I suggest posting the older patch but with the Doorman of doom issue fixed since you got that right. The older patch still had that problem. And leaving the stage clear theme implementation for when that's fully/properly done.

@Wesker Yes, that was my intention. I will do that before the day is out.

Last edited by pepillopev on Sun 5 Aug 2018 - 0:11; edited 1 time in total

@ToAll After some long troubleshooting and play testing. I present you my vision for Battletoads & Double Dragon. I dub it the "Sega Genesis Edition". Meaning, it attempts to replicate all the missing tracks not found in the regular SNES ROM (just like the Genesis counterpart). I hope you 'Toad lovers enjoy this patch. This is the first stable release.

Hey, I wasn't expecting you to return and do the final stable release so soon. Caught me off guard for sure.

I'll give this a test tomorrow and see if it works perfect without flaws. Too bad there's not a proper cover of boss theme 2 from the actual game but reusing that boss theme from Battletoads Arcade/Super Battletoads as boss theme 2 replacement is certainly not a bad idea.

Wesker do u know i have the original battletoads of nes version for 4 players.. and battletoads double dragon nes 3 players.. u need mednaffe modified to play it.. it needs support of 255+sprite in order not to flicker the screen..cause the original nes dont support 4 player games with so much sprites running same time

@Wesker Never said it was the final stable release. It may still have unforseen bugs (hence, calling it a first stable release). Based on my play testing I did not encounter any msu-based bugs. But then again, I only played with one of the Lee brothers. So, technically, it is not fully tested. That, my friend, I leave up to you and report back.


Last edited by pepillopev on Wed 8 Aug 2018 - 3:26; edited 1 time in total

@Wesker I wonder if GinBunBun can contact Hylopathic Productions to compose the remaining tracks. GinBunBun did mention in a previous post that he acquired permission to use their audio work for this patch.

@Wesker This is why I said "first stable release". I found a bug where the boss battle 2 theme does not always play for Rat Ship. I'm currently looking into it.

@ToAll @Wesker Hopefully, I squashed the intermittent no "Rat Ship" boss theme now with version 1.8 (posted at the top).

I left version 1.7 still in the archive just in case other bugs were introduced with version 1.8. Version 1.7 will just have the issue where sometimes the Rat Ship boss theme won't play (depending on what character you use in the game).

@kurrono I have played those NES hacks, but only on emulators as I don't have an original NES console, so I'm not familiarized with the issues that may give on real hardware but I suppose it's the case because that hack must be hitting the sprite limit of the NES by forcing that.

@pepillopev I was finally able to test this and I found a bug which seems to happens only on SD2SNES. Or at least it's happening to me. It doesn't happen on either bsnes and Snes9X so it reminds me to the bug I was having with Battletoads in Battlemaniacs and I don't know if it will be possible to trace the issue then.

Esentially, the Stage Clear theme is glitching the game. When I defeat all the bosses, instead of playing the theme, the game freezes with a black screen. The bug happens with both version 1.7 and version 1.8 by the way, and it happens with every single of them, even Robo Manus which in the previous bugged (I don't know if it was 1.6 or whatever) did had the stage clear theme playing perfectly, while the rest of the bosses simply didn't have anything being played after defeating them but didn't glitch out the game like it's doing right now. I'm afraid that if you won't be able to trace and fix that, then you will have to do an optional fix to disable the Stage Clear theme, same as it happened with Battletoads in Battlemaniacs in which I had a glitch on a certain level (the Snake Pit levels) regarding the pause theme, which coincidentially also locked the game to a black screen.

Robo Manus, by the way, has an additional glitch. When he appears and you do the freaking out animation, instead of playing his boss music, the game slows down for a couple of second and then gets back to the level music. But unlike the other bug, this one happens also in bsnes and Snes9X so you should be able to trace it and fix it I suppose.

@kurrono. About the music themselves, of course it would be great that Hylopathic Productions or anyone else (it seems the non-SNES tracks like Player select or Boss theme are not done by them, and they are very good too) would do a proper remix of boss theme 2 so it wouldn't be necessary to get the boss theme of Battletoads Arcade. I don't know if it's possible to contact them or GinBunBun knows how. Alternatively someone could attempt to do it with boss theme 2 while keeping the heavy metal style.

