I'm playing the hack through BSNES and with the infinite lives cheat, and now I understand what's going on. The problems are SD2SNES specific. They don't happen at all playing at BSNES, no matter if you play with cheats or not, that's not what causing the issue. It's the hack itself.

It's not just the pause problem on the Snake Pit levels and the graphic issues on Dark Tower/Dark Queen levels, the music also goes perfect on BSNES but starts late on console playing on SD2SNES and that can be noticed on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8zamvkZnW8 see 0:04, 2:40, 10:18, 10:29, 12:14, 12:37, 16:30, 16:48, 19:48, 20:08 and 22:12, all the musics start playing a couple of seconds late.

I don't know if SNES9X is mirroring the SD2SNES issues but I can try. If it does, then maybe it's easier for you to test it and fix it that way.

Ok, after numerous playthroughs of the game through SD2SNES, BSNES and SNES9X, I have the problem issue fully documented.

The graphic problem in the Dark Tower level and the Dark Queen boss was also appearing to me in BSNES and SNES9X, unlike the other problem withe Snake Level pause and of course the music playback problem which only happen on the console and not on emulators. After some investigation, I noticed what was causing the graphic problem in the Dark Tower level and Dark Queen boss was a checksum problem conclicting with the infinite lives cheat, given that the MSU-1 hack doesn't fix the checksum when patching and that's why I had that problem on the MSU-1 hack with infinite lives and its bad checksum but not on the normal ROM with the same cheat applied which had the checksum right. I fixed the checksum on the MSU-1 hack and that problem got fixed, so one problem less. You don't have to look that issue at all.

But unfortunately the music playback problem starting a couple of seconds late and the issue with pausing/unpausing freezing the game on the Snake Pit levels are still present. Those are problems are specific of the MSU-1 hack. It doesn't matter if you use cheats or not, if you have the checksum well or not, or whatever. The point is, BSNES and SNES9X don't reproduce those problems, but SD2SNES actually does. So if you don't have a SD2SNES then that's probably why you didn't notice it and I don't know how easy is to fix those. Especially the Snake Pit level one is a nuisance because you can't pause at all on that level or else you'll have to restart the game.

The delayed music playback problem, according to what I noticed on the game behaviour on emulators and on the console, is because on console the game does some kind of a freeze/stop mechanic (it seems it tries to load something) and then when the music starts sounding it's already a couple of seconds late. The emulators don't have this sort of freeze/stop behaviour, they actually start playing the music earlier and that's why it's done from the beginning without delay like it should. It's also a reason why if you pause the game on console with SD2SNES, you do actually get the song restarted from the beginning, because that freeze/stop mechanic is not performed by the game when you pause/unpase the game but it does when the level is loaded. I don't know if this is well explained or not but it can be noticed if you compare the Shiryu video (which seem to be recorded from real hardware with SD2SNES) to how the game behaves on emulator.

Wesker can u show me how to use cheats on sd2snes .....i got to test gaming..to find the bug of the game..plus. i read a tutorial to make it work.. but the game cheats no working..,plus it dont have on off function

Other thing theres no way when u unapause or pasuse the game to get the song where it was msu1 ..works like cd music.. not spc rom music..is impossible to do that

I checked the msu code and it's fine (the way we always code it to work on sd2snes). We cannot trace sd2snes, since we have no debugger.
The code of this game is unusual and you cannot play it e.g. snes9x1.51 and zsnes (i think). You maybe want to try the native unpatched Rom on sd2snes whether your bugs occur. It could be possible that sd2snes has a weird bug with this game like older emulators and the msu code is not responsible..

As said we cannot fix the code if the bug doesn't happen on bsnes (debugger). In the end you need to renounce on this game using sd2snes, I'm afraid and it is emulator only.

I downloaded sd2snes cheat for battletoads but i cant make it to work.. battletoads is a hard game.. i did it when i was younger now i dont got patience to play like a pro

kurrono wrote:Wesker can u show me how to use cheats on sd2snes .....i got to test gaming..to find the bug of the game..plus. i read a tutorial to make it work.. but the game cheats no working..,plus it dont have on off function

Try patching these codes to the game for infinite lives.

