BigFred wrote:
About Virtual Fishing: I remember I took the hash (crc32 526CC969) from your old list of hashes which also made it into Red Dragaon afair. Can you please tell me if this was a new dump when you did it and you “released” this dump to the public or did you never do such a thing and just confirmed what you already found in goodvboy at that time? Important to know if this is a one-time-dump or a real confirmation (even if your tool calculates the same hash in the past we encountered original carts which contained faulty chips resulting in “bad” dumps so we never apply a verified to a unique crc no matter how reliable the dumping method).

Hmm… honestly I really don’t remember if mine was a new dump or whether it matched an existing dump… it’s been so long since I originally dumped my collection (~2002 or so). I don’t think I ever publicly posted them anywhere, but I sent them to several people on IRC, so they easily could have made their way to the public (I didn’t ask that they be kept private or anything).

I just downloaded one from Emuparadise, and it matches my CRC32 and has a date of 1996… but of course file timestamps can easily be modified, so that doesn’t really tell whether it’s my dump or not. So yeah… it’s possible that my specific cart is different than others’ (and maybe “bad”). I’ll dig through my stuff and see if I still have another Virtual Fishing cart around here (I don’t think I do… but I sometimes dig through boxes and find stuff I don’t remember having… and I tend to buy stuff that I already have several copies of). 🙂 A friend of mine does have one… I can ask him to bring it by next time I see him.

BigFred wrote:
Just to avoid misunderstandings: So this means you also redumped Innsmouth and you can confirm the “new” hash 83CB6A00 that was found recently? Would be very nice to have a confirmation.

Correct… I had redumped my collection with the link cable dumper, and got reliable results on all games (I’d hope the VB could reliably read its own carts). 😉 And yeah, the CRC32 of my Innsmouth dump is 0x83CB6A00. I also just verified my cart again yesterday on the VB with the CRC32 checker.

Tauwasser wrote:
Well, not to rain on your parade, but that statement doesn’t alleviate our fears in the slightest.

The problem with the Virtual Boy is that Nintendo decided not to encode ROM/RAM size etc. in the game header like they did for every other system — at least up to that point (I’m not too up-to-date on NDS stuff).

So, I imagine that you either input the ROM size manually within your software, or check if the header exists at 0x7FFDE0 & 0x7FFFFF, 0x3FFFFF, 0x1FFFFF etc. programmatically.
The latter is still not too definitive as a game could easily have the same bytes in multiple places, but should be enough.

For instance, I can also confirm the old Innsmouth CRC32, simply by over-dumping and not checking whether or not the first half of the dump is actually identical to the second half.

Attached is a screenshot of my test app… it outputs the CRC32 of all the common sizes (homebrew and commercial… simply over-reading if the ROM size is smaller), and you have to decide which is correct (either examine the data to figure out the size, look at the physical ROM used, etc). In the case of Innsmouth, I’m fairly sure it’s well established that it’s a 1MB ROM.

IMO, looking at the size and CRC32 from the no-intro database and comparing that CRC32 with the one of the corresponding size in my test app is a pretty reassuring check that they match. I had written that app because I was troubleshooting problems that I thought might be caused by some crappy flash chips… but it seemed like an appropriate test here too. I don’t have an assembled USB link cable right now or I would have just redumped the carts again.

I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying about the old Innsmouth CRC32 though… are you saying the old “good” ROM was correct, but simply over-dumped? That should have been easily caught by a quick check in a hex editor.

Tauwasser wrote:
Would it be possible for you to take a picture of the cart PCBs? I’m kind of a stickler for accuracy in that regard.

Yep, I can… it was getting late last night and I didn’t feel like pulling apart a bunch of carts, but I wanted to post pics at least as “proof” of ownership.

DogP

Attachments:

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Hedgetrimmer wrote:
Cool, that seems to work, be interesting to see how it holds up with other print methods.

Yep… Shapeways could make it look nice… not sure how their plastic (nylon I think?) would hold up compared to ABS.

Thanks again for posting the model!

DogP

BigFred wrote:
These games are still in need of a proper redump:

3-D Tetris (USA)
Jack Bros. (USA)
Mario Clash (Japan, USA)
Nester’s Funky Bowling (USA)
Panic Bomber (USA)
Virtual Bowling (Japan)
Virtual Fishing (Japan)
Virtual Lab (Japan)

I’m especially looking forward to Virtual Fishing because the current dump info is contradictory.

I checked the hashes from your database against my personal dumps, and they all match (including Virtual Fishing). As a double-check, I just re-ran those carts (except Virtual Bowling, which I don’t own anymore) through a CRC32 calculator program I had written, which runs on the VB and calculates the CRC32 of the cartridge in the system. The CRC32s all matched.

