too close for comfort - black label

[Cagar]

If the game runs but it's blurry and don't know how to fix it (because you're lazy), put this in your UME folder and it should be fixed
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97517759/ume.ini

[Formless God]

Smooth as silk. The stage 2 boss sprite flicker is there though.

Btw what's the deal with Deathsmiles MBL? There's nothing in the archive.

[KAI]

You need the both rom sets, the original and MLB.

Many thanks for the .ini Cagar, I can finally vsinc this shit.

[captpain]

Many thanks for the .ini Cagar, I can finally vsinc this shit.

why would you do that

[joeboto]

Smooth as silk. The stage 2 boss sprite flicker is there though.

Btw what's the deal with Deathsmiles MBL? There's nothing in the archive.

seems like all the parent roms are build in one big zip, the child rom is only placeholder.

[Vamos]

Works flawlessly great job! Just curious but why is mushi now 410mb though?

[AntiFritz]

Works flawlessly great job! Just curious but why is mushi now 410mb though?

Because it includes three versions.

[Vamos]

Works flawlessly great job! Just curious but why is mushi now 410mb though?

Because it includes three versions.

Ah ok thanks!

[MadScientist]

It does contain 3 versions, but as well as that, the files inside the zip file don't seem to actually be compressed - see here (new one on top - prior mushi on the bottom);

http://i.imgur.com/4FyziXP.jpg

Just tried unzipping it and rezipping it (with 7zip). File size went from 410MB to ~95MB (the previous rom was ~36.5MB). The game seemed to work just as well as before.

[joeboto]

oh theres a new mushisamb. whats the dot version? ive read that somewhere on haze page but its down at the moment.

[matrigs]

oh theres a new mushisamb. whats the dot version? ive read that somewhere on haze page but its down at the moment.

Bugfix.

[Vamos]

Will mushi 1.5 be making an appearance at somepoint?

[cools]

Man, Pink Sweets 2006/xx/xx MASTER VER. doesn't seem as broken as arcade otaku's wiki makes out. Defaults to Free Play but I have ship selection and special mode doesn't seem to fuck up the attract mode.

You sure you're able to choose the different types of each characters ship? As for the latter (and the lack of a hw revision number), shows that the emulation needs a lot of work.

[matrigs]

How do you unlock strong in DFK 1.5 ?

[DocHauser]

From the strategy thread:

After putting in a coin, hold down ABD on the 2P side and input the following code on the 1P side:
B・C・B・A・D・down・up・A・A・D・D・C・C・B・B・left・left・A・right・left・left・left

Or just 1CC the game.

[matrigs]

Or just 1CC the game.

That's what i need strong for.

Quite weird that they decided to hide the easier mode, instead of the harder as they did before, which made sense.

Thanks !

[AntiFritz]

Man, Pink Sweets 2006/xx/xx MASTER VER. doesn't seem as broken as arcade otaku's wiki makes out. Defaults to Free Play but I have ship selection and special mode doesn't seem to fuck up the attract mode.

You sure you're able to choose the different types of each characters ship? As for the latter (and the lack of a hw revision number), shows that the emulation needs a lot of work.

I tried Kasumi B and Kasumi Start and then picked up the first power up icon and they were different shot types (B shot had the rockets firing straight ahead whereas start had them fly back then forwards). I didn't do anything more in depth then this though.

[Cagar]

Or just 1CC the game.

That's what i need strong for.

Quite weird that they decided to hide the easier mode, instead of the harder as they did before, which made sense.

Thanks !

It's not just easy, but hilariously overpowered.
It makes sense, they wanted players to spend their coins on the normal mode before giving out the funny mode. I think it's about money

but yeah

Would dumped saidaioujou work with this UME version?

[Formless God]

seems like all the parent roms are build in one big zip, the child rom is only placeholder.

Aah, I glanced through the filenames too quickly. Thanks!

Would dumped saidaioujou work with this UME version?

Are you just asking in advance or is this actually a thing already?

[Udderdude]

SDOJ port has 360 mode and 1.5, why would you even want to emulate the original with the score bug?

[rtw]

Playing Pink Sweets XX/XX is a bit pointless

I have been told that ALL the Pink Sweets XX/XX versions are actually professionally done bootleg conversions of a trade show version (hence freeplay by default and XX/XX because there was no release date at the time etc.). Supposedly CAVE have gone from being unwilling to fix them to not even returning the boards.