CBAF-44D4 P1 Infinite Lives (1 of 3)
69AF-44A4 P1 Infinite Lives (2 of 3)
46AF-47D4 P1 Infinite Lives (3 of 3)

Using them you will probably be able to make your way up to the Snake Pit level and see what happens there if you pause/unpause the game. No need to go any further as the rest of the game is perfect.

But if you are playing the game on SD2SNES, at least you would have noticed by now that all the musics always start late? That can't be fixed anyhow?

Conn wrote:I checked the msu code and it's fine (the way we always code it to work on sd2snes). We cannot trace sd2snes, since we have no debugger.
The code of this game is unusual and you cannot play it e.g. snes9x1.51 and zsnes (i think). You maybe want to try the native unpatched Rom on sd2snes whether your bugs occur. It could be possible that sd2snes has a weird bug with this game like older emulators and the msu code is not responsible..

As said we cannot fix the code if the bug doesn't happen on bsnes (debugger). In the end you need to renounce on this game using sd2snes, I'm afraid and it is emulator only.

As I mentioned, the pause/unpause bug of the Snake Pit level is specific of the MSU-1 hack. It doesn't happen if you play with the unpatched ROM on SD2SNES. I don't know what's causing it but it's the MSU-1 hack for sure and it only happens on SD2SNES, not on emulators.

The issue is not that bad to actually renounce to playing the game using SD2SNES if it can't be fixed by any mean, you just have to be aware of not pausing the game under any circumstance during the Snake Pit levels.

Last edited by Wesker on Sat 28 Jul 2018 - 21:15; edited 1 time in total

It goes in .yml file how i maje that load into the rom..sd2snes has no option for that

kurrono wrote:It goes in .yml file how i maje that load into the rom..sd2snes has no option for that

No, what you have to do is patch the codes to a clean ROM using some cheat patcher program like GGGuy, and then apply the MSU-1 hack. That way you'll have the MSU-1 hacked version with infinite lives.

You can also do it the other way around, patch the codes to an already MSU-1 hacked version, but I recommend doing the cheat patch first and then the MSU-1 hack as that usually gives less problems. And fixing the checksum too, because if not then you will obtain the other graphic problem I mentioned earlier on the Dark Tower level and Dark Queen final boss.

But how you patch it Wesker?

Ok i see

As I mentioned, the pause/unpause bug of the Snake Pit level is specific of the MSU-1 hack. It doesn't happen if you play with the unpatched ROM on SD2SNES. I don't know what's causing it but it's the MSU-1 hack for sure and it only happens on SD2SNES, not on emulators.

I see. I must have misread that. But my message stays the same: sd2snes has no debug option, so we cannot trace it. The code is good. I also never heard that checksum is causing issues.
So: we cannot help you, and it is emulator only then, I'm afraid. Though another, independent sd2snes check would be good to confirm this.

kurrono wrote:Ok i see

Did you manage it to patch the codes? With GGGuy is easy to do.

Conn wrote:I see. I must have misread that. But my message stays the same: sd2snes has no debug option, so we cannot trace it. The code is good. I also never heard that checksum is causing issues.

So: we cannot help you, and it is emulator only then, I'm afraid. Though another, independent sd2snes check would be good to confirm this.

The checksum problem was causing the issues with the lives/health metter and the graphic foreground layers with the Dark Tower level and Dark Queen final boss. Don't worry about that as I solved that already.

If the pause/unpause bug on the Snake Pit levels can't be traced/solved, well, then I guess you can always leave a warning note on the patch readme to never ever pause the game on those levels when playing on SD2SNES.

But the fact of the musics always starting late on SD2SNES, maybe that can be solved adding a delay or two seconds of silence on the music playback? So they would start right on SD2SNES. To not affect the fact that BSNES and SNES9X have the playback right and would play silence for a couple of seconds, maybe a separate release with the tracks properly modified/adjusted can be done for SD2SNES and the current one can be kept for emulators.

