Topic: dink's FBN Development & Fixes thread

[dink]

While playing Ninja Baseball Bat man, the screen froze up in 2 separate games (the music kept playing - but everything else freezes).  Once during a boss fight with the airplane-boss and then again in level 2 on the ships deck right after I got into the car.

EDIT: I got it to happen again - this time I saved a state right before hopping into the car, and basically I hop into the car and go around the screen like mad crashing into enemies, after 5-10 times of re-trying this, it'll lock up solid.  It usually happens when the screen is really busy (lots of sprites crashing about).  After the screen locks up solid and I press a bunch of buttons, the screen goes really strange with numbers. (see pic)  Also attached in states.zip: state saved right @ the car (for jumping into and going nuts) and a state taken when its locked up (ala piccy)

[dink]

I thought it would be fun to try to reproduce the problem with the world version of the romset, and the first time I got it to freeze - in the car after beating windy airplane, I started hitting a lot of buttons, and the game just rebooted to the irem logo - this time, weird things would be flashing all over the screen while the game booted.  Here's a perfect recreation scenario:
unzip nbbincar into your savestates directory.
load the game/load hit f9(load state)
drive a bit - when you see the pile of toxic barrels, move your joystick / gamepad in circles as fast as you can whilst hitting the barrels - if it doesn't lock up after you crash into the barrels, try again (it might take a couple tries)

Ideas?

[dink]

Good news - I updated the irem_cpu decode table for this game, and now the music doesn't sound like a horrible cacophony of Richard D. James' blenders.  I have to leave, so I won't be able to test if that fixed the lockup, but hopefully it does.  More news when I get back in a few hours...

best regards,
- dink

[Barry Harris]

I thought it would be fun to try to reproduce the problem with the world version of the romset, and the first time I got it to freeze - in the car after beating windy airplane, I started hitting a lot of buttons, and the game just rebooted to the irem logo - this time, weird things would be flashing all over the screen while the game booted.  Here's a perfect recreation scenario:
unzip nbbincar into your savestates directory.
load the game/load hit f9(load state)
drive a bit - when you see the pile of toxic barrels, move your joystick / gamepad in circles as fast as you can whilst hitting the barrels - if it doesn't lock up after you crash into the barrels, try again (it might take a couple tries)

Ideas?

Does the driver have code to avoid opposite direction presses?

[dink]

Does the driver have code to avoid opposite direction presses?

It didn't, but I added code to check & clear opposites (from d_m62.cpp) and tried again, no luck.. its still being troublesome.. :/

[dink]

Here's a new savestate, for nbbatman - it freezes after about 3 seconds after it loads - nothing else needs to be done.  Was real lucky to catch this one!

best regards,
- dink

[dink]

I think the problem w/nbbatman is solved! *awesome!*

Ok, let me start - whenever this lockup problem happened, there were a lot of sprite-type things happening on the screen, so this got me thinking - lets check the sprite stuff in the driver.  Turns out it throws a sprite buffer refresh interrupt when its done copying over the sprite buffer, so I thought I'd disable the interrupt just for the heck of it.  it caused the same exact kinda lockup that I was experiencing, so I figured the problem was in that area.   In the mame code, there is a comment that says "Major title 2 doesn't like this interrupt", which got me even better clue to as where the problem lies.  Time to add a new kludge for this game and do some playtesting!  None of my savestates lockup anymore, so thats good

best regards,
- dink

[dink]

Hey guys, one last message re: Ninja Baseball BatMan - the game is now fully playable without any freezeups! (woohoo!!)
I havn't had this much fun w/a game since Caveman Ninja

Big thanks to cmart for letting us all know about this awesome game & of course iq_132 for getting it to boot
On an unrelated note - thanks Treble Winner for the configurable directory option! (& sorry I didn't get to check out the bug-site yet, I was entirely focused on getting this game running stable today.)

Gonna take a nice long break now,
best regards,
- dink

[cmart]

Thanks to you guys for making it playable and all the hard work. Can't wait to play it in the next release.

[dink]

Re: Ninja Baseball Batman
In the cutscenes/intro/animations theres a bunch of flickers, and at the end of each fadeout theres also a flicker.  I was able to get rid of the flicker in the animations (which is where it looked the worst), but at the end of each fadeout, I couldn't fix that.  MAME also suffers from the same flickers, so at this point I don't think its fixable - but on the other hand, its not something that detracts from the game at all, and is hardly noticable.  Well, this is the best I can do for this awesome game

EDIT: I played the game to the end earlier to make sure everything checks out OK, and also Just finished the game 2player with Kaillera with my good friend Zazzone I won't spoil things too much, but heres a piccy from earlier...

thats all for now,
best regards,
- dink

[dink]

Hello friends and fans of FBAlpha!
I have some more great news - Another longstanding bug has been squashed, the game is In The Hunt aka Kaitei Daisensou.  Lets let the pictures do the talking

[csmart]

Great job Dink

[JacKc]

.Nice job dink 

[Arcadez]

In The Hunt Nice game a good fix dink well done!!

[dink]

thanks guys, I appreciate the comments.   they keep me motivated!

best regards,
- dink