Messages

31

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: January 03, 2019, 06:29 PM »

What about Mega Man X2 and how X dies in attract mode (even with normal Cx4 speed) unless you turn on in-game hooks? Not sure when this issue was introduced, but I sure hope it has gotten some attention.

its known since august 2016
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=5486.0

Wow, that long? I'm really surprised by this. I tested it out when I got my Super NT, but I may just have used the real cart instead of the SD2SNES, or I still had in-game hooks on when I did it (very likely, as I only started turning them off because of the Super NT's own button combos).

32

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: January 03, 2019, 01:42 AM »

Please, remember that this is a leaked firmware.

I had many of issues you're talking about and they are fixed now in the last test firmware that I have (1.10.1 beta).

Just wait...

What about Mega Man X2 and how X dies in attract mode (even with normal Cx4 speed) unless you turn on in-game hooks? Not sure when this issue was introduced, but I sure hope it has gotten some attention.

33

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Firmware v1.9.0 released

« on: December 20, 2018, 09:11 PM »

HEY SNES OWNERS RTEADING SD2SNES TOPIC SNES ISNT GOOD WAY TO PLAY SF GAMES BUY A SATURN

Never said that, just that it is not the best way to play them, you can do as you please obviously, you can stay on 1.8 + S-DD1 leaked patch or move to 1.9 official .... that's your choice.
protheanbeacon suggested to hold off on 1.9 because of SF2alpha (his opinion) and I happen to disagree because if you care about SF II games I think  (my opinion) that they can be played better elsewhere (not that the SNES versions themselves are bad) .... given with 2 SD cards you can have it both ways not sure what the big fuss is about.

You could have at least suggested emulation instead of another console though; it's what most people seem to do. But yeah, I'm with protheanbeacon for now. Yeah, I could use a second card, but the beta I have is working fine, and I'm willing to wait a few months for the S-DD1 official release or until there is a tweaked version of magno's S-DD1 bit file that works with the new firmware (I imagine this is actually likely to show up first).

34

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Firmware v1.9.0 released

« on: December 20, 2018, 08:03 PM »

Never said it was the pinnacle so there's nothing to admit.

You did suggest people to NOT update until S-DD1 is supported officially however long that would take.
That is not a good suggestion imho. The BS-X issues reported if widespread are a little more concerning (if one cares about BS-X).

Wrt the best way to play the best SF II games in one retro console, sorry but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_Collection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capcom_Generations#Capcom_Generations_5:_Street_Fighter_Collection_2
both on Saturn and awesome ... and I don't actually love Sega ... but still some of the best ports of Capcom fighting series were on Saturn (given the JP and US mk II controllers were also awesome for fighter games). The DC had incredible ports too but the default controller is just terrible .... when I play any of it I use a Sat2DC converter. In many years I have not taken a look at any of the 16bits ports .... I still get why one wants to play them though so don't get me wrong here.

I am not scoffing at the SF II production on SNES and all the awesome hacks that would come, just I disagree with the suggestion to NOT update, given also that going back just requires putting back the old files (or a second SD as already stated).

Obviously if anyone wants to absolutely play SF alpha 2 on SNES by any means stay on whatever makes it work!!!!

Other than that .... Hadouken! and hoping that Magnus gets to be satisfied with his S-DD1 core and allows Ikari to integrate it back as soon as possible. It is indeed a great time to have a SD2SNES ... SuperFX, SA-1, S-DD1 ... probably SPC7110 not too far off (just for completeness) ... it's all good.

HEY SNES OWNERS RTEADING SD2SNES TOPIC SNES ISNT GOOD WAY TO PLAY SF GAMES BUY A SATURN

35

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Super Scope + SD2SNES not supported?

« on: December 15, 2018, 12:45 AM »

Looking at Discord, it seems that auto-region patching was the culprit on this one...

36

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 11, 2018, 11:33 PM »

@Eyedunno Thanks for the fast information. I will have to set up some time to do some reading. Much appreciated it.

Be sure to check out that proto too! It's severely feature-limited (only a few fighters), but on the other hand the characters have more animations than in the final game. If only they had had 40mbits or so to work with instead of 32...

