Batsugun's Sound Has Finally Been Emulated

[gameoverDude]

I've noticed TM's faults especially in Grind Stormer. Sometimes when you start a new game, you'll get the boss music instead of the proper 1st stage BGM. TM's stopgap solution is definitely not near as good as actual audio emulation, and it'll be obsolete when MAME one day has GS, Vimana, Fire Shark, and the others working with real sound.

Great news on the Batsugun sound emulation.

[drboom]

Shmupmame new release plz

Yup. Seconded.

[Paradigm]

Thundermame is not correct in terms of either graphics, or audio, your post is incredibly rude towards those who have spent time and money in trying to get this done properly.

How is he being incredibly rude? He wasn't slagging you off, he just said that he's satisfied with how it currently runs in TM.

If people want to spend their time and money getting Batsugun perfectly emulated, that's entirely their decision. It doesn't mean david peterson or anybody else owes them anything.

Oh and FYI - since you've been waiting in excess of ten years to play Batsugun properly - there's a Saturn port available.

[emphatic]

How is he being incredibly rude? He wasn't slagging you off, he just said that he's satisfied with how it currently runs in TM.

The "Who cares?" comment was quite unnecessary. Quite a lot of people care.

Oh and FYI - since you've been waiting in excess of ten years to play Batsugun properly - there's a Saturn port available.

It's not about playing, it's about getting it properly emulated.

[IseeThings]

How is he being incredibly rude? He wasn't slagging you off, he just said that he's satisfied with how it currently runs in TM.

The "Who cares?" comment was quite unnecessary. Quite a lot of people care.

exactly, "who cares" is rude spoiled brattish behavior.

this is a bigger achievement than getting the Cave PGM stuff running.

[Despatche]

How is he being incredibly rude? He wasn't slagging you off, he just said that he's satisfied with how it currently runs in TM.

Who cares? i play the game with sound in thundermame where it comes from is not important the experience is still identicle.

This isn't "incredibly rude"? Get out.

If people want to spend their time and money getting Batsugun perfectly emulated, that's entirely their decision. It doesn't mean david peterson or anybody else owes them anything.

It means he has no right to walk in here and "who cares". Get out.

Oh and FYI - since you've been waiting in excess of ten years to play Batsugun properly - there's a Saturn port available.

Opting for the Saturn port basically says "I'm never going to play this game properly", period. Get out.

And answer my PM.

[Matsunaga]

Amazing how something like Batsugun's sound working can cause a fight... People are nuts...

[captpain]

This isn't "incredibly rude"? Get out.

If people want to spend their time and money getting Batsugun perfectly emulated, that's entirely their decision. It doesn't mean david peterson or anybody else owes them anything.

It means he has no right to walk in here and "who cares". Get out.

It's just rude, not 'extremely'. Also, he has that right (but doesn't anymore because he's banned)!

[captpain]

Anyway I am psyched about this, because I only recently discovered Batsugun. I always sort of wrote it off as a sluggish game that had obligatory respect in the shmup community but it turns out that it's actually fun (imagine that )! I'd never even heard the music until now and it has a great overly-excited arcade vibe to it.

[Paradigm]

Opting for the Saturn port basically says "I'm never going to play this game properly", period. Get out.

And answer my PM.

Yeah OK. To anyone out there with the Saturn port, you might be playing Batsugun, but you're not playing it 'properly'.

Oh and this PM?

You are a strange individual. Why are you here?

[Despatche]

It's just rude, not 'extremely'. Also, he has that right (but doesn't anymore because he's banned)!

It's principle, it's all about principle... it really is.

[esreveR]

I don't quite understand why the sound wasn't working in the first place. Can someone please explain this to me? D:

Also, I got Batsugun for the Saturn before MAME had correct sound emulation and I found...I wasn't exactly missing out on much D:

I want to hear Dogyuun in action though.

[drauch]

For a second there I wondered if david peterson got banned for posting in this thread and I was a bit confused, then I read his post history...

[TrevHead (TVR)]

For a second there I wondered if david peterson got banned for posting in this thread and I was a bit confused, then I read his post history...

He really had a chip on his shoulder, at times I thought it was a troll account. Lets hope we can go back to having decent threads without all this senseless bickerring we've been having recently

EDIT out of curiousity, when banned is put up below the username is that just a perma ban or temp ban?

