Dec 23, 2021

Avenue Fighter II, The World Warrier

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This text is piece of a series about Avenue Fighter II and the CPS-1. It is suggested to learn the previous entries earlier than discovering out this one.

The embarassing typo

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One among my favourite myth about Avenue Fighter II is Akiman’s tale of a peril stumbled on rapidly earlier than shipping.

Merely three days earlier than the lower-off date, I stumbled on one thing rotten. I had made a mistake with the subtitle “World Warrior”, mis-spelling it “World Warrier.”

– Akiman, Lead graphic derive on SF2 (translated by Shmuplation)

A sport of the topic. Ouch!

To totally observe the placement, we now need to dig into how the arcade hardware works. The CPS-1 is a spruce tile drawing machine. It’ll map a bunch of tiles but can’t alter them. They’re taken from the GFX ROM as they’re and sent to the veil (even supposing they’ll also be flipped horizontally or vertically).

The GFX ROM and the 68000 instructions ROM as burned one by one. The realm Akiman portray is that the GFX ROM had been burned but he would possibly perchance silent set apart changes to the instructions.

But how would possibly perchance he repair the mistake if the art work became once role in stone at this level?

Now I’m in a position to safely declare this tale too, but we in truth didn’t gaze it until several months after the total sprite work had been done. For the reason that logo had already been created, I couldn’t upright slump in and replace the letter at this level.

“Possibly I’m in a position to upright force it to search luxuriate in an ‘o’,” I notion. I tried layering diversified diversified sprites over it until ultimately, it regarded luxuriate in an ‘o’. Phew!

– Akiman, Lead graphic derive on SF2 (translated by Shmuplation)

All about primary parts

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Akiman description of the answer left me wanting more primary parts. How did he turn an ‘e’ into an ‘o’? Since I had a sheet extractor, I regarded for the text and definite ample, the emblem and the typo luxuriate in been stumbled on on sheet 0x7B00.

The emblem is drawn by ability of 16 map calls the usage of tiles 0xC8, 0xC9, 0xCA, 0xCB, 0xCC, 0xCD, 0xCE, 0xCF, 0xD8, 0xD9, 0xDA, 0xDB, 0xDC, 0xDD, 0xDE, and 0xDF.

The manner Akiman solved his enviornment declare that are attempting to be perfect in direct to ship. He observed that there became once an ‘or’ in ‘World’ which would possibly perchance perhaps kinda match pretty than the ‘ier’. So, he dropped the three final tiles 0xDD, 0xDE, and 0xDF and changed them with 0xCD and 0xCE.

That became once greater but it undoubtedly utterly displaced the topic on tale of the borrowed neutral appropriate leg of the ‘W’ regarded luxuriate in an ‘l’ pretty than an ‘i’. The emblem now learn ‘The World Warrlor’.

At this level, what became once wanted became once a manner to gash the tip of the ‘l’ to set apart it look luxuriate in a dot on high of an ‘i’ but how would possibly perchance he enact that on tale of the 68000 can’t write in a tile?

Guile to the rescue

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The final piece of the puzzle comes from Guile’s calves. Whenever you happen to look carefully at tile 0x96 you will discover it has utterly one pixel considered in the lower left corner.

Guile palette

World Warrier palette

One thing that I omitted to mention earlier is that the palette management is utterly below the 68000 adjust. The CPU is free to situation a tile drawing declare the usage of regardless of palette it pleases.

Guile’s green palette is now not counseled on tale of the emblem uses blue colours. But when we field them aspect by aspect, we see that index 14 is darkish green in Guile’s palette but darkish blue in the emblem palette.

The usage of tile 0x96 with the emblem palette permits the 68000 to luxuriate in a (very pricey) machine the build 255 pixels are wasted to transparency however the 256th can even be old luxuriate in a pencil.

That pencil-tile is old to situation three map declare with coordinates overlapping the ‘l’. This successfully creates a line which cuts the tip piece and set apart it look luxuriate in the dot on the tip of an ‘i’.

Whenever you happen to ever wondered why the ‘i’ of ‘Warrior’ regarded irregular all these years, now you know. Et voila!

Epilogue

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The typo became once fixed in later versions of Avenue Fighter 2 the build the “World Warrior” role of tiles aspects a right “IOR”.

Ironically these need to now not old on tale of the sub-title became once changed from “World Warrior” to “Champion Edition” and then “Hyper-struggling with”.

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