Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Korama - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Jcaraballo, on 07 April 2015 - 05:55 PM, said:

Nothing happened to them, so far.

Graxer, on 12 April 2015 - 11:12 AM, said:

Thanks!
Yeah, the Sonic CD opening I uploaded requires an installed codec that handles Xvid/DivX. Maybe I should have used mpg or mp4, but at the moment I have only avi playback implemented.

Chris Highwind, on 12 April 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:

Yes, the original link is still up-to-date. The version is 1.0.0.24 for the launcher and 2.0.1.58 for the DLL.
You are selecting a mounted ISO (I.e. a virtual CD drive), not an ISO file itself, right?

MainMemory, on 06 April 2015 - 11:37 AM, said:

Thanks!

Tets, on 06 April 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

That's strange, as it works just fine for me. I'll have to do some research on this.

Unfortunately I have to focus on other things at the moment, so it will take a while before I'll be able to release an update, then with support for Bug!, hopefully.

MainMemory, on 05 April 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

I know it was intended to be renamed, but that clashes with my philosophy of not changing the original files.

InvisibleUp, on 05 April 2015 - 07:25 PM, said:

Yes, you can copy the original CD content to HDD yourself, or you could just use the "install from original CD" feature, after all I went to the trouble of making it. It's actually preferrable to use the launcher's install function, because it'll copy the necessary files, which might not always be identical to a manual copy. Sonic CD for example doesn't have the two required RDX libraries in its "GAME" folder, but the launcher's install function will place them there for you.
The "pick already installed location" function is rather dumb at this point. It only checks if there's a valid executable in the folder you select. The original Ecco-only launcher checked the existence of all required data files as well. I guess I should add that feature again.

As for starting games directly and not with the launcher: some work, some don't. It depends on when the game in question loads ddraw.dll, the DLL that contains my patches. Some games have a static reference to ddraw.dll in their import table, so that Windows automatically loads ddraw.dll the moment the game is executed, meaning my patches can modify the game in memory before it gets a chance to run. That's the case with Sonic 3D Blast, and Bug! as well. Other games however load ddraw.dll only later during their execution. Sometimes too late, I.e. after running unwanted or broken code (CD checks, video mode checks, etc.). Starting the games via launcher makes sure that ddraw.dll will be loaded right from the start, regardless whether the game originally imported it statically or dynamically (or not at all).

muteKi, on 06 April 2015 - 06:11 AM, said:

Thanks. Sounds like you have changed some settings of Sonic 3D. It lets you choose between 50, 55, and 60 fps, and has a setting cryptically named "motion smoothing". What the latter actually does is half the frame rate when disabled. So, selecting "60 fps" in S3D's game menu will actually result in 30 fps, unless "motion smoothing" is enabled. Alternatively, the "sleep value" (near the bottom of the launcher's configuration page) could be too high. Try reducing it (Alt+"-" and Alt+"+" while the game is running).

I'm not sure what you mean about Sonic CD. Does the normal stage music not resume after the speed-up track? Or is there just a delay / pause? If it's the latter, the pause might be in your audio file.

Chibisteven, on 04 April 2015 - 02:36 PM, said:

Thanks for your feedback! I had the same problem with Sonic & Knuckles Collection not terminating properly, I mentioned it here before. It happens because when the game shuts down, it calls FreeLibrary to unload the music library MIDIOUT.DLL from memory, but for some reason, that causes an access violation in MIDIOUT.DLL. I found out that by calling the "initialize" function of MIDIOUT before freeing, the error won't happen.
I will try to tackle Sonic R, but I can't say when.
Concerning Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Sound Blaster FM: I don't feel that's my department. The game has outsorced its complete music to the mentioned MIDIOUT.DLL library, whose interface is known. So, anyone could relatively easily create a compatible replacement for it to change everything about the music.

MainMemory, on 04 April 2015 - 04:52 PM, said:

Great! By the way, I found another small issue with SMPSOUT: it expects that there's a MIDIOUTY.DLL. If there isn't, and you have a track configured to use the MIDI version, the game will crash. I think SMPSOUT should check first whether MIDIOUTY.DLL exists, and if it doesn't, use MIDIOUT.DLL instead.
Weird issue with your controller. I hope it'll work better once I have completed the new joystick handling code.


In other news, I got Bug! working, but it's not release-worthy yet (doesn't play its videos and music yet). The game lives up to its name and has a nasty bug in its DirectDraw initialization code, writing to a memory object that is allocated only later. But that's not actually what prevented it from running. As usual, it wants a 256 color video mode and also refuses to run in video modes wider than 1024 pixels. I guess they did this for performance reasons, but it was quite short-sighted, after all processing power is known to increase with each new CPU generation.
The nice thing is that the software 3D engine scales, so instead of playing it like this (internal resolution: 320x240, stretched to 1920x1200) (or with halftone stretching, which is usable here, as the game runs at 30 fps, not 60), you can play it like this (internal resolution: 1920x1200). The textures and sprites are still awfully low-res up close, but they look nicer in the distance and the polygons are sharp.

Bug! also has a hidden cheat code: in the Help / About dialog box, there's an invisible edit field that is supposed to capture key input. If you typed "babyseals", it should activate a cheat menu entry with a few options. However, I don't see any way to give input focus to that edit field so that it would actually receive keypresses. Maybe it worked in older Windows versions. Anyway, I can easily activate that cheat menu by other means.

I didn't make the sound file for Sonic CD, it came from the original 16 bit release, but wasn't included in the 32 bit one (and even disabled in code there).
But I have been thinking about custom sound effects for SCD and S&KC, I.e. using individual external files like Ecco and S3D already do.
I'd also like to add a volume control for sound effects, because I find it annoying when games are significantly louder than other apps and don't offer that functionality.
You can already control the bass.dll playback volume (Alt+Up/Down hotkeys). That reminds me, could you add volume control to smpsout.dll?
In the form of another exported function like "SetVolume" or similar. No urgency, but it would be nice to have.

Yes, Sonic 3D Blast doesn't play the speed shoes and invincibility tracks, even though they are on CD.
The tracks are just never used by the game code, I checked. The only way that I can think of to enable them, is to understand the game logic,
find the precise location of the piece of code that gets executed whenever those powerups become active, and then hack into it to start
the appropriate tracks.