I have to admit that I did some further swappings to the music tracks. I swapped "Stage Clear, Victory cutscene" for "Continue screen", because the Continue screen music the SNES version uses is actually the Stage Clear theme of the rest of the versions (NES, Mega Drive and Game Boy) and it's a follow up to the "Stage Clear" jingle, it's essentially the same melody. It's better put that way. The Mega Drive version also had the SNES "Stage Clear, Victory cutscene" music as "Next Level", but in this case that's the only version doing that because the rest of the versions for Nintendo consoles all had the "Next Level" theme the same as SNES (it's actually a remix of Turbo Tunnel theme from the original Battletoads). The Continue screen had different musics in all versions: the NES version used an exclusive theme from the NES version which is also used as pre-title screen theme (when the Tradewest and Rare logos show up), the Mega Drive version had its own exclusive theme too, and the Game Boy version actually reused the Next Level theme there. But in this case, I kind of like having the Next Level theme same as the Nintendo console versions do and not much like the Mega Drive does so I left that intact and simply had "Stage Clear, Victory cutscene" for the Continue scene.

About what you did with the boss musics, I feel now the hack as an overuse of boss theme 2 over boss theme 1. Boss theme 1 is now used only by Abobo, Roper and Robo Manus. Boss theme 2 is used by everyone else. Maybe at least one of the two final bosses, either the Shadow Boss and the Dark Queen, should have boss theme 1 so the use would be more paired. I feel it's the Dark Queen who should have boss theme 1. There's also another option which wouldn't follow any of the other versions, and it's giving the Battletoads bosses one music and the Double Dragon bosses the other, so this way they would get a better distinction among them. In this case, the Battletoads bosses are a little more diverse because of the fact that General Slaughter appears three times as miniboss, so in this case maybe those two Doorman of doom from the second stage could have boss music like in that previous bugged music and keeping in mind that your character freaks out when he seems them. The use of the boss theme musics would be perfectly paired then. But that's up to your choice and preference, of course.

Deja-vu?
I remember we also had some unidentified crash in battlemaniacs:
https://www.zeldix.net/t1693p50-battletoads-in-the-battlemaniacs
Easiest and only option is to add an optional patch that has the new boss code nop-ed out.

Battletoads apparently hate sd2snes

Yeah, pretty much the same thing happening again, although this one is even worse because this affects to all the levels and you can't properly finish any of them because of this bug, unlike some random bug that only happens when pausing in one single level like the one from Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. In this case there's a level select cheat though, something Battletoads in Battlemaniacs doesn't have and thanks to that I have been able to check this happens in all levels. Otherwise, it would have been impossible.

But the other specific bug with Robo Manus also happens in emulators so fortunately that one can be traced.

@Wesker Unfortunately, the stage clear will have to be omitted entirely including the Robo-Magnus theme.

I just don’t have the time to troubleshoot it. Work is picking up (lot more out of town travel).

I will just completely disable those items. Conn, if you can NOP those hooks for me, i would gladly appreciate it.

@Wesker Your opinion is duly noted for the overuse track in mini-bosses (but I can only work with samples that are available). I can give the mini-bosses their own tracks if you prefer. I will need the actual PCMs you would want and send them to me to incorporate) I will not do the work for you. Basically, giving me just YouTube links is not good enough. In my line of work, I learned, before you voice your opinion, have a better solution ready to implement at moments notice. Or say nothing at all. In the end, PCMs are not permanent, the end user has full control of what tracks they want to play. It boils down to making the PCMs yourself to your liking. Just sayting.

As for the sd2snes lockup in Stage Clear, I believe that MSU code does not play nice with the loop delay I incorporated to mimic the Sega Genesis version (where the game pauses and plays the tune and resumes game code). Or it could just be the MSU code does not play nice so near a WAI (hardware interrupt). Not really sure, I don't have a sd2snes for trial and error and honestly I don't care too much about real hardware (I'm pure emulation).

If Kurrono does ship me his old sd2snes (so I can repair and use it). Then I'll be able to troubleshoot on my real SNES hardware. For now, I just don't care for hardware.

Robo-Magnus? Hmm, the problem may be a due to the addition of the mini-Boss tunes. I did not experience this "stutter" issue on bSnes++ v0.40 (latest one). I did not test Snes9x yet. Sure, I can see what is going on but I have other stuff on my plate now.

When and if I have time, I will update the patches. One being plain vanilla MSU (with only the original SNES triggers) and the other an experimental version.

@pepillopev Hey, I think you clearly misunderstood about the overuse of tracks. I was just giving suggestions about the placements of the tracks that are already in, not requesting you to actually introduce new themes which seems to be what you understood with that answer. Even not taking into account the General Slaughter minibosses, it's still three bosses with boss theme 1 and four bosses with boss theme 2, but of course, it's up to you to do place them as you wish, it's your hack after all.