37

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 11, 2018, 08:57 PM »

@Eyedunno Do you mean the long delay that comes between some screens (player select->versus->fight, etc)? If this is "audio loading times" you are referring to, then my answer would be no. If I am not mistaken from researching the "delay issue", all the discussions gravitate toward the SDD-1 chip playing a role in this. Decompressing data and copying it to RAM is CPU time intensive and can cause delays. The SNES only has limited amount of bandwidth and CPU cycles to accomplish this to best of its meager limitations.

https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=14634&start=15

Because they jammed both fighters' vocals into ARAM alongside the music and SFX samples, and their loading code wasn't very good. That's why the game freezes every time the announcer says something. With the original 22 kHz samples, even BRR compressed, Dan Hibiki alone would be on the order of 300 KB.

More:
http://helmet.kafuka.org/byuubackup/viewtopic.php@f=9&t=5026.html

SNES Street Fighter Alpha 2's "load times" are not related to compression or graphics. It's related to the SPC. Everything freezes briefly because the CPU is communicating with the SPC to load new sample data. The game uses relatively high quality samples which take alot of RAM. The result is needing to reload SPC RAM often which is a slow process. Unlike the PPU, the CPU cannot DMA transfer data to the SPC. It has to use a slow CPU communication method. It's very noticeable since everything on screen stops. You could probably reduce those pauses by removing certain sounds from being loaded and being played. They really should have included in the options menu an option to disable the announcer voices, save you a little bit of time. But it's not related to compression or graphics. If the SPC had more than 64K of RAM maybe it could have been avoided while maintaining the same good audio.

Edit: One more. This is how I learned about the issue.
https://assemblergames.com/threads/sd2snes-comming-soon.37008/page-6

The so called "load times" are not related to the SDD-1 or the Graphics at all. The strange pauses that seem like load times, are indeed load times, but they are for loading AUDIO samples. The very nice announcer and other voice samples in SFA2 come at a cost. They take up alot of the very tiny 64K of Audio CPU RAM. So the game basically "stops" completely while samples are uploaded to Audio RAM. Unfortunately the SNES has no method to fastly transfer data to the audio CPU. It has to go through a rather slow communication method. Other SNES games also can be seen having this strange pause. Mega Man & Bass if you jump around after killing a pause to keep moving you'll notice a slight pause when the music needs to load.

Edit #2: That prototype is out there, dude:
https://eludevisibility.org/d.php?file=sfc/street-fighter-2-zero-japan-prototype.7z
(At least I think that is the correct link. Not in a position to check it right now.)

38

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 11, 2018, 07:02 PM »

@Eyedunno Hmm, I am wondering if the MSU patch code is causing a long "mute/silence", just enough to cut off your speakers. Since SPC audio is forcibly muted, perhaps the absence of the SPC "mute" audio signal is what is not being picked up by your speakers. We can test this theory two ways:

#1 Using an original non-patched ROM, allow the SFA2 "Results" fanfare to fully play out and see if the speaker cuts off
-OR-
#2 Using patched MSU-1 ROM, just rename or delete the "sfa2-msu1-112.pcm" to force SPC playback for the "Results" fanfare and see if speaker cuts off

If playing the original SPC audio version of the "Results" fanfare fully plays out and speaker does not cut off, this is telling me that the SNES still sends some kind of "silent" audio signal during the mute portion of the game (results leading to the next fighter screen, etc). This "silent" SPC audio signal may be what is keeping your speakers alive, this is just a hunch. Since my MSU code forcibly stops SPC audio from playing for a given track, this may be the issue causing your speakers to cut off due to long silence going into your analog input.

I am almost positive it's not uncommon for me to not mash between fights, and I have not noticed the problem on a regular ROM, but I will test the unpatched ROM a bit this evening when I get home.

Perhaps, again this is just a theory, you can extend the "Results" fanfare PCM track, with dead silence, to see if this alleviates your speaker cut off issue. Again, the PCM track that you would need to redo is track "sfa2-msu1-112.pcm" or "sfz2-msu1-112.pcm". You can also substitute any other PCM track that has longer play time too (for testing theory).

I may try this. But I'm not sure if it's going to be a huge deal to me, honestly. On a normal TV, it's not a concern, just on the Vanatoo speakers I have my PC monitor hooked up to.

The "Birdie" no audio problem you experienced was a mistake on my part. During code porting, I left out some critical MSU1 code that affected some tracks (Birdie was not the only one that was mute, there were other tracks too  ). This is fixed now, so no worries, unless you find other bugs for me to squash. Other than that, SFZ2 should be good to go.

Awesome that this is fixed for sure then. Glad I could help in a very limited way. And thanks a lot for this; it's a huge improvement over the normal ROM!

