Author Topic: dink's FBN Development & Fixes thread  (Read 760232 times)

Offline dink

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Hello FBA Fans,
Earlier today a good friend let me know that almost all of the deco16 games (Boogie Wings, Diet Go Go, Crude Buster, Darkseal, Funky Jet, Rohga Armor Force, Super Burger Time, Tumble Pop and Vapor Trail) suffered from the same slowdown issue that Caveman Ninja had.  So I got to work on the fixes, and also fixed a few sound crackle issues in Vapor Trail, Crude Buster and Dark Seal.  Vapor Trail was the worst - it crackles just about every time the weapon was shot.
NOTE: Boogie Wings crackles a bit at the beginning of level 1 during the explosion of the structure, at this present time a fix doesn't exist.

Best regards,
- dink
« Last Edit: May 26, 2014, 03:46:50 AM by dink »

Offline dink

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Hi guys,
I'm working on the Super Kaneko Nova System driver, I got Cyvern to work with music!
Only have a few little issues to iron out, and I'll post back with some progress :)

best regards,
- dink

Offline dink

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Alright!! I got Cyvern on the Super Kaneko Nova System working 100% :)
(@iq_132: with the speed hack working & with full cycles & with perfect music \o/ :D  :biggrin: )

Heres a little detail on how it *painstakingly* came to be..
The first problem, get iq_132's brilliant and almost-finished d_suprnova.cpp to work with the latest FBA, this was just simple stuff like changing the BurnInfo structure's from the old to the new style.

The second problem - Cyvern would hang after the machine tests - this took about 4 hours of referencing the mame code, updating a few things here and there..  after a bit of almost going mad, and coming to a conclusion that this might never boot, I found a little piece of code that was commented - so I uncommented it, just "for the heck of it".  And that fixed it  :redface:  :eek:

The third problem aka the greatly needed "speedhack".  Let me tell ya, without this thing, the music chops up and the game is unplayable at 35-40FPS.  Its just too intense [for my little p4 3ghz pc].
This bit of code, codenamed the "speedhack" caused the code to cut a few corners making the game run at proper 60FPS without any slowdowns or stutters... BUT...
Enabling the "speedhack" was not without consequences - It caused the background music to cut out randomly and caused the SFX to become lagged.  After a day and a half of debugging, I came to the conclusion that the bug wasn't in the FBA driver at all, but in the Hitachi SH-2 CPU emulation - well... the function that burns cycles until the next interrupt, which allowed for the "speedhack" to work, was skipping over timer events that the game needs to keep the music playing. (I didn't know it was skipping these timer events until later on the next day...)

The third problem and a half - aka the next day - after making subtle changes to the SH-2 CPU core, recompiling, linking, loading the newly compiled FBA, loading Cyvern & testing the music - about 50 or 60 times, I realized I might have to look at things a little differently to get this fixed..  To make a long story a little less long, I took a break, thought about it for a while and realized that maybe some timer events were getting skipped when the "speedhack" went to burn cpu cycles until the next interrupt.  I updated the SH-2 core, tested it out, and lo-and-behold - it worked!!  I played a few games to make sure I wasn't dreaming, then came here to write this :)

The next FBA will not only have one fk'n awesome shooter game - Fire Barrel(Air Assault), but 2 of them :D

Tis a great day, my friends,
thats it for now & best regards,
- dink

« Last Edit: May 29, 2014, 06:34:57 PM by dink »

Offline dink

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A couple days ago I didn't think this would ever be possible in FBA, oh how wrong I was..
Cyvern Screenies: *click to zoom*
« Last Edit: May 30, 2014, 03:54:46 AM by dink »

Offline Arcadez

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Nice work dink Cyvern's a crackin game there is another big shmup in the same driver Sengki Strikers well worth getting it
playable in FBA if possible

« Last Edit: May 30, 2014, 09:30:20 AM by gamez fan »

Offline iq_132

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Nice work dink Cyvern's a crackin game there is another big shmup in the same driver Sengki Strikers well worth getting it
playable in FBA if possible
I could never get that particular game to boot. That's where the driver stalled out. :(


Offline dink

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I stayed up until like 5am last night (er, today morning) trying to get sengeki striker to work, I'd love to get it to work, but, its not looking good.

On the other hand, at least we got Cyvern out of it :)

kev

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Good work Dink :)

Offline KaNyErO

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Dlink your fixes are awesome. Do you think you could have a look at neogeo's super bubble pop? It has a problem with controls.

Thanks

Offline iq_132

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Dlink your fixes are awesome. Do you think you could have a look at neogeo's super bubble pop? It has a problem with controls.

Thanks
Those don't even work in mame. Been meaning to take a crack at again. :-|


Offline dink

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Thanks for the kind words guys :)
I took a break from coding and played Cyvern.. all night..  What an intense game!

level 4 is really killer, it's sort of a Neo-Tokyo/Bladerunner-esque level, pic below..

EDIT: the Cyvern driver has been cleaned up and checked in to svn :)
« Last Edit: May 31, 2014, 02:03:39 PM by dink »

Offline dink

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Hi guys, just a little update for today...
I'm working on a quick 'n'dirty TLCS90 cpu port to get sound in the NMK16 game Arcadian/Rapid Hero.
Lets see how it goes.... :)

Offline iq_132

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Hi guys, just a little update for today...
I'm working on a quick 'n'dirty TLCS90 cpu port to get sound in the NMK16 game Arcadian/Rapid Hero.
Lets see how it goes.... :)
Really looking forward to this! I remember being disappointed when I added this game and there was no sound (the sound wasn't even emulated in MAME yet!)


Offline dink

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I'm making some progress on the Rapid Hero soundcpu (TLCS90841), it isn't quite working right (yet), but I'm definitely getting somewhere :)  *fingers crossed*

iq_132 - I know you're really busy, but if I can't figure this out, would you take a look at it?
« Last Edit: June 02, 2014, 05:31:26 PM by dink »

Offline iq_132

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I'm making some progress on the Rapid Hero soundcpu (TLCS90841), it isn't quite working right (yet), but I'm definitely getting somewhere :)  *fingers crossed*

iq_132 - I know you're really busy, but if I can't figure this out, would you take a look at it?

Of course! Just send me what you've got when/if you're stuck.