I found out a while back that the Japanese version of first game had some official artwork in the credits and a little "The End" animation at the end of the game -- it seems Natsume opted to just remove these rather than translate them (similarly to the fourth channel on Harvest Moon 64).
I decided to learn some SNES assembly and attempted to restore them (and fix as many bugs and exploits as I could find).
My latest changes (v2.0) include the following:
Fixes:
- fixed duplicate power berry glitch
- fixed broken chicken statue power berry glitch
- fixed bug where time does not progress on the first day after receiving dog from Ellen
- fixed bug where picking up a chick would interrupt dropping the dog
- fixed going to bed at the same time as Eve to give +2 instead of -2 affection (like all other spouses)
- fixed soft lock by preventing simultaneously selling an animal at the same time as buying a cow
- fixed bug where items shipped via horse would be ignored when not touching horse
- fixed bug where invalid fatigue animation would be played after restoring small amounts of stamina when max stamina is large
- preventing use of Ellen's dialog which mentions the horse before you own a horse
- preventing wife from being in and out of house at the same time
- fixed Nina's married herb and flower gifts' dialog and affection boosts
- fixed Ellen's anniversary gift logic to work with eggs and milk (like all other spouses)
Restorations:
- restored credits images
- restored and translated "The End" animation at the end of the game
Removed Exploits and Other Improvements:
- added logic and UI to buy multiple bags of seeds at once, limiting the amount of seed bags to 99 for each type
- added functionality to force sleep at midnight
- updated miracle potion and medicine to only be consumed if the area applied
- updated seeds, hoe, sickle, and picked crops to not require re-watering if the soil is already watered
- updated functionality to allow hammer to clear cut grass or seeds of any kind
- added functionality so that the start button moves the cursor to "OK" for the name entry logic
- only allowing dog to count one hug per day
- updated power berries to be picked up automatically after they spawn
- updated chickens to be non-solid (allow player to move through them like chicks)
- added support for chickens laying eggs outside (two if they're happy, where they're happier the more they're outside)
- updated logic for cows being cranky and chickens getting eaten from wild dogs to actually require being fenced in
- the more days you've hugged your dog, the more area the dog will protect against wild dogs, regardless of fencing
- updated child (not baby) cows to lose 1 affection point if they aren't fed when in barn
- cows and chickens now gain an affection point when eating grass outside
- digging up moles no longer cause cows to possibly get cranky
- in-game hour to last 20 real-world seconds instead of 15 real-world seconds.
- hurricane logic no longer destroys grass and animal purchasing logic no longer requires any planted grass. Hurricane randomness now happens exactly once per summer, guaranteed.
- hot springs now restore stamina by one point each time four in-game minutes pass (rather than each time you enter the hot springs)
- hot springs will now also increase happiness by one point for ever in-game hour that passes
- buying a cow no longer prevents you from also buying a chicken
- buying a chicken no longer prevents you from also buying a cow
- you can return to buy another cow after returning to your ranch to name the first cow
- reimbursing player 5000g if paid-for cow was not delivered by the end of the day (due to cutscene ending day automatically)
- speeding up text if A/B/X/Y/L/R are held down
- forcing horse to be idle for 2 seconds after dismounting
- forcing horse to be idle for 4 seconds after using saddle to ship item
- now allowing game to continue after end of game (mostly untested)
- limiting number of gifts you can give to each girl to 1 per day
- unified logic so that girls' affection boost is consistent across their different locations
I haven't been able to test all that much, but my goal was to leave the spirit of the original game in-tact -- while removing any exploits that would encourage repeatedly doing the same thing without limit (e.g. chopping logs or watering crops infinitely into the night or talking to a girl over and over to max out her affection).
I'd appreciate if anyone has any thoughts or feedback
I'm not trying to diminish your efforts here, but this kind of talk is not allowed on Ushi. This is directly from the rules.
Can we talk about rewritable cartridges and emulation here?
No. This forum is hosted in the United States, where the use of R4 cards and other like items are not legal. While this forum does allow people from all countries to post, discussion of rewritable cartridges for game consoles is not appropriate. If a user mentions they are using a device to illegally play video games (Harvest Moon or otherwise), the account will be banned.
This is also not the forum to use for help using your emulator. If you are posting questions on how to get a game to work with your program, your account will be banned.
The OP isn't pointing out where to download a copy of the game, nor asking how to get it to work with an emulator. Other patch-like posts have been accepted in the past, so it would be unfair to not allow this one as well.
I made sure to review the forum rules before posting (haven't been on here in over a decade ) -- my apologies for not being more explicit in my initial post
One of my intentions in posting here is to gather insight and feedback on what other bugs or cut features people knew of.
Hey Mattdog, can you do a few more tweaks to the cows?
1. The SNES slow « Mr.Gourmet's hat » CPU makes tending 12 cows a nightmare. Can you do something about it? Maybe split the barn into sections where one section has 6 cows, and then a door in the back takes you to another section with another 6 cows?
2. Prevent cows from moving out of their pen. When cows move, their sprites can merge into a single object making it impossible to take care of. You either add collision to prevent merging, or stop them from moving too much.
3. Make it easier to get cows in and out of the barns. Maybe equip the bell and use it on a cow to automatically teleport it in and out of the barn.
Hey Mattdog, can you do a few more tweaks to the cows?
1. The SNES slow « Mr.Gourmet's hat » CPU makes tending 12 cows a nightmare. Can you do something about it? Maybe split the barn into sections where one section has 6 cows, and then a door in the back takes you to another section with another 6 cows?
2. Prevent cows from moving out of their pen. When cows move, their sprites can merge into a single object making it impossible to take care of. You either add collision to prevent merging, or stop them from moving too much.
