Language…
12 users online:  Atari2.0, Brian94, Danik2343, DixyNL, Golden Yoshi, Jordan, masl, Pink Gold Peach, Rykon-V73, Shiki_Makiro, synthie_cat, Zavok - Guests: 248 - Bots: 320
Users: 64,795 (2,377 active)
Latest user: mathew

Backporting GBA changes to SNES

Help

Hello fellas,
when I was little I used to play the GBA version of Yoshi's Island. Today I fired up the SNES original (on an emulator) and was kinda disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the graphics and overall field of view (not as zoomed in as on the GBA) were amazing, but Yoshi's sound effects were weak as shit, particularly the fluttering sound which was barely audible.

I read some of the information regarding the process of how to modify the ROM, but I'm nowhere near capable of replacing the audio files myself so I'm asking here if anyone wants to take this upon himself. I noticed that there are already audio files on this site and the necessary software to patch the ROM, so that's like 2/3 the way. Now someone just has to extract the sound effects from YISMA3 and put them in SMW2YI.

While we're at it, I was wondering if someone would be mad enough to port even more things, as long as it doesn't take too long to accomplish that. I found a list of changes here and most of them seem either too complicated or not too terribly useful/noticable. Personally, I'd like to see these:

Quote
The Countdown Timer ticks down each second now, instead of nearly twice per second as in the original game.

Quote
The original version had 21 red coins in More Monkey Madness (Extra 3), but the remake has the usual 20. There was a red coin under a Tap-Tap on a ground pound stake. This has been removed from the remake.

Quote
All Yoshis had red shoes in the original. In the remake, they have different colored shoes, as in Yoshi's Story.

Quote
In the original, the coin graphics used for dark areas were also used for red coins disguised as normal coins. As such, the red coin locations could often be given away by the red shadowing around the bottom, whereas normal coins were entirely yellow. In the GBA version, the red shadowed coin graphics are only used for dark areas, and the disguised red coins cannot be distinguished without using the magnifying glass.

Quote
The sound effects for Yoshi's jumping, fluttering, crouching, and egg throwing were replaced with vocals similar to those used in Yoshi's Story. Also, the Shy Guy voice clips from that game are used for the Shy Guys as they emerge from pipes.

Quote
Baby Mario's cry, which was a stock sound effect in the SNES version, is replaced with a new voiced cry by Charles Martinet. The original cry can still be heard from Baby Luigi on the world map.


Best regards
That project reminds me from SMW Advance.

Anyway, level design, star countdown and most graphics the easiest changes to do.

The red coins are slightly more difficult as only the red coin sprites are used (there are some unused red coin blocks) wheras regular coins are used as both, blocks and sprites. The problem here is the magnifying glass as that changes the red coins' graphics which is easy to do on sprites (the primary reason why red coins exist as only sprites in the original game, not as blocks) but hard on a background layer i.e. blocks. Yoshi's Island only uses six global colours scattered around at three different palettes (red-brow, yellow, grey and green-blue) and four of the colours are reserved for local foreground graphics. To visualise it, here is Yoshi's Island's palette with the global foreground colours highlighted (the bottom half is fixed for sprites, two rows are for layer 2, the background, one row for layer 3 which can be in foreground or background and the rest for layer 1, the foreground):


The second challenge would be the new sound effects because ARAM is limited. Not only would you have to replace all sound effects with new ones (though these are generally a single note played at a constant pitch) and we can't really modify the music engine, In fact, SNES games generally use rather simple sound effects, often using global instruments (sometimes local) instead of actual sounds/voices to save ARAM space for the music itself (the instruments in particular).
The GBA's sound chip wasn't really the best of the world but I believe it's also more customisable than the SPC700 the SNES used.
To complement a bit about this specific point:

Quote
All Yoshis had red shoes in the original. In the remake, they have different colored shoes, as in Yoshi's Story.

This feature is included in the Yoshi's Island Graphics Enhanced patch (or alternatively, the Yoshi Color Fix patch), which also includes several improvements to the game (for example, making possible to not hit message blocks with eggs, like in the GBA remake), so you may take a look of that.

About the extra coin in More Monkey Madness, that's literally the easiest thing to do: just needed to delete the Extended Object 16 that is above Object 2B, and that's it.
Layout made by MaxodeX
2021 TRENO vibe check thread
Originally posted by MarioFanGamer
That project reminds me from SMW Advance.

Exactly, and we definitely need an YI Advance as well!

Originally posted by Shiny Ninetales
This feature is included in the Yoshi's Island Graphics Enhanced patch (or alternatively, the Yoshi Color Fix patch), which also includes several improvements to the game (for example, making possible to not hit message blocks with eggs, like in the GBA remake), so you may take a look of that.

Yeah, if one could pull this off it gotta be this dude. The amount of work that this required must've been enormous.

Originally posted by MarioFanGamer
The second challenge would be the new sound effects because ARAM is limited. Not only would you have to replace all sound effects with new ones (though these are generally a single note played at a constant pitch) and we can't really modify the music engine, In fact, SNES games generally use rather simple sound effects, often using global instruments (sometimes local) instead of actual sounds/voices to save ARAM space for the music itself (the instruments in particular).

Personally, I mostly care about the sound effects. The game feels sluggish without Yoshi's iconic flutter sound.
So what you're saying is that it's not as simple as replacing some sound files, someone actually has to recreate them specifically tailored for the SNES sound chip?

Best regards

Help