By the way, I wonder if you've looked into what would be involved in reducing some of the audio load times. Could it help to have a version with no SPC music (along with presumably some other hacks)?

39

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 10, 2018, 04:08 AM »

Ok, I uploaded the fixed patch (hopefully). Please retest the JAP patch (both music-always and music-mute) and let me know how it turns out. The download link is the same (get it at Zeldix).

OK, so this did not fix the map screen problem, but I think I figured out what was causing that. I was not mashing from the end of the fight, and I just waited for the next match. I realized that if I mashed, I heard the whole fanfare. It ended up being my speakers--they shut down their analog input if they don't detect a signal for too long, and apparently that was too long. Moving the sd2snes into the living room, everything worked fine.

So basically, blame my setup for this. Weird that it never happens with the regular game though. Might have to look into why.

As for the Birdie thing, I have played a few more times, but have yet to see Birdie as my first fight. However, when I did fight him, the music played correctly. (Note that that definitely was not my speakers. When it happened, the sfx were normal, but with no music.)

I will report if I have any further trouble.

40

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 09, 2018, 09:50 PM »

Patch is finished, here's the video that'll be attached to the release article on Zeldix. It contains the same playthrough twice, but with each soundtrack used. The arcade soundtrack is first, the arranged soundtrack begins at 25:31.

https://youtu.be/evghSEskeho

It'll be posted tomorrow.

OK, just did one playthrough with Sakura, SFZ2J, music-always, default difficulty, manual, normal speed on Super Nt. Two issues:

1) My first fight was with Birdie, and there was no music at all for both rounds. Dunno if this is a fluke, or an issue with Birdie specifically, or what, just did a quick test. But I started one more game, and the first fight was with Sodom, and everything was fine.
2) The little fanfare that plays on the world map screen moving to the start of the next match does not start at the beginning; it starts about halfway through, and this is consistent, despite working fine in Relikk's video of the US version above. So maybe some timing issue or something, dunno.

41

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 06, 2018, 06:53 PM »

Relikk, so far the US->JAP port was pretty simple (the addresses were off in the jap version). I just need to find one more area where I have to mute msu after Sagat finishes his dialog with Ryu going into the final battle. Simple enough. Only thing that sucks, I have to play there. Unless someone has a save state just before this part of the game loads. Yes, I am in lazy mode to do this myself at the moment. 

UPDATE: Ah, I went ahead and played (with cheats). It seems this version does not use the extra code to mute the APU music during the dialogs. So, I guess this is done. Relikk, I will send you the Jap version IPS for you to test (just in case no other native code was destroyed in this port).

Amazing. Thanks so much for your work on this! Can't wait to see and especially hear it. Well, actually I can wait; it's just an expression.

42

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 06, 2018, 12:04 AM »

Pev might do it, but another thing you can hope for is that the ROMs are similar, and that the final patch can be used "as is" on the Japanese version. Something I haven't tried. I really should...

EDIT: It doesn't. It looks promising until it gets to the title screen, then it crashes, and everything is muted up until that point. It's probably overwriting some native code where there is free space in the US ROM. It shouldn't be too hard for Pev to port it to the Japanese ROM.

Yeah, I would have assumed it wouldn't work; there's a pretty fair amount of difference between the two, even if not so much in terms of gameplay. And yeah, I don't imagine it would be hard to port.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SDD1 Support is here!

« on: December 05, 2018, 09:11 PM »

Might be better off with a separate, optional MSU1 patch that has the original names rather than patching the Japanese version. It's only Bison -> Vega, and Katana -> Sodom.

And Akuma -> Gouki. And Charlie -> Nash. Anyway, I'd rather have this than nothing, but this would still change the title of the game to Alpha instead of Zero and the menu options, stage names, and various other text (between rounds and in the endings) from Japanese to English. Not sure if there are other significant differences, but I certainly don't think it would be better to have a fake MSU-1 SFZ2 over a real one.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: When is next official firmware going to be released?

« on: December 04, 2018, 01:21 AM »

Also, even before this year's explosion of updates from Redguy/magno, SD2SNES had better compatibility and performance than any other SNES flashcart, and did it with no donor hardware. At least we can maybe expect that soon the number of people whining to ikari is going to drop precipitously (unless they are big shogi fans, lol).

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: When is next official firmware going to be released?

« on: December 03, 2018, 08:25 PM »

Also, savestates are already supported in the official FW, just only accessible by USB debugging.

Now this I did not realize. Fair enough, I guess.