Thank u Pev I guess I'm still around

Congrats @Pepv and @Kurrono. Well done. Cannot wait to play this. It really looks awesome :-D

thank you both ! nice job !

hello, the link of patch don't work

GERMANMAGO wrote:hello, the link of patch don't work

Fixed, not sure how long it will last. I am noticing that our patch links are starting to be flagged more often.

Thank you so much

I have a mega.nz in my file list that (still?) works:
https://mega.nz/file/dqpkQSpR#6BXbH8-TYXfRgT0hyt98v8-G3_7ynZYdc8t8X90O5a4

patch size is 229b alike that in the new link you posted, Pev (so I assume it's the same, and the mega.nz was only temporary down). In your new link there's also 2 patches, the old Kurrono with 152b in the main folder (maybe it's better to delete it there - also since it is the same name as the rom name so it will auto-apply if in the folder).

Edit:
Because of the double patch inside the new file I changed it back to the old link. If you need your file link pev, it is this:

Code:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/k02tap72ii89qm2/msu-edf-patch-kurrono-vvv18-fix.zip/file

Something is definitely wrong here, there's no music on the weapon select screen, and some sound effects are completely corrupted, like the weapon select noise and the pink lasers fired by enemies in the first stage.

Can't give my 2 cents on that... in any case it would be up to pev in case something is indeed wrong.

Conn wrote:Can't give my 2 cents on that... in any case it would be up to pev in case something is indeed wrong.

No worries, just reporting my experience, I used Flips to patch a verified no-intro copy of the USA rom and it's a bit busted.

It appears the author has blanked out tracks that weren't in the arcade version, which is why the weapon select screen is silent. But it's the messed up sound effects that are a real problem with the patch, when enemies start firing lasers the sounds get really glitchy and abrasive.

I just checked, and out of my brief test. Yes. There is no breakpoint in the weapon select and I can confirm the distorted sfx.

Probably this patch needs to be remade (at least partly) from scratch... bad news however this will happen soon. I am not sure whether it was Pev or Kurrono (or both) that coded it, but also I have no idea whether they will take care of it.

@Conn It was Kurrono who code this patch. I just helped here and there fixing things he asked me to do. Unfortunately, I don’t have any source code for this. Work is busy at the moment for me even giving this a gander. Apologies in advance.

Nice to see you still around
The source code is luckily part of the patch download, but since we both are familiar with k's past projects, out of experience it might be better to recode it. For my part, I'm not sure whether this code is sufficient buggy enough to unretire... Probably it requires also a new pcm set (at least for those left out tracks).

i spent a bit of time with this yesterday. Seems internally is a databank system without index 0 being a proper mute, but 0 is still being called in order to mute, leading to some glitched sfx.

May be easier to send a "stop" instruction after spc play has been set. stop appears to be FF to all 4 IO ports.

or perhaps the better solution would be to hard mute it on the APU side, though it looks like the way I know how to do that may not work in this situation.

Conn wrote:Nice to see you still around
The source code is luckily part of the patch download, but since we both are familiar with k's past projects, out of experience it might be better to recode it. For my part, I'm not sure whether this code is sufficient buggy enough to unretire... Probably it requires also a new pcm set (at least for those left out tracks).

Yup, this is the case. If work eases up a bit. I can consider recode but don’t hold me to that just yet. I don’t have much time to even look at Lethal Enforcers.

Yup, this is the case. If work eases up a bit. I can consider recode but don’t hold me to that just yet. I don’t have much time to even look at Lethal Enforcers.

No worries... I'm too not very interested and have limited time,
however, I tried myself a bit, maybe it helps (@Cubear?):

weapon select:
$05/96EE 8E 40 21    STX $2140  [$05:2140]   A:0000 X:0005
(X is the track, make X:0001 for mute)

Level 1:
$00/E27E A9 02       LDA #$02                A:0800
...
$00/E287 8D 40 21    STA $2140  [$00:2140]   A:0802
A is the track, make A:0801 for mute

I've tried multiple values for A when tracks are called, from $00 to $0F and from $F0 (some sort of fade signal) to $FF (stop) but none of them let the laser SFX play without distortion (though value of $06 lets the weapon select sfx play without distortion)

i even tried just NOPing out the play instruction and the laser sfx are distorted even then, it feels like they will not be "happy" unless the game thinks the song is playing.

I think this is looking like a prime candidate for APU mute.

mmh, yes. I do not know how to make the laser sound but in the weapon select screen I hear the distortions.
You can go in geiger snes9x into  
-> show hex
-> view aram (audio ram)
and change byte $f4 to directly switch tracks (05 is the music here)

It appears that there are two different music banks (or even two different apu scripts), one for levels, one for menu.

So when muting with track 01 you have instantly the distortions. I think it is only possible with some advanced apu asm coding skills (which I do not have). I had a similar issue with DKCountry 1, where SFX were too fast. The problem is that the spc and sfx are synced or whatever.
No idea if it is possible to fix this, or if it is, if it is worth the effort...

I have one last idea which is to see if i can edit the music data to be silent/looping silence so that it is technically "playing" when the sfx are running.

I also don't really know much about coding for the APU or the format of music data inside of it, so it's a bit of a last ditch effort, but if it bears fruit it could be a handy skill to have in my arsenal.

I also tried a bit but of no avail I am also a bit lost when it comes to apu (my previous success there is based mainly on try&error).

My idea is working, I've managed to proof-of-concept a working mute for Stage 1's music by zeroing out a portion of the song data.

It looks like I will have to do the same to all other stage themes (and perhaps the boss theme as well) before this is considered complete.

As far as making the weapon select song play via MSU-1 I really havent looked too hard at the existing code for this game but chances are it would need to be reworked slightly in order to do so.

Oh this is awesome, you're a blessing for this community after pev and I burnt out a bit.
However please don't take more workload than you can bear, nobody is hunting you or anyone. If you succeed in anything, gorgeous, if not... Well, after 7 years on this forum, there are always bugs and imperfections, so it's ok to let it be the way it is

I've worked up a slightly more elegant semi-hard mute by only setting the volume on the channels that SFX come across on, but some parts of the song still play on one of the channels so I need to do my prior mute strategy for each song still.

Similarily, I think the hooks should probably change since this game is using a databank system but being treated like it has an index. I believe some tracks are not being called that should be, notably boss battle music + weapon select.

There should also probably be a stop music on the continue/game over screen as per normal operation as well.

It's a lot of changes for a game that I personally do not care much about, but I'm learning a lot in the process so I won't consider this wasted time

I've finished as much work as I would like to do on this game, lol.

I happened upon a much nicer hard mute (via trial-and-error) and converted the old mutes into triggers for songs that would be missing due to the way MSU-1 was implemented.

It feels like there's a lot of work left to be done here. The tracks don't have loop points set, tracks that don't have an arcade version should have SPC PCMs made, it's possible that I missed some of the triggers for song changes that exist in the later levels, etc.

I also added some (commented out) fade triggers that I was just too lazy to turn into proper fades. If somebody else wants to tackle that, be my guest.

the new tracks that play via PCM should be

Code:

1. Title screen noise
2. (unused)
3. Boss Battle
4. Victory
5. Weapon Select
6. (unused, plays on the continue screen)

But hey, the issue was fixed! The sound effects no longer glitch out.

Download the new patch here:

Code:

https://mega.nz/file/nSxQwIBQ#B1tgdy9z2zjFfgXVHuscEQwOn5cCVLxCQFNJ7U7Z2M0