KMH's Shmup Patches (up: Touhou - No UI Background)

[Steven]

I don't suppose you can get Tatsujin Ou's stereo audio working and also working with mycophobia's hack, can you? The stereo audio is all there on the PCB and they did actually get it working on the Astro City Mini V and on the MiSTer (although the audio on MiSTer is still more or less completely broken), so yeah.

[KMH]

I don't suppose you can get Tatsujin Ou's stereo audio working and also working with mycophobia's hack, can you? The stereo audio is all there on the PCB and they did actually get it working on the Astro City Mini V and on the MiSTer (although the audio on MiSTer is still more or less completely broken), so yeah.

It says in the mame source, that enabling stereo for that game can be done by modifying the toaplan2 driver, and changing just a single line of code in it. So I don't think I can help you, because what you need is not a modification of the game/rom, but instead a different mame build with that altered driver. And I have zero experience with that.

From toaplan2.cpp (mame/src/mame/toaplan/toaplan2.cpp):

//#define TRUXTON2_STEREO /* Uncomment to hear truxton2 music in stereo */

Unless I'm misunderstanding, all you need to do is remove // at the beginning of this line, to enable stereo. So I guess if you want it badly enough, you can probably find some guide on how to build mame, and then make your own stereo-enabled build with this change.

[Steven]

I already have this since it's on the MiSTer, so it's more for people who don't have that. I don't know if what's on the MiSTer will work on other emulators or whatever. Maybe it will, but maybe it won't.

[emphatic]

I never want to hear that again.

Amen, brother.

[KMH]

I had to change the thread title again. The character limit was too... limiting. Here's the TD2 patch:


Thunder Dragon 2 - No Voices [mame]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/ThunderDragon2-NoVoices

Removes the voices from the game.

[emphatic]

I had to change the thread title again. The character limit was too... limiting. Here's the TD2 patch:


Thunder Dragon 2 - No Voices [mame]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/ThunderDragon2-NoVoices

Removes the voices from the game.

Much appreciated.

[KMH]

I finished the Blazing Star patch, and updated the No Voices patch for Dangun Feveron:


Blazing Star - Replace Bonus Sound [mame]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/BlazingStar-ReplaceBonusSound

Changes the sound (voice) that plays when you pick up a bonus item, replacing it with the lucky panel item pickup sound effect.

This should be less distracting than "B-B-BONUS BONUS BONUS", while still giving some nice audio feedback (when picking up a lot of bonus items at once for example).



(update) Dangun Feveron - No Voices [mame]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/DangunFeveron-NoVoices

Updated the patch to address a general Dangun Feveron audio issue (frequent audio crackling/popping when voices are triggered during gameplay)

For some reason, when you're playing this game and it triggers the voices, the beginning of the voice clips will sometimes have a loud audio crackle or "pop", when the game starts playing them. I'm not sure if it's an emulation issue, or if the game is just sloppily programmed audio-wise. It also happens with other sound effects on rare occasions, but it's way worse with the announcer voice lines, because of the loudness and how frequently it happens with them. The issue has nothing to do with the actual voice data, so it is present when playing on both the vanilla rom and also with my first patch. But the updated patch should fix all the announcer related audio crackling.

Updating to the new version of the patch is not strictly necessary, as there's no critical issue with the original patch. But it will make the game sound much cleaner than both the original patch and vanilla rom, so I definitely recommend doing it.

[emphatic]

I thought of a patch proposal for Battle Garegga that removes the randomness completely, for example, the pink birds would be the best you can get, and every other random thing should also be the "preferred" way. This way, for shmup competitions, randomness won't force people to restart etc.

[XoPachi]

Blazing Star - Replace Bonus Sound [mame]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/BlazingStar-ReplaceBonusSound

Changes the sound (voice) that plays when you pick up a bonus item, replacing it with the lucky panel item pickup sound effect.

This should be less distracting than "B-B-BONUS BONUS BONUS", while still giving some nice audio feedback (when picking up a lot of bonus items at once for example)

Thank you, God. Oh my Christ...

[KMH]

I thought of a patch proposal for Battle Garegga that removes the randomness completely, for example, the pink birds would be the best you can get, and every other random thing should also be the "preferred" way. This way, for shmup competitions, randomness won't force people to restart etc.

It is an interesting idea for sure, but I don't think I have the capabilities to make something like that yet. It seems like a step up in difficulty from what I've made so far.

Your post immediately made me think of Darius Gaiden, which is another game that would definitely benefit from a patch like that. The bonus items in that game have such insane variance, that when you try to play it for score, it quickly starts to feel more like a slot machine.

