[Released] Magician Lord romhack - Again changes from Hell

[Boomchild]

Hello everyone !

Finally, the patch is available !

​

Here are the changes :

Gameplay

8 HP max (6 in the original version)
5 lives per credit (2 in the original version)
Invincibility time doubled after being hit
Global level timer removed (normally hidden), which used to spawn an invincible monster after a few minutes
Disabled automatic monster spawns when staying in the same area for several seconds
You now need to get hit twice to lose one power level. This is visually represented by the power cell cracking after the first hit before disappearing
You can drop off ladders by pressing the jump button
When transformed, pressing C allows you to return to Elta’s base form while keeping the extra HP
In his base form, Elta can now fire 4 magic missiles simultaneously on screen (2 in the original)
Reduced HP for certain enemies that required too many hits to defeat
Removed the time limit for Gal Agiese’s dialogue before each boss, allowing you to enjoy the full music. Press any button to skip directly to the boss

Visuals

The power gauge design has been completely redone to match the HP bar’s style
Realignment of the orbs at the top of the screen
Improved character shadows for better contrast and consistency
Removed the score and hi-score display. Let’s be honest: NO ONE plays Magician Lord for the score — especially not a modded version! The remaining lives counter has been moved to the top-left corner to maximize space for those gorgeous graphics

Translation

Complete French translation of the game based on the Japanese script.
Complete retranslation of the English version, known for its infamous lines (“Again changes to hell”), to better match the Japanese script
Fear not, fans of the glorious Engrish original translation: a patch is available with the two English translation, you can switch between them by pressing D at the title screen

Cheats
For those playing without a memory card who wish to resume from the last reached level, you can press UP+C+D at any time to automatically skip to the next stage

Screenshots











Link

https://github.com/Boomchil/maglord-acfh/releases/download/1.0.0/maglord_acfh_1.0.0.zip

Inside the archive, you'll find a comprehensive readme explaining how to create a rom to play on mame, modded Switch, Analogue Pocket, Darksoft, or create a .neo file.

Hope you like it !

PS : Mods, can you please close the other thread ? Thank you !

 

[lithy]

Up and running, were there any final changes made besides dropping the Beta text on the title screen?

Thanks again for sharing, nice work.

 

[max 330 megafartz]

I prolly still wont be able to figger out how to run the damn thing, but congrats! I can imagine the changes versus the original rom in my mind and they are koll

 

[NeoCverA]

View attachment 90055

Up and running, were there any final changes made besides dropping the Beta text on the title screen?

Thanks again for sharing, nice work.

So did you basically patch the maglord S rom and the maglordh P rom then drop the patched files/replace the maglord files? (did you rename the P rom to 005-pg1.p1 (for backbit)

edit: the patched p rom works fine, just removed the 005-pg1.p1 from the folder.

 

[BeefJerky]

So did you basically patch the maglord S rom and the maglordh P rom then drop the patched files/replace the maglord files? (did you rename the P rom to 005-pg1.p1 (for backbit)

Guess I’ll wait for the release.

 

[NeoCverA]

@Boomchild thanks for all your work on this.
Have you converted to .neo (or anyone else)?

A buddy made a conversion so I could test on MiSTer and I'm encountering what seems to be a missing channel (some of the BGM is not playing) but I do hear it in stereo. Very odd.

The patched rom works great on the backbit - Im playing via an MV1C - so it's mono but I get more of the music vs the .neo

 

[Boomchild]

@Boomchild thanks for all your work on this.
Have you converted to .neo (or anyone else)?

A buddy made a conversion so I could test on MiSTer and I'm encountering what seems to be a missing channel (some of the BGM is not playing) but I do hear it in stereo. Very odd.

The patched rom works great on the backbit - Im playing via an MV1C - so it's mono but I get more of the music vs the .neo

Check your PM, I've sent you a .neo file. However I don't have the hardware to test it.

For the sound bug, have you tried with the original ROM ? Magician Lord uses an early board with its own way to address the sound rom, and when doing a convert with another board some channels are missing, so it may be related. The romhack do not alter anything related to the sound (only the P ROM and the S ROM are modified).

 

[city41]

I am currently working on adding this to https://neorh.mattgreer.dev

@Boomchild lmk if you don't want me to do that.

Since this hack takes two roms as the input, I have to rework the patching tool a good deal, but it's definitely doable.

 

[Boomchild]

I am currently working on adding this to https://neorh.mattgreer.dev

@Boomchild lmk if you don't want me to do that.

