--------------------------------------------------------------- Streets of Rage2: Among Us By Yoni Arousement https://yoni2.blogspot.com or www.yonih2.us (New Blog URL since Google basically pulled a Tumblr in 2022) --------------------------------------------------------------- I felt that an Among Us themed Streets of Rage 2 ROM Hack needed to exist. Gens emulator is recommended for this ROM Hack... except its built-in AVI recorder crashes the emulator during certain transitions. Gens is less lilkely for the ROM Hack to have random bugs that would occur on more accurate emulators, and a Model 1 Sega Genesis. So... basically I forced myself to make this ROM Hack. I felt that SOR2 ROM Hack themed after Among Us must exist. So I decided to use what I've learned over the years from editing SOR2. Did I have fun while making this? Yes I did! Was it also stressful? Yes, because of the possible bugs from editing enemies. SOR2: Among Us is based on version 0.9 of SOR2: Syndicate Wars, a ROM Hack by Red Crimson and gsaurus that not only makes all the enemies playable (barring Vehelits), but converted their graphics from compressed to uncompressed, so one can freely customize their sprites. It also added Adam to the roster, and a Survival Mode. A later version of SOR2: Syndicate Wars was first publicly shared in 2016, when the Genesis Collection on Steam was updated with a Unity Hub and added support for Workshop items. This new version added Zan and Roo to the roster, made enemies use the alt palettes, lets you start from any area, added a self-destruct command for Particle, the list goes on. However, there are huge reasons I still prefer editing v0.9 over the 2016+ version (2.x). In addition to things being in different addresses again (that's how assembly is), Pancake wouldn't work properly with that version at the time I first checked it out. Upon editing a character and loading the 2016+ version, and reaching the character select screen, the game literally filled the whole VRAM with my character's tiles. Editing enemies in SOR2: SW can lead to all sorts of problems that must be reversed in a Hex Editor, such as editing Big-Ben making the counter of vaulting over an enemy not reset. So, one word of advice would be to make backups of your ROM Hacks. Starting with Abadede's Back Slam sprites, I needed to start generating sprites in Old Addresses (unused art tiles that I blanked out), which is risky but worthwhile. --------------------------------------------------------------- What programs did you use to create this ROM Hack? Notepad, to take notes of course! In addition: Gens: My main emulator used to test my ROM Hacks. BizHawk: Usually, I use BizHawk to verify the sprites in case they display incorrect art, in which case I can generate duplicates of the same sprites that glitched on more accurate emulators, and on an actual Genesis. gsaurus' tools: Pancake 2 v1.6: The bread and butter of tools, used to customize character sprites, animations, hitboxes, etc. Mega Drive Voice Editor: This program lets you easily replace voice samples in Sega Genesis games, including guides for games like Streets of Rage 2 & 3, and the European version of fellow Yuzo Koshiro game The Story of Thor/Beyond Oasis. Palettes of Rage: To customize the color palettes. On a few occasions, I created my own guides. RGBGen: Converts colors to Genesis format. Tile Layer Pro: My Tile Editor of choice, TLP was a program I used back in the day to view tiles. I also use it to blank out unused/replaced art tiles and insert edits made to misc. graphics such as fonts, items, icons and other HUD elements. Paint.NET v3.5.10: My main tool to create and/or edit sprites and artwork. I actually prefer to use an older version of this program, for reasons I forget... GraphicsGale: To create indexed sprite images that are to be inserted into a SOR ROM. GoldWave: To edit sounds. Usually I downsample sounds up to 22050hz. What's absolutely required, though, is to encode the sounds to 8-bit mono, so they can properly be inserted into a ROM via MDV. Wavosaur can be alternatively used for this purpose. Hex Workshop: My favorite Hex Editor to use. I make so many Hex Edits with this program. One godsend of this tool is that you can compare the Hex Values of two different files at once, which helps me tremendously in reversing bugs. XVI32 would do an okay job as a Hex Editor. Spread32: A spreadsheet tool. As of this writing, I'm not too used to using these tools. In the case of SOR2, I usually use it for enemy names. I might suggest also creating a spreadsheet for the Duel Mode palettes. Speaking of which, people should make videos of Duel Mode matches in these Streets of Rage ROM Hacks! --------------------------------------------------------------- How to Patch: Patch SOR2_AmongUs.ips over a regular US Streets of Rage 2 ROM, via Lunar IPS. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sub-Patches: SOR2_AmongUs_NoGore: Disables the gory deaths, and makes the characters' sprites blink when they die. SOR2_AmongUs_SoundDriver: Reverts changes made to the Sound Driver. Sub-Patches can be applied over a patched SOR2_AmongUs ROM. --------------------------------------------------------------- Who's that little witch that has nothing to do with Among Us? Meet Maddaneen, the witch! She's just one of my OC's who appeared in an old comic series of mine: https://web.archive.org/web/20121114180901/http://lorenzothecomic.blogspot.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------