Topic: A few things I've noticed re: Megadrive

[Ryvius86]

First, I just wanna say FB Alpha is wonderful. Living as I do (with my head under a rock), I've only recently made the shift to FB Alpha. I'd previously used WinKawaks for about 20 years and as good as it is, I have to say the extra video features and hardware emulation FB Alpha has kinda makes it redundant. As hard as that is for me to say. I think the only thing WinKawaks does better at this point is the fact it takes no time to scan folders. The CPS3 emulation is just great.

While the arcade side of things runs flawlessly, I've noticed a few things on the Megadrive side:

- Both Golden Axe (Arcade) and Golden Axe (MD) have the same filename, which causes the MD version not to show. I have a separate folder for MD roms and it's linked through path #7 (as I've seen suggested elsewhere).
- Sonic & Knuckles shares a file with a prototype version (skp03), and thus the prototype displays with an error in the list of games. I know this because it has the same CRC.
- Use zipnames displays MD roms with the pre-fix "md_", but when files are renamed to this FB Alpha doesn't recognise them. This is a little confusing. I was hoping renaming "goldnaxe" to "md_goldnaxe" would fix that issue.

The IPS Manager is a sick tool. I've only managed to get it to work with Megadrive roms in the Test IPS version so far, but it's great. I've attached an English translation of Bare Knuckle III (Streets of Rage 3) by Twilight Translations if anyone's interested. Again, it only works in the Test IPS version though. You can find it somewhere on here, but I'll upload it just in case.

[Ryvius86]

I hope it's okay to make another post here. I managed to compile a newer version of FB Alpha from Github;

- It seems the Golden Axe issue has been resolved for a future release (nice one!).
- However, the Sonic & Knuckles issue remains. As far as I can tell Sonic & Knuckles (sk) shares a file (CRC is 4DCFD55C) with Sonic & Knuckles Prototype 3 (skp03), thus making the Prototype display in the game list.
- Use zipnames is still a little confusing, because technically no MD roms use the pre-fix "md_" and are removed from the game list when renamed as such. However, support files must have the pre-fix in the folder name. Personally, I didn't have much trouble figuring this out as I'd done a bit of research before trying it, but it does mess with my OCD and I can see it tripping a lot of people up in future.



Again, FB Alpha is wonderful and I'm having a great time with it. Hopefully I can stop playing games long enough to contribute something to the project in the near future.

[Ryvius86]

Me again. I could really use some advice. Whenever I make any changes to d_megadrive.cpp and then try to compile, it throws out the error:

mingw32-make[1]: *** [d_megadrive.o] Error 1
mingw32-make: *** [mingw345] Error 2

This includes slight changes to genres, titles, etc to adding in new roms. I just can't seem to compile it once any changes are made. I don't have any issue compiling the FBAlpha-master, so I'm wondering if I need to edit burn.cpp or the makefile.mingw aswell?

Here is an example of some of the changes I've made: https://github.com/Ryvius86/FBAlpha/commit/3321411db2a13189e9a12c14a272c43bcef5d24c

Could someone point me in the right direction?

[barbudreadmon]

I don't know what's your issue, your changes build fine for me.

[Ryvius86]

Weird.

The errors start like this:

Compiling src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp...
src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp:1: error: stray '\239' in program
src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp:1: error: stray '\187' in program
src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp:1: error: stray '\191' in program
src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp:1: error: invalid token
In file included from src/burn/drv/megadrive/d_megadrive.cpp:2:

Followed by 46000 more errors and 43000 warnings. Is their no log file I can check?

[barbudreadmon]

I think your editor is messing up something, but github is somehow fixing it, maybe try replacing your local file by the one you sent to github ?

[Robert]

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2005-01/msg00272.html

You may have used Notepad as your editor, and you saved the file as something other than ANSI. This causes Notepad to include a BOM at the start of the file.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark

Use a decent editor, such as Notepad++.

[dink]

Ryvius86, nice work on the genre & adding game hack!
It's ok for arcade games and megadrive games to have the same filename, fba will take care of this (internally) if you set the drive paths for the consoles at the end of the list - it's described better in the manual  

[Ryvius86]

Great advice! As far as I remember I've been using Notepad++ this whole time, but lo and behold their was a BOM at the start. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. I removed it using HxD and the compile is finally done. I'd say happy days, but it's 3am now. Guess I'll have to test it tomorrow. Thank you so much.

And thanks dink! I thought I'd at least start with something simple, since I've not done any coding since Uni. And that was quite a while ago. Oh, and I've sent you a PM.

[Ryvius86]

I've made a pull request on the shiny new Github here: https://github.com/dinkc64/FBAlphaFB/pull/1/files

- Added Sonic to the family, so now you can filter by Sonic and sonic-related games.
- Added Bare Knuckle III fan-translation by Twilight.
- Amended general things like genres, regions, etc. The gamelist is insane. Do we really need 20 prototypes for Sonic 2?
- Mostly worked on d_megadrive.cpp, but also made some tweaks to d_cps1.cpp and a couple others.

I was pretty much just testing the water with these. Any advice, feedback or requests are welcome.

[dink]

Thanks for the changes, they look good 

The only thing I can advise is don't worry about the non-win32 directory under burner/.  (qt/sdl/psp).  That stuff hasn't been maintained in ages or more, and probably won't even compile now-a-days.  But, who knows, maybe you did compile it.. hehe.

Years ago I felt the same way about all the sonic2 betas/prototypes, but after talking to a couple people that like messing about in the old versions, I think they should stay.

best regards,
- dink

[iq_132]

I've made a pull request on the shiny new Github here: https://github.com/dinkc64/FBAlphaFB/pull/1/files

- Added Sonic to the family, so now you can filter by Sonic and sonic-related games.
- Added Bare Knuckle III fan-translation by Twilight.
- Amended general things like genres, regions, etc. The gamelist is insane. Do we really need 20 prototypes for Sonic 2?
- Mostly worked on d_megadrive.cpp, but also made some tweaks to d_cps1.cpp and a couple others.

I was pretty much just testing the water with these. Any advice, feedback or requests are welcome.

Nice work

[Ryvius86]

Thanks guys.

Years ago I felt the same way about all the sonic2 betas/prototypes, but after talking to a couple people that like messing about in the old versions, I think they should stay.

The current gamelist is over 12,000. You could remove 50% of it without affecting any of the parents. It would cut both the scan and compile time in half. And would be a lot easier to navigate and maintain. Then again, I'm not really a "full romset" kind of person. I think a version for each region and a few handpicked hacks is more than enough for any one person. But that's just me, I think people are generally hoarders when it comes to this sort of thing.

Here's another update to d_megadrive.cpp: https://github.com/dinkc64/FBAlphaFB/pull/2/files

- Updated loads of genres
- Organised Sonic clones and hacks
- Other minor tweaks