Messages

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: As a request, would you please implement Japanese text, characters?

« on: October 19, 2019, 03:11 AM »

Krikzz doesn't make the firmware, ikari does (and very sporadically at that, as he has a day job and a family--most of the new updates have been thanks to a few other people). Games that implement kanji do it by literally using distinct tiles (and in many cases multiple tiles for a single kanji), and often representing the memory addresses that referenced those tiles in an arbitrary manner, and using whatever encoding scheme the programmers could come up with that saved the most memory. AFAIK, they didn't use any of the same encoding systems that are now universal. Anyway, it's not that it couldn't possibly be done, it's that it's nowhere near as easy as you seemed to think in your original post.

And the demand for it is not that high, honestly. I can read Japanese (and lived in Japan for five years) and also have a large collection (~100) of original Super Famicom games, but I used ZSNES (which also has its own font, so it didn't support non-Latin character sets) for so long that all my roms have been in romaji forever. Plus you literally select your game and then you don't have to look at it again until you go back to the menu. Besides, kanji in filenames are a PITA in terms of sorting when you have a large number of files. It's not as though you're gonna have 聖剣伝説２ and it'll magically fall under the さ行 (or under the 's'es), even on a modern PC.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: As a request, would you please implement Japanese text, characters?

« on: October 19, 2019, 02:21 AM »

This would probably not be anywhere near as trivial as you think to implement because Unicode and other East Asian character encoding systems (including Shift JIS) use two bytes per character for some characters and one byte per character for others (like the Latin alphabet you still need to support), plus you need to draw new tiles for each kanji (at least the ones that are used in existing games, so you could certainly get away with a subset of characters in practice--you can even find Japanese fonts that work like this, including only the joyo kanji, for example) and include that in the SD2SNES firmware.

Why, I remember when you had to find a Japanese version of Windows to get your computer to play well with Japanese, to say nothing of using Japanese on a flashcart for a 16-bit video game console. (Get off my lawn.)

All that said, kana would probably be easier to implement if you were willing to settle for only kana.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SD2SNES and in game anti piracy measures?

« on: August 23, 2019, 06:38 PM »

Clean, unmodified roms work fine, even for things like Earthbound. You could actually look up Earthbound on this forum; there was one thread a month or two ago where someone thought there were issues with too many crows, but it turned out to just be bad RNG and not a copy protection issue.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Super Metroid Hacks?

« on: June 06, 2019, 07:54 PM »

Is rotation the one where Super Metroid map is on it is side?

Yes. And yes, you have to be good at wall jumping, and there might even be a spot or two where you have to be capable of Alcatraz Escape (balling up right after a wall jump), but I forget. There are also some annoying things with water (like just before getting Gravity Suit) and lava/acid (some of the rooms in upper Norfair and even in Tourian) and one wicked-hard missile expansion (Main Street missiles) if you are going for 100%. Otherwise, a pretty straightforward hack.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Super Metroid Hacks?

« on: June 04, 2019, 08:59 PM »

As for  Super Metroid patches, I've been trying out one called Super Metroid: Ascent that's pretty interesting, some enemy changes, some neat tricks with how the map changes as you find items (and use of new artwork, and musical tweaks). Like one room lava fills in after you get the morph ball, in another it becomes dark and ashy after you discover the map terminal in another room. The main theme though is most of the map has you climbing from the bottom to the top of the world, rather than working your way down. And save games are far apart (like the first save point is almost half hour to an hour into the game if you don't know where you going, and I surely don't LOL), but there are plenty of enemy spawn points to farm health from. Also some neat tricks with some of the enemies, like having to stand on the back of a caterpillar bug to cross over lava.

A lot of that sort of reminds me of Rotation, which is probably my favorite hack of the few I've played, other than Dessyreqt's randomizer, which I've played (speedrunner difficulty) hundreds of hours of, but I do not know if you'd call a randomizer a hack, as every seed is sort of its own hack.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Do save states work with the Super NT?

« on: April 08, 2019, 10:33 PM »

Save states definitely work on the Super NT if you're using the correct firmware on your SD2SNES. In fact I saved the state of Zelda III on my Super NT and was then able to successfully load it on my Super Famicom Jr and carry on playing.

Try this: save a state in Street Fighter II--maybe save halfway through the third battle or something--and load that on your SFC Jr.

(Methinks you are confusing SRAM saves with save states.)

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Firmware 1.10.2 seems to be nearing its release

« on: April 04, 2019, 12:56 AM »

I would hold off anyway. He made a mistake that breaks some games, as others have reported.

And I have never had ANY issue with BSX games, aside from once when I made a new SD2SNES folder and forgot to copy in the BIOS files.

You sure you have all the files you need in the SD2SNES folder (BIOS, pagefile, there may be one other, I forget)?

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Firmware v1.10.0 + 1.10.1 are out.

« on: March 25, 2019, 08:21 PM »

And this is the problem with the Russian telephone game where we go from a potential future update at some unknown date possibly a year or more in the future to a "major feature" of the unit to be expected at launch.

