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Coffee Jones posted:There's this article from Byuu/Near (rip, what a loving loss) and it mentions a level in the "Speedy Gonzalez" SNES game that crashes on Snes9x because of hacky coding but it works fine on real hardware. Yeah that bug is loving weird, and it's essentially more of a bug in the original game rather than an emulator oversight. It basically needs to break out of a software loop by reading a certain value from a specific unmapped memory address that only really happens in a very specific situation that you can only hit correctly with an emulator that's cycle-accurate. The much simpler emulators prior to Near's higan didn't go quite that deep because they never really needed to, and especially since the system requirements for higan are considerably higher and would have been impractical in the heyday of SNES9X. That said, I think there were hacks for Speedy Gonzales on SNES that specifically fixed this bug so it would work on simpler emulators.
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Apr 16, 2024 23:15
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Coffee Jones posted:Having a copy of a rom patcher on hand is a pain. This online patcher is a cool idea and it supports multiple formats - https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/ There's a lot of really good ideas in this post, especially handling patching through the website. It could even check the CRC to make sure you're using the correct version. It would be great to have a tool that manages applying multiple patches and keeping them up to date. If you want to combine variable width font, retranslation, MSU-1 and balance patches it can be tricky to find the correct order to apply them in without causing issues. On the website each user could keep a patch playlist for each game, have those patches be combined into one .ips and even be notified when one of them receives an update. Users could also have the option to share their playlists so a new user can easily get a combined patch that's already been tested.
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Apr 18, 2024 08:12
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I really wish you could mix and match hacks - like Secret of mana's 2023 retranslation patch - https://www.romhacking.net/translations/5765/ with with 2000's Variable width hack (c'mon Square...) https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/18/ [spoiler]oh gently caress college was 20 years ago[spoiler] and this hack mentions some capability of combining hacks https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4860/ quote:Important things to note: Someone can definitely script this together and ensure that the files produced match a hash. Otherwise, patching IPS files manually runs the risk of "now you have a mangled pile of bits that produces a blank screen in your emulator. Go fish." goddamn headers.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:06
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It would be nice to see a wider acceptance of bps patches since they actually check to see that they're being applied to the correct rom they were created with. SMW Central moved over to bps exclusively some years ago and it was a really great decision.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:29
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Coffee Jones posted:I really wish you could mix and match hacks - like I don't think that this can be blanketly done. Different patches may modify the same areas in memory, but for different effect. We could certainly point out if compatibility between patches exists and theoretically how to patch so they don't break each other though. (But then you're asking RHDN to test every permutation of patches for a given game, and I don't think that's something we could do.) If a patch author has tested their patch for compatibility with other patches and wants to point that out, that could done at time of submission, perhaps?
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Apr 18, 2024 20:32
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Yeah, IPS files don't really care about what has/hasn't already happened to the base file for the most part, which is part of why applying multiple on top of each other can be so fickle. If one dev's changes affect a certain area of the game data that another patch also touches, beyond there being some sort of compatibility stuff thought out in advance there's a high chance something'll go wrong. Especially if one of them moves everything about to expand a ROM or optimize things. As a handy example, the VWF patch for SoM you mention has a level of CRC check or encryption added via it from what I remember, so if the wrong thing is changed via further patching there to affect that, nothing's gonna work right if it even manages to boot. BPS files may be a bit tricky for trying to stack patches that way as well since there's some degree of checking involved, but I honestly don't remember trying anything like that last time I was doing anything with SNES patches though. Pre-Edit: Yeah, already beat on this it seems, but it's mostly a technical thing here that'd have to be mitigated by a whole lot of manual testing. DarkSol can probably speak on this point a bit more, but on the stuff mentioned beforehand on guidance, you'd probably need to find a whole team of volunteers beyond the current approvals staff for that alone. As is, I believe a good number of the articles are done up by someone else on the site when needed via the "Submit News" option. Like when I was getting SRW GC stuff pushed out prior to that patch release there, alongside fleshing out the game's page with a bit of actual detail and getting the patch itself uploaded, drafting up a news post for the release was one of the things that needed done at the time as well. You'd probably also want some guidelines on tone, subject, etc, on top of that as well, but you'd still need folks who'd be interested and suited to looking into such subjects, testing stuff out, and then writing about it all. The option to auto-patch from a particular page would still be nice though, 100% agreed, at least for any games where it's feasible (eg, patch hosted on-site, not a massive patch, not a massive game, etc), even if only because I keep forgetting where I save some of my patchers at times and need to redownload. Same for tags, like where there's some stuff you can already filter for within searches, a tagging system would be real nice to add more detail to that.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:02
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FPzero posted:It would be nice to see a wider acceptance of bps patches since they actually check to see that they're being applied to the correct rom they were created with. SMW Central moved over to bps exclusively some years ago and it was a really great decision. So that’s the difference. Guess I’ll exclusively use bps from now on.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:04
