pepillopev wrote:Wolfenstein MSU1 Patch (Conn)*

Wolfenstein PCM Set (Polargames Selected / PepilloPEV Edited)

Thanks to DarkSamus and Polargames for the provided research material to get this patch project started.

*Note: Do not use Snes9x (it has noise distortions). Use the bSnes++ emulator. Sd2Snes has not been tested.

Thank you guys very much, Conn,Pepillopev,Darksamus you rock

pepillopev wrote:Wolfenstein MSU1 Patch (Conn)*

Wolfenstein PCM Set (Polargames Selected / PepilloPEV Edited)

Thanks to DarkSamus and Polargames for the provided research material to get this patch project started.

*Note: Do not use Snes9x (it has noise distortions). Use the bSnes++ emulator. Sd2Snes has not been tested.

Ok, I have tested this out in retroarch and it does work, now the buzz seams to be in the sound fx, It seems to be in sound output 1,5,8. 8 thought gets ride of the buzz all together, So it must be conflecting with 8. Ihope that helps, I used ips patch.

Seems like the patch is bsnes (and hopefully) sd2snes only (anybody keen to test?).

The mute I found isn't perfect but I wasn't able to find another one. There's one guy here, Kurrono who magically ffinds the weirdest mutes, maybe he looks at it one time, so it's not conflicting with snes9x/retroarch.

All right, with this, wolfenstein has been "doomished"

It improves a lot the game.

Señor Ventura wrote:All right, with this, wolfenstein has been "doomished"

It improves a lot the game.

Sweet, I am happy that you like it Señor Ventura :-D

Hey everyone I was board a while back and I had made this to go with the MSU1 patch, Its cover art for it. I was board and played in photoshop with it. All rights belong to the respected parties. I just made it to look like a cd cover.

@Conn I was able to find a sound test option using Action Replay codes. It help me better isolate a hard mute (only 1byte). Now Snes9x plays the game fine without buzzing. Hopefully, this alternate mute is good for the whole game (only did partial testing in bSnes++ and Snes9x).

Conn, pepillopev, I have tested with the 1.1 fix and it works 100% in snes9x, No issue at all. It plays great :-D Thank you to both and also another Thanks to pepillopev for the video also :-D

Last edited by Polargames on Sun 17 Jun 2018 - 23:30; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Forgot to add more)

@Polargames Can you upload that cover you made to my server without my name on it? I want to use it for the title cover for the YouTube video I made.

pepillopev wrote:@Polargames Can you upload that cover you made to my server without my name on it? I want to use it for the title cover for the YouTube video I made.

Ok, I can do that, I did take the nintendo logo off because I did not want you to get in trouble. But there you go :-D

pepillopev wrote:@Conn I was able to find a sound test option using Action Replay codes. It help me better isolate a hard mute (only 1byte). Now Snes9x plays the game fine without buzzing. Hopefully, this alternate mute is good for the whole game (only did partial testing in bSnes++ and Snes9x).

Awesome!
I saw that you put that byte in the area I found but you gotta teach me how you found it and what e4 is for

Ah, now I know what you did:

orginal code:

Code:


02FF E4 16     MOV A,$16            A:02
0301 3F 97 02  CALL !$0297          A:04


You move the value in ram $16 (here #$04) into A

Your altered code with E4:

Code:


02FF E4 E4     MOV A,$E4            A:02
0301 3F 97 02  CALL !$0297          A:00


This code is not safe, since it moves the value of $E4 to ram, that is (only by chance) #$00.
The #$00 mutes then.


Safer is if you make:

Code:


02FF E8 00     MOV A,#$00           A:02
0301 3F 97 02  CALL !$0297          A:00


Means your code:
; PeV - gives music mute (fx intact, need more testing to ensure proper spc music mute)
org $ce9922
db $e4

should be changed that to:
org $ce9921
db $e8,$00

Excellent find, Pev! Don't want to know how long you tried

@Conn It was not easy, I will tell you that much. I’ll classify this as beginner’s luck. I don’t remember how exactly I was drawn to that 2nd byte that you $00’ed.

I’m just glad Snes9x is good now. This sound engine is a PITA. Wow, just one byte off and I messed up the native code, shit. I’m surprised it worked at all.

Im just glad you are watching out for my rookie mistakes.

