[Scummvm-devel] On 3.3 in the README: "Maniac Mansion NES notes"

[Max Horn]

Hi there,

while working on revising our README a bit (and doing some "User's Guide"
work) I cam upon section 3.3 of our README which says this:

<quote>
In order to get the game working, you will have to strip out the first
16 bytes from the ROM you are trying to work with. Any hex editor will work
as long as you are able to copy/paste.  After you open the ROM with the
hex editor, copy everything from the second row (17th byte) to the end.
After you do this, paste it to a new hex file. Name the new file
"Maniac Mansion (XX).prg" while XX stands for the version you are working
with (E, F, G, SW, or U).  The final size should be exactly 262144 bytes.
</quote>


Call me naive, but ... *why* are we forcing users to do that? Given the
fixed sizes involved, shouldn't it be almost trivial to add code which
detects when those leading 16 bytes have not been stripped (say, by
looking at the file size -- ain't I a genious for coming up with this
clever trick? *ggg*), and then skip those automatically? If there is no
fundamental reason preventing this that I missed: Please, somebody with
the NES MM implement this. If nobody is willing/able to do it, I could do
it, too, but then somebody else has to test it.

I really have a hard time convincing myself that it's a good idea to write
into a README or manual that a user should use a hex editor in order to be
able to play a game... :-).


Cheers,
Max