[Lethe]

I thought of a patch proposal for Battle Garegga that removes the randomness completely, for example, the pink birds would be the best you can get, and every other random thing should also be the "preferred" way. This way, for shmup competitions, randomness won't force people to restart etc.

I don't think this is a sane idea for a romhack, but it's a great one for new games (and I'm sure it's been brought up before). You design the game so all the RNG is seeded at the start of the run, and then have a mode/option that temporarily rigs the seed sequencing and spits out a share code or something so players can synchronize the next however many runs.

[Rastan78]

Your post immediately made me think of Darius Gaiden, which is another game that would definitely benefit from a patch like that. The bonus items in that game have such insane variance, that when you try to play it for score, it quickly starts to feel more like a slot machine.

It's not all that big of a deal IMO. The point swing between really bad medal luck and really good medal luck over a full run is about 200k in my experience. On high level runs the medals are probably like 2% of your score at best. Plus good luck is reasonably common.

A patch like that could be useful for practice though. If you're trying to optimize a section for score it can be pretty confusing to have random fluctuations all the time.

Agreed removing Garegga RNG would be insanely complex. You'd have to stabilize boss movement and attack order etc etc. Might be cool for head to head events or something. But for example if you already know exactly when Mad Ball is going to drop into the perfect position to be bombed is that really even the same boss anymore?

[KMH]

Your post immediately made me think of Darius Gaiden, which is another game that would definitely benefit from a patch like that. The bonus items in that game have such insane variance, that when you try to play it for score, it quickly starts to feel more like a slot machine.

It's not all that big of a deal IMO. The point swing between really bad medal luck and really good medal luck over a full run is about 200k in my experience. On high level runs the medals are probably like 2% of your score at best. Plus good luck is reasonably common.

A patch like that could be useful for practice though. If you're trying to optimize a section for score it can be pretty confusing to have random fluctuations all the time.

Agreed removing Garegga RNG would be insanely complex. You'd have to stabilize boss movement and attack order etc etc. Might be cool for head to head events or something. But for example if you already know exactly when Mad Ball is going to drop into the perfect position to be bombed is that really even the same boss anymore?

I think it's more like 300-400k if you're actually lucky, and if you're already maximizing every other aspect of the game, it definitely encourages you to go straight to reset hell (in my case, after stage 2 if I'm not already up 125-150k on bonuses by that point). It's also just the absolute worst feeling to execute everything perfectly (NMNB, all captains, all boss parts destroyed), and then when you get to the final stage, you already know that you have no chance of beating your PB, because you got unlucky. That's when it really starts to feel like a waste of time. I've seen so many people who feel similarly, so I don't think "slot machine" is entirely unwarranted.

As for Garegga, I had similar thoughts. I wouldn't be surprised if those Yagawa games would be some of the hardest to make completely static, because of how random everything is (even smaller things). You would also have to make a lot of decisions about what to do with the rank system, and the secret tricks that give you slightly unique outcomes every time (like the birds). I also think a lot of people (myself included), find Garegga and Batrider to be even more interesting because they are so chaotic. It's quite likely that they would lose a lot of their magic if you tried to "tame" them.

[Rastan78]

and if you're already maximizing every other aspect of the game, it definitely encourages you to go straight to reset hell (in my case, after stage 2 if I'm not already up 125-150k on bonuses by that point). It's also just the absolute worst feeling to execute everything perfectly

NoOOOoO! Please don't do this. I could write an essay on why this is counterproductive. Probably better to leave that for the DG strategy topic and stay OT for now lol.

I do think a hack making the medal values static would be worthwhile though. Would it be best to maybe have them be a midrange value every time? Having every medal be max 51k seems a bit cheesy. Having them give 0 pts would be useful for practice and understanding a route's true baseline scoring potential, but would remove any incentive to pick them up at all.

Cozmic Collection does have the gadget that displays your medal score (G Darius HD as well). I think if the gadget computed your base score without medals as well that would've been even better.

Yeah Garegga would definitely be lobotomized without RNG and probably even lose a lot of appeal for the BG old heads that love the game how it is. Even if it wouldn't be a technical nightmare to achieve.

[KMH]

and if you're already maximizing every other aspect of the game, it definitely encourages you to go straight to reset hell (in my case, after stage 2 if I'm not already up 125-150k on bonuses by that point). It's also just the absolute worst feeling to execute everything perfectly

I do think a hack making the medal values static would be worthwhile though. Would it be best to maybe have them be a midrange value every time? Having every medal be max 51k seems a bit cheesy. Having them give 0 pts would be useful for practice and understanding a route's true baseline scoring potential, but would remove any incentive to pick them up at all.

