illu§ion Wrote: Wow. Good topic. I never read so many different opinions in this thread.

Marcel, Is it true? Did you get another Account after the (Should I say it) Late Marcel?
BTW, I nominate this for Greatest thread of all time.

All I know is I want to know how people think a red Ninja could be conjurred. I really want to try it out. So far I have had little luck trying to find anything in the roms. I can't figure out how text is stored in the roms for it or anything so its difficult. I want to find text in the game and to find a way to read the images straight out of the rom, but I don't really know how they would be stored. Anybody ever tinker with the game before? or any MK arcade game for that matter? In the end, I'd want the knowledge to mess around with UMK3 moreso then any of the others anyway.

Heck, if I can get a pizza-colored Johnny Cage in MK2, a red ninja isn't all that unbelievable...

Or puke colored Shang...

You Suck - Shao Kahn

SuperMarioBro Wrote: Marcel, Is it true? Did you get another Account after the (Should I say it) Late Marcel?

Marcelunbeatable no more. If you send me a PM on my other account be sure to send it again in this account. If that's what you're wondering.

Well, I tried to come to an aggreement, but that's not going to happen cause no one's able to admit that the identity of the "glitched character" was created after it was "found". So going back to my original statement, no Ermac does not exist in MK1. There is no real evidence to support this because everything that has been present it easily countered, and no one can logically counter anything that has been presented against it. You guys who believe in Ermac still, all 3 of you, out of the entire MK community, go ahead and believe, but I think it's really silly to keep spreading the rumor.

Rumor is defined by:

A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth.
Unverified information received from another; hearsay.

If you guys don't at least agree that Ermac is a "rumor" than there is something seriously wrong here.

Matt

I guess I have to repeat myself.

"If you have version 1.0.9.5 B of the UK rom, change the first 383030387A00 to 616E75737A00 to get the error macro thing to happen. There. "

MK2KungBroken Wrote: Well, I tried to come to an aggreement, but that's not going to happen cause no one's able to admit that the identity of the "glitched character" was created after it was "found". So going back to my original statement, no Ermac does not exist in MK1. There is no real evidence to support this because everything that has been present it easily countered, and no one can logically counter anything that has been presented against it. You guys who believe in Ermac still, all 3 of you, out of the entire MK community, go ahead and believe, but I think it's really silly to keep spreading the rumor. Rumor is defined by: A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth. Unverified information received from another; hearsay. If you guys don't at least agree that Ermac is a "rumor" than there is something seriously wrong here. Matt

aaaah, so there is definitive proof from hyuga? and aaaaah, kunbroken did take my hint and change his signature. Interesting events.
Hyuga, can you explain to our viewers if ermac exists when you do this code? just cough or something, say yes, Ive taken a beating on this. thanks.

"Error Macro", the program, existed before the glitch occured, not the "Ermac" character. It was programmed in there to protect the system from any fatal bugs (lol..."fatal"). "Ermac" became the nickname of a supposed red ninja that appeared at some point as a result of this glitch occuring, and the system responding with the recovery program (possibly just a color palette glitch).

So, no, Ermac as an actual character did not exist until this glitch occured (supposedly).

MK2KungBroken Wrote: Well, I tried to come to an aggreement, but that's not going to happen cause no one's able to admit that the identity of the "glitched character" was created after it was "found". Matt

LoL you guys are amazingly entertaining, Hyuga, did it work, or did it not produce a red ninja and increase the ERMACS counter by 1? If it increased the counter and there was no red ninja, then it proves nothing. I never said there's no such thing as the ERMACS system, it's right there in the audits. Outworld you just jumped on what Hyuga said as if it's the ultimate proof, when Hyuga has only said it cause an ERMAC, not Ermac...lol fun-ny. But seriously, Hyuga what does it do and can you give some screen shots?

Matt

Hyuga Wrote: I guess I have to repeat myself. "If you have version 1.0.9.5 B of the UK rom, change the first 383030387A00 to 616E75737A00 to get the error macro thing to happen. There. "

Don't just repeat, clarify. You say change the first 383030387a00. But, I asked you where that was? That is a string of numbers and I have no idea how I would find that. It could be in the rom for the game, in the ram of the game after the game is loaded or in the chunk of ram the emulator is using if its running on a computer. Which is it? Please, I would really like to know.

again, I just asked for proof from Hyuga, I didn't "jump" on hyuha's theory. If anybody can provide online pics of an Ermac, whatever this thing is, its an expert like hyuga.

Hyuga tried to show me, but we had to leave, he got into the ROM and changed the numbers, but then we left. I think its true.

What program do you suggest using for doing the editting Hyuga? Right now I just right little thingies in Rapid-Q to scan through roms for hex values.

lol another tidbit to add to this, the MK1 arcade manual didn't list ermacs as being on the audit page. It listed error traps instead. Just found that amusing.

dreemernj Wrote: lol another tidbit to add to this, the MK1 arcade manual didn't list ermacs as being on the audit page. It listed error traps instead. Just found that amusing.

what does that mean, and are we getting closer to the truth?

