SNES Online: Findings

Saturday, November 30, 2019

As you should be easily aware of, I've shifted my research over from SNES Classic to SNES Switch Online. I'm still interested in SNES Classic, there's just more to figure out and work on right now with the Switch.

After I released CaVE I started getting back to work on the Switch .sfrom footer format. I got the basics documented and supported in SFROM Tool. But there's several unused parameters that have not been figured out.

Looking in the code, you can generate a full list of the params by value. And you can figure out which ones use a single byte value, and which use multi bytes. For some params, I had the convenience of there being support for the familiar SNESC sfrom format headers, and I could tell when a value is shared between the 2 and figure out the purpose for the one in the NSO .sfrom format. This is how I figured out how to use param 44, and get SFA2 and Star Ocean supported.

After that though, I had other things to focus on, so progress stopped. Now though I've been back to work! And I've figured out a few more params!

First up, we have...

Read more »

Release: SFROM Tool v1.2.0.0

Saturday, November 30, 2019

This release is long overdue!

Originally, I avoided it in favor of unofficial builds as I wanted the next version to be completely cross platform. But, as I have gotten no feedback on the Mac/Linux builds... I just haven't cared to try keeping them up-to-date with the Windows version. Avalonia, the WPF alternative UI library I use for those, is also a limited annoying pain in the ass to work with too. So I don't much care for working on those atm...

Anyway. The major changes in this build include. Drag and Drop support. Zipped ROM support. Switch SFROM support. And 3DS data.bin support.

The Switch .sfrom support is the biggest thing. As soon as the SNES Switch Online app came out I did my best to figure it out asap. I released a un-offical build as soon as I could, but as I had not figured out most of the params, I didn't want to release the real build yet. But now things are different! And while I may not have a perfect understanding of every parameter... I think I have a suitable enough grasp for a release.

I'll be posting a write up of my journey to figure out and document the new format soon.

Additionally, the 3DS support is important. It was always something I "could" do. And in the case of importing, I DID do it for my debugging/development code. But I never though there was a need for it until a couple months ago. I was asked about it, and told of the need. I was already working on support for the new .sfrom format... so it was nothing much to additionally work on support for the 3DS too.

Here's the changelog...

Read more »

Release: CaVE Database Manager v1.0

Sunday, November 03, 2019

Today I've released a new tool. In my efforts to translate my SNES Classic work over to supporting the Switch's SNES Online, I saw a empty space that could use filling in that of a tool to help users properly manage their custom databases. Not only for SNES, but nothing really existed like it for NES Online either despite that being out for awhile.

I wanted people to be able to mod their SNES Online installation as easily as possible. I wanted it to be as newbie friendly, and approachable by as many people as possible. Editing text files where one minor typo could render things completely unusable, was not that in the slightest!

Read more »