Topic: sf3:3rd strike widescreen

[barbudreadmon]

nice progress

[dink]

Wow this is great!  Nice work bankbank!!

best regards,
- dink

[bankbank]

made some lovely progress after a long, long process of trying to figure out the popping in/out of objects in the foreground and background of several stages
bp 60b644e,1,{r6=FF07;g}
bp 60b6452,1,{r3=ee;g}

regarding object pop in/out, I just need to make some small adjustments on Ken, Alex, and Elena's stages and then this aspect of the hack is all done. after that there's really just two more things to change:
A) far edge stage boundaries for some characters have black or incomplete graphics. I'll probably adjust stage boundary coordinates rather than trying to modify the graphics. much cleaner solution
B) as detailed previously, several graphics which take up the entire width of the screen in 4:3 mode need to be adjusted. most pressing is the super KO flash.

progress video here: https://youtu.be/HOElBwfY7eI

I've also attached my working spreadsheet .xls file here for anyone who's interested.

@barbudreadmon I wonder if it will possible to get you to help me to add this 3rd Strike Widescreen hack to FBNeo once it's complete? there's some complications due to FBNeo's implementation of widescreen in CPS3
https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/commit/1def4f08e8da1a36d5a5b59655d805a9cddd1b6c
https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/commit/58193128db1d48f62c9740ce5953906892d5a644#diff-b90a4e5bd9895fe57c50572183c6bc44cc4f222750d7519c117c8c0aaaf1ef28

I have hacked the sfiii3nr1 binary so that the game no longer checks the nvram for the widescreen toggle - the hack will always, no matter what launch into widescreen. and, unfortunately, now the hack hangs at the initial boot text (which is around where the nvram loading is). I assume this is due to the way FBNeo works with CPS3 wide, as referenced in the two github links above. If you would be so kind to accommodate my hack (which hopefully lots of people will play but who knows), I would be very greatful. I can provide you with the modified binary on discord or a patch on here.

[barbudreadmon]

@barbudreadmon I wonder if it will possible to get you to help me to add this 3rd Strike Widescreen hack to FBNeo once it's complete?

Sure , you can ping me on discord when you are done.

[bankbank]

Sure , you can ping me on discord when you are done.

merci! barbudreadmon was so kind as to add the mod to FBNEO:
https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/commit/6dd253cbe092116e147b68ee20ea9a1c7bb79989

[dink]

Awesome, nice work bankbank!

[bankbank]

anyone here have insight into how cps3/3s stores data in vram?
I have found the function which loads/decompresses the tile data
and DrewDos found where the tile data resides (compressed) in the ROM
but I can't find where it writes decompressed tile data to / where it can be read from

I have fixed the white part of the super ko flash since I was able to just modify the tilemap and to change the all-black tiles to all-white tiles
but for fixing the super ko flash graphical parts, I need to put new graphics data in the ROM and then in VRAM and reference with more modified tilemap
I just can't figure out where the tiles are in VRAM
anyone?

[dink]

bankbank, Most stuff makes it into vram via dma, from both the sh2 cpu and the cps3 board also has another dma controller to do palette, sprite and character dma.
To get the addresses from where this stuff is coming from, you'd need to edit the driver and uncomment all of the logging in the dma (chr,pal,sprite) functions, as well as in the sh2 cpu's dma function - as the logging stuff is there but commented out.  One could also watch the dma addresses without recompiling anything.  Look for dma_w in cps3_map in the current mame driver.

best regards,
- dink

[Netro]

Within all this great work you guys are doing, is it possible to disable the hud elements for 3rd strike, as well as the background?

[dink]

most likely: you'd have to hack the cps3 code, and have it only draw the sprites.

[barbudreadmon]

If that result is what you are looking for, you can reach it pretty easily by disabling layer 1 & 2 in our UI

[bankbank]

minor update here with some good news and some bad news

the good news is that the hack runs on real CPS3 hardware

the bad news is that the right side of the background tiles are not updating (see attached screenshot)

this behavior is different from what we observe when the hack is played in FBNeo, where the background tiles are drawn correctly

when I set widescreen to permanently on through modification of the binary, perhaps I only did it partially. there's also a chance that I need to update a routine to draw to that area.

it's important to me that this thing works on real hardware, so I'm going to tackle the issue eventually

[dink]

bankbank, love what you're doing - keep it up
While I can't be much help with real hw, just wanted to say that the way it stops drawing tiles is a curiosity. 

good luck!
best regards,
- dink