[IseeThings]

I don't quite understand why the sound wasn't working in the first place. Can someone please explain this to me? D:

Also, I got Batsugun for the Saturn before MAME had correct sound emulation and I found...I wasn't exactly missing out on much D:

I want to hear Dogyuun in action though.

For many years it was thought that the Batsugun sound code was stored in an MCU and was impossible to extract (with technology / resources available at the time) This was the case for several earlier Toaplan titles, so attempting to emulate the sound on them was largely put aside under the logical assumption that these were the same.

A couple of years later it was discovered that the later "Toaplan Type 2" games actually use the main game CPU to upload their sound programs, but the uploaded programs were encrypted, and the CPU type couldn't be identified.

Somebody then noted that Batsugun wasn't encrypted, and it was identified as V20 / V30 code, the same CPU IREM used for their sound CPUs (In The Hunt, Undercover Cops etc.)

However, the code didn't run properly with the MAME V20/V30 cores, because unlike the IREM games, Toaplan made use of some extra features in the specific model of the CPU they used (which are actually V25 chips)

Those features have just been added to the core by AWJ, allowing the sound program to run, and sound to be properly emulated in Batsugun. This wasn't the easiest of work because it required substantial changes to the CPU core in order to support the new features.

The Batsugun sound program is almost identical to the Knuckle Bash sound program, but the latter is encrypted. By comparing the two programs Knuckle Bash can also be decrypted, this is almost done. Work so far has shown Dogyuun and V-Five to use the same encryption table as Knuckle Bash, so by decrypting Knuckle Bash they will be much closer to having sound too, they might even simply just start working at that point.

Fix Eight uses a different encryption table, but the sound program on it is almost the same as Dogyuun, so again, by virtue of decrypting the Dogyuun it will be easy to decrypt Fix Eight by comparing the program code.

Right now only Batsugun has sound, but I'd expect Knuckle Bash, Dogyuun and V-Five to follow shortly, there are no technical hurdles for those anymore. Fix Eight could take a little longer, but not too much longer.

It makes more sense to do things like this properly than hack in samples from the OST.

For the older Toaplan games the original problem remains, the sound code is confirmed to be inside the CPU, however the technology to extract it is available as a service now, but not a cheap service.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for the technical write-up.

[mjclark]

For many years it was thought that the Batsugun sound code was stored in an MCU and was impossible to extract (with technology / resources available at the time) This was the case for several earlier Toaplan titles, so attempting to emulate the sound on them was largely put aside under the logical assumption that these were the same.
A couple of years later it was discovered that the later "Toaplan Type 2" games actually use the main game CPU to upload their sound programs

It fascinates and intrigues me that there are still so many unknowns and new discoveries to be made (with emulation as well as with scoring mechanics) like discovering new species of insects in the rain forests.
I always wonder where the original developers and technicians are cos they could explain everything and clear away many mysteries if they were tracked down (and in my experience are usually keen to talk).
It would be amazing to interview, say, the technician who designed the Batsugun PCB or the guy who developed the scoring system for G-Stream G2020 but I guess that would need some serious detective work and some very fluent Japanese

[undamned]

Batsugun's sound working can cause a fight

Sigworthy.
-ud

[linko9]

This is such awesome news! I was able to get Batsugun's sound working in Thundermame with samples, but not Dogyuun. I really love the Dogyuun soundtrack, so I can't wait to play the game with sound!

[Master O]

Robiza - Toaplan 2 Update

note: The above site is originally in Italian.

[trap15]

this is a bigger achievement than getting the Cave PGM stuff running.

Well, my contributions feel marginalized. Awesome.

This was not a difficult thing to do, it was just tedious and AWJ happened to be the only one who cared enough to do it.
It should have been in the core in the first place. Getting PGM sound working was far harder, as it actually required real reverse engineering and such, whereas all of this was documented very clearly in the datasheet.

[IseeThings]

this is a bigger achievement than getting the Cave PGM stuff running.

Well, my contributions feel marginalized. Awesome.

This was not a difficult thing to do, it was just tedious and AWJ happened to be the only one who cared enough to do it.
It should have been in the core in the first place. Getting PGM sound working was far harder, as it actually required real reverse engineering and such, whereas all of this was documented very clearly in the datasheet.

I was referring to it from a 'protection' point of view. Using obscure features of a CPU ended up being a better protection than the stuff Cave put in.

