openMugen development

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:22 am

Sorry, NeoGeo resolution is 320x224!

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:51 pm

actually it's 304x224 (iirc either that or 302). Most games CAN run at 320 but others have clipping necessary to not have utter garbage everywhere.

Green Ranger · Post by **Green Ranger** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 2:18 am

Dopey Dark Savant0 wrote:I am getting interested in a "mugen" type engine for the DC every day. I just might go back to programming for this. Unless this someone else is doing it. But I do think it might be feasible.

By all means if you think it's feasible, do what you can to make it possible!

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 1:11 pm

I am looking into it, but I am on a slow internet line. So it may take a while to get all the tools and the source code that is needed. Plus I haven't coded ANYTHING in about a year now, so I guess I am a little rusty. And this would be my first non windows project, compunding the confusion. But don't worry, I will at least try.

I still think a mugen type engine with openbor would be better without paks, so people can just make a swap disc and reburn characters to the disc.

Maybe if I finish it fast enough I could enter it into that contest. Do you guys think the Senile Team would mind?

One step closer to a custom badge.

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 3:11 pm

Okay, I have looked into things and will start contacting some people associated with BOR. I also have a design document that I will put up in a few days so you guys can review it and suggest things before I commit to changes, because after that, all changes will have to be made by someone else at a seperate time. That way no one bugs me like we bug other dev'ers.

CGRemakes · Post by **CGRemakes** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 4:14 pm

I have been heavily involved with the OpenBOR project, and am quite sure this would be possible. One known issue with the DC port is that there is an issue with the sound. I do not know much about programming DC hardware, so someone else may be able to fix it. It is not known if this is a memory problem or if it's a programming bug (the author of the DC port is uncontactable). Basically there is a problem that it does not play sound effects simultaneously very well (tends to cut out). If anyone knows how to fix this problem it would be of great help both to OpenBOR as well as OpenMUGEN. I am willing to provide whatever is needed.

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:07 pm

Thanks a million. I hope to get in contact with you soon as to what you are currently using.

As for sound, I will look into it, although I don't see how I could be of much help with the DC area, since I have no prior knowledge, but I am sure someone would be able to help with that.

CGRemakes · Post by **CGRemakes** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:26 am

No problem.

I would like to be involved with this project as well. I am very familiar with the source and should be able to contribute quite a bit. Quite a few of the features that would be used are already present. The computer AI would have to be heavily modified (for 1 player support), but other than that, most features already exist or could be easily added.

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 11:24 am

Yep. I am almost done with my write-up and am converting it to html so everyone can see it regularly. I will host it on my site and maybe have it on my blog so people can post comments there. Or should I just leave comments here? What do you think?

I thought AI was from each individual character, but I will show you what I mean when I am done.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:21 am

Welcome to DCEmu, CGRemakes

CGRemakes wrote:One known issue with the DC port is that there is an issue with the sound. I do not know much about programming DC hardware, so someone else may be able to fix it. It is not known if this is a memory problem or if it's a programming bug (the author of the DC port is uncontactable). Basically there is a problem that it does not play sound effects simultaneously very well (tends to cut out). If anyone knows how to fix this problem it would be of great help both to OpenBOR as well as OpenMUGEN. I am willing to provide whatever is needed.

The sound bug is most-likely a palette issue. Mr.Q and Kingherb tested this in a session wasting 70 CDRs. I did some additional tests too. That was before we released Rhythm of Destruction over at DCEvolution. It only occurs if one uses a palette that uses more than 128 colors.
As e.g. Rage of the Streets shows you can change the palette without any problems, but as soon as you use more than 128 colors, the sound bug occurs.

CGRemakes · Post by **CGRemakes** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:52 am

Really? That's the first I'd heard about that. So does it exist at all if you use the pallet correctly, or just not as much?

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:42 pm

If you use the original palette or a palette that uses only 128 colors it does not happen. There won't be a sound bug.

As I wrote the problem only ever occurs if you use a palette that uses more than 128 colors. And only on the DC port, not the PC versions.

ALL mods I've tried do work perfectly with all of the binaries - except those who use more than 128 colors but these work with the Win32/Dos version of BoR.

Take Rhythm of Destruction - Street Fighter version as a test mod:

You start the game and there won't be any bug. You keep playing and after half of the stage is completed, there's the sound bug. Dying sounds are missing, not more than one soundfx/voice sample at once is played.

You start the next stage and again there's no bug. You keep playing. After you've beat the half of the stage, there it is again.

Something of interest that I've found during the research when I played Rhythm of Destruction and I noticed that there's been no sound bug during the whole stage 6 [Blue Version]
That most-likely is connected to the player character you chose, the background of that stage and the low number of different enemies spawned. The Stage is called 6Jungle3.

Conclusion: It's no problem that your player character and backgrounds uses a certain amount of colors, but as soon as enemy xzy is spawned in Stage xyz, the color palette is used to a degree where the DC port says: "Oh, no! No more colors please! ...I got enuff. I'm gonna cut off the sounds right now. There you go!"

Mr.Q's mods suffer worst from that bug. Hyper Final Fight, Double Dragon Extreme, Rythm of Destruction... all have the sound problems.

Since I noticed the problem with Hyper Final Fight while working on the BoR Collection at first, I tried different versions of the BoR engine as scrambled selfboot binaries and unscrambled non-boot versions in combination with different menu systems but nothing changed the problem.

