masamuneGTO
Student
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masamuneGTO
Student
Audio is working there is some sprite priority stuff he is working on and a few other glitches that require debugging. He started working on it yesterday, so...holy shot that dude is making solid progress!
How's the audio? (I'm at work and can't watch it with audio on)
Amazing progress!! But not done. I see the same priority issue still that is in the version of Punisher I have here. Also curious if he can die in the later levels. The version of Punisher I have here you can't die after the third level.
But Jesus, one day? Holy shit.
But Jesus, one day? Holy shit.
masamuneGTO
Student
@Mitsurugi-w I'll update when I know more. I see Trap pretty much every Thursday, so I'll have more information by then. He seems to think that he'll be able to figure it out. Also the framework he has mapped out should make porting of other games feasible.
Regarding audio, it's all perfect. I wrote a slick tool that automagically decrypts the entire sound program, so I'm quite confident that it's perfect.
The priority issue is probably going to be the biggest pain, I'm a little afraid that it'll be a lot more work than I anticipated, but we'll see. I haven't played all the way through yet, but I get a few random crashes that I'm gonna track down at some point. So I don't know about not being able to die. I will do Tenchi wo Kurau next probably, I think my toolchain is going to make doing new games pretty easy.
Amazing work in such a short amount of time, and welcome to the forum
Awesome
xodaraP
Legendary
I have an original Warriors of Fate board here, if you need anything tested or if I can help, let me know. I have desuicided it rather than used decrypted ROMs, so it's battery original.
Also, as Mitsu said - getting it working that well in MAME and then on original hardware in a single day? You sir, win the internet
edit: out of interest, is 3 player going to be possible using the CPS2 kick harness like AvP?
Cooked up Tenchi o Kurau 2 in a few hours, the game's code is pretty sloppy and "everywhere" with its priority stuff, so it's definitely buggier than Cadillacs. I'll have to polish this one up later too. Amusingly, my sound decryption program would have worked 100% out of the box if I'd just let it go with the entrypoints from Cadillacs, but I didn't think it'd work so I did it again and noticed they were the exact same. Maybe all of them will be the same, that'd be sweet.
https://youtu.be/A2auvUysnNI
3 player should be fine, I just need to hook it up. I don't have any 3-player harness (or any 3-player cabs lol) to test it on either, though MAME should be sufficient for that.
Also I didn't mention, but the save EEPROM doesn't seem to work yet either, I'm not sure why (I fixed up all the accesses to it, I think...), so that's another bug on the pile.
https://youtu.be/A2auvUysnNI
I don't think any HW comparison should be needed, MAME is certainly good enough to tell me when stuff is broken
3 player should be fine, I just need to hook it up. I don't have any 3-player harness (or any 3-player cabs lol) to test it on either, though MAME should be sufficient for that.
Also I didn't mention, but the save EEPROM doesn't seem to work yet either, I'm not sure why (I fixed up all the accesses to it, I think...), so that's another bug on the pile.
For a skilled person, the 68000 is not a challenge. Also, the details on sprites, priority, end-of-sprite list, double-buffering the video, all that info is on AO in a topic by me & Oliviera.
As an exercise i set out with the 'dinohunt' romset (bootleg) last night from scratch, to see & document what is at least needed to get the game to boot into the test screen. (This Dinohunt bootleg version uses normal z80 and not a qsound board.) My idea was to later patch the qsound audio playing back in after confirming there is no protection triggered in the bootleg. Turns out the bootleg _still_ has a lot of checks and shit unpatched and wants to talk to the qsound board at 0xF1xxxx instead of 0x61xxxx where cps2 has it. So i spent a lot of time debugging and patching that into 0x61xxxx when the thing finally boots, needing me to fix the inputs because i get stuck in the upside down self test screen.
Plus i forgot how to merge the gfx roms properly and lost the dd / byteshuf cmd batch file i had made eons ago when i started my first attempt lol. So i have too many nasty hex edits in there and if done properly, need to re-do all this shit again.
Edit: Also, i'm not after the bounty
@trap15 As i posted this the WoF work you did got posted and i must say, great work. I cannot wait to see how you handled the sprite list and some other stuff as that was(and is) beyond my 68K 'skills' at this time
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Cooked up Tenchi o Kurau 2 in a few hours, the game's code is pretty sloppy and "everywhere" with its priority stuff, so it's definitely buggier than Cadillacs. I'll have to polish this one up later too. Amusingly, my sound decryption program would have worked 100% out of the box if I'd just let it go with the entrypoints from Cadillacs, but I didn't think it'd work so I did it again and noticed they were the exact same. Maybe all of them will be the same, that'd be sweet.
https://youtu.be/A2auvUysnNI
I don't think any HW comparison should be needed, MAME is certainly good enough to tell me when stuff is broken
3 player should be fine, I just need to hook it up. I don't have any 3-player harness (or any 3-player cabs lol) to test it on either, though MAME should be sufficient for that.
Also I didn't mention, but the save EEPROM doesn't seem to work yet either, I'm not sure why (I fixed up all the accesses to it, I think...), so that's another bug on the pile.
Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!
I'm sure @trap15 will figure a way through this...Loving this thread right now.
I believe the sprite priority issues were where most previous attempts have given up, though. Hope trap15 can sort it out
That's pretty damn sweet. This, plus Cadillacs, and we'll have some more 2+ player games on the CPS2, aside from D&D and AvP. Single screen coop in beat 'em ups is the best. I've ordered some XH connectors just to finally be able to play a 4P game of Captain Commando ... Right after I revive it, that is. Damn you Capcom. You, and your batteries.
Been playing a bit of the Cadillacs port, it's definitely triggering protection stuff in a lot of places (leading to good effects such as "kick me back to the title screen", "black screen forever", and obviously crashes). Got good ideas on how to track those down. When I did Tenchi o Kurau 2 I noticed they check if 2 CPS-B register addresses in the code have been changed, and then if so it infinite loops. It does this right at the beginning so it was obvious enough and easy to patch away, but still very cute, and kinda gives away the sort of things they're looking for.
I have a rather gross idea on what I can do to solve it, it's going to be pretty invasive hackery though. CPS2 being able to push a ton of big sprites is going to come in handy...I'm sure @trap15 will figure a way through this...Loving this thread right now.
I believe the sprite priority issues were where most previous attempts have given up, though. Hope trap15 can sort it out
xodaraP
Legendary
I've revived 2 Captain Commando boards now, - it's not too difficult, just a bit awkward when you have all the wires connected up, make sure you use different colours - I used the same as the instruction pictures did and red and black for +5/GND so as not to get confused
What I found worked best was to run the reprogram cycle through the Arduino twice while it was connected, and both were successful.
A
Apocalypse
It's for sure very nice you can re-inject keys now. I just don't and simply remove the battery for 2 reasons:
- I can decrypt games myself so I cant' complain if it's buggy and also it's a way of getting rid of the "Phoenix" logo and menu
- I've got 50+ games originally equipped with batteries. It's way too much work replacing all of them every 5 years (to be safe).
