NES Space Checker

[Shiru]

My quest for a tool that checks free ROM space resulted in this small project. It does the job for me, maybe it could be useful for someone else.

That's how it looks:



Download the tool

[Denine]

That's really nice tool, may come handy.
I'm really curious HOW the tool know which byte is empty byte?
How tool detects it?

[tepples]

That's really nice tool, may come handy.
I'm really curious HOW the tool know which byte is empty byte?
How tool detects it?

I'm guessing it looks for $FF or $00 bytes (most common choices for ld65 fillval), or it looks for the longest existing runs and uses their byte values.

[Shiru]

The algorithm is explained in the readme, and there is source code as well - yes, it looks for the longest existing runs.

[thefox]

FYI, I tried running the app but it complained about two DLLs: borlndmm.dll and cc3270mt.dll. I found those online but it would be nice if they were included in the package for convenience.

[Shiru]

Thanks for report, I forgot to disable Dynamic RTL. The file is updated.

[thefox]

The file is updated.

Doesn't seem to be updated, the modification time of NESsc.exe is still 2011-12-30.

[Shiru]

It is because there was wrong link in the first post (fixed) - I moved files to another place since then, with copy of old files at old place.

[thefox]

Thanks, works now.

[Bisqwit]

Related to that, here's my PHP library for inserting stuff into a ROM according to a list of free space. It is the little brother of the system I have in Chronotools.

It does automatic tail-head merging of partially/wholly identical pieces of data, linking of inter-object references, and attempts to organize the potentially thousands of pieces into the given stripes of free space in a manner that results in most optimal filling.

It is aware of restrictions like "this object must be stored in a pre-defined location" or "these 200 objects must be placed in the same memory bank, whatever that may be".

Source code / download: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/src/romlinker_php.zip

The field of use for this library is in ROM hacking. I used it in the creation of my Finnish translation patch of Simon's Quest.
See inc/linker.php , which contains phpDocumentor compatible documentation.

[thefox]

There's a bug in the way this tool finds the fill byte, so it doesn't always use the byte with the longest run in the file. I took a look at the code, and as far as I could understand, the bug seems to be here:

Code: Select all

if(len>=8) lens[prev]=len;

Should be:

Code: Select all

if(len>=8 && len > lens[prev]) lens[prev]=len;

[Shiru]

Guess you are right, updated the file.

[thefox]

Guess you are right, updated the file.

Thanks!