[FE8] Skip the difficulty selection (defaulting to a set one)

circleseverywhere - Today at 2:56 PM
cool stuff
thanks
post that on feu at some point

{
PUSH; ORG 0xA20164
    POIN (prFixedDifficulty+1)
POP

prFixedDifficulty:
    SHORT (0x2200 | DIFFICULTY) // Difficulty: 0 for easy, 1 for normal, 2 for hard
    SHORT 0x2300
    SHORT 0x212A
    SHORT 0x5442
    SHORT 0x213D
    SHORT 0x5443
    SHORT 0x4770
    ALIGN 4
}

Replace DIFFICULTY with 0, 1 or 2 depending on which difficulty you wish to set.

Source
.thumb

mov r2, #2 @ 0 for easy, 1 for normal, 2 for hard
mov r3, #0

mov  r1, #0x2A
strb r2, [r0, r1]

mov  r1, #0x3D
strb r3, [r0, r1]

bx lr

HOW IT WORKS AND WHY

(If you’re just interested in the do part you can stop reading now)

Ok so, 0xA20160 is part of the savemenu 6C code (savemenu manages save & new game menu stuff), and at this point the 6C code is like so:
CALL(MakeDifficultySelect6C), with MakeDifficultySelect6C as follows:

MakeDifficultySelect6C:
    push {lr}

    mov r1, r0
    ldr r0, =p6C_DifficultySelection

    bl NewBlocking6C

    pop {r0}
    bx r0

This is interesting because this means that the savemenu 6C relies on the fact that the difficulty selection 6C is blocking to wait for the difficulty to be set. The following code is SLEEP(0) (what I usually alias to YIELD, because it stops the execution of the 6C until the next frame it is active), which means that this would be where the difficulty selection does its thing, and in the end will write to savemenu and destroy itself (unblocking savemenu in the process).

What we do, is skip that 6C entirely, and write the parameters directly to the savemenu 6C. Since no blocking 6C has been created, it will just continue its execution next frame as if it has existed (and execute according to the saved parameters, you can tryout this by setting the difficulty to 3, which was the code for “cancel”, and if you do things right it should prevent you to start a new game entirely because that’s a good idea right).

See here for more 6C doc stuff

I guess you could expand all that to only allow the difficulty selection screen under certain circumstances (:arrow_right::arrow_left::arrow_right::arrow_left::arrow_right::arrow_left::arrow_right::arrow_right::soon:?)

VoilĂ !

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This stuff’s really cool! I’d like to use it. Should I credit you or circles (or both)?

thanks!

circles just asked me if I knew anything about this and that’s why I made this, so I guess if you’re gonna credit someone for this I guess that would probably be me. (Although you can credit circles too if you want).

Note that I don’t mind not being credited for something small like this so it’s up to you whether you want to credit anyone at all.

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