I owed Polargames, that much too. Just like you helped me get started here last year.

pepillopev wrote:@Conn It was not easy, I will tell you that much. I’ll classify this as beginner’s luck. I don’t remember how exactly I was drawn to that 2nd byte that you $00’ed.

I’m just glad Snes9x is good now. This sound engine is a PITA. Wow, just one byte off and I messed up the native code, shit. I’m surprised it worked at all.

Im just glad you are watching out for my rookie mistakes.

I owed Polargames, that much too. Just like you helped me get started here last year.

Pepillopev, Thank You very much for looking threw the code, you have showed me that a game genie can be used for a project like this, and not just for video game cheating lol. If you would have messed up the native code, I for one would not be mad at all, I had it backed up when Conn busted his butt to build the asm for it. I made sure I backed it up because I was 100% sure I would of screwed it up. You and Conn are the best to have because I learned a lot from both of you. Thank you so much for being my teachers. .

@polargames In some cases, it does to give you an idea how the game developer utilized the spc. You have more control to discover how SPC is played. Every game uses the SPC differently. There are some games where you can reuse established patch code (Kurrono is a testament to that).

Conn, showed me a more efficient and precise method to trace down the SPC but it takes a couple tries just to get comfortable doing it. It’s like chess, easy to learn the rules but difficult to master the strategy in finding a good SPC mute (at least for me). I’m getting there.

Then we have Kurrono too. As Conn stated before, he has a real knack for finding alternate mutes.

pepillopev wrote:@polargames In some cases, it does to give you an idea how the game developer utilized the spc. You have more control to discover how SPC is played. Every game uses the SPC differently. There are some games where you can reuse established patch code (Kurrono is a testament to that).

Conn, showed me a more efficient and precise method to trace down the SPC but it takes a couple tries just to get comfortable doing it. It’s like chess, easy to learn the rules but difficult to master the strategy in finding a good SPC mute (at least for me). I’m getting there.

Then we have Kurrono too. As Conn stated before, he has a real knack for finding alternate mutes.

That's realy great information to know and I for one will take a crack at that when I am board just to see how spcs are different. May I ask what Conn's more efficient and precise method is? To be very honest pepillopev when Conn asked you to teach him how you found it, I thought you were in the same rank that Conn is in, The master level. For Kurrono has there been times that when he has found alternate mutes it really made you scratch your heads on it?

It's not about ranks. I do that for 15 years, so I have some experience. But other people have other methods or patience, just like the w3d guy who managed finding track triggers that I couldn't. That's more about in which corners of your brain you're thinking to find solutions.
Using other methods pev had here he managed to mute w3d... with corners, intuition and patience, that I couldn't.

As for the method you're asking for, it's the apu mute. Apu is independent from cpu and uses a different asm machine (1-address, vs 2-address machine of the cpu).
Apu muting require different skills, and I by chance found out when msu donkey Kong country 1.
But it's the least wanted method as a spc fallback isn't possible. That's a pity in complex games like ys5.

Conn wrote:It's not about ranks. I do that for 15 years, so I have some experience. But other people have other methods or patience, just like the w3d guy who managed finding track triggers that I couldn't. That's more about in which corners of your brain you're thinking to find solutions.
Using other methods pev had here he managed to mute w3d... with corners, intuition and patience, that I couldn't.

As for the method you're asking for, it's the apu mute. Apu is independent from cpu and uses a different asm machine (1-address, vs 2-address machine of the cpu).
Apu muting require different skills, and I by chance found out when msu donkey Kong country 1.
But it's the least wanted method as a spc fallback isn't possible. That's a pity in complex games like ys5.

O ok, So when it comes to spcs there are more the one why of finding them by how and where your brain works. Wow, that is very neat. And depending on how or where your patience level is, sometimes that can bring you better results and builds your experience. Cool, I will use the new information and play a round with some games to better understand them. Thank you Conn. On ys 5 is that why its taking a longer process then other games of getting it msued? I have been reading everything so far that has been posted on the game and earthbound, they seem to be monster headaches to figure out.

You see, there is no blueprint how to msu a game. Basically it's two steps: you need to find the track triggers and substitute them with pcm:s and the second, you need to mute the spc leaving sfx intact.
Mainly the spc mute is the difficult part, we evolved some techniques and now succeeded in every game until now. Usually it is depending on the company which technique you need to use, the most friendly ones are Nintendo (they usually have a mute track or such), most awful are Enix (IMO) and that W3D company is now on top of that list.

