Lethal Enforcers

So far, a good hook to get track numbers has been found and mapped.
-- track map below --

Spoiler:

-- The hook is at $80ac05 --

Spoiler:

The track map hook took less than 30 minutes to find. The problem now is finding a good mute for this game. Traditional methods to preserve SPC fallback (ie, mute at $2140, etc) produce either game crashing or partial mute with some FX sounds compromised. This looks like it may be another hard mute game.

@Conn, @Cubear If either of you would like to take a stab at the mute portion, feel free to do so. Eventually, one of us will find it. I am grateful that now there are three of us that can tackle this problem.

Maybe this helps (hard mute):
pc 0x1c09e9: 33 20 07 -> e8 00 00
(as far I can tell ingame sfx are intact, however konami logo is distorted - let me know if it works as a base and/or you need further help)

@Conn This will work as discussed over Discord. Just have to mute Konami and Title Screen (hard mute not playing nice in these two sequences). Thanks again for the fast response.

i've been looking at that game a little bit, something that may help off the top of my head is the game genie code for accessing the sound test.. there's a fadeout and a stop command for music that you can trigger in there, chances are that if you fadeout or stop directly after the play command is set, it should spc mute?

Enable Game Genie code FD62-1F04, then start the game. (enter top option at title screen)

i'll try to test this at some point today

@Cubear Yup, that is what I used to help me find the hook from my initial post. Sound test and actual game play match the already mapped tracks. Thanks for suggesting it though.

there's a fadeout and a stop command for music that you can trigger in there, chances are that if you fadeout or stop directly after the play command is set, it should spc mute?

I did go down that route but get garbled FX sounds but eventually the game settles down and plays fine, but have suspicions some FX sounds are missing.

@Cubear Conn found a good hard mute second time around. I think all is well; I just have to remap the tracks to match Zophar Domain's track list.

Looks like Pev never got around to finishing/implementing the fades after finding his (undisclosed) mute. Anyone willing to take over and finish the code portion?

Pev mentioned in a different thread (Earth defense force??) that he was just finding himself too busy to put work into rom hacks atm. I'm comfortable waiting for that, but if he'd like somebody to take over and polish it up for him, I can take it on.

I'd prefer that it comes from Pev himself though, and perhaps he could share the code he's already done were it to come to that... no sense in duplicating work.

Relikk wrote:Looks like Pev never got around to finishing/implementing the fades after finding his (undisclosed) mute. Anyone willing to take over and finish the code portion?

Conn found the hard mute for me. I had no part of that. As for the fade out. I tried a bit but gave up once work started getting hard and heavy. At the moment, I just have no desire to work on this. I added the source code further down this post for Cubear to look at. The current source is working just missing fade out implementation and precise mutes in-game (for example, fade out before boss encounters, abrupt music stops in stage clears, etc). Sorry for the delay, Mr Relikk.

Cubear wrote:I'd prefer that it comes from Pev himself though, and perhaps he could share the code he's already done were it to come to that... no sense in duplicating work.

Appreciate the patience for my response. Below is the source code. It is working and playable, just missing tweaks (proper msu music stops and fades).

The source code link:

Code:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgP3JzxSpofUgVqNgzU5gLaSTOrt?e=BlE0L0

pepillopev wrote:Sorry for the delay, Mr Relikk.

Pff. As always, you have my eternal gratitude for all you do, so there's absolutely no need to ever say sorry, it's just when I saw that a certain account went bye-bye I thought that would be the end of it, for good this time. Thanks for disclosing your progress and effectively handing over the reins.

I'll take a quick peek over this and see what I can do to finish it off, then... Thank you for your hard work.

From what I could tell, your prior fade hook was perfect for "stop" so all I needed to do was find a place for the real fade hook and put a fade in. Wonderful code to work with and very professional.

I gave it a test in sound test and it worked out OK, I think it should be fine to put into the database, it'll help us weed out any problems faster anyways.