It's in the ROM, dreemerj. I use a program labelled as "Hexpectacle.exe". I got it off of some German site. It can compress and decompress data. I don't know if those numbers are compressed or decompressed, though. I can't tell. The buttons are in German. I actually don't edit HEX that much, so I wouldn't know.

Anyway, it makes everything fucked up. It's really random. It's feasible that a red ninja would appear eventually. No sign of the name Ermac anywhere, though.

Yeah, I was looking through the rom and I don't think the word Ermac can really appear in game, definately not in the energy bar. I am still looking around to see if it can appear at the end of the round when it announces who wins but I doubt that as well.

Well, once you get into hacking ROMS, you'll understand how tiles are stored. Text is (usually) stored in chunks that can be mixed and matched into several letters. It's quite possible that the letter data got corrupted to spell out something else.

-The top of an F and the bottom of a C could make an E
-The top of a P and the bottom of a K could make an R
-The top of an M and the bottom of an H could make another M
-The top of a 4 and the bottom of an H could make an A
-The top of a G and the bottom of an L could make an C

I've dealt with roms before, I've actually made a couple of little tile edittors for simple SNES games, such as MarioKart and even started one for UMK3 but the pieces are broken up to small for me to bother putting them all back together. I would say the chances of broken letters are slim on here, especially broken letters accidentally spelling Ermac. Going off that logic they have a similar probability of spelling "Shakespeare."

I am weighing the odds on it. At this point, all the names are stored in one place for the energy bars and there is no ermac for that, that's why I don't think ermac could really appear in the memory bar. Also, working off how unique the lettering is in the memory bars and the fact that Reptile has Scorpion written in his energy bar, I'd say that the energy bar names are actually images instead of text stored and then shown with a font. But, that doesn't say anything about ermac appearing at the end of the round because that is text shown with a font, so my next thingy to try is to find all the text in the rom, which so far is being very difficult. I'm mainly used to SNES roms which are far easier, but oh well, maybe it will happen.

I know. I'm just trying to think of a (slightly) plausable explanation as to the Ermac at the end of the round thing. I'm going to work on it more tomorrow. I'm too tired to even type correctly at this point.

If you think this is hard, though, try changing a single piece of sprite data in a Neo-Geo ROM. I gave up after about 3 minutes of looking at one

dreemernj Wrote: I've dealt with roms before, I've actually made a couple of little tile edittors for simple SNES games, such as MarioKart and even started one for UMK3 but the pieces are broken up to small for me to bother putting them all back together. I would say the chances of broken letters are slim on here, especially broken letters accidentally spelling Ermac. Going off that logic they have a similar probability of spelling "Shakespeare." I am weighing the odds on it. At this point, all the names are stored in one place for the energy bars and there is no ermac for that, that's why I don't think ermac could really appear in the memory bar. Also, working off how unique the lettering is in the memory bars and the fact that Reptile has Scorpion written in his energy bar, I'd say that the energy bar names are actually images instead of text stored and then shown with a font. But, that doesn't say anything about ermac appearing at the end of the round because that is text shown with a font, so my next thingy to try is to find all the text in the rom, which so far is being very difficult. I'm mainly used to SNES roms which are far easier, but oh well, maybe it will happen.

Any update?

I don't know how, but I do know people looked at all the text in MK II. It'd be great if you guys could. If "Ermac Wins" is not in the game then the EGM story/pic is dead...

DreemerNJ has been trying to do that, he'll let us know when that happens.

One thing I noticed when fighting Reptile is that in the green of his costume are bits of fleshtones that are identically in Scorpions, except in Scorpions, they blend with the yellow nicely. Sub-zero is not a pallet swap of Scorpion when it comes to his stance as they are entirely different images. Moves like punches and kicks however are. In SF2, the original Ken and Ryu were identical pallet swaps except with different heads and different victory stances, later on, they uses bits and pieces of different frames here and there.

Anyway, the fact that the flesh tones are in both Reptile's and Scorpion's costume leads me to believe that Scorpion's costume is the original pallet and that there is no red pallet available for the costume. Even Sub-zero has a shine of sorts on his shoulder that is flesh tone but would match Scoprion's, and not a red or green costume. So the no loading of a pallet and using the default color, that being red, is not a valid possibility.

Matt

I have not found the text yet. Can't seem to figure how its stored in there. Plus, I have been sidetracked writing my name on Raiden's chest, teehee.

As far as the coloring, the ninjas are pallet swaps in every way it seems from looking through the game. Scorpion and Sub have different stances and all, but it appears the swapping of pallets for the stances would still work since it looks like a pallet system for both. You can see some of Sub Zero's blue in the middle of his arm during his stance as well as the sloppiness on his face which shows its actually a very poor quality pallet swap.

Hopefully I will find the text soon. But, thus far, it has been EXTREMELY annoying. The graphics are stored in a fairly straight forward way, much easier then in an SNES rom or something, but still, its painful to tease info out of this thing.