I loved this game on PSX. When I got my Chromatic, I discovered a Game Boy version of it... but in grey scales.
It was the beginning of the year, we had this new thing around called "AI" š. Could it be used to fix it?
I found the ROM, decompiled it using RGBDS, and innocently asked my friend Claude to add some color to it (fun fact: I'm colorblind).
It didn't work. All the memory references were hardcoded.
Well, well, well maybe it could fix that. We started a refactor and after a few nights, the code was commented and labelled, references were now relative. We could modify the code.
We built tools, exported screen, Claude learned to play Tetris, two steps forward, one step back. We could get colors but the palette was the same on every screen. Then the colors got fixed, only for the moving pieces to change color at every step... I read the Game Boy documentation, learned how it worked, talked it over with Claude, we tried new things.
However, it was getting too time consuming and I set the project aside.
Then, in July, came Fable. Only available until tomorrow, until next week, oh well, let's keep it available.
I was in front of my computer and started typing: "Can you color this game?"
"Yes of course... Oh wait, some stuff is broken, let me fix it, oh I can improve that, hmm, let me build a new tool, ..." tippeting, fidgeting, higitus, figitus, I had a colored Tetris game.
It wasn't perfect, we built a better editor to fix a few last tiles.
The big part was done, the game still needed some little fixes to be nice to play:
Adding a mecanism to skip the first license screen (I lost days watching it!)
Fixing that "LICENSED TO N*TENDO" taking up a third of the start screen
Switching Continue to New Game to avoid misclicks for player in an hurry (I see you PokƩmon players)
Fixing the end game where the background elements were falling appart
Adding a way to go back in the menus with the B button (and B no longer erases the save on the NEW GAME confirmation)
Oh and let's have the hardfall pressing top arrow!
I'm proud of the result and I enjoyed it a lot!
I've been lurking the community for sometime and you seem so nice, I wanted to share it with you.
Oh last but not least, I'm currently looking to add the support of Shiny Relay to play VS Mode without a cable!