3. Make it easier to get cows in and out of the barns. Maybe equip the bell and use it on a cow to automatically teleport it in and out of the barn.
Regarding 1:
The slowdown is certainly a tricky problem to solve -- and having cows + chickens together out in the field makes it even worse (I won't be discussing any emulation solution stuff on this forum, of course). Would having the framerate drop to 15fps in these cases would be preferable to it slowing down, in your opinion?
Regarding 2:
Reducing the frequency that the cows and chickens move may also reduce the slowdown, as large portions of the most expensive logic is the collision checking that is done for their movement logic. I also considered reducing the max number of cows and chickens to be 8 and 6, respectively (like in Harvest Moon 64), and then update the scoring logic at the end of the game to be twice as generous. Would either of these changes be undesirable?
Regarding 3:
I didn't want to break any of the functionality demonstrated in the tutorial videos (where the bell is used to slowly bring a cow outside), but perhaps updating the bell to only affect the cow that you last touched would still be intuitive? I also considered having the bell tree act as an instant teleport for all the cows and yourself to go back into the barn -- what do you think?
Hey Mattdog, can you do a few more tweaks to the cows?
1. The SNES slow « Mr.Gourmet's hat » CPU makes tending 12 cows a nightmare. Can you do something about it? Maybe split the barn into sections where one section has 6 cows, and then a door in the back takes you to another section with another 6 cows?
2. Prevent cows from moving out of their pen. When cows move, their sprites can merge into a single object making it impossible to take care of. You either add collision to prevent merging, or stop them from moving too much.
3. Make it easier to get cows in and out of the barns. Maybe equip the bell and use it on a cow to automatically teleport it in and out of the barn.
Regarding 1:
The slowdown is certainly a tricky problem to solve -- and having cows + chickens together out in the field makes it even worse (I won't be discussing any emulation solution stuff on this forum, of course). Would having the framerate drop to 15fps in these cases would be preferable to it slowing down, in your opinion?
Regarding 2:
Reducing the frequency that the cows and chickens move may also reduce the slowdown, as large portions of the most expensive logic is the collision checking that is done for their movement logic. I also considered reducing the max number of cows and chickens to be 8 and 6, respectively (like in Harvest Moon 64), and then update the scoring logic at the end of the game to be twice as generous. Would either of these changes be undesirable?
Regarding 3:
I didn't want to break any of the functionality demonstrated in the tutorial videos (where the bell is used to slowly bring a cow outside), but perhaps updating the bell to only affect the cow that you last touched would still be intuitive? I also considered having the bell tree act as an instant teleport for all the cows and yourself to go back into the barn -- what do you think?
I appreciate all your feedback
1. I recall the GB Harvest Moon separated the barns and coops into 2 sections divided by a door. That said, reducing the cows and chicken number might be the easier option. I rather not have the frame rate drop to 15. That might cause literal headaches when playing at such a frame rate.
There are other possibities, but might be more complex? For example, I heard early SNES games used a slower [b]Very Bad Thing™[/b] that only runs at 2.5Mhz or something while later SNES games used a faster [b]Very Bad Thing™[/b]. Hackers have been able to reduce slowdown by making the game thinks it's not a faster [b]Very Bad Thing™[/b], I think. Maybe HM used a slower [b]Very Bad Thing™[/b] to save money? There's also the SA1 Chip hack where people use the SA1 chip to boost the speed of SNES games that didn't have them.
2. Yeah, I notice the slow down happens mainly when things move. It's so aggravating watching the game slow to a crawl while the cows merge into one entity. Whether you reduce the numbers or make them stop moving, as long as it works, I have no problems.
3. I don't think you should worry about that. I'm willing to bet people who download the patch will be reading up on the changes. I can't image someone randomly downloading a patch without knowing what it does. Plus, in addition to that, you can also create a youtube video for your patch showing the new mechanic.
I've just uploaded a version 2.1 update which includes slowdown fixes for both cows and chickens (the upload should soon be available at http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4056/).
It is still possible to have slowdowns if you move all of your cows and all of your chickens outside at once, but for most cases that I've tested I think this should be a sufficient improvement
Anonymous Fish wrote:I've just uploaded a version 2.1 update which includes slowdown fixes for both cows and chickens (the upload should soon be available at http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4056/).
It is still possible to have slowdowns if you move all of your cows and all of your chickens outside at once, but for most cases that I've tested I think this should be a sufficient improvement
Thanks again for all your feedback!
Oops -- looks like I posted this anonymously because I didn't log in first >.<
Can you fix the glitch when switching between the cowbell and another item that causes the game to freeze after 4 switches? It makes a subtle corrupted sound that grows with intensity on each switch with the fourth switch completely freezing the game.
Whaaaat? I can't believe such a patch existed, it's sooooo cool! Makes me wanna play SNEs again. Thank you
I also considered reducing the max number of cows and chickens to be 8 and 6, respectively (like in Harvest Moon 64), and then update the scoring logic at the end of the game to be twice as generous. Would either of these changes be undesirable?
This is great idea if you ask me.
I also considered having the bell tree act as an instant teleport for all the cows and yourself to go back into the barn -- what do you think?
And this is even the best idea ever, would be so cool to have that!
Btw, how do you make those r0m h@cks?! It's so awesome I can't even tell! Is there any option to create a rucksack or sth?! :D Or maybe option to "eat something" later afater not choosing "eat or pick up" menu. Like you bring the berry to the table in house (a plate on table) and makes you ask do you want to eat this?
Last edited by fizzly on Oct 24, 2024 4:17 am, edited 2 times in total.
) -- my apologies for not being more explicit in my initial post 
