Life Force (via Project Nested)

pev wrote:@Arasoi Ok, I did attempt Life Force on both Mesen and Project Nested to some degree of success.
Now, what I found out with this game; when you mute the stage music it will kill the track ID boss music trigger. Meaning, the boss music will not trigger. The boss track ID triggers fine if I allow NSF to play normally. At this time, I just do not have time to figure out the cause due to workload. I gave it a fair chance and chose to post my findings here should someone else wishes to pick this one up. I may come back to it or not. At least, I am saving people some trouble trying to make this MSU-1.

From my first glance your hook here seems to be to a load indexed to each stage ($30 in ram) I found Game Over coming through a different method, so it's possible that "boss battle" does as well.

it seems that when boss battle is starting to play, it reads from ram $06de, changing this when written will change which track plays when the boss music starts

06DE gets written at (NES prg)  $1de3a shortly before the boss music begins to play, even when i force the game to mute the track. i'd have to check the other levels if the same holds true but i think this might be enough for now.

Wonderful to see some interest for Life Force, thank you for your efforts!

I can make a post on RHDN forums asking for some assistance with this, if that's helpful.

Relikk and I will be making some pcm packs since some significant progress has been made, hopefully the boss music issue can be resolved.

Cubear wrote:From my first glance your hook here seems to be to a load indexed to each stage ($30 in ram) I found Game Over coming through a different method, so it's possible that "boss battle" does as well.

Odd, I am able change music and fx at will via breakpoint using my provided hook. Not sure, what you mean by your statement.

Cubear wrote:it seems that when boss battle is starting to play, it reads from ram $06de, changing this when written will change which track plays when the boss music starts

06DE gets written at (NES prg)  $1de3a shortly before the boss music begins to play, even when i force the game to mute the track. i'd have to check the other levels if the same holds true but i think this might be enough for now.

Indeed, your suggested hook shows a lot of promise. So far, it has triggered in the first two boss encounters with the stage music at mute. Would have to do a full play through before investing any time in coding a MSU-1 patch. Unless, you want to deal with this. Otherwise, I can when time is available.

I'd be willing to do a playthrough to test, if that would help.

Additionally, Relikk pointed out that the NSF has 2 extra tracks from what was listed in the track map.

https://www.zophar.net/music/nintendo-nes-nsf/life-force

The "bonus" music is a short track originally from Gradius that plays for a stage 5 mid boss. "Pyramic" is just Stage 5 (Thunderbolt) but without the intro portion.

@pev
first: oops, i may have gone too far upstream in my first investigation + it can be safely ignored lol
second: no room in my life atm for more hobby work. i'm already slacking on several things that i'm doing for other people..

@arasoi
I can make a patch with a hard mute, you could give it a playthrough in mesen or something and see if a specific breakpoint set still triggers on boss battles. that's what's needed ATM.  and for pev or i to have free time

I can do that, certainly. I have a pcm set made already as well if that's helpful.

The PCMs would come in handy for testing the MSU1 code after it has been developed. I can't speak for pev, but it certainly helps motivate me as a coder.

i've attached an IPS to this post.
i've disabled track plays at the start of the stage + also given infinite lives
if you can't find the specific version of rom, try it anyways, if not i'll do this to a different one lol.

what i'd like for you to do is breakpoint $1de3a in prg rom in mesen's debugger. if it breaks on any track change, through all stages, it'd be fine for starting the boss music (probably)
if it breaks very early in the stage, not near a boss, please report it.

Cubear wrote:The PCMs would come in handy for testing the MSU1 code after it has been developed. I can't speak for pev, but it certainly helps motivate me as a coder.

what i'd like for you to do is breakpoint $1de3a  in prg rom in mesen's debugger. if it breaks on any track change, through all stages, it'd be fine for starting the boss music (probably)
if it breaks very early in the stage, not near a boss, please report it.

I played through the entire game today in mesen with the debugger set as specified, the only breaks that occurred were before a boss, it did not break early in any of the stages.

The midboss music in stage 5 still plays, and after the midboss is defeated the regular stage music starts without the intro. These are 2 tracks that weren't defined in pev's original posts so just need to be added I think. The ending/credits music also played after the ending cinematic.

If there is anything else I can do to help please let me know.

To make things easier for anyone wanting to work on this hack I'm posting my "beta" (proper volume levels not dialed in yet) pcm pack for Life Force here:

https://mega.nz/file/ke1hxQoJ#M9uotEYQD3eLnpK1861HffDdcdLy-wwTpVkc5BF_1pk

perfect. chances are there's a good location for a mute that would catch the stage 5 midboss/resume. likely right where pev's original hook was...

@Arasoi / @Cubear Wow, excellent work gents, err, people.