Cubear wrote:I think it should be fine to put into the database, it'll help us weed out any problems faster anyways.

Not just yet. Let me get the audio sorted out. There's also an issue with the demo mode music fading out weirdly at the start. It sounds like it does multiple times before eventually stopping. It should play normally.

Some loop corrections need to be made in the ASM also...

$0D - no loop
$12 - loop
$14 - no loop
$15 - no loop
$16 - loop
$17 - loop

@cubear:
lda $7e41fe
cmp $00

Must be CMP #$00

Boss music doesn't play. Here's a BSNES Plus save state for the stage 1 boss.

It’s funny how I can just keep making the same mistakes lol. I need a post it note to remind me I think. Will fix in a couple hours

Apologies for the small error.
@conn absolutely instantly spotted the cause of the infinite looping fadeout.
I've added the boss music to the remapping table and I also adjusted the loop/noloop values as you have requested.

That said, @Pepillopev already has some nice debugging features set up to easily find the track number being called. Seems like the called track numbers can be different between sound test and the game itself.

I suppose with this in mind a play-through of the game would be best practice just to make sure we've got them all sorted.

If ever a track is not playing, please inspect RAM address $7e7fdd and it'll at least let us know what track number the game has called so we can add it to the remap table.

Boss music plays now, that's good.

The issue with the demo music fading out at the very beginning still persists, and the rank up/down etc. fanfare's at the end of each main level don't play (I can't seem to find any track triggers with the RAM address you specified, at the moment). I've attached a save state from just before the shooting range "Stage Clear" and rank changes. You can use the YouTube video below as a reference, it's timestamped at the same spot as the save state.

https://youtu.be/u1K5GI5ChBQ?t=78

Got the fading cleared up and all three short jingles added to the remapping table.

it seems a lot of the values differ from the sound test for some strange reason...

The fades just needed for me to turn the fade off when a new track was called. just bad management on my part even aside from code errors.

I was pretty much out of action for the past two days due to some work being done in the house, but I've found a few issues.

Music plays during the demo now, so that's good, but stock ROM behaviour fades out the demo music once the demo is finished. In the current MSU1 hack the music continues to play until there is a track change (the title screen or the Konami logo).

On one of the last level sections (Mission 5) in the chemical plant, if you shoot the barrels they go on fire, which triggers night vision (it'll eventually reach that point later in the stage anyway). The music should change to track $0A. In the MSU1 hack the currently playing track fades or stops, but doesn't transition to track $0A and no music plays. YouTube reference below, and a save state (which also includes a state at the last boss for the ending and for the name entry track issues below).

As mentioned above, the ending music doesn't play (track $17), nor does the name entry music ($16).

https://youtu.be/ApZTGqp7Qm0?t=2019

perfect description of the issues, i'm on it

Alright, I added the stage clear, end credits, name entry, night vision, and game over track numbers for gameplay to the track remapping table.

also added a second trigger for fade-outs which seems to catch the odd behaviour for demo play fadeouts

I did a quick playthrough of the game and this is all that seemed to be missing, but do let me know.

Everything seems fine to me.

Here's a video you can use when you're ready to release it: https://youtu.be/HrfU8PjuqoQ

Arcade PCM's: https://mega.nz/file/86ZzhAAL#8ZWbHixi1DgFwf1z2C1exouxvEShIp0Od_2xYJPix3g

Sega CD PCM's: https://mega.nz/file/Vy4zTLTZ#IHUdDsizEOAB7OBD_B0Pi08E4rKZA0DFDXb18Y0NiXU

Well, this isn't really mine lmao. Pev did almost all the work. I think it's worthy of release but I don't especially want to take more credit than a "special thanks" so would you mind posting it in my stead?

It doesn't matter who posts it, as long as they were involved in some capacity and the proper credits are given in the article, but sure. I'll post it in a little while.

Thanks to all involved. This is now finished.