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Post by elmer on Oct 25, 2019 19:46:37 GMT
I can't say that it would be worth any one person's effort, but it would really be appreciated by fans as it should make a noticeable difference in flicker reduction to the average player. Finding the addresses to modify for 1-cycle mode in both the HuCard and the CD was pretty easy, but I don't know if it will actually improve anything ... Hudson/NEC may have built other sprite-flicker mechanisms into the code. As it is, I can probably modify the Turbo Everdrive OS to patch the US HuCard when it is loaded, but there is little chance of automatically patching the CD when the game is run. A patch for the CD would have to be separately applied, and then a new CD burned.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Oct 25, 2019 20:01:03 GMT
I can't say that it would be worth any one person's effort, but it would really be appreciated by fans as it should make a noticeable difference in flicker reduction to the average player. Finding the addresses to modify for 1-cycle mode in both the HuCard and the CD was pretty easy, but I don't know if it will actually improve anything ... Hudson/NEC may have built other sprite-flicker mechanisms into the code. As it is, I can probably modify the Turbo Everdrive OS to patch the US HuCard when it is loaded, but there is little chance of automatically patching the CD when the game is run. A patch for the CD would have to be separately applied, and then a new CD burned.
In theory, the TG-16 version should already have reduced flicker with the lower resolution. I understand very little compared to you guys, but to me the fact that they used a resolution drop in an attempt to reduce flicker is a sign that maybe they hadn't yet figured out everything being discussed here. I don't think that the CD version is worth updating. If it was easier than patching the TurboChip rom it would make sense, but the CD game is already in need of a soundtrack replacement and removal of the cinemas. Chances are if someone did a detailed comparison, they'd find that some of the in-game assets were cut for space as well. |
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Post by ndiddy on Oct 25, 2019 22:02:36 GMT
Hmmmm ... I wonder if it's worth trying to get the new Turbo Everdrive OS to actually patch the US R-Type HuCard and possibly even the R-Type CD, and switch them to 1-cycle mode so that they support the same number of sprites-per-line as the Japanese R-type HuCards?
Probably not, you can just play the Japanese version. |
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Post by turboxray on Oct 26, 2019 7:44:00 GMT
Runtime patching would be great!
I know a couple of PCE games used 240px display in 256 res mode (5.37mhz). They did that so they could scroll solid stripes of sprites across the screen as a BG layer.
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Post by elmer on Oct 26, 2019 22:24:28 GMT
Runtime patching would be great! I know a couple of PCE games used 240px display in 256 res mode (5.37mhz). They did that so they could scroll solid stripes of sprites across the screen as a BG layer. TEOS already runtime-patches a couple of HuCards (such as the Super Sytem Card), so the mechanism is already in place. Adding the US version of R-Type to the list should be pretty easy. Yep, the Xanadu games both run with a 240 pixel display. On top of the ability to use sprites as a scrolling background layer, it's also a nice way of saving 2KB of precious VRAM for the BAT, while still being able to do a full 8-way scroll on the background layer. |
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pokun
Gun-headed
Posts: 85 
Homebrew skills: HuC6280 assembly
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Post by pokun on Oct 31, 2019 17:41:28 GMT
I would hate it if the Everdrive applied patches left and right without my consent. I strongly believe any runtime patching should be fully controlled by the user (including the region patch). The Super System Card patch is the only exception because not applying it could be harmful.
That said, automatic runtime patching might be useful. You could have patches in the same directory as the ROM, or you could have a user-editible list that tells the OS what patches to apply to what ROMs.
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Post by Mathius on Nov 1, 2019 2:15:47 GMT
Could someone shed some light on the Super System Card deal with the Turbo Everdrive please? A link would be fine too. I have a TED ver. 2, I believe. What should I be concerned about?
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Post by dshadoff on Nov 1, 2019 3:01:07 GMT
I would hate it if the Everdrive applied patches left and right without my consent. I strongly believe any runtime patching should be fully controlled by the user (including the region patch). The Super System Card patch is the only exception because not applying it could be harmful.
That said, automatic runtime patching might be useful. You could have patches in the same directory as the ROM, or you could have a user-editible list that tells the OS what patches to apply to what ROMs.
The Everdrive (at least ver 2) automatically "patched" US ROMs upon load, to remove the region-protection (so that they could run on Japanese systems), from the beginning. It does this by recognizing a byte sequence during load which is unlikely to be anything other than protection code, and modifying it as it transfers from SDCard to RAM. There is no documentation about this, and no warning. I discovered this while performing a partial disassembly of the code several months ago. |
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Post by dshadoff on Nov 1, 2019 10:38:16 GMT
Could someone shed some light on the Super System Card deal with the Turbo Everdrive please? A link would be fine too. I have a TED ver. 2, I believe. What should I be concerned about? There is a potential bus conflict (not good for electronics). The patch is on Elmer's programming links in the Home-brew development section, and there is a bit more discussion within the thread. But I found a link there to the original discussion, so I'm reporting the link here for you: krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=3640.0 |
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pokun
Gun-headed
Posts: 85
Homebrew skills: HuC6280 assembly
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Post by pokun on Nov 1, 2019 12:32:12 GMT
I would hate it if the Everdrive applied patches left and right without my consent. I strongly believe any runtime patching should be fully controlled by the user (including the region patch). The Super System Card patch is the only exception because not applying it could be harmful. That said, automatic runtime patching might be useful. You could have patches in the same directory as the ROM, or you could have a user-editible list that tells the OS what patches to apply to what ROMs.