Since this hack takes two roms as the input, I have to rework the patching tool a good deal, but it's definitely doable.

Feel free to add it, no problem !

And I wanted to thank you once again for your fantastic article about the Puzzle Bobble ROM hack — that’s really what helped me get started. Even though I eventually went down the 68k assembly route instead of using LUA scripts, I honestly think that without you, this project simply wouldn’t have happened. So once again, a huge thank you!

 

[city41]

Awesome, glad it was helpful. Not sure what you mean by 68k instead of lua though. The lua scripts are to help you learn more about the game. But anyway, glad to see another cool Neo hack out there.

I should have an early version of neorh with ACFH added up for testing pretty soon.

 

[Boomchild]

Sorry, I meant that I didn’t use any script or tool and just wrote down the asm directly in hex into the p1 file (at first I swapped bytes on the fly when writing it, but it soon drove me crazy so I wrote a little script that swap/unswap the whole file ^^’)

 

[city41]

oh wow, doing this with a hex editor is hard core as hell. Congrats, that's awesome!

 

[city41]

OK got a version of neorh working with ACFH

https://neorh-git-maglord-matt-greers-projects.vercel.app/maglordh

I'ts a bit raw and still has a few things to fix before I push it out to the real site.

If anyone wants to try it, let me know if you hit any issues. After giving it maglord.zip and maglordh.zip, it will download maglordh_acfh-ee.zip (or maglordh_acfh-fa.zip, depending on which version you chose). Rename that to maglordh.zip, put it in your mame directory, and run the game from the command line.

Once I make sure this is all working correctly, I'll add .neo support. Sorry, I don't do darksoft's format because I honestly don't know anything about it or have a way to test it.

 

[NEOGOKU_DRAGON]

This game truly deserves an accessible version for the Neo Geo CD! @Boomchild @iq_132

 

[Boomchild]

I started looking into porting this hack to the Neo Geo CD, but the fact that it’s based on set 2 (where you respawn right where you die) completely ruins the point of the hack, which is meant to offer a console-like experience. I could still fairly easily add my modifications (remove the timer, disable flying monster spawns, etc.), but the overall experience would still be worse. If someone ever volunteers to port set 1 to the Neo Geo CD, then we could make something really cool ^^

 

[Neo Alec]

I started looking into porting this hack to the Neo Geo CD, but the fact that it’s based on set 2 (where you respawn right where you die) completely ruins the point of the hack, which is meant to offer a console-like experience. I could still fairly easily add my modifications (remove the timer, disable flying monster spawns, etc.), but the overall experience would still be worse. If someone ever volunteers to port set 1 to the Neo Geo CD, then we could make something really cool ^^

The CD release has the P rom modified a lot to play the music from CD I take it?

 

[Boomchild]

The CD release has the P rom modified a lot to play the music from CD I take it?

Yes, while you can find fragments of the original code here and there, it’s an hexadecimal puzzle to put it back to its original form.

I’m pretty sure it can be done somewhat easily, but it sure will need a lot of work.

 

[NeoSeeD]

OK got a version of neorh working with ACFH

https://neorh-git-maglord-matt-greers-projects.vercel.app/maglordh

I'ts a bit raw and still has a few things to fix before I push it out to the real site.

If anyone wants to try it, let me know if you hit any issues. After giving it maglord.zip and maglordh.zip, it will download maglordh_acfh-ee.zip (or maglordh_acfh-fa.zip, depending on which version you chose). Rename that to maglordh.zip, put it in your mame directory, and run the game from the command line.

Once I make sure this is all working correctly, I'll add .neo support. Sorry, I don't do darksoft's format because I honestly don't know anything about it or have a way to test it.

I found ROMS that worked on the site and got a zip with p1 & s1 files.

 

[NeoCverA]

tested this out and received an error:

An error occured. Make sure these are maglord.zip, maglordh.zip meant for recent versions of MAME.
unexpected error: combineSourceFiles: unexpected file count mismatch. Expected 2, got 3

Edit: ok figured it out - it's pretty picky and requires a very clean romset.
Most non-merged sets include all of the bios junk files and maglordh usually includes all of the parent files as well.
merged set usually has the maglordh folder within maglord zip
To test your tool out, I basically used the merged set (maglord.zip) - unzipped it, moved the /maglordh out, zipped that up. Deleted /maglordh from the extracted maglord then zipped it up thus creating a new maglord.zip and used those on your tool/site - it liked those.