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SeANMcBAY posted:So that’s the difference. Guess I’ll exclusively use bps from now on. The patcher for bps files, Floating IPS, is really good too. I like it's ability to keep an unmodified copy of the rom when patching. Another cool feature is the ability to take, like, 5 patches and tell the program to apply them all to one rom, and it will spit out 5 patched roms, one for each patch. It was great for when I was judging contest entries for our contents and had 50+ entries to set up.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:25
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I know BPS was created by byuu/near so I'm sure there's good reason for it, but VCDIFF has been around since 1999, is standardized by RFC, and has commonly-available tools for it (xdelta3). It's odd to me that folks don't, just use that. Maybe it's harder to implement for live patching.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:25
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I dunno but I always had trouble with getting xdelta to work. It seems frequently used for ps1 stuff, sometimes n64, but that's where i had trouble the few times I tried. Same for ppf patches with n64.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:32
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I've always appreciated both lips and flips for having cute little 3-up moons for icons
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Apr 19, 2024 18:36
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Presumably inherited from LunarMagic
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Apr 19, 2024 20:39
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ExcessBLarg! posted:I know BPS was created by byuu/near so I'm sure there's good reason for it, but VCDIFF has been around since 1999, is standardized by RFC, and has commonly-available tools for it (xdelta3). It's odd to me that folks don't, just use that. Maybe it's harder to implement for live patching. just glancing over VCDIFF and BPS, VCDIFF doesn't seem to have checksums for the patch, input, or output files, and decoding is also more involved/complicated than BPS. so, uh, it isn't odd to me at all, because the community had been using IPS files forever and VCDIFF doesn't really seem any better than those.
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Apr 20, 2024 05:21
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Right - roms on the internet are a mess of versions, regions, headered vs headerless, overdumps etc. so if the patch knows the hash of the file it expects as input and the hash of the resulting patched rom, you’ve validated the patch works correctly. It is way too easy to produce something that doesn’t boot or crashes 30 minutes in. This is something IPS lacks because it’s a relic of the Amiga pirate scene and c’mon guys what decade is this? https://x.com/infidelity_nes/status/1782552841690750980 Sound on.  Infidelity is now working on an NES->SNES + MSU-1 port of Contra. Really subtle how the NES has to dim the foliage in order to move the helicopter while the SNES has multiple background layers Looper posted:I've always appreciated both lips and flips for having cute little 3-up moons for icons I’m nostalgic for 90’s internet when people would use sprites as icons and menu items So Fusoya’s site hasn’t changed much since the dial up days http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/ Including a pic of his Win 9x desktop with other examples of sprites as icons http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/graphics/desktop.jpg Coffee Jones fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 12:43
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Near did have a collection of clean dumps of every SNES game, but they didn't want to release it, although I think they did release the hashes. There are relatively few people with complete collections of SNES games now, especially if you count all the poorly documented version changes and various promotional cartridges that were never sold to the public. Add in the fact that such a project would require thousands of hours of tedious work plus specialized equipment, and I don't think we'll see anything like that again. 
Konstantin fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 17:01
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not just all that, but the money involved too. prices for anything retro-related are stupidly inflated at the moment
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Apr 23, 2024 19:31
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Yeah, Jeremy Parish just put out a video explaining that the price of GB games skyrocketing has resulted in him being unable to afford covering all of the games for his Video Game Works series going forward, so he's no longer trying to acquire weird Japanese-only GB imports. Which is a shame because his videos are really well done.
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Apr 23, 2024 19:36
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I get there's the whole "principle of the thing" stuff, but if it's such a burden to get the original copies, why not just use a flashcart? Having the original copy right there in front of you isn't exactly making or breaking your video series, it's fairly meaningless to the overall video.
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Apr 23, 2024 19:53
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Goons are honest and publicly law-abiding, citizen.  (Just don't look at my post history in this thread. Or... anywhere else.)
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Apr 23, 2024 20:01
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Kurui Reiten posted:I get there's the whole "principle of the thing" stuff, but if it's such a burden to get the original copies, why not just use a flashcart? Having the original copy right there in front of you isn't exactly making or breaking your video series, it's fairly meaningless to the overall video. i assume for most such cases it's for archival and preservation purposes
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Apr 23, 2024 20:16
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Kurui Reiten posted:I get there's the whole "principle of the thing" stuff, but if it's such a burden to get the original copies, why not just use a flashcart? Beyond that, though, his video series aren't really about the games, especially since most of them haven't aged well. They're more of an exhaustive understanding of the greater gaming context of the era, which in addition to the games themselves, also includes the supplemental material, Nintendo Power, contemporaneous experiences and the influence of pop-culture, etc. Even if an exhaustive dive into the library of a single system was kind of his shtick for a while, there's plenty of folks who are more than happy to post a video of every title in their ROM list and, ultimately, I assume he just doesn't find that fulfilling on its own.
