Raiden II/DX MAME driver work

[trap15]

austere and I have decided to attempt to work on the Raiden II/DX MAME drivers, since we'd really like to see it emulated in MAME. So far we have *slightly* fixed the attract mode. The protection is a tough cookie, but we're going to try to get the chips for it decapped. We are opening a website for our progress soon, where we will take donations for the decapping. If you want to hang out with us, we are in #raidenii on EFnet. Any questions or comments?

[nZero]

Cool, wish you guys the best of luck! It'd be nice for more people to be able to play the original versions of these (even if the PSX ports are excellent)

Question: Is the Seibu protection device confirmed to have any internal ROM? That is, is there anything to actually learn from decapping it?

[trap15]

Yeah, it's actually somewhat like a CPU, even. It takes in bytecode and does magic with it. It's a very complex device, more advanced and annoying than any other protection we've ever seen. To give an example of the annoyingness: it uses it for moving sprites and collision detection. Yeah, it's that bad.
Getting it decapped would certainly help a ton. At present, we're mainly looking over the bytecode and trying to make some sense of it, but there are a bunch of macro instructions that are really complex.

[Klatrymadon]

This is an utterly heroic venture. All the very best to you, chap! I'll certainly try to make a donation at some point.

[emphatic]

Best of luck to ya fellas!

[cools]

If you must kill a board for the decap - use a Japanese one

[trap15]

Nah, the money would be to have Guru decap it, since they've got the chips, they just don't have the money. No matter how much of a dick he is, he's got the resources to do it

[1up]

sounds good. I would gladly donate for the decap

[trap15]

Nice to see people are willing to help get it decapped. We'll try to get our site up ASAP to take the donations.
Oh yeah, if you wanna hang with us, we're on #raidenii on EFnet.

[MathU]

Raiden II's antipiracy scheme is one of the few I can cite as incredibly effective. What will I use when this is finally cracked?

[PsikyoFan]

Have you actually spoken to Guru? There's several things outstanding to be decapped because the guy who was doing the work for a reasonable price is currently unavailable. Guru does not have the skills or equipment himself to do this. Also, there's plenty of people already willing to stump up the cash for a variety of games as and when they can be done. Raiden II/DX is up there.
I fear you'll end up collecting donations and have little to do with it...

[austere]

Have you actually spoken to Guru?

I sent him a message quite a while ago, he's yet to respond to it. Do you have any idea if or when the decapper will be available again?

http://guru.mameworld.info/decap/index.html

If you look at chips 151, 152, 153, 154 and 155, you'll note that they're highlighted purple. That means they had these on hand for a while but lacked the funds to decap them. We've almost done as much as we could with the information available, which is why we've acquired a Raiden II PCB. I've got quite a bit of equipment that I can use to probe the damn chips without decapping them. It probably won't be enough though, there's a good chance that these things are CPLDs/PLDs.

As for the site, it might be a while before it's up since my DNS registrar is being retarded.

[PsikyoFan]

Have you actually spoken to Guru?

I sent him a message quite a while ago, he's yet to respond to it. Do you have any idea if or when the decapper will be available again?

Sorry, no. I'm not that involved with the acquiring/dumping side of things. I believe it's for personal reasons and it's looking less promising we'll see more out of him.
There's still a lot that can be done with the hardware and some trojans, or perhaps sniffing the bus or even a fluke (dunno if there's such a thing for x86 running at that speed).
If you're serious and actually making some progress, then there's a very smart guy who broke many of more complex protections in MAME who looks at this from time to time. Having access to someone well equipped might well be what he needs to make some progress. You should be able to figure out who.

In some ways it'll be sad to see it emulated, it's one of the remaining holy grails and to see it replaced by a few hundred lines of obfuscation and memcpys will destroy the mystery.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

In some ways it'll be sad to see it emulated, it's one of the remaining holy grails and to see it replaced by a few hundred lines of obfuscation and memcpys will destroy the mystery.

(Noob Question) what are the other holy grails of non working mame games? I would guess that the 2000 to 2005 era cave games would be quite high in everyones lists. Personally i wouldnt mind RSG and Ikuraga on mame plus DDP2 even if everyone says its a big pile of steaming poo.

EDIT: that guru has a sweet thing going it seems, as hes the only man available atm who can do this kind of stuff he can take aslong as he wants to actually do the work. I bet he likes having a large number of pcbs on his todo list as he can play the fuck out of them before he kills the chips. BTW why hasnt anyone else come forward and said they can do this sort of work? i know bugger all about this sort of stuff but surely someothers will and not just guru?

[Udderdude]

BTW why hasnt anyone else come forward and said they can do this sort of work? i know bugger all about this sort of stuff but surely someothers will and not just guru?

There are other people willing to do the work, it's just that they have no paticular interest in arcade game preservation .. and will charge about a gazillion dollars to do it properly.

[croikle]

Personally i wouldnt mind RSG and Ikuraga on mame

RSG already works in MAME. There's some preliminary work on Ikaruga, but AFAIK nobody has a machine fast enough to play it anywhere close to full speed.

[austere]

I believe it's for personal reasons and it's looking less promising we'll see more out of him.

That's a shame, the cost of $200/chip is really hard to beat. I wonder what the Guru plans to do with the donations he receives, given that the usual deal is suspended.