@Cubear Noticed you are working on a different ROM revision of Life Force. What is the CRC for this ROM? Never mind, found your ROM of choice. Now, I understand the confusion from earlier and why your suggested hooks were not working for me. I was using a different ROM revision. Seeing as you went with this ROM revision, I will have to port my preliminary Mesen NEA code to test then port to Project Nested to MSU-1. To be fair, in my earlier posts, I did not mention what ROM I used, my bad.

lol, i just used the first one that i had found. though i'll mention that posting any address in Project Nested won't work for any other conversion.. it puts things in a different place every time you convert... so i had to find your hook via checking writes to 06e0 instead


usually i then trace backwards to the earliest point i can identify a signal at, which is why i wound up at loading the track number to be set by an index from $30 (stage loaded)

Cubear wrote:lol, i just used the first one that i had found. though i'll mention that posting any address in Project Nested won't work for any other conversion.. it puts things in a different place every time you convert... so i had to find your hook via checking writes to 06e0 instead

@Cubear Glad this was sorted out. I was wrecking my brain wondering what the hell was going on. Either way, now that we are on the same page, I can incorporate your hook to Mesen NEA first, then let @Arasoi test it. If all goes well, then on to MSU-1. Both already are working. It is just the Boss part that was a pain. If I get stuck, would you mind me picking your brain again?

i'm always happy to help! honestly the hacking part is the fun part for me, i love to poke around in a rom.. coding and bugfixing.. eeeeeeuuugh, it takes too long and feels like it never ends

Cubear wrote:i'm always happy to help! honestly the hacking part is the fun part for me, i love to poke around in a rom..  coding and bugfixing.. eeeeeeuuugh, it takes too long and feels like it never ends

More the reason I stay away from RPGs, lol. I like quick projects. My patience is not so good most of the time.

after a quick check the midboss song on stage 5 is $22 and passes through your original hook. resuming the stage song afterwards also passes through that hook. you're golden i think

Cubear wrote:after a quick check the midboss song on stage 5 is $22 and passes through your original hook. resuming the stage song afterwards also passes through that hook. you're golden i think

Yeah, it does pass through when I updated the track list above. It was quick check, just did not bother playing further (this was late at night). In a bit, I will start the finishing touches.

@Arasoi Asked Cubear for some help with the boss trigger. It is executed in SRAM. Still not tech savvy when dealing with that. Waiting on a response from him. But not to keep you waiting. Here is a patch that so far plays the stages (not bosses).

https://www.mediafire.com/file/kegy0yatr34d6zn/Life_Force_%2528USA%2529_%2528Rev_1%2529_%2528Virtual_Console%2529.ips/file

You can use this to level out the music. It is a bit loud.

Still to do is pause/unpause, fade out stage as well.

@Arasoi Forgot to mention, this patch is for the Project Nested ROM. Not the base NES ROM. One more thing, all the tracks are set to loop, for now. Once all the kinks are worked out. The loop stuff will be corrected.

Excellent, thank you very much.

I do not have a Nested profile specifically for the Virtual Console ROM, would the one sent previously for the regular one work for it as well?

Arasoi wrote:Excellent, thank you very much.

I do not have a Nested profile specifically for the Virtual Console ROM, would the one sent previously for the regular one work for it as well?

Yes, I used the same profile and it worked without issue for me. The same profile uses the recommended settings from the PNN spreadsheet.

@Arasoi Ah crap, forgot to mention that I remapped some tracks.

Stage 1 is Track 1
Stage 2 is Track 2
Stage 3 is Track 3
Stage 4 is Track 4
Stage 5 is Track 5
Stage 6 is Track 6
Boss is Track 7
Game Over is Track 8
Credits is Track 9
Stage 5 mini boss is Track 16 (may have botched this one up - i am away from home at the moment).

Still, this beta patch is meant for you to normalize the audio.

Thank you for the information.

Can you please specify the correct file name for the patched snes rom, and the desired file names for the pcm tracks?

Do I need a .msu file as well?

Sorry for all the questions.

Arasoi wrote:Can you please specify the correct file name for the patched snes rom

Just rename the patched SMC to something like “lf_msu.smc”

and the desired file names for the pcm tracks?

Same, rename to lf_msu-x.pcm (where is X is track number)

Do I need a .msu file as well?

Yes, just create an empty text file and rename it as “lf_msu.msu”

Sorry for all the questions.

no worries. i hope my responses helped.

Thank you. One more thing, could you possibly add in an infinite lives code to the beta patch like Cubear did so I can test easily? It makes things a lot quicker for me.

Arasoi wrote:Thank you. One more thing, could you possibly add in an infinite lives code to the beta patch like Cubear did so I can test easily? It makes things a lot quicker for me.

In Mesen, start the game and pause it. Freeze CPU Memory RAM location at $34. That will freeze your lives at 2. Or just type FF. That will give you 99+ lives.

Open Memory Viewer, stay on CPU Memory. Find location $0034. Right click on that area and choose Freeze.