[Cagar]

SDOJ port has 360 mode and 1.5, why would you even want to emulate the original with the score bug?

Keyboard controls, better graphics, and possibly less input lag and some other things like portability

[matrigs]

Because he likes to be too close for comfort

[cools]

Playing Pink Sweets XX/XX is a bit pointless

I have been told that ALL the Pink Sweets XX/XX versions are actually professionally done bootleg conversions of a trade show version (hence freeplay by default and XX/XX because there was no release date at the time etc.). Supposedly CAVE have gone from being unwilling to fix them to not even returning the boards.

That actually makes total sense.

[IseeThings]

I'd also like to use this thread to highlight another fairly important issue.

The Flash roms Cave have used for the data on these SH3 boards do not appear to be very good, and appear to be failing at an alarming rate.

I don't know if they're just poor quality by default, or reject bin material, but Cave were certainly aware that some of the flash ROMs could potentially contain bad blocks. The start of the u2 flash rom for each game has a table marking the bad blocks in the ROM. The rest of the ROM is then programmed around those bad blocks in an attempt to make sure no code / data was written to bad parts of the ROM.

unfortunately either the roms are decaying post-programming, or the method Cave used to detect bad blocks was imperfect, because we're seeing lots and lots of boards where the flash roms are starting to go bad or contain bad data (for games with uncompressed graphics this can lead to bad pixels here and there - you might not even notice, for compressed ones it can be worse)

there are definitely some in a state of rapid decay with at least one known case where somebody dumped it a few months back, and dumped it again now only to find a lot more bad blocks.

the bad roms returned to Cave appear to get reprogrammed as other games (again programming around the freshly marked bad blocks) so newer games seem to suffer from this even more than older ones. This is evident as later games with bad blocks have data from older games in those bad blocks.

I'm told it took *3* DFK1.5 boards (all with partially bad data rom) to get a good dump. The reason there are a bunch of different u2 roms in some other games (even after you strip away unused garbage / leftovers from previous games) is similar.

this is kinda worrying, and if you have one of the *rare* games more so, because it's possible you're sitting on a time-bomb that you simply won't be able to reprogram / replace later if there are no dumps.

note, this might not be Cave's fault, but simply the nature of the flash roms, many of the multi-game neogeo bootlegs, atomiswave bootlegs, blue-elf + happy-fish multigames etc. (all using similar types of ROMs but of a higher capacity) suffer from an almost identical problem where blocks end up failing leaving some games glitchy / unplayable.

obviously there is a fine line between what is 'OK' and 'not OK' when emulating these things, but I think one of the reasons the dumpers decided to release the roms in this case is because they find the above situation highly disturbing and want to ensure that as many people dump and verify their boards before the situation becomes worse and finding non-corrupt copies of the games is much harder.

of course if people start converting other games using bad roms (and there are definitely some unofficial conversions out there already, the asian factories know where the money is) then even having 2 copies of something might not confirm it as good.

a messy situation I'm sure you'll agree.

[cools]

I don't know if they're just poor quality by default, or reject bin material, but Cave were certainly aware that some of the flash ROMs could potentially contain bad blocks. The start of the u2 flash rom for each game has a table marking the bad blocks in the ROM. The rest of the ROM is then programmed around those bad blocks in an attempt to make sure no code / data was written to bad parts of the ROM.

Isn't this entirely normal usage for flash chips?

[Jaimers]

SDOJ port has 360 mode and 1.5, why would you even want to emulate the original with the score bug?

Like anybody on this forum could trigger the score bug.

Also 1.5 is silly.

[IseeThings]

I don't know if they're just poor quality by default, or reject bin material, but Cave were certainly aware that some of the flash ROMs could potentially contain bad blocks. The start of the u2 flash rom for each game has a table marking the bad blocks in the ROM. The rest of the ROM is then programmed around those bad blocks in an attempt to make sure no code / data was written to bad parts of the ROM.

Isn't this entirely normal usage for flash chips?

Yes, it's sensible use of them as a precaution, the main issue is that we're seeing data on (unmarked) bad blocks anyway so either they didn't do a good job of detecting the bad blocks, or they've gone bad since. Both are significant cause for concern IMHO.

[monouchi]

Thanks IseeThings for the info. Thats interesting and scary.

[AntiFritz]

That sounds rather sad. I feel bad for people that have spent thousands on pcbs which may not even work correctly in 10+ years time. Wonder what the state of a lot of early Mushihime-sama boards is.