Too much time spent patching, not enough playing? Confused about ROM headers, expansion and IPS patches? Insecure, afraid and alone? Fret no more, your salvation is here! Introducing…
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ROM
EarthBound Patcher is a brand-new tool to assist with the creation and distribution of hacks for EarthBound ROMs. Its features include:
- Creation and Application: EarthBound Patcher can create EBP (EarthBound Patch) patches as well as apply IPS or EBP patches, including patches created with other patchers.
- Portability: EarthBound Patcher runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Ease-of-use: EarthBound Patcher makes applying and creating hacks dead simple – no more will you have to worry about ROM headers or their lack thereof; EarthBound Patcher tries to automatically detect what kind of ROM to patch. It can even detect if you’re using an unconventional ROM, in which case it will patch it to the standard version.
- Patch Metadata: EarthBound Patcher created patches can contain metadata, including the patch’s title, the patch’s author and a short description for the patch. This information is displayed by EarthBound Patcher when you open the patch for applying. This ensures you always know what a patch is for.
EarthBound Patcher is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License v3.
Website: EarthBound Patcher
Source: Lyrositor/EBPatcher
Download (fastest): Version 1.0
Huh? Why do we need this? What’s wrong with IPS patches and Lunar IPS?
If you’re fine with IPS patches, great! It’s a venerable patch format for SNES ROM hacks, and the EBP format is actually just a simple extension of the IPS format. However, IPS patching can be a bit confusing, especially since you can never be entirely sure you’re applying it to the correct ROM, since patches can be made against a headered ROM, an unheadered ROM, an expanded ROM, etc., and the user has no way of knowing it before trying to patch. Patching incorrectly often results in aberrations like this:
With EarthBound Patcher, you don’t have to worry about any of that. Select a clean ROM, be it headered or not, expanded or not, and it will always be automatically trimmed or expanded as needed. It also makes sure that any newly-created EBP patch will be for unheadered ROMs, even if the specified source ROM is a headered ROM!
Be that as it may, Lunar IPS has proved its stability. Are you sure your software is bug-free?
Of course not. There are probably a few bugs for edge-cases. Not to mention that EBP patches are systematically bigger than IPS patches created with Lunar IPS since EarthBound Patcher uses a less-efficient patching algorithm. But overall, I’d say it’s perfectly usable, especially with EBP patches. If you find a bug, though, please report it and I’ll try to get a fix out as fast as possible.
Yeeaaah OK… But why create a new patch format in that case?
A new format is required to ensure that the patch was indeed created with EBPatcher. It’s also used to store JSON-encoded metadata, appended after all the data.
Fair enough, but every single hack out there is distributed through IPS patches. Where can we get EBP patches?
EarthBound Patcher is perfectly capable of applying IPS patches (although during my testing, one patch failed to apply correctly, for reasons currently unknown). However, EBP patches are definitely a safer bet. But to get them, you’d need a website hosting them. You’d need a place to easily download them. You’d need…
The EarthBound Hack Vault is an online repository of ROM hacks for the SNES game EarthBound. Hacks are distributed in the EBP (EarthBound Patch) format to facilitate usage; they must be applied with EarthBound Patcher. I’m launching it with 5 hacks for now, but hopefully this will grow over the following weeks. Each hack comes with a description, a short presentation and a link to an EBP patch file. It also provides a series of links to useful resources, including my EarthBound Hacking 101 project and CCScriptWriter.
If you’d like to submit your hack, feel free to send me a PM on the forums with the details described here. I’ll be a bit unavailable over the following weeks as I’m currently moving overseas, but I’ll try to stay up-to-date.
Many thanks to Mr. Tenda for help in the creation of EarthBound Patcher and the EarthBound Hack Vault.
Note: I had to rush this release a bit because my time is limited currently. I apologize for any typos, incorrect links or any eventual complications you might encounter.