Maybe find out about features from official sources and not from randos on the Internet. (And yeah, I know ikari mentioned the savestate thing too, but it was as a possibility and clearly not something to expect right away.)

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: How do I use sd2snes pro in game menu

« on: March 20, 2019, 11:45 PM »

Is that really the only problem with save states? The music in the background continues to play? Couldn't that be remedied simply by changing areas in whatever game you're playing? If thats the only minus, I think it's pretty minor. Sure, the same music plays or continues to play can get annoying, but depending on what game, music switches often. As long as the actual save state works without locking up, I think it would work fine as-is

That's my understanding, though there may be games where savestates are legitimately broken for other reasons (or just because of issues with in-game hooks). So many people talking about it makes me wonder if it really has already been fixed on the Pro, but ikari was talking about it in purely hypothetical terms on SmokeMonster's stream just a few weeks ago (the whole thing about simulating the APU on the FPGA), so I think it's like one of those Russian telephone games where the exact message and the context get lost and you end up with people thinking the Pro will have Super Game Boy support and official savestate support (with the audio state saved as well) out of the box.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: How do I use sd2snes pro in game menu

« on: March 20, 2019, 05:56 PM »

evidently the save states worked, but there was an audio issue. the SD2Snes Pro fixes that problem.

Describing it as "an audio issue" is a wild oversimplification. Basically, whatever music is playing at the moment will continue playing even after you load a state, and this is not just "an issue" with SD2SNES, but with all save states that work on real hardware, e.g. the Nakitek Game Saver and romhacks with savestate functionality like the Super Metroid practice ROM.

And no, SD2SNES Pro doesn't fix it, or at least it doesn't yet, and will not for some time. "Fixing that problem" is going to be a huge project because it has to do with limitations of accessing the SNES's APU. See the post RIGHT above yours.

So much misinformation...

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SD2SNES Pro

« on: March 04, 2019, 11:48 PM »

I imagine we're less than five years away from ST018 on SOME FPGA platform anyway though. Dr. Decap and byuu have already laid the groundwork for it, and it's already been implemented in bsnes for 6 or 7 years. It's little more than a curiosity, of course: if you are really into shogi, a modern smartphone would be a better choice than this, to say nothing of more powerful PCs. But once all the other cores are done and in good working order with all games, what else is there to do? And then on MiSTer, I sort of wonder if the ST018's functions couldn't just be offloaded to the DE10-nano's own ARM processor.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SD2SNES Pro

« on: March 01, 2019, 06:20 PM »

I bought an A version

I seriously doubt you bought an A version. Wasn't the A version just Ikari's initial prototype? First Krikzz run was like E2 or something like that, IIRC.

Do we have to wait FEW MONTHS more and buy a "stable' revision (revision C , D ??) without any hidden troubles ??

SDSNES is a pricey  add on ...
Don't want to live AGAIN, the same trouble as with SDSNES.....   

Why do you want an SD2SNES Pro? The biggest reason it is being made is because the legacy hardware is getting expensive, so it was redesigned with newer hardware that is easier to buy. Don't expect to be able to play any games you can't already play on your regular SD2SNES. Yes, maybe some day it might support save states with sound and Super Game Boy, plus it will support SA-1 games and MSU-1 at the same time, but that's literally all. You already have access to 100% of the North American and European library and well over 99% of the Japanese library with regular SD2SNES. What's wrong with that? Unless you really think it's worth shelling out $200+ just to play hacks of Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius and Super Mario RPG with MSU-1 music...

I recommend maybe waiting a year or two until it's actually better than regular SD2SNES, and that way you can also check forums and make sure the new hardware is working with no obscure issues.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: Firmware v1.10.0 is out

« on: March 01, 2019, 06:09 PM »

firmware 1.10.0 with S-DD1 support sd2snes ?

It literally says it in the OP, so yes.

All I see in the OP is "initial firmware release for sd2snes Mk.III ("sd2snes pro")", so I wouldn't blame anybody for wondering if it will work with Mk.II too.

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FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SD2SNES Pro

« on: February 27, 2019, 06:47 PM »

I'm probably gonna stick with my original SD2SNES as well. I never play hacked/modded games. And I don't ever use save states. So there's like zero point of me getting this one, right?

Potential S-DD1 support will be for both pro and non-pro versions?

I'm totally with you on this. I understand the need for SD2SNES Pro on the manufacturing side, but personally, it offers nothing new that I care about (and even if I did care about save states, my understanding is that it's not even a sure thing). I have decided to take the plunge into putting together a MiSTer though. Just got my DE10-nano yesterday.

15

FXPAK (SD2SNES) / Re: SD2SNES + Super Nt boot problems with controller connected

« on: February 18, 2019, 11:58 PM »

I am using the included micro USB cable that came packaged with the Super Nt, which is plugged into a USB power adapter (1000mA) which goes into my wall socket. Could this be the problem?

1 amp should be enough unless you are sharing the adapter across two USB devices (like charging a phone at the same time using the same adapter you are using for the Super Nt). But man, it sure sounds like a power issue, especially if having a controller plugged in seems to sometimes make a difference.