Also from an age / preservation point of view, the last time Batsugun got ported was the Saturn and the game is now 18 years old.

Now, if a company owns, or wants to buy up the rights to the game to port it to a modern platform they have all the knowledge they need to provide a 100% authentic arcade emulation as part of their port, as well as a correct easily debuggable reference for creating it. The Cave code is more modern, and the company still around to develop it, so chances are if somebody wanted to port it they would have access to easily compilable C sources. (not that it hasn't stopped them messing it up in the past)

I believe by your own admission some of the PGM sound stuff is still a bit hacky?

It's often been stated that the reason many of the Sega game packs that were released prior to MAME emulating the Sega protection devices only included unprotected games, often based on bootleg code is because they really had no other source of information for them anymore.

Hopefully that reassures you as to why I consider this to be a bigger achievement. I feel it helps the industry more, and was in more urgent need of doing. It also closes the book on the 11 year saga that has been the emulation of the game.

That's not to say the Cave stuff wasn't good to see, it was good to get more of the revisions found and documented, which helps owners of the PCB know if they're running the most recent known bug-fixed code, and the emulation of them definitely helped with that.

I would still consider the aforementioned Sega emulation to be an even bigger achievement than either of these! Never underestimate the importance of having an old game properly emulated if you want to do a port. I know people who have worked in the industry and have turned down the chance to port certain old games to XBLA because the emulation wasn't good enough (not a good reference), and the company was unable / unwilling to supply original sources (or they were simply assembly language)

[austere]

SquidMan, I'm going to have to agree with IseeThings. Batsugun's sound getting emulated is the grand-daddy achievement in emulation history. Even Kale's recent work on the Seibu driver pales in comparison. The realisation that V20/V30 code was being uploaded was so insightful, I don't think even the NSA could have figured it out. It's hard to tell x86-like opcodes from encrypted bytecode for an obscure processor, it's quite rare you see.

In fact I heard there isn't even a datasheet on these things!

I believe by your own admission some of the PGM sound stuff is still a bit hacky?

The ICS2115 driver is a complete hack, I just made it all up, trying everything until it worked. In fact, I was drunk half the time so if the sound begins to skip/slow down, you can blame the booze.

I feel it helps the industry more, and was in more urgent need of doing.

I totally agree, the industry was in shambles until Batsugun's sound got emulated properly. With this move, NYSE:MAME's stock has risen 50% while FBA.L eased a little on the news. An industry conference is being held to discuss the full ramifications of the changes to the CPU core, right after the end of the MAME expo to be held in Moscow.

[IseeThings]

SquidMan, I'm going to have to agree with IseeThings. Batsugun's sound getting emulated is the grand-daddy achievement in emulation history. Even Kale's recent work on the Seibu driver pales in comparison. The realisation that V20/V30 code was being uploaded was so insightful, I don't think even the NSA could have figured it out. It's hard to tell x86-like opcodes from encrypted bytecode for an obscure processor, it's quite rare you see.

You mean the stuff I've been helping Kale with? That's pretty damn important.

Sometimes you've got to keep things in perspective tho. Nowhere have I said 'who cares?' as the original poster did. I've simply said Batsugun sound was a bigger achievement than figuring out the protection on the Cave games, which for various reasons, it was. I laughed when I figured that one out.

I do wonder why you're trying to flame me for saying a piece of work I played one of the most significant roles in getting working is less important than one where I didn't. You could have kept backwards label if you really wanted...

[austere]

It's called trolling and you and I are both pretty good at it. I did get you to reveal your identity, didn't I?

[IseeThings]

It's called trolling and you and I are both pretty good at it. I did get you to reveal your identity, didn't I?

I believe most people had already figured that one out

[austere]

Some had doubts, I knew from the very beginning.

[jonny5]

Gentleman, you are both heroes to the community! Sleep soundly knowing you have put an ear to ear smile on the faces of many people through your actions.

Your work is appreciated.

[chempop]

Undamned beat me to it, but...

Shmups forum - where Batsugun's working sound causes fights

Btw, I love the music in batsugun and also the Saturn's arrange music. Not enough verts have unique tunes for each boss. Stage 5's relaxing melody is quite epic paired with the circuit-board looking city scape.

[Zeron]

I might aswell post this here

Who Let the Dogyuun Out?

Following on from the previous post…

Robiza and AWJ have been working away at the encryption on the remaining Toaplan games which use a V25 CPU.

http://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/