Shining in the Darkness - Thornwood Terrors Rom Mod by Daedalus007

[Daedalus007]

Hello everyone! I'm the original author of the v1.0.1 Thornwood Terrors mod for Shining in the Darkness[www.romhacking.net]

Here is the official legal rom to obtain:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/71161/Shining_in_the_Darkness/

I also created an updated v1.2 beta version[forums.shiningforcecentral.com] that is newer than the one on RHDN but I was only able to post it on some SitD fan forums.

I'm really happy to see people still (recently) enjoying this. Awesome!
I used to go by different name(s) on the RHDN forums because the admin (Nighthawk or w/e his name is now) is a jerk, to put it mildly.

I'll be contacting the people who have been reposting my rom mods/hacks on the workshop so that they are aware that I'm still alive/around (currently busy modding FF12 Zodiac Age).

All of my rom mods/hacks are released under the following license:
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike v4.0 International version[creativecommons.org]

So it is perfectly legal for ANYONE to repost this as long as they follow the license. I'll ask the posters to update the attribution since I no longer go by that old username and would like people to be able to reach me directly.

During my time at RHDN, I was unfortunately unable to receive feedback for the mod so if anyone would like to provide feedback the best place to reach me is on Discord. My Steam Profile has my Discord username and a link to the server that I run.

I'd love to hear some feedback about my work.

Cheers! :)

[Daedalus007]

In the event of any salty people trying to think I'm not the author, I went ahead and logged into my Shining Force Central accounts to update them with a Steam Workshop blurb.

[OmegaDL50]

Hey. Sorry for the delayed response. Would you prefer I update the version I uploaded of your patch to v1.2 Beta

I will update the credits accordingly to your current name.

[Daedalus007]

I actually want to properly finish the mod to make it an 'easy mode' mod and just abandon the 'hard difficulty' part of it since that seems to be very unpopular. It has been years since I released it and I'm super-happy that a new audience on Steam is able to easily obtain the rom (legally) and also enjoy my mod :)

I'll need some time to dig out my old backup hard drive and copy over my old notes and spreadsheets I kept. I will probably make a detailed 'spoiler' bestiary guide so people are aware of a few things and those who don't want to be spoiled will avoid it.

I'm currently thinking of splitting the mod into v1.3e (for easy) and v1.3h (for hard) and fixing the weird bugs people have been having. I'm taking a guess that the rom version I used as a base (dumped from my Genesis cart) is different from the version up on Steam. I'll have to troubleshoot and have some people test for me. If anyone has save game files PLEASE hang onto them as that'll make testing much easier. SAVE GAME files and not 'save states'!

[Daedalus007]

Doing a quick clarification here. I made this SitD rom mod a long while ago and I realize there's more of a desire for an 'easier mode' than a harder one. That said, some may wonder why the patches are buggy or don't work properly.

I was still fairly new-ish to rom modding and didn't properly double-check my dumped rom compared to the No-Intro rom verification system.[i.imgur.com] Apparently the rom I dumped worked properly but was not a 'clean' dump or a 'good' dump. Maybe an overdump or something. But the hashes ended up not matching the ones they needed to be. Back then I had a homemade cart dumping device and all the fancy ones available now were too pricey for me to afford in the past.

The short story is that the current versions of patches (both v1.01 and v1.2 beta) are not really designed to work with the verified-clean-dump version of the ROM that is currently for sale on Steam. I'll be working in the coming days to rectify this and make it fully-compatible the way it should've been all those many years ago. I had initially dismissed concerns about missing items as someone not patching properly but now I know that I should've investigated further rather than dismissing it.

The ETA for completion of this is sometime before the end of May. Exact date is uncertain since I have other things I'm in the middle of and I never expected to have to come back to something to fix it.

The updated release will be a 'final' release in BPS patch format. One with all the 'easy' changes but WITHOUT the 'Thornwood Agony' boss buffs. This will be the version 1.3e (easy mode) and then one WITH the 'Thornwood Agony' boss buffs being v1.3h (hard mode).

Prior to the public release of these, I'll ask for some testers to speedrun through the game and use their save states to try to break things as often as possible and especially test out bosses and changed things.

I realize that my 'boss buffs' were a bit too aggressive so I'll dial them back down to a lower % buff. I'll dig out my original bestiary spreadsheet I had archived and will see what changes I made so that I can make it challenging without being ruthlessly-punishing to conquer the game.

[Daedalus007]

My release of the upcoming v1.3e and v1.3h will exclusively be in BPS format because it is far too much effort/work for me to create separate IPS patches that people are going to want to combine anyways. For this game in particular, the modding tools are a bit basic compared to more modern games.

I will release the patches themselves (WITHOUT the roms) exclusively on the SFC forums. As far as Steam Workshop, I'll ask Professor Prinny here to update the version with updated v1.3 versions only after it has been bug-tested enough for a suitable public release.

Anyone who is good at speed-running this game and wants to volunteer for testing, please get in touch with me via Discord. My contact info is in the comments on my Steam Profile page.