If you're serious and actually making some progress

Oh, we're very serious and we've made some progress so far. Things will get interesting once the board is in my hands. I may be a bit tight on time though, since I've got a chip to design by the end of June.

then there's a very smart guy who broke many of more complex protections in MAME who looks at this from time to time. Having access to someone well equipped might well be what he needs to make some progress. You should be able to figure out who.

He's welcome to join the very smart guys already working on it. Help is always appreciated, especially if the dude in question has substantial arcade protection scheme cracking experience. Boy do I wonder who it is! ;)

In some ways it'll be sad to see it emulated, it's one of the remaining holy grails

Precisely what intrigued me; it's quite a popular game so you can't say it hasn't been cracked yet due to a lack of interest. -- But it will be cracked, the only question is who will crack it and when.

[sunburstbasser]

Personally i wouldnt mind RSG and Ikuraga on mame

RSG already works in MAME. There's some preliminary work on Ikaruga, but AFAIK nobody has a machine fast enough to play it anywhere close to full speed.

RSG does run in MAME but at least my MacBook doesn't like it when big bosses full of polygons show up. Really starts to lag. Could be my computer, as its only the areas full of 3D models and the mostly sprite-based Souky doesn't have much problem at all. Does it run better on Windows machines?

I think it'll be a while before we see Sega NAOMI games anywhere near full speed.

[PsikyoFan]

Help is always appreciated, especially if the dude in question has substantial arcade protection scheme cracking experience. Boy do I wonder who it is!

If you have something to show that demonstrates some progress in understanding, then submit it so submit@mamedev.org and I'm sure it would get the discussion and potentially followed up on. At the very least it would likely get included in the next minor release.

[bcass]

Saturn RSG runs perfectly on a decent PC using the SSF emulator.

[austere]

If you have something to show that demonstrates some progress in understanding, then submit it so submit@mamedev.org

You'll have to hang with us in EFnet/#raidenii to get the details! ;P

At the very least it would likely get included in the next minor release.

For now, we're not interested in its inclusion into MAME-proper. That would follow any progress we make as all of our modifications are open sourced. Integration is best left to the experts and they're free to do it at their own accord.

[PsikyoFan]

For now, we're not interested in its inclusion into MAME-proper. That would follow any progress we make as all of our modifications are open sourced. Integration is best left to the experts and they're free to do it at their own accord.

Fair enough. I took a look at the github commits so far. Odd that you have an aversion to C++, but hey it's not currently a barrier to merging if you make some significant progress.
You realise you can trivially build MAME with only one or two drivers if the compilation times bother you (referring to your initial commits)?

[austere]

I have no aversion to C++, in fact it is my preferred language for this sort of work! SquidMan has his own preference of course, even though he's more than capable of using C++. The reason for using 0.135 is different though, it is related to XCode and the naming convention used in MAME versions >0.135. Like you said, I can't imagine it would be too hard to reintegrate the Raiden II/Seibu driver back into the mainstream MAME version once we're done.

EDIT: Also, on my end the compile time was very fast. I compiled the entire thing along with the TMS57002 module.

[trap15]

Yeah, the compile times don't matter to me anymore, since I never have to clean, and it only takes the time to compile 2 or 3 source files each time now. Also, like austere said, we're not really looking to integrate into regular MAME, heh. And I have an aversion to C++, mainly being that MAME doesn't really need to be C++, and C++ has an ugly syntax, in my opinion

[PsikyoFan]

... and it only takes the time to compile 2 or 3 source files each time now.

Well, a 'tiny' build will link much quicker too.

[trap15]

Possibly, but I'd rather spend my time working on code rather than attempting to figure out tiny builds, if you know what I mean.

[kennyrh]

All this talk of de-capping got me wondering. When will we see any concrete results of the de-capped work already undertaken in MAME

I know it's a long, arduous, expensive and dangerous project but what's the time frame for results in MAME

[trap15]

It's in there for sure take a look at the Dr. Decapitator page for stuff they've decapped. I'm almost sure whatever is in there was utilized for improving MAME

[null1024]

Personally i wouldnt mind RSG and Ikuraga on mame

RSG already works in MAME. There's some preliminary work on Ikaruga, but AFAIK nobody has a machine fast enough to play it anywhere close to full speed.

RSG does run in MAME but at least my MacBook doesn't like it when big bosses full of polygons show up. Really starts to lag. Could be my computer, as its only the areas full of 3D models and the mostly sprite-based Souky doesn't have much problem at all. Does it run better on Windows machines?

What MAME version are you using? 0.128 works best for RSG. I mention this constantly, but it's true. A few graphics glitches [some minor, some major but disappear asap/don't hinder the game], but it's a lot faster than .129 and up.


Also, I'd be amazed to finally see the security on Raiden II finally broken.

[trap15]

Well, both austere and I have PCBs now (well, austere's is on its way, and we both need superguns, etc.), so I am writing a "trojan" program for it to run tests on the legit COPX. So yeah, we're getting close
Also, we're about to launch our site/blog for the project, we're just waiting on austere's DNS people so we can make it look nicer
We've both spent a pretty penny on stuff, so I doubt we're just going to "give up" anytime soon. Since I don't think I've linked this here yet, all of our code is on http://github.com/SquidMan/ubermame. So if you want to compile it up for yourself and give it a spin, go ahead
Peace out