I initially assumed it'd have been a problem caused either by L@Cible's set up for the compiling of the source code or the added rumble feature. That'd have explained why all other versions of BoR (Darkbor or OpenBor) had the same problem - they're all based on L@Cible's BoR DC ToolChain.
That however proofed to be wrong. It also occurred with the original engine, released by Neill Corlett.

The voice and sound fx recordings are all correctly set. For the BoR Collection Vol.2 I went thru ALL the voice and sound fx files of Hyper Final Fight 1 & 2 (really each and everyone of them) to try to fix and check the frequencies, offsets etc. It gained nothing regarding that bug...

The problem isn't related to the music either: I replaced the music of Rythm of Destruction with some random tracks of other mods and reburned it for testing. It gained nothing.

Mr.Q wrote:actually i think that maybe can be sth else....think of a ridiculous kind of question regarding the sound bug....stuff that isn't directly related to it! we , KH and I started to think on so many possibilities that we just released the mods....testing and prooving that all theories were wrong, but just 1: 128+ custom pallete. we know that it sounds ridiculos, but think about it: almost every bor mod 'till the good ol' ones like DoR or HFF used bor editor original pallete, not custom one.....since dor has original bor pallete, it only has the sound bug at the final stage...HFF ones have bigger palletes i think...180, if not 196. i used to make all my custom palletes of 190+ colors, having almost real colors on my mods, and having the rest of them for stages, it worked so good for me so it was ok. all my mods have palletes like that, and since we've tested some many possibilities, this question is probably one of the closest ones lol, who knows...[...]the only thing i can do is making my future mods in 128 (or less) lame color pallete hehehehe :p. maybe it cause sth wrong in DC code and memory cache stuff. maybe the dc code about palletes can't really handle a different pallete than the original one from the editor and it tries to store it in another place...well, you just can guess 'forever, the sound bug is making me loosing interes about modding, really , although i'm not quitting bor scene, that's for sure it just makes me more lazy about making mods[...]

Kingherb wrote:Here are some possibilities that could be causing the problem

1. Pallettes that go over 128 colours
2. The Dc has a limit to the amount of sound effects that can be loaded into the same level
3. Too many different characters spawned per level

[...]The problem with the bug is that you could make a perfect mod then have to keep stripping it down and down until the bug is gone which is sad, the Dc should really be able to handle a lot of sounds, but even after raising the sound cache in the Bor source it makes no difference, which makes me suspect that there must be something wrong in the Dc port, because the Pc version is unaffected by the bug, I haven?t tested the Xbox/Ps2 versions but it would be interesting to know if the bug was in those?

For what I know (I spent months getting VisioN's Hatchet Ninhaz carefully stripped down to work with a custom DC engine I created based on L@Cible's version) it's not that likely that it's number 2 and 3 on Kingherb's list.

---

As I wrote above, the colors the enemies are used in combination with the player character and the background does make the difference if you use a color palette with more than 128 cols.
Rage of the Streets uses a custom palette but not more than 128 cols.

The Xbox versions aren't done by Neill Corlett but the PS2 port so it could be interesting to see if the PS2 version has the bug with e.g. Hyper Final Fight.

Big thanks to Mr.Q and specially to Kingherb for the dozens of tests they did.

I hope these notes are of any help.

CGRemakes · Post by **CGRemakes** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 2:47 am

That is good to know. It didn't make sense to me that the bug would be any more prevelant in OpenBOR than in the orignial DC BOR port. None of the sound code was touched by anyone, so that shouldn't have been the problem. Thanks for the info.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 7:22 am

Glad those notes were of any help

I wish you good luck on the project - I'm really looking forward to see some 1-vs-1 mods for Dreamcast

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 11:28 am

Here is my writeup. It was originally supposed to have pictures describing things, but I am not that good in photoshop. So here is a link:

http://darksavant0.250free.com/OpenMTBOR_writeup.rtf (4 KB!)

Oh, and we need a good name for the engine. My name sounds stupid.

kungpow12345 · Post by **kungpow12345** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:14 am

the name is simple: Fighter's Rage. ...also, I'm glad you guys found out the source of the sound bug. That is very interesting. You would think someone would beef up the sound core by now.

I wouldn't want this to happen if BoR had a decent "original mod" with it. hint hint demetri if you're listening.

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 11:57 am

Do you guys think the same bug will be reproduced in Age Of the Beast? Perhaps they know of a fix?

Anyways, criticize my writeup! I know it is not NesterDC SE, but a fighting engine is monumentous and should be done right the first time.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 5:22 pm

Downloaded. I'm gonna read it asap.

Cormega · Post by **Cormega** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:17 am

What will be the perspective of the combo system?

Remember this engine if I'm not mistaken will be built off of BOR. So that means we will need to build our own combo system rather than implementing MUGENs. Will we be able to employ various combo methods for mods (Street Fighter, Tekken, KOF, etc). These games have different fighting schemes when it comes to combos and counter systems. It would be bland to have different mods but with the same fighting system. How will we address this or can it even be addressed given the capabilities of BOR.This may take more thought then first realized. What's your opinion, anyone.

CGRemakes · Post by **CGRemakes** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:15 pm

Combos will be completely customizable. I have already made it so you can have any combination of 2 directions and a action button (in OpenBOR). For this engine, more combinations could fairly easily be added, as well as the "hold down a button for x number of seconds" combo. The combo system will likely be very flexible.

openMugen development

OpenMugen Development