I found the Robo-Manus bug on bsnes using the 0.88 version by the way. It's not a plus version with debugger, I didn't try that and after all the logical thing is using the plus version with debugger of course, since that's the one that will be able to trace it. If it's possible to at least trace and fix that one, then having an alternative patch for use on SD2SNES which omits the Stage Clear theme is probably the best solution. It's similar to what was done in Battletoads in Battlemaniacs disabling the Pause theme for use on SD2SNES.

I just tried with bsnes plus v.073+3a, which does have a debugger, and the Robo-Manus bug happens, so that means that one at least can be traced and hopefully fixed I guess.

The issue with the stage clear theme, I think an alternative patch intended for SD2SNES which disables the stage clear theme completely will be more than enough. Similar to the fix for the Pause bug that was done for Battletoads in Battlemaniacs.

@Wesker I never suggested to change anything, hence phrase “if you prefer”. And if you preferred too, then you would offer your track suggestions to insert in the game. I guess my way of commenting it did not come out how I thought in my head. But oh well.

As stated before the original Conn/Kurrono patch will be posted alongside the experimental one. The source ASM is included if anyone wants to do a fork.

At this moment, I am fully retired. I just don’t have the time any more to continue this hobby.

I hope someone will realize your “perfect vision” of the game. Much luck.

Last edited by pepillopev on Sat 11 Aug 2018 - 16:46; edited 1 time in total

@ToAll I updated the patches into two separate links. #1 is the original release patch, and #2 an experimental one with msu support only for player select, boss tracks (main ones only), and crazy ride. Removed the other code due to sd2snes instabilities.

From here on, any one is welcome to do as they wish (the asm is included minus the extra buggy code, i only left what was stable from last time). I will no longer make any additional attempts.

As stated before, I am officially retired and will no longer be in active development of any new MSU1 patches. Thank you all for a wonderful experience at Zeldix.

@wesker, could you try both versions how they go on sd2snes?

@Pev, what do you think about keeping the old 1.8 as emulator version (with stage clear and such nice add-ons) and the better one of those both sd2snes versions as sd2snes version once we know it?

Here's 1.9 whcih fixes boss l5 (at least I hope). Couldn't do anything about the stage clear/sd2snes problem, it was rather complex what Pev coded here

So if this works, I think we go with two versions (1.9 as emu, and that working of the two sd2snes versions in first post after you tested, wesker)

Attachments

btdd_msu_v9.zip You don't have permission to download attachments.(820 Kb) Downloaded 4 times

I just tested 1.9 and yeah, the Robo Manus boss bug is fixed. So 1.9 is now the perfect/definitive version for emulators, and for SD2SNES, I suggest taking 1.9 and removing all the stage clear triggers and putting that as a fix for SD2SNES. That's going to be better than leaving the current "Experimental SG version" because that version has several other triggers removed because PepilloPev thought those were causing the issue with Robo Manus, but there wasn't. So that's what I would do anyway.

The ideal would be three versions then:
- Original release: For those who want the SNES game as it is, just improving the existing musics and without additional music triggers to resemble other versions.
- 1.9 release: For those who wants the additional music triggers that make the SNES version resemble more other versions and going to use it for emulators only.
- 1.9 release without stage clear triggers: For those who wants the additional music triggers but are going to use it for SD2SNES so they would have to miss the stage clear theme due to the bug it causes.

@Wesker I did not remove the additional triggers due to that. I removed them to just make a stable version. This is the reason why I chose to just retire. You make assumptions and make judgement calls that Conn, Kurrono, and I already have planned. Playing them off as suggestions you came up yourself.

@pepillopev You said in a previous message "Robo-Magnus? Hmm, the problem may be a due to the addition of the mini-Boss tunes". And it turns out it wasn't that what was causing the problem with Robo Manus. But don't worry, 1.9 can be perfectly played in emulators with all boss music triggers on place, including the General Slaughter minibosses, and not causing any trouble to Robo Manus nor anyone else anymore.

So 1.9 is now a stable version for emulators without having to remove anything, and it's probably easy to do an optional stable version for SD2SNES out of 1.9 only removing the stage clear triggers which are the remaining problematic ones currently causing trouble on SD2SNES. No need to remove anything else like the "Experimental SG version" does so it's going to be a better version that way, right?

Alright, I edited first post to a link that leads to 1.9
This package now also contains a sd2snes version without the stage clear. Is everything safe&sound now with this project?