Cho Ren Sha v1.10 Level Select?

[DuckReconMajor]

Hello. I apologize if this should have gone in another forum.
From what I've seen there is not yet a known way to access the menu in Cho Ren Sha 68k v1.10 Windows release that allows you to do level select ("Kakus[h]i Menu").
Is this still the case or has any more information been found?
Thank you.

[DuckReconMajor]

Sorry if this is not allowed, I made a very simple Cheat Engine table that will let you do level select
I'm not a cheat engine expert at all but I think that because it's one of those offset green addresses it should work with just the address. So I didn't need to make any pointers or anything. Through restarts of both Cheat Engine and the game, this still worked.

You need to set the value while you're not in-game e.g. while on the menu or watching an attract demo. If you set the value while you're in-game, when you return to the menu the value will get set back to what it was.

If you'd rather just have the code for it the file contents are below. Just put this in a file and save it with .CT extension and if you have cheat engine installed you should be able to just double click.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CheatTable CheatEngineTableVersion="46">
  <CheatEntries>
    <CheatEntry>
      <ID>1</ID>
      <Description>"No description"</Description>
      <VariableType>4 Bytes</VariableType>
      <Address>cho_ren_sha_68k.exe+536D90</Address>
    </CheatEntry>
  </CheatEntries>
  <UserdefinedSymbols/>
</CheatTable>

[maximo310]

Hey, thanks for posting this!

I messed around with the CT file posted earlier, and while it looks like the level select works for values 0-7 (which corresponds to stages 1-1 through 2-0) & 9 (stage 2-1), it looks like subsequent values in the 10-15 range spawn the stage 2-6 backgrounds but keep the same enemy patterns as 2-1. I also noticed that entering certain higher values would spawn stages either with no enemies ( 16 just plays the TLB theme) or 1-1 enemies along with messed up BG graphics in both cases.

I'm not entirely sure what would be causing this, but if you do continue work on this project, you might be able to reference the previous 1.0 windows release & maybe see if there's any potential leads on getting all of the levels/ boss sections to load properly via level select.

[Lethe]

Loop 2 is (stage number + 16). Works with both normal and hard mode. I don't know how to access the extra postgame loops though. Those bugged-out fake stages have always been accessible with the debug menu IIRC. I think maximo's idea of looking at the old version is worth trying out, but you'll likely need to be able to make sense of the program structure in the debugger to make progress.

You wouldn't have an issue with this being added to the shmups.wiki page until there's a better solution?

[DuckReconMajor]

You wouldn't have an issue with this being added to the shmups.wiki page until there's a better solution?

Not at all! It took about 10 minutes I'm just glad people find it helpful.