The problem with YS5 and Earthbound is that the PCM devs have some extra-wishes to mimic the original game as close as possible (like fading) or add extra features like additional tracks. This all is possible but is (of course) time and playtest consuming.
The limits of msu are if some more channels are involved, like SMW when riding Yoshi, the current music gets some drums. This cannot be mimicked.

BTW: there's a good chance I'll start 2 new projects in a month or so (when I have more time).
- Out of this world with the video replacing
- EVO
But no promise on that.

Conn wrote:- Out of this world with the video replacing

Perfect, i really would like to see how far the snes goes using 16 Bytes tiles (this game doesn't seems to use tiles with more than 4 colors, right?).

As said, don't count on it.
There's a video of the intro, I plan to use that alike the alttp video for the intro. No idea what you mean by 16 bit tiles, I never touched the game until now.

Conn wrote:You see, there is no blueprint how to msu a game. Basically it's two steps: you need to find the track triggers and substitute them with pcm:s and the second, you need to mute the spc leaving sfx intact.
Mainly the spc mute is the difficult part, we evolved some techniques and now succeeded in every game until now. Usually it is depending on the company which technique you need to use, the most friendly ones are Nintendo (they usually have a mute track or such), most awful are Enix (IMO) and that W3D company is now on top of that list.

The problem with YS5 and Earthbound is that the PCM devs have some extra-wishes to mimic the original game as close as possible (like fading) or add extra features like additional tracks. This all is possible but is (of course) time and playtest consuming.
The limits of msu are if some more channels are involved, like SMW when riding Yoshi, the current music gets some drums. This cannot be mimicked.

BTW: there's a good chance I'll start 2 new projects in a month or so (when I have more time).
- Out of this world with the video replacing
- EVO
But no promise on that.

I see, So when it comes to the little things people are used to when playing said video game like SMW yoshi's music their is a limit to msu and sometimes it pushes it. Now the spc mute does that normaly go into where the music loops in a game, or does it go into another area. The reason I had ask is I had posted a debugger that has a I/O map that shows where the music loops in a game. I will send you the link on that. https://www.zeldix.net/t1730-finding-spcs-easier-i-think
Now that is why there had been a lot of minor code changes to the asm that you had posted for thoes games. Awesome to here that there are 2 games that you might be in the works. On the one game how hard will it be in putting in video, Is it the same challenge that Chronro Trigger is having with the videos or is that diffrent?

Last edited by Polargames on Thu 21 Jun 2018 - 15:12; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : sending a link to Conn)

The picture you showed is the current state of the apu machine imo. It tells you which registers are used with which values.
Spc muting needs different techniques, at least as far I know them.

Currently I really have no time for another project. Making a msu video is easy, all code and conversion instructions are there. Difficult is to let it play at a specific time after the boot, skipping the original intro and such.
Chrono trigger shall have the video split, I think to play different parts at different locations. This is hard (I would not know how to accomplish) and I also don't know what's the current state or whether qwerty already gave up on that.

Conn wrote:The picture you showed is the current state of the apu machine imo. It tells you which registers are used with which values.
Spc muting needs different techniques, at least as far I know them.

Currently I really have no time for another project. Making a msu video is easy, all code and conversion instructions are there. Difficult is to let it play at a specific time after the boot, skipping the original intro and such.
Chrono trigger shall have the video split, I think to play different parts at different locations. This is hard (I would not know how to accomplish) and I also don't know what's the current state or  whether qwerty already gave up on that.

O I did not know that, so its would not be very useful for spcs, Is it good for knowing where the code for the audio is. I am just ciruious because when I was playing around I like it how it showed the loop, So I thought it would be a lifesaver..well at least give you a good area to look into. Sweet, I am glade that your project that you hope you can get enought time to work on it will be easy, at least makeing the video. Is it kinda like msu in a way for making a video, or is that something different. Also what qwerty may/may not be doing with Chrono Trigger, Would that be in the area of something super stressful? For me I think it would, but I honstly have no clue on that. On the second project that you hope to work on at some point, EVO, What would you like to do with it. I know you would like that to be msued, do you want to put in a video along with it?