Once I input the roms it likes, Im prompted with:

Finally: Grab the patched game​

Along with a button that says Download as mame.zip to use on emulators

Output: maglordh_acfh-ee.zip containing '005-p1.p1' and '005-s1.s1'


I believe most people trying it out would expect a patched rom ready to go rather than just the 2 patched files. Maybe a good idea to leave the instructions of renaming to maglordh, put in the mame dir, etc.

OK got a version of neorh working with ACFH

https://neorh-git-maglord-matt-greers-projects.vercel.app/maglordh

I'ts a bit raw and still has a few things to fix before I push it out to the real site.

If anyone wants to try it, let me know if you hit any issues. After giving it maglord.zip and maglordh.zip, it will download maglordh_acfh-ee.zip (or maglordh_acfh-fa.zip, depending on which version you chose). Rename that to maglordh.zip, put it in your mame directory, and run the game from the command line.

Once I make sure this is all working correctly, I'll add .neo support. Sorry, I don't do darksoft's format because I honestly don't know anything about it or have a way to test it.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

I was playing around with Magician Lord just for fun and the level timer actually times out mid and end bosses! Of course it's tedious as hell to time those bosses out but it works lol. Since this is the most active magician lord related thread I thought I'd post this here.

Highly disagree with removing score, no one plays Magician Lord for score? Maybe, but what about the life extends... and the point items that are still there...

 

[Boomchild]

Highly disagree with removing score, no one plays Magician Lord for score? Maybe, but what about the life extends... and the point items that are still there...

You have a point there (pun intended), but the life extends are still there, and to me, the sound of collecting the point items alone is satisfying enough ^^

 

[city41]

I believe most people trying it out would expect a patched rom ready to go rather than just the 2 patched files

Yeah I'll see about doing that. I was copying Boomchild's instructions on keeping maglordh as a separate rom.

The thing about "ready to go" and MAME is that is only possible if you launch it from the command line. Most people need something like hbmame for neo geo rom hacks and acfh would have to be added to it. So the real goal of the site is .neo files which just work as-is on mister and the neosd.

Thanks for the feedback, I will fix up the site. This is why it's not deployed yet.

 

[city41]

the level timer actually times out mid and end bosses! Of course it's tedious as hell to time those bosses out but it works lol

what happens? Do you die or something?

Is this for vanilla ML or with the hack?

This thread has also shown me that wow I've just not played ML much at all...

 

[NeoSeeD]

Yeah I'll see about doing that. I was copying Boomchild's instructions on keeping maglordh as a separate rom.

The thing about "ready to go" and MAME is that is only possible if you launch it from the command line. Most people need something like hbmame for neo geo rom hacks and acfh would have to be added to it. So the real goal of the site is .neo files which just work as-is on mister and the neosd.

Thanks for the feedback, I will fix up the site. This is why it's not deployed yet.

Thanks for helping to simplify the process. It took a few tries because as stated prior, part of the issue is that its not clear what MAME Roms are actually needed. MAME changes romsets like underwear so at minimum, a note of which rom set versions are needed would make things simpler.

On the site, maybe the drag and drop box can spit out an error if its the wrong ROM? Currently, if only one of the ROMS is incorrect, it's unclear which one it is.

Once users find the correct ROMS, the resulting zip file is incomplete without any further instruction that more files are needed. Most users will try it on MAME, it will fail and they'll have no idea why.

Now, once users have the correct zip, the game can be played on the Retroarch MAME core without command line shenanigans. I also converted over to .neo and it works on Geolith and my NeoSD cart. I haven't played through the game, but it does boot and work at least up to stage 2 and likely can be completed.

 

[city41]

what MAME Roms are actually needed. MAME changes romsets like underwear so at minimum, a note of which rom set versions are needed would make things simpler.

The having too many files problem that you encountered is specific to Magician Lord. I need to change how the site works to accomodate the two input roms. I didn't consider both zips would have the same rom it needs, so it grabbed both, then said wait a minute there's too many. That is an easy fix though.

It uses the sha of the rom file (not the zip, the roms inside of it), to look for the roms it needs. So usually it doesn't care about extra files, it just ignores them. Just about any mame neo geo rom will work because, at least in my experience, the mame dumps for neo geo games have not changed in a very long time.

Yeah there's tons of different neo roms floating around, and the contents of the zip varies a lot. But the actual rom files themselves are the same in all the zips. Again, at least in my experience with the other games (kof94, ss4, lb and puzzle bobble).