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Apr 23, 2024 20:26
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Nah, there's a lot of misunderstanding here. I use flash carts all the time for my video capture. I just received a flash cart loaded with the complete Tomy Pyuuta library this afternoon, for when I eventually get around to covering that, so I don't have to hang on to all the Pyuuta games I'm photographing/lending to Gaming Alexandria for scans. The original physical releases I hunt for are for photography that will appear in the book editions that I adapt from my videos. I'm totally fine borrowing materials or even traveling to other people's locations to photograph stuff (Steve Lin let me spend an afternoon at his house last year so that I could photograph about 85% of the TG16 library, and those pix will eventually become available for public use via the VGHF). But who the hell owns a GB import library for me to shoot? I do still want to touch on interesting imports for the GB, though. The Astro Rabbies and Roadsters of the world demand highlighting.
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Apr 23, 2024 20:34
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Hopefully someone cool steps up and lends you whatever you need. I greatly appreciate all the photography work.
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Apr 23, 2024 20:49
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I bet Random Stranger has a lot of JP GB games. But AFAIK he mostly collects loose cartridges so if you need CIB... Maybe you can get ahold of that Japanese guy who rents separate apartments to store all his gaming stuff.
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Apr 23, 2024 20:59
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That dude looks like he would probably have heart palpitations if another human being made even passing physical contact with the dusty objects fused to his shelves.
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Apr 23, 2024 21:02
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Ofecks posted:I bet Random Stranger has a lot of JP GB games. But AFAIK he mostly collects loose cartridges so if you need CIB... Maybe you can get ahold of that Japanese guy who rents separate apartments to store all his gaming stuff. The only complete in box Japanese GB games I have are pretty dull. Yakuman, one of the Shanghai games, Donkey Kong Country, a Goemon game, and a Namco and Konami collection. Mainly a mix of "I want/need this and a boxed coy was surprisingly cheap" stuff. I'm happy to loan out any of my stuff for archival, but I genuinely don't have that much that someone hasn't already put the work into.
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Apr 23, 2024 21:31
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Why does Nadia Oxford call you “Parish” as in “I was on a panel in Toledo with Parish when that VirtualBoy malfunctioned and fried a kid’s retinas.” E: Congratulations on ten years. Coffee Jones fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 01:16
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Nadia's just like that. We don't ask why she is the way she is, we just cherish the fact that she is.
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Apr 24, 2024 02:18
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Well heck, I feel like I should've guessed you had an account here. Might as well take a moment to say I really love your work and how you fuse discussion of the game itself into its broader cultural context. The recent Dragon Warrior episode was so fascinating to watch, I didn't even mind watching it a second time when my roommate threw it on the TV the other night. If you ever manage to get to N64 Works 2000, I have a complete-in-box copy of Bomberman 64: The Second Attack that I'd be happy to lend for photography. I know it's prohibitively expensive to acquire these days, especially complete, so I wouldn't mind doing my part for preservation.
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Apr 24, 2024 03:23
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Dr. Spitesworth posted:Nadia's just like that. We don't ask why she is the way she is, we just cherish the fact that she is. Bless her
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Apr 24, 2024 09:34
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FPzero posted:Well heck, I feel like I should've guessed you had an account here. Might as well take a moment to say I really love your work and how you fuse discussion of the game itself into its broader cultural context. The recent Dragon Warrior episode was so fascinating to watch, I didn't even mind watching it a second time when my roommate threw it on the TV the other night. If you ever manage to get to N64 Works 2000, I have a complete-in-box copy of Bomberman 64: The Second Attack that I'd be happy to lend for photography. I know it's prohibitively expensive to acquire these days, especially complete, so I wouldn't mind doing my part for preservation. Thanks for the offer! I actually have access to some friends' complete libraries for N64, U.S. Saturn, NGPC, and a few others. I just wish I had friends with complete NES/SNES/GB libraries, the bums.
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Apr 24, 2024 21:24
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Thank you Doctor for the decade of content you've delivered to us degenerates. Hell of a accomplishment to stick with it that long.
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Apr 25, 2024 00:27
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Dr. Spitesworth posted:Thanks for the offer! I actually have access to some friends' complete libraries for N64, U.S. Saturn, NGPC, and a few others. I just wish I had friends with complete NES/SNES/GB libraries, the bums. You're welcome! N64 seems like it would be a lot of fun to collect for but I don't have the wherewithal or money to start shelling out for carts. The only uncommon GB game I have complete in box these days is a copy of Turok: Battle of the Bionisaurs from 1998. Everything else is mostly common first party offerings.
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Apr 25, 2024 17:37
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I know I had carts for Tetrisphere and The New Tetris but I can't find them 
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Apr 25, 2024 19:47
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