I attached a pic of the carts, which I just ran through the calculator today. I have no idea which carts I actually dumped, since I’ve owned many copies of most games over the years, but odds are extremely low that the CRC32 matches, but the ROM differs (unless it was purposefully manipulated).

BigFred wrote:
This applies to Innsmouth. You posted about some trouble dumping this game. It seems others had this problem too – the goodtools file is incorrect and so is the hash posted by enri. However Tauwasser’s dumper appears to be 100% reliable (he can tell you more details about this probably).

Yep… with my old hand-wired dumper, I had problems with that one… I had redumped my collection with my USB link cable dumper, and (as expected) got reliable dumps (same hashes as your database).

DogP

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I had black ABS loaded in my printer and was printing a couple other things last night, so I decided to try printing one of these… it turned out MUCH better than I expected!

As expected, the front was a bit messy, since it’s not flat, but the latest slicing software definitely improved how the support material breaks free from the rest of the print. It was still pretty rough though, so I sanded it a bit, then sprayed it with some acetone to kinda melt/smooth it a little (not really sure if what I did was an improvement or not though). Of course the “Neartendo” logo didn’t turn out well.

Overall though, it’s a nice looking and very functional part. I installed it on a stand with a badly cracked medallion (cracked on the side, and the top was completely cracked off). The original screws went into it, and it feels plenty strong. I’d actually say it’s more flexible than the original, and therefore more resistant to cracking. I tried breaking it by overextending the stand legs, but it didn’t break (I’m sure I could break it if I REALLY tried, but it handles realistic opening forces quite well). The part is very sturdy, though it seems a little bit looser than the original (the legs don’t “snap” into place as much, and they have a little bit more play), but that could be an imperfection of my print.

Up close, you can see the kinda ugly face… but from a couple feet away, it looks perfectly fine. A few tweaks could make this an easily 3D printable part… or it could be printed with a better printer (dual extruder with dissolvable support material would be helpful).

Anyway, attached are some pics for your viewing pleasure.

DogP

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M.K. wrote:

DogP schrieb:
Where can you find the database?

http://datomatic.no-intro.org/?page=download

Cool… thanks! I’ll go through the ROMs this weekend.

DogP

Where can you find the database? I’d be glad to check my dumps against it.

I remember a few ROMs that were different from what I had previously… but there have been several ROMs floating around for a lot of games, with no authority for what is good… so I’m not sure what others are calling “good”. I personally just stick with my own ROMs, which I trust, since I dumped them myself.

DogP

I’ve actually seen a few posts about the competition spread around… I was sorta surprised to see that anyone outside this forum even paid any attention. I even came across a couple mentions of my Flappy Bird clone. 😛

DogP

blitter wrote:
Mine is written in Objective-C++/Cocoa, so you’re only going to be able to compile it on a Mac. 😉 The VSU and audio engine parts are written in C++ though, so really only the GUI part would have to be rewritten.

Heh, doh… the GUI is the part that I didn’t want to write. I guess I can’t really complain, since I’m basically giving all you non Windows users the middle finger by using Visual C++. 😉

I pretty much took inspiration from this mock screenshot http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=9560#forumpost9560

Yep… I kept looking back at my old mockup as well. I was hoping I’d just be able to use that form (I did that mockup in VB 6.0), but there didn’t seem to be a way to bring a VB 6.0 form into VC++ 2010… so I had to recreate it.

The waveform-based emulation code is pretty accurate to my ears, down to the aliasing artifacts– haven’t done a wave-to-wave analysis vs. the hardware though. Verdict is still out on the noise channel, after also messing with it in Mednafen. Will have to try on hardware soon. However I’m still not sure how “interval” actually works, since both in that generator and in my own experiments writing for the VSU, all I get is silence. I must be doing something wrong.

Cool… good to “hear” (see what I did there). 😉 I believe the interval just automatically stops a sound after a specified amount of time… it may be a little bit tough to notice that it’s playing if you’re only doing a single note though, since it can be pretty short (or maybe the internal state counter isn’t getting properly reset or something).

I attached a crappy sound tester app I wrote a LONG time ago… I thought it was hosted somewhere on this site, but I couldn’t find it (maybe I just posted it on IRC years ago… I’ll see if KR155E can add it here). It’s very similar to the VSU emulator app (set up a sequence of register values and play), but of course it’s on real hardware… so if you think you’re doing something wrong w/ the interval, give that a try on real hardware.

BTW, I was just messing around with the sound generator app and found a few bugs… they probably don’t affect you though (sscanf related). Either way, I’ll fix up the code and upload a new version, probably this weekend.

DogP

Attachments:

1. sndplay-1.zip

Protoman85 wrote:
You know what would be a nice touch? Having Mario running away from you at the right side of the screen. It would be like those stages with the bridges where cheep cheeps fly out everywhere.

