps instead.
I've heard of FLIPS before but yeah. I'm guessing it's just overall better than LIPS?

But hey if it's easy as LIPS then I'll remember to use it if I submit something.
Originally posted by 1UPdudes
I've heard of FLIPS before but yeah. I'm guessing it's just overall better than LIPS?

But hey if it's easy as LIPS then I'll remember to use it if I submit something.

Patching indeed is easy. Just a few clicks.

Posting also to let you know that the conversion project is finished! A big thank you to Alcaro who did the conversion.
Hack submission guidelines, as well as the F.A.Q. and the Rules thread have been edited. From now on (with the exception of the patches submitted before this moment), submitting an .IPS patch is an immediate removal reason.

If you encounter any issue, as well as threads mentioning .IPS patching and the likes, please report here, thank you!
Uh...

No one asked me, but this seems a little redundant, seeing as headering a ROM takes about 5 seconds. Am I right or wrong?
new.sfc
P.A.U.L.
Paul '96
Wrong.
Headering doesn't take long (if you know how to do it, which a ton of people don't), but that's not the only benefit of bps.
Your layout has been removed.
Originally posted by leod
Wrong.
Headering doesn't take long (if you know how to do it, which a ton of people don't), but that's not the only benefit of bps.


Well what are the other benefits?

I'm not fighting this decision, just trying to establish logic.
new.sfc
P.A.U.L.
Paul '96
The main reason is to avoid header headaches. Unheadered ROM is a simple fix if you know what's going on, but newcomers don't; not counting VLDC9, I counted about one question per month, and that's not counting people who solve it after half an hour of Googling, or people who give up. Making things easier for newcomers is the main reason we did this.

Another advantage is that BPSes verify that they're applied to the correct file only, so you can't apply patches to the Japanese ROM without getting an error message. (That's how the header remover works - if the BPS is for a file 512 bytes smaller than the input ROM, it cuts off 512 bytes from the start.)

A third one is that a BPS can copy stuff around inside the ROM. This means ROM extenders aren't needed prior to patching; while this isn't relevant for SMW (except that one hack), it makes life a lot simpler for Super Mario 64 hackers.

A fourth one is that since BPS can copy stuff around, and a backreference is smaller than a copy of the data, a BPS is a lot smaller than the IPS.
<blm> zsnes users are the flatearthers of emulation
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