Hello everyone! So I assume everyone's been seeing the breakthroughs with AI as of late.
A simple game I've adored for two decades is a simple puzzle game called Magic Ball 2, but has had numerous issues on modern PC's.
I have quite a collection variants of this game with different build dates, including a late retitle called Smash Frenzy 2.
What I found is most builds on Windows 10+ there is no sound at all, as for Smash Frenzy 2 there is working sound as the assets are unpacked and not in encrypted archives.
...But due to Win10's/Win11's jankyness with backwards compatibility, Smash Frenzy 2 tends to only start 16-bit colour depths once for whatever reason and never run the game a second time.
Since the game uses locked hard-coded resolutions with 16-bit colour depth, I had to make a janky tool in the past to patch in custom resolutions as seen here.
But I was never able to fix the colour depth, the broken help menu under custom resolutions or the FOV as I don't have any x86 assembly skills. Just a hex editor guessing beforehand.
That all changes today, Claude Opus 5.5 has taken a shot at repairing the game and found that the games "MoleBox" DRM was responsible for breaking sound under modern Windows.
So it got rid of the problem by unpacking all the original executables, as a side bonus the engine reads all game assets from simple folders making modding the game very easy.
Smash Frenzy 2 was the only one I noticed that was like this out of the lot that was unpacked from the start.
Claude was able to add support for 32-bit depths, borderless fullscreen, widescreen FOV and correction for the broken 3D in the "How to play menu". For ALL the builds I had.
That includes:
Since modding is incredibly easy now, I've compiled together a custom mod called "Magic Ball 2 - Community Edition" which glues together the "New Worlds" expansions (Spring Time & Magic Hearts) with the base game based on the 2005 version (the only one to feature the 3D intro).
This will give you the best Magic Ball 2 experience overall, or alternatively Smash Frenzy 2 already bundles all 300 levels if you prefer that title but you also lose the cool intro.
Smash Frenzy 2 also by default saves in the %appdata% directory, Claude was able to add another patch that makes it save in the /Saves directory instead making it portable again.
All these options can be configured in mb2fix.ini
Anyway! Enjoy!
The sources for the tools it made are also included, along with the original unpacked executable before the mb2fix thing.
A simple game I've adored for two decades is a simple puzzle game called Magic Ball 2, but has had numerous issues on modern PC's.
I have quite a collection variants of this game with different build dates, including a late retitle called Smash Frenzy 2.
What I found is most builds on Windows 10+ there is no sound at all, as for Smash Frenzy 2 there is working sound as the assets are unpacked and not in encrypted archives.
...But due to Win10's/Win11's jankyness with backwards compatibility, Smash Frenzy 2 tends to only start 16-bit colour depths once for whatever reason and never run the game a second time.
Since the game uses locked hard-coded resolutions with 16-bit colour depth, I had to make a janky tool in the past to patch in custom resolutions as seen here.
But I was never able to fix the colour depth, the broken help menu under custom resolutions or the FOV as I don't have any x86 assembly skills. Just a hex editor guessing beforehand.
That all changes today, Claude Opus 5.5 has taken a shot at repairing the game and found that the games "MoleBox" DRM was responsible for breaking sound under modern Windows.
So it got rid of the problem by unpacking all the original executables, as a side bonus the engine reads all game assets from simple folders making modding the game very easy.
Smash Frenzy 2 was the only one I noticed that was like this out of the lot that was unpacked from the start.
Claude was able to add support for 32-bit depths, borderless fullscreen, widescreen FOV and correction for the broken 3D in the "How to play menu". For ALL the builds I had.
That includes:
Code:
Magic Ball 2 (16 Dec 2004)
Magic Ball 2 - New Worlds (22 Jun 2005)
Magic Ball 2 (29 Dec 2005)
Smash Frenzy 2 (26 Oct 2009)Since modding is incredibly easy now, I've compiled together a custom mod called "Magic Ball 2 - Community Edition" which glues together the "New Worlds" expansions (Spring Time & Magic Hearts) with the base game based on the 2005 version (the only one to feature the 3D intro).
This will give you the best Magic Ball 2 experience overall, or alternatively Smash Frenzy 2 already bundles all 300 levels if you prefer that title but you also lose the cool intro.
Smash Frenzy 2 also by default saves in the %appdata% directory, Claude was able to add another patch that makes it save in the /Saves directory instead making it portable again.
All these options can be configured in mb2fix.ini
Anyway! Enjoy!
The sources for the tools it made are also included, along with the original unpacked executable before the mb2fix thing.
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