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DARKSOFT Games Fixed to work with DIMM

@MetalliC Thank you very much for the reply, it's very appreciated!
This explains a lot of what I wasn't understanding! I'll have a read through the links you sent and have another go!
 
Thanks very much @MetalliC - read up on those two topics, and they explained everything I was missing!

For others if they are interested the issues were:

- I was reading the addresses the wrong way around, due to the endianness. When I was quoting 0x00000040 I really meant 0x40000000 and ditto for 0x00003000 I really meant 0x00300000.
- This made it easy to see that it's only the first 0x300000 of the first IC that is actually decrypted, and not the first 0x800000 as I thought. The fact there is an unencrypted header at this point should have been a good hint lol (this unencrypted section is clearly the test mode, that for some reason in this game sits unencrypted unlike the other m4 games I looked at which encrypt test mode as well).
- The 40 I was seeing was actually a flag (explained in the naomi source code linked by MetalliC) to tell the naomi to decrypt that section. Seeing as I decrypted the first sets of bytes myself using a brute forcer, this needs to be turned off so that the naomi loads it as plain text.

Now very happy with a working netbootable version of Manic Panic Ghosts!

Next task is to try and get hold of a real serial IO board for the game so that I can find out the protocol and try to HLE it so I can play the game!
 
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crashman said:
Good work!
Are you going to make that version public available?
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More than happy to, unsure who I would give it to though?

Is there a way to submit something to Gakmans repository?

(Also bare in mind you can't play the game without the correct non jvs IO)
 
bobbydilley said:
Now very happy with a working netbootable version of Manic Panic Ghosts!
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I'm personally doubt if it working netbootable image. it is expected to boot fine via CF boot but not net, and require more patching using Deunan's tools to boot via network. same as other M4 and not only carts.
 
MetalliC said:
I'm personally doubt if it working netbootable image. it is expected to boot fine via CF boot but not net, and require more patching using Deunan's tools to boot via network. same as other M4 and not only carts.
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The game does 'boot via network' as thats how I tested it on my actual Naomi, I don't use CF cards. Obviously I couldn't get further than the 'IO TIMEOUT' error as I don't have the original IO, so you could be right that it won't work properly once past that. Test mode worked as well, and I could navigate to all options.

I saw on Demul you had it running the attract mode whilst saying 'IO TIMEOUT' error at the side. Did you manage to skip the error screen somehow, and would you be willing to share with me how you did this so I can test the game runs in the attract mode as well?

I'm assuming you've also emulated the entire IO board in Demul as I can see it's running. Are you doing HLE or actually emulating the SH4 chip in the IO board?

It is worth noting that I did compare a few M4 games from mame to the working versions listed here (Akatsuki for example), and they had no changes other than decrypting the blocks, turning the flags off + setting the region flag to any region.
 
bobbydilley said:
The game does 'boot via network' as thats how I tested it on my actual Naomi, I don't use CF cards. Obviously I couldn't get further than the 'IO TIMEOUT' error as I don't have the original IO, so you could be right that it won't work properly once past that. Test mode worked as well, and I could navigate to all options.
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just saying - number of games require patching, due to still unknown reason btw. I'd guess they trigger some kind of protection in DIMM's firmware network boot mode code. so it worth to check if game(s) really works.

bobbydilley said:
I'm assuming you've also emulated the entire IO board in Demul as I can see it's running. Are you doing HLE or actually emulating the SH4 chip in the IO board?
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sure thing, IO protocol was reverse engineered and (HLE) emulated
 
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how does it actually work?
i'v played the hell out of it, but still dont know if those hammers are like light-guns with impact sensors or if it's some type of sensor-plate over the monitor.
 
Hi. Can I use an original HOTD2 cartrigde on regular Naomi? Is there any specific BIOS that allows to use it?
 
Oh I didn't realize Export was censored. I'm used to the USA BIOS that has the blood color selection in the test menu.
 
Yeah just change blood color in the menu.
 
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