I think K is owning a sd2snes. He's also the main author of this patch and made the pcm (I did the pause stuff, but see no way how it could be misinterpreted by sd2snes, and am unable to trace it).
I'm sure K will test the issues you mentioned on sd2snes and takes actions on the pcm if needed

kurrono mentioned on the Battletoads Double Dragon thread by mistake that he's not getting the pause/unpause bug on the Snake Pit levels. I don't know what may be causing it since I'm only getting it with the hacked ROM on SD2SNES and not with either a clean ROM on SD2SNES or the hacked ROM on anywhere else. I'll try to figure it out patching another ROM or anything like that.

As for the pcm problem, it appears in this video too like I mentioned:



See 0:04, 2:40, 10:18, 10:29, 12:14, 12:37, 16:30, 16:48, 19:48, 20:08 and 22:12, and compare them to the behaviour of the game on both BSNES and SNES9X. It always starts playing the music late because there's a delay playing the music that doesn't happen on the emulators. It should be pretty evident.

I was able to fix that.
The reason is that the apu must also be activated in order for msu playback. So in the new asm, I coupled the STA $2007-03 to the playsignal (when the apu was ready).
There are games that re-boot the apu for strange reasons in-game (like here before a level).


Download the patch from first post (says v2 now) and re-apply

Snake Pit:
I talked back to K and this doesn't happen on his sd2snes. From a cpu-logical point of view it would be strange if the bug only happens there and nowhere else. Guess this is a weird cheat or something on your side as well.

Last edited by Conn on Sun 29 Jul 2018 - 11:04; edited 1 time in total

Hey Wesker download new patch and test it..who knows maybe game will not freeze

Conn i sent u a video last night about the game play i didnt get it?

Check out the bug.

https://mega.nz/#!qkpD1CYa!5eZGlNZI7zCVDyXASOwsHAr12TpW-98IRX-riUCBrz4

This was recorded still playing the old patch with delayed musics. I'll try the v2 patch with adjusted music, thanks for fixing that. Maybe that fixes this issue too, who knows.

Omg is true ...the snes freezes on pause and screen goes black he wasnt lying isaw his video
.bit why mines doesnt do that?

And let me assure it's not because of infinite cheats, because I also get the problem if I arrive to that level using a clean hack without cheats applied. It's difficult to manage to arrive that level without infinite lives but I can do it. And I can record a video of that situation if necessary.

But before I'm going to test the v2 patch and see if it also fixes that problem hopefully.

Hey,wesker watch my video im not lying..my place is a mess haha ..but check it my video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jC7dP4529j5VWySHCxhmFBQIH5rFQWgv/view?usp=drivesdk

Wesker there is cheat that u dont die on snake ldvel that mess up my game last niht hahah i ended stuck in the upper part in 4th ice room

Just tested it the v2 version. Sadly the pause bug is still there. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to live with it. At least all the other bugs/problems were fixed.

I don't know why it doesn't happen to you (I see you also prefer playing as Rash rather than Pimple, hehe) but it does happen to me. I don't think it's related to the SD2SNES (I don't think it's faulty) or the firmware (we are both using 0.1.8). May be related to the hardware, my console is a Japanese Super Famicom. Sadly I don't have the mean to test it on another console, so I will have to leave it be and make sure I don't ever pause on that level.

I suppose the cheat the messed up your game is the one that makes you invincible against the spikes. I wouldn't use that cheat, it easily messes up your game like you say. I would only use these cheats for ease of play.

Either the infinite continues cheat which are these:

P1/Pimple
C96A-346F

P2/Rash
C96B-34DF

Or the infinite lives cheat which are these

P1/Pimple
CBAF-44D4
69AF-44A4
46AF-47D4

P2/Rash
CBA9-4464
69A9-4704
4CA9-4764

And nothing else. Maybe you can also add a cheat to up the number of lives to 5 or 9 if you don't want to use the infinite lives cheat, but nothing else. Using those invincibility cheat hacks easily break game in certain levels with special conditions (and there are a lot of them in this game), so I would only use cheats that, even if you are still dying a lot, will prevent you from having a Game Over (which is easy since this game has limited continues) and having to start the game all over again.

You could attach a bsnes savestate from snake pit, where it happens in your sd2snes.
I'll try to trace then if there is anything different executed. Chance is little but your only hope.