[Daedalus007]

Ok so I think I wasn't as derpy as I thought.
I looked again at the original release[www.romhacking.net] and the readme[www.romhacking.net]. I clearly put the correct rom hashes for the 'verified good dump'. This means that I did indeed use a good dump as the basis for my rom mod here.

Now the challenge will be trying to correct whatever bugs/issues may be present that have been causing the problems that people have experienced. Since every person who obtained the rom from Steam has a 'legit verified' rom with the correct hashes, a bad rom dump can be excluded from consideration.

I'm going to continue my plan to create the updated release of the mod with 'easy' and 'hard' variations. However, because of this new information that I've (re)discovered, I'll be delaying an upcoming release until I get it done. I won't be giving an actual ETA or promising it'll be done by the end of the month.

Why? IRL workload, bills to pay, the usual stuff. I've been considering putting a great deal of effort into other endeavors to make more money independently of my current job so that I can do more work at home and thus have less time in traffic and more time doing what I love.

I'll only be updating this thread when the release is ready to go. If anyone wants updates and to perhaps help with testing it out, PLEASE check my Steam Profile on how to get in touch with me via Discord. I've got some other projects with Zodiac Age being planned so this may be something put on the back burner in the interim.

Taking a guess but perhaps some of the changes I made with the editors created other issues due to the editors being somewhat buggy or incomplete.

[Daedalus007]

Changed my mind: please check updates below.

RIP this mod. Oh whelp. :(

I'm going to not spend further time trying to decipher what is going on or fix/improve the issues of this mod. After spending weeks going through and redoing and testing and such, I've realized that the editors I was using may have caused some other unforseen issues and that I'd need to manually hex-edit everything I wanted to change in order to mitigate those issues.

I do not have time for that. Not for a mod that is so old and so niche (in an already niche game) that spending 40+ hours just to make things harder (or easier) would not be something I want to spend time on at all. The initial modding already took a good chunk of my time back when I first created it, so spending as much or even more time trying to manually do everything is not desirable to me.

I'm busy with planning mods for FF12: Zodiac Age right now. I'd rather not spend more time on this than I already have.

All my work has a very permissive 'Creative Commons' license so if anyone wants to create some improved editors and/or their own 'hardcore' version then feel free to do so.

I'm leaving it as-is and do NOT plan on fixing the bugs/issues for the mod. I've moved on and I hope that any dedicated SitD fans might be willing to create some better/tested editors (or improve the existing ones) so that SitD can live on for those enthusiasts.

Apologies to any/all who were waiting on improvements. IRL and other stuff (including Zodiac Age modding) have a much higher priority for me than worrying about this.

At any point in the future, I may decide to come back to this but there's zero promises/guarantees on any of that. Maybe in 2030 or something lmao.

[Daedalus007]

Quick Update Today on 15-June-2018:

I've been working feverishly on this mod for the past week but despite my best efforts, I won't be able to do full/comprehensive testing on this in a limited timeframe.

New estimated release date is sometime before July 29th. I want to have it tested and ready before the July 4th weekend. If you are interested in helping beta-test the mod earlier, please get in touch with me on Discord. My info is listed in the comments of my Steam Profile.

I'm not going to do the hard mode after all; everything is designed to make the game significantly easier.

-----------------------------------------------------

If testing still reveals the missing chest and other problems, then I'll resort to just increasing XP/Gold gains as well as putting in the Tamayoshi Helm and Glass Armor increased value cheats. Other changes will then be discarded. I hope I don't have to do this but only testing will determine it.

Thanks again to everyone for your patience and understanding <3

[Daedalus007]

Quick Update for 17-June-2018:

It is with heavy heart that I report this mod to be cancelled. I did a few minor changes for items, weapons, armor, and editing an early enemy and tested them and apparently there's an issue with the compression & decompression of the ROM data wherein certain changes will shift data around in odd ways and thus cause the errors that have been seen.

I'm not certain WHICH values are incorrectly compressed but I'm significantly limited in what I can safely alter. Trial and error takes far too long and the lack of testers means that I've consumed close to 80+ hours troubleshooting this to no avail.

Because of this issue, changing anything is just an exercise in trial and error and something I don't have time to do right now. I haven't had any volunteers come forth to help with testing and thus the update for this project is effectively buried. I'm not certain if any of the preliminary testing for the editor had managed to find this issue.

I'm no longer able to work on this unless an improved editor can be created that properly handles the ROM value compression without shifting data around and messing things up. The source code of the original editors has been released for anyone to work on so if you happen to be code-saavy then please get in touch with me via Discord.

As far as cheating, there are ways to decrypt the ROM file from the Steam version and then open it up in any standard Sega Genesis/MegaDrive emulator like Kega Fusion. From there, it is trivial to do a quick search for Game Genie/PAR codes.

[Daedalus007]

If anyone needs help with applying the v1.01 IPS files to the ROM files (or help decrypting the ROM from the Steam format) then feel free to get in touch with me. My contact info (via Discord) is on my Steam Profile page.

When contacting me, please be sure to mention what you need help with.