The Everdrive (at least ver 2) automatically "patched" US ROMs upon load, to remove the region-protection (so that they could run on Japanese systems), from the beginning. It does this by recognizing a byte sequence during load which is unlikely to be anything other than protection code, and modifying it as it transfers from SDCard to RAM. There is no documentation about this, and no warning. I discovered this while performing a partial disassembly of the code several months ago. Yeah that is the "region patch" I was talking about. I'm grateful there is a patch at all (especially since I don't have any non-Japanese PC Engine systems), and it's convenient that I don't have to manually patch all US ROMs or region mod my systems, but I'd like it if there was an option setting that decides whether or not it should be applied, like there is on the SD2SNES. How am I supposed to experiment with this kind of thing if the Everdrive modifies my ROM without my consent when running it? Also someone here said that the region patching even fails in some games. The Everdrives, although nice and cheap, are unfortunately plagued with bad (or usually no) documentation and sometimes hacky solutions to problems like this. |
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Post by turboxray on Nov 1, 2019 16:11:02 GMT
Jun 1994 NEC Avenue Tenchi o Kurau Japan CD 368 $03 $02 $03 $2D $x0 -
That game is a hot mess! I thought strider was the worse sprite offender because they didn't flatten their sprite composition, but this game! Holy crap haha. There's like three layers of dynamic sprite composition going on for the player at time and enemies (all horses are their own sprite, and weapons are too). The game is actually kinda fun but the flicker is the worse offender on the system yet. And to top it off, window res is 368?
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Post by paranoiadragon on Nov 1, 2019 20:45:23 GMT
Jun 1994 NEC Avenue Tenchi o Kurau Japan CD 368 $03 $02 $03 $2D $x0 - That game is a hot mess! I thought strider was the worse sprite offender because they didn't flatten their sprite composition, but this game! Holy crap haha. There's like three layers of dynamic sprite composition going on for the player at time and enemies (all horses are their own sprite, and weapons are too). The game is actually kinda fun but the flicker is the worse offender on the system yet. And to top it off, window res is 368? It sounds like it could have been done better, which in a way is good to hear. It's actually a fun game, but I really really really feel like the flicker detracts from the experience. I think it was only one player, do you think it could have been two player if done properly? Would have been nice if they could have found a way to have Redbook audio tracks as well, not sure if that would have been doable because of possible loading thru each level? |
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Post by elmer on Nov 1, 2019 21:13:12 GMT
How am I supposed to experiment with this kind of thing if the Everdrive modifies my ROM without my consent when running it? Also someone here said that the region patching even fails in some games. The Everdrives, although nice and cheap, are unfortunately plagued with bad (or usually no) documentation and sometimes hacky solutions to problems like this. What kind of experiments do you wish to run? Do you really just want to see your US HuCard games fail to run ... it's not very exciting, y'know, there aren't any messages or anything, the game just soft-locks. Could you please point out where someone has said that the region patching even fails in some games ... I don't recall that conversation. Patching out the region-lock code is a minimal change ... a one byte difference that changes one branch in Hudson's mandated-but-pointless region checking code. Now, *maybe* Krikzz's version of the check alters something else, too, but I really doubt it. The region-unlock that's in TEOS is a bit more-specific about what it alters, based on my checking every US HuCard release and then targeting the specific place in the code that the region-check is done ... but I really doubt that it makes any practical difference, it's just faster. Now ... one thing that has been know to fail, especially with early TurboEverdrives, is the fugly hardware region-free solutions that actually alter the electronics of the console, and effect the bus timings. Now that is what I, personally, call a "hacky" solution. IMHO, runtime patching is an elegant solution in comparison. Apart from that, I do agree that having a utility that just randomly applies changes to games to make them "look" better, is definitely a different situation, and so I understand why you believe that patching the US version of R-Type is a step-too-far. I'm in two minds myself, but I can *kinda* justify it by pointing out that all that the patch would be doing is to restore the original hardware-performance of the Japan HuCard versions of the game, and to reverse a restriction that was imposed on them from the outside, and that they fought against. I'm tempted to do that as a realtime patch, rather than have people start distributing pre-patched versions of the game that are just one-byte different, and are going to get confused with the original version in the years to come. Then, if the patch does prove problematic, it can be removed, and no damage would be done. |
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Post by spenoza on Nov 1, 2019 22:03:30 GMT
Build an auto-patcher menu into the TEOS. Let people turn on or off the auto-patches they want.
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Post by Mathius on Nov 1, 2019 22:48:10 GMT
Could someone shed some light on the Super System Card deal with the Turbo Everdrive please? A link would be fine too. I have a TED ver. 2, I believe. What should I be concerned about? There is a potential bus conflict (not good for electronics). The patch is on Elmer's programming links in the Home-brew development section, and there is a bit more discussion within the thread. But I found a link there to the original discussion, so I'm reporting the link here for you: krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=3640.0Thank you very much! Another question. Can I use a program like Lunar IPS to patch the two SSC ROMs? At first I thought the download links were the entire ROMs pre-patched, but the file sizes were too small. |
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