posted by taizou @ 2013-02-19 00:08:46
hhugboy
well hey, I made an emulator! an emulator by the name of hhugboy, which is very very heavily based on GEST. because the world definitely needed another gameboy emulator. I have zero experience of emulator coding and I've done a little bit of C++ before (which 99% of emulators are written in) but I don't get along with the language one bit, so it's been kind of... a learning experience for me, to say the least, but I've finally got something I'm fairly happy with.
the major thing with this emulator is it supports Sintax and Li Cheng mappers on unmodified copies of their roms (ie the "raw dump" versions I've posted previously). I've been hacking these games to make them work on standard emulators, but this has proved a little difficult with a few games, which got me thinking - why not try and emulate their mappers instead? and so.. I did. Those two, anyway. Li Cheng's was easy, Sintax's was a bit more work and isn't 100% perfect (new dumps may or may not run, but most should). Also, for any other emu authors or other interested parties, I'm going to document those two as much as I can at some point soon.
This does raise the problem of how to detect which games use which mappers - I've kind of tried to fudge it based on the boot logo but that isn't 100% reliable so I've put in a manual override in the menu too. It'd be nice if the Game Boy had a ROM file format like the NES's (iNES and UNIF) containing cartridge info independent of the internal GB ROM header (which was set by the developers and often wrong for unlicensed games) avoiding the need for either hacks, dubious autodetection attempts or manual overrides to determine which mapper to use. I don't know if there's enough interest for something like this to take off, given that it's only necessary for unlicensed games (and Mani's multicarts) though.
Anyway I've made a bunch of other improvements and tweaks to the original GEST, including screenshots, a recent ROM list, sharper filtering at larger sizes, Unicode filename support (which I haven't seen in any other emu, so have fun naming your roms in whatever language takes your fancy), a nicer/somehow appropriate onscreen font (from codeman38), and more!
Latest downloads, source code and issue tracker can all be found on bitbucket, so..go there! and try it. and if you find any bugs add them to the tracker.
(also I realise there aren't any Li Cheng roms out there to play on this thing but I'm planning to fix that in the near future too)
posted by taizou @ 2013-02-11 14:13:25
Dumps
now THIS is another one I've been after for what can only be described as a long-ass time. once again this comes from Qiezei's 8 in 1 - it's another Vast Fame game (hell yes) and it's an action game, so it's considerably more accessible than their RPGs for all you non-Chinese-speakers out there. It's called "E Mo Dao" (惡魔島) literally "Devil Island", also known as "Devil Land" (from the multicart menu).
Basically it's a clone of Konami's Getsu Fuuma Den gameplay-wise, but aesthetically closer to Castlevania, and for my money it controls better than the original did (though it can be hard to avoid enemies at times, much like Zook Hero 2). Music is excellent as usual, the graphics are really nice, and all around its just a good package.
Anyway, enjoy! No need for a fix this time, I think (but if you have any issues with saving please let me know)
E Mo Dao (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip).zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-02-08 13:50:23
Dumps
Got another one from Qiezei's 8 in 1 multicart today - a shooter by the name of "Qi Tian Da Sheng: Sun Wu Kong" (齊天大聖-孫悟空), also known as "West Story" based on its name in the menu of said multi.
You may have seen an alternate version of this game before - "Harry Potter 3" (which I happen to have made an English translation patch for) - and while I'd previously assumed this game was the original and Harry was made later, the header actually says "HARRY2002" which is a pretty clear indication it was the other way around.
It is, I'm fairly sure, by Vast Fame, although unusually for them they've "done a Sintax" and stolen music from somewhere else rather than composing their own. Fortunately the soundtrack they stole was from Parodius and it's excellent.
Qi Tian Da Sheng - Sun Wu Kong (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip).zip (no need for a fix this time, yay)
posted by taizou @ 2013-01-22 13:46:07
Dumps
Sintaxmas may be over, but the most magical day of the year can come at any time - just when you're least expecting it.. it's New Vast Fame Game Day! (yay)
This is something I've been chasing for a while - it's a strategy RPG called Sheng Shou Wu Yu: Shen Long Chuan Shuo (聖獸物語-神龍傳說), which translates to something along the lines of "Holy Beast Story: Legend of the God Dragon". As you might expect from Vast Fame, it's pretty excellent.
Much like my previous dumps of Shi Kong Xing Shou and Xin Feng Shen Bang, this one was extracted from a Vast Fame multicart, this time an 8 in 1 - many thanks to Qiezei for providing the cart! You can find scans of the cart packaging, along with lots of other interesting stuff, on his blog.
Two ROMs this time, both work (ostensibly) but the raw dump has the wrong save type set in the header so fails to save properly in most emulators. The "Header Fix" version fixes that, and also the checksum too, just for the hell of it.
raw dump: Sheng Shou Wu Yu - Shen Long Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Raw Dump].zip
header fix: Sheng Shou Wu Yu - Shen Long Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Header Fix].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-01-06 22:45:25
Dumps
well I covered this in a post a while back, and now it's dumped! ah the wonders of technology. or something. I dumped the menu and BigFred reassembled it using the existing Japanese dumps of these games (as the versions on the multi are identical to the standalone Japanese releases).
To quote BigFred, since he can explain it better than I can:
As you can see the global checksum is correct - actually this is the same as the other Mani/Taito Pack where the single ROM-images are just stitched together in a certain order. Now let me explain: A real MMM01 ROM-image does have the ROM banks including the menu at the end of the data rather than the start as other mapper games. This is not just speculation but was verified by a raw dump done by The Guru (MAME). We also received information about this matter from the dumper toshi77 who provided a few details about the MMM01 together with his dump of the Taito pack. MMM01 maps these pages as the first pages on bootup. This means most emulators will just load the first game and you won't see the menu at all. The only emulator that currently handles the MMM01 correctly is the french emulator rew. If you load the Taito pack into it you will get the menu and each game can be correctly loaded using the accurate "header at the end" raw image. However the Mani games do not have a correct header setting to MMM01 which rew uses to initialize the mapper. On real hardware this is not needed of course but on emulators you won't get a correct result.
4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Raw Dump].zip - The correct raw image with the menu at the end. This will not currently work in any emulators.
4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Menu First].zip - As above, with the menu moved to the start. This produces the correct checksum, and also works in MESS, which incorrectly implements MMM01.
4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Header Fix].zip - The raw image with the header edited to MMM01, works in rew.
btw, sorry to anyone who's been waiting for this!
