Overview

Echo Whistle is a proof-of-concept network item service for Free Enterprise. A client, server, and patch are provided. The user can edit an included YAML file to change which items are received from a small subset of item locations.

Requirements

Echo Whistle requires SNI (The latest release as of publishing can be found here. It will (probably) not work with QUsb2Snes.

The following platforms should work:

FXPak
snes9x-emunwa
bsnes-plus-wasm
Retroarch with a bsnes-mercury core and Network Commands set to On.

Instructions

Check the releases tab for a pre-built package for your OS.

Building the ROM

Two bps patches are included to be applied to a vanilla ROM. One will produce the original Free Enterprise ROM, the one named "echowhistle.bps" will produce the ROM that will work with the item service. You can use an in-browser patcher such as this one: https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/

Running the Server and Client

Executables are included in the packaged release or can be built from source with Cargo. The server will expect a file named secrets_ki.yaml in the same directory it's being executed from or an optional --yaml path/to/yaml parameter can be passed via CLI. Both the server and client can take optional --host and --port parameters, by default 127.0.0.1:38281.

Playing the Game

You can edit the yaml file describing a small subset of key item-location pairs before running the server. Instructions are included in the document. The suggested order of operations is as follows:

Start SNI
Load the ROM and wait on the title screen
Start the client & server
Begin playing the game

Issues and Advisories

No characters can join my party including one of the starting characters

Sorry. Characters are available in the Mysidia crystal room.

The whistle doesn't work

Sorry.

One of the item locations contains the gauntlet fight

Very sorry.

This only works on the provided patch
There's nothing on the moon or in the Underworld

This is a "test settings" seed. Obviously I saw the whale and pre-opened underground several times while testing but it never occurred to me anyone would go to the moon or the underworld until just now. Any non-sphere one key item location will lock the game in an infinite loop.