Doubt it. Sounds like it’s just being gatekept to the nth degree.
Oh man, couldn't have picked more polar opposite good/bad news if I had to.
Bummer to hear your project won't come to release @ekorz but you did one hell of a job.
I don't look at this as we lost ddp campaign version, moreso we gained a way to listen to Rick Astley on a candy cab.
beetlemari
Beginner
well this sucks
was awesome to watch progress of though
edit: also the ultimate rick roll
was awesome to watch progress of though
edit: also the ultimate rick roll
ekorz has joined Team EXA-AM2!
Because Cave already has the licensing money. Only party whose bottom line is affected is Exa.
I have no insight into this project.
But I have been on the side of the license holder, and on the side of doing personal projects that violated licensed IPs and getting (very polite) requests to desist what I was doing so the license holder didn't have to report me to the source. To which I complied, they were in the right, and I wasn't.
As the license holder you are paying money for that license. Perhaps up front cash, perhaps a royalty on everything you sell, and putting your own time and money into developing something with it.
Unauthorized, unlicensed projects hurt that investment.
If say exA (pure speculation from here on out) was working on an arcade release of the Campaign mode, with Cave's approval, they're not only paying Cave for that, they're also paying their devs, or Trap and Mike, or whoever to make a port.
They hope to attract shmup fans to the arcade to play it, and make money for ops who buy their game. They hope to sell their game to private collectors. Their business model relies on having exclusive content their fans are excited about.
If that core, and frankly small, audience can simply play it for free? It's going to hurt sales, it's going to hurt arcade plays.
So yeah, they have "the right". Legally speaking they would probably simply ask Cave to deal with it, but before anyone sends a cease and desist and involves lawyers a simple polite email often gets the job done. Nobody here is trying to invite problems for the companies or the community.
Or maybe something different happened, who knows. But the above isn't unreasonable. Sharing a fan remake of a rare piece of IP is neat, I'm 100% for it. But it's not our IP, and the holders do have rights.
But I have been on the side of the license holder, and on the side of doing personal projects that violated licensed IPs and getting (very polite) requests to desist what I was doing so the license holder didn't have to report me to the source. To which I complied, they were in the right, and I wasn't.
As the license holder you are paying money for that license. Perhaps up front cash, perhaps a royalty on everything you sell, and putting your own time and money into developing something with it.
Unauthorized, unlicensed projects hurt that investment.
If say exA (pure speculation from here on out) was working on an arcade release of the Campaign mode, with Cave's approval, they're not only paying Cave for that, they're also paying their devs, or Trap and Mike, or whoever to make a port.
They hope to attract shmup fans to the arcade to play it, and make money for ops who buy their game. They hope to sell their game to private collectors. Their business model relies on having exclusive content their fans are excited about.
If that core, and frankly small, audience can simply play it for free? It's going to hurt sales, it's going to hurt arcade plays.
So yeah, they have "the right". Legally speaking they would probably simply ask Cave to deal with it, but before anyone sends a cease and desist and involves lawyers a simple polite email often gets the job done. Nobody here is trying to invite problems for the companies or the community.
Or maybe something different happened, who knows. But the above isn't unreasonable. Sharing a fan remake of a rare piece of IP is neat, I'm 100% for it. But it's not our IP, and the holders do have rights.
if it were me id release it, and id go to dodonprison
Mickysmoke
Enthusiast
Damn that's a kick in the bollocks, hope yourself and your mates can enjoy your hard work, that was one badass looking game 
GHOSTfaceKILLr74
Beginner
Are there tutorials available or maybe ekorz is willing to make a tutorial on how to mod Dodonpachi?!
Any links would be appreciated.
I'm willing to start my own ddp campaign project in private (I'm sure many others would too).
There's nothing illegal in tutorials.
Any links would be appreciated.
I'm willing to start my own ddp campaign project in private (I'm sure many others would too).
There's nothing illegal in tutorials.
AlxUnderBase
Enlightened
First of all we have this section :
https://www.arcade-projects.com/forums/introductions.56/
Cheers & welcome
This is a super-cool project by ekorz! Big props for all the work you put into this. Hopefully, one day your version can be released.
The timing really stinks. Over 25 years go by and then all of the sudden within days of release, this happens. Oof. Not a good look.
While it's a bummer that it's not going to be immediately playable for wide distribution with mame/mister, it does seem cool that something official is in the works. Whether it's EXA or M2, both of those companies have contact with CAVE so maybe the original source will be available to them and the release will be close to perfect. I'm hoping it's M2 so that I can actually play it (sorry EXA, you're doing excellent work but it's so cost-prohibitive, it might as well be vaporware for most shmup fans).
In the meantime, we should just go play Dodonpachi Daioujou!
The timing really stinks. Over 25 years go by and then all of the sudden within days of release, this happens. Oof. Not a good look.
While it's a bummer that it's not going to be immediately playable for wide distribution with mame/mister, it does seem cool that something official is in the works. Whether it's EXA or M2, both of those companies have contact with CAVE so maybe the original source will be available to them and the release will be close to perfect. I'm hoping it's M2 so that I can actually play it (sorry EXA, you're doing excellent work but it's so cost-prohibitive, it might as well be vaporware for most shmup fans).
In the meantime, we should just go play Dodonpachi Daioujou!
debugger documentation is actually all you need: https://docs.mamedev.org/debugger/general.html
There are a bunch of romhacking tutorials out there, I'm not doing anything special but I did work up to this level of complexity by starting at something very small.
In extremely broad strokes, you let mame or ghidra or whatever else disassemble the program rom binary, then you read through it and use the debugger to figure out what is doing what, and then make edits in the binary to implement the changes you want. I built some tooling to help make things faster, but it's nothing special.
Also, there's no legal issue with any of my work/code/patches/etc. I've just made an educated choice to pause this release, based on new information that was shared with me in private.