That’s a great idea… you could slowly start to catch up to him, and to finish a level, you have to crash into Mario to kill him (and maybe if you miss him, you’d have to try the level again, like when you miss the exhaust port in the Star Wars arcade game).

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Well, after a few attempts, I made it to 25 exactly… I was just about ready to stare excitement in the face, but got a pipe in the face instead. 🙂

LOL, nice!

DogP

Awesome! I seriously just started on this exact same project last weekend (using Visual C++ 2010 to minimize the awefulness of writing a GUI 😉 ). Luckily I only have a couple hours into it, so maybe I can scratch that off my list (though I’ll have to try compiling yours for Windows or Linux). 🙂

The end result that I’m trying to create is a program similar to sfxr ( http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html ) for VB. The ability to quickly generate a “jump” sound that you like, then copy/paste it into code would be EXTREMELY useful IMO. But a GUI of the sound generator seemed like a logical first step. If I can get yours compiled, maybe I’ll use that as the base.

BTW, you say it gets choppy with all 6 channels… are you generating the audio on the fly? Can it generate to a file so you can listen to it without the choppiness (not in real-time). And is there any sort of sequencer, so you can sorta “compose” a song/sfx? And from your experience so far, does my VSU emulator code sound accurate? I never really tested much of it. 😉

DogP

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thunderstruck wrote:
i comnented the collision detection and let it run till 300 or so.

Heh, cheater. 😉

DogP

Lester Knight wrote:
dogp: your physics are great. the game is easier than the original and feels much more natural. i’m rather enjoying this one. do you have any plans to add any background music?

Thanks… yeah, I was trying to make this more playable than the original… though I didn’t want it to be too easy. Has anyone made it past 25 yet? That’s where it gets more exciting.

I’m still considering adding some BG music and sound effects… it shouldn’t take much to do, so it’d be nice to cleanly “wrap up” the game. I was going to put some in, but ended up spending the time on moving pipes and other playability stuff. I’m pretty terrible at making music (and most artsy kinda stuff), so I figured rushed sounds would turn out bad anyway. 😉

DogP

I think their normal purpose is just to add support… without them, the bent metal legs are a bit springy. But yeah, several people have noticed the same thing you did… that it makes a good reinforcement for a broken medallion.

DogP

Lester Knight wrote:
has anyone played a game without the lenses? what was it like? do the lenses help the gaming experience?

Your eyes dry out pretty quickly without the lenses, since the mirrors act as fans. 😉 As expected, it’s not much different looking… except you notice more ambient reflections, since stuff that’s not red becomes much more noticeable. But with the eyeshade on and your face properly looking into the system, it’s not a big deal.

DogP

Ah… thanks for the clarification. So it sounds like for the most part, it really comes down to keeping the swastika (and related references) out of the games. That seems reasonable, and if I ported Wolfenstein, I’d take them out. I’m not sure it really makes much difference to the game, other than giving it a story of you being the good guy fighting bad guys. The game could probably work just as well where you’re the bad guy trying to escape from Guantanamo Bay (like Harold and Kumar). 😉

I had seen other references that said red blood wasn’t allowed and had to be changed to green, and other weird stuff… and was a bit worried since I can’t change the blood from red for technical reasons. 😉

DogP

That does look nice… pictures are working for me now.

BTW, the other way I’ve tried removing scratches from plexi is using a flame. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for the VB, since it’s easy to screw up… but I’ve had several plexi monitor bezels on arcade games that have people’s names scrached into them with keys and stuff… and there’s just no good way to get them out. The flame does an okay job of kinda melting the surface to at least get rid of the roughness and make it clear again (makes the scratches a lot less noticeable).

Here’s a link showing someone doing it to a pinball ramp: http://www.flippers.be/flame_polishing.html .

DogP

I think this would make a great full game, along the lines of Yoshi’s Safari, maybe mixed with Space Harrier (we’ve got 2 D-Pads, maybe the character could move to dodge stuff, as well as aim).

DogP

Yeah, no doubt there are some glitches (couple that I came across were things like Mario Land’s status scrolled with the level, the marbles are missing in Marble Madness, etc)… but overall, it’s really impressive. I hope he continues to make improvements.

DogP

Yeah, I’m not sure I expected Street Fighter 2 as an entry, though I am sorta surprised at the lack of entries from the two people most vocal earlier in the competition (Red Metal and Guy Perfect).

And I don’t think the rules stated that the game had to be started after the competition (just couldn’t be an entry from a previous compo)… though it would seem a bit unfair to submit something that was near completion before the compo as your entry.

DogP

RunnerPack wrote:
Your version is fun, but it has to be harder than the original.

Heh, no… here’s a pretty good copy of the original: http://flappybird.io/ . The pipes are close together (both vertically and horizontally), and the screen is oriented vertically, so you can’t really look ahead very far. The original is pretty ridiculously tough. 😛

DogP