Cozmic Collection does have the gadget that displays your medal score (G Darius HD as well). I think if the gadget computed your base score without medals as well that would've been even better.

I completely forgot that the Cozmic Collection keeps track of the bonus items/points, because I've only played the game in MAME. In that case, I suppose you could use that gadget for both practice/competition purposes, if you wanted to do a competition where luck (with bonus items) is not a factor. It's probably not worth the effort to make a MAME patch then. But to answer your question anyway, I think Max value makes the most sense. That way, you preserve the gameplay and routes from the vanilla game.

[KMH]

This is the final project from my initial wishlist/backlog. I saved it for last, because I knew it would be the most involved and time consuming one by far. I doubt it'll be the last thing I ever make though, because my list of shmups to 1cc is gigantic. So I will probably find something else to get annoyed by eventually.


Touhou Project - No Background [pc/win]
https://github.com/KMHSTG/Touhou-NoBackground

Removes the UI background art during gameplay, leaving just the gameplay area and UI elements on a black background.



Here's a screenshot comparison (first 12 images are normal screenshots, last 12 are in THRotator with default configs).
https://imgur.com/a/kShQGjj

In the past it was easier for me to put up with distracting stuff like this, but after playing shmups in MAME for a while, it annoys me even more whenever I go back to Touhou.

This is similar to my earlier no background patch for Shiki 1 steam, except this time I had to make patches for 19 games instead of 1. I also added support for the static english patches, so in the end it's around 30 different patches. And then I made a simple patcher to apply them easily, because xdelta patches are a really bad fit for the large Touhou dat files.
The patcher works like this: Extracts Touhou dat file(s) --> replaces one file inside extracted copy --> repacks "patched" dat file(s).

The patches have only been lightly tested this time, because it's just not feasible for me to thoroughly test so many games/configurations by myself. But since the patches are so simple, and they only have one effect, it should be very obvious if something breaks.

And finally, this release also comes with a big disclaimer, that the patcher has not been tested on anything but windows 7 (yet). I have no way of testing on windows 10/11, but I think it should work fine, since the patcher is just thdat.exe from Touhou Toolkit, controlled by simple batch files. If it doesn't work, I'll try to fix it if I can, but in that case I would probably need some assistance from a win10/11 user. Or wait until I get access to one of those myself.

[Steven]

Any chance of giving Strikers games a stage order selection thing like some of the Raizing games have?

[KMH]

Any chance of giving Strikers games a stage order selection thing like some of the Raizing games have?

That's definitely beyond my skillset. But even if it wasn't, I wouldn't make something like that. It would objectively make the games easier, and so you wouldn't be able to submit any run made on the patched version to community leaderboards. The stuff I'm interested in, is all about making the game slightly more pleasurable or convenient to play, without messing with any difficulty/gameplay balance, so you retain the ability to fairly compete and compare with the vanilla game. Similar to the battle garegga convenience patch (which was my main inspiration to start making my own). I think everything I've made so far, achieves the goal of being 1:1 comparable with the vanilla game quite well (from a leaderboard/competitive perspective). Patches that would absolutely require a leaderboard split, those are not that interesting to me in the first place, even if I had the ability to make them. Not that it matters in this case though, since I couldn't make it even if I wanted to.

[Steven]

It wouldn't make the game easier; that logic is flawed. There would be no difference in difficulty if you choose a specific stage order or if the game randomly gives you the exact same stage order.

The whole point is to make training more efficient, but if you can't do it anyway, don't worry about it.

[KMH]

It wouldn't make the game easier; that logic is flawed. There would be no difference in difficulty if you choose a specific stage order or if the game randomly gives you the exact same stage order.

The whole point is to make training more efficient, but if you can't do it anyway, don't worry about it.

It's not flawed logic lol, I'm not talking about a difference in game difficulty. You would have an obvious advantage over anyone playing on the vanilla rom. Even if you argue that it's just time saved rerolling to get the stage order you want, that's still an unfair advantage, because you would be able to plan your run out (like in Batrider), where other people can at most control the first stage by rerolling (since Psikyo games don't show you the stage order). If it wasn't an unfair advantage, I can assure you that patches like the one you're requesting, would already exist AND get used for every single Psikyo game. There's probably several people in the community who could throw something like that together. There's no way it would fly in any competitive sense.

For people who don't care about leaderboards or competing, I can see how it would be a useful thing to have. But I think it's crazy to argue that it's not an unfair advantage. And for training purposes, well, if you have access to a romhack like that, you definitely have access to savestates which would be a faster and superior way to practice anyway.

[Steven]

You clearly didn't understand my point and I am too lazy to explain it, so forget about it.