Vitor Vilela

I finally got a new PC! A laptop as always. I have great expectations for this new hardware.

By the way It's the first time I'm using Windows 11, any hints for someone that is been using Windows 10?

Super Mario World widescreen hack

Super Mario World widescreen hack on top with the original on the bottom CRT!

Thank you @hackervilela.sneslab.net for making this possible! github.com/VitorVilela7...

#snes #supermarioworld #retrogaming

And finally... I have a SMW ROM hack being worked on. It's a really important SMW hack and I will finish it.

That's it. If you need anything from me, please reach me! I'm all open for new thoughts and I'm free to help. Be positive that we are advancing and 2025 will be amazing.

We have SnesLab, my community focused on the development of SNES tools and projects -- be sure to check it out! I have some incredible things planned in 2025 and 2026, some cool long-term run tools that will be useful for all SNES ROM hacking communities. (+)

...holding me were resolved and 2025 looks a really clean, nice path open for a great year.

Looking ahead, I have high hopes for the projects in progress. SA-1 SimCity is nearby done and I plan to return Super Metroid soon... (+)

Hello everyone! Happy New Year!!! 🎉✨

I hope you’re all having an amazing time this week. I’m really excited about 2025!

2024 flew by so quickly. While I had a lot of personal challenges to deal, 2024 was really important year for myself. A lot of things that were... (+)

Area 88 EN Plus is a retranslation of UN Squadron that rebalances the mission rewards to encourage the use of mid tier planes and cuts down on grinding. Firing is now full auto. Compatible with @hackervilela.sneslab.net's FastROM hack.
Download: blizzz.ovh/files/area88...

It's paused right now as I had some difficulty dealing with a big ROM. Working on smaller one to figure out if there's a more efficient way to handle larger ROMs

Hello everyone!! Seeing a lot of new followers recently - welcome you all!! If any if you need something feel free to drop me a message!

Yeah

Never had a chance to play it yet, but from gameplay it seems possible :)

it's post a random game in your collection Saturday

Entrevista: MaxwelThuThu fala sobre as iniciativas de restauração de Lost Medias, fandubs, ROM hacking e muito mais Imagem: Reino do Cogumelo • Arte: Ramucho99 (Melo), jãnsin (Maxwel) O Reino do Cogumelo recebe com muito orgulho o preservador, ROM hacker ...

A espera acabou! O Reino recebe com muito orgulho o preservador, ROM hacker e dublador independente @maxwelolinda.bsky.social, dos canais MaxwelThuThu e MaxwelSeven, para uma entrevista exclusiva! Confira:

We have to implement the functions, just like how the ROMs inside the DSP chip also implement the same things as well.

I once did implement a few DSP-1 functions on SA-1 on a project involving mode 7 over worlds

Terraria is possible on the SNES as well! Just give me the game source code =)

Dá tranquilo... SA-1 aguenta 8 MB, um cartucho com um mapper especial dá uns 12MB. E mesmo se tudo der errado, da pra usar o MSU-1 que cabe até 4GB =)

One day, we will be able to play Stardew Valley on the SNES

In TL,DR:
- Most enhancements chips are barely used, specially SA-1.
- DSP-n chips can be fully customized by what your ROM needs.
- OBC-1 was useful for about 1 year before FX/SA-1 chips.
- ST-018 has a lot of lost potential due of its hardware design.

4. ST-018. The most powerful enhancement chip ever made. But the lack of a data bus between it and the SNES makes it impossible to be used in more impressive applications. You can only use it make "answers" (e.g. AI), but can't make it produce "graphics" or "music" or "effects".

SA-1 multiplication/division is a killer feature. You have no idea how many games does some ridiculously slow operations because the SNES doesn't have 16-bit multiplication or division.

Something that can be done in 20 cycles costs 500 cycles because there was no 16-bit hardware division available.

You could use a C to ASM compiler and even if the code was barely optimized, it performed ok on the SA-1 CPU. So it was an interesting option, even if you didn't use all CPU features.

3. SA-1. There's some theory that people used the chip only for anti-piracy protection, without using the CPU effectively.

And the games that used SA-1, they mostly focused on speeding up game development. You didn't have to worry a lot about optimizing the game or writing direct ASM code.

Depending on how intense your game is, it might help you processing the game about 10-15% faster. Given that we had no coprocessors as SA-1 and Super FX, this seemed very useful if you had no more spare time available on the SNES CPU, even with FastROM.

2. The OBC-1 chip was made only to make it faster to insert sprite data to OAM. Instead of you doing some index calculations and bit-wise operations, you only need to send them to OBC-1 and they will do it for you.

You can do that on the SNES CPU, but OBC-1 does it way faster.

And of course, if you only depend on Mode 7 projection and you don't need to change angle in real time, you don't need an enhancement chip at all -- you can store the angles/tables precomputed in the ROM and make the SNES CPU only do the minimal calculations for you around rotation.

SA-1 and Super FX are both powerful enough to make the same functions as DSP-1. So you can in theory port a DSP-1/2/3/4 game to use SA-1 or Super FX without affecting performance.

DSP1 also calculates the 3D projections for you. Give the X/Y/Z coordinate to the DSP1 and the chip will give you the X/Y + sprite number to you put on the SNES screen. It will make it look perfect when using the Mode 7 projection.

But DSP-1 is very slow. You have to wait a lot until it responds.

People used DSP-1 a lot on "Mario Kart style" games because it made way easier to setup mode 7 projections. You only had to set 3-4 parameters on DSP and it generated all HDMA tables for you. Without DSP-1 you need to do all math yourself and it's a very complex math.

So there is the ROM about the SNES runs and the ROM that the DSP chip runs. The games that uses "DSP2-4" basically did that.

DSP-1A/1B are bug fixes on some corner cases (e.g. accidentally division by zero).

The video @maxwelolinda.bsky.social made about enhancement chips made me remember of some hidden knowledge that I forgot completely about:

1. DSP1-DSP4 chips are pretty much the same. The difference is that they programmed a different ROM *inside* the chip. We can make our own DSP chip with that.