[jpx72]

I was finaly able to reproduce the famous Rockman 4 Minus Infinity hack on a cartridge and I have a problem. It's nothing hardware related I'm afraid, but the hack itself is flawed.

Although it is not occuring very often, the "weapons menu" which is usually activated by pressing Start button, is popping up from time to time.
I'd say it's a random occurence when pressing other buttons, but as 3gengames from NA said "it's probably corrupting controller writes from some DPCM samples" .

So my question is simple - can this be repaired? By someone here?
Author of this hack, puresabe, is Japanese, and it might be worth a shot to contact him directly (in his mother-tongue)  and let him know about this effort and compatibility issues. If I have translated his readme.txt correctly, he knows about issues in Nestopia emulator, because primarily he used FCEUX. And since Nestopia is closer to the real hardware, the issues occur on the real thing too (the same glitch occurs both in Nestopia and real hardware).

Author's website: http://borokobo.web.fc2.com   http://www4.atpages.jp/borokobo

Any ideas and help-out is appreciated!
I want this hack to get more attention since it's the best bloody Rockman hack out there!

PS: Label made by RainLink at Famicomworld.com [link to the topic]

[Dizzy9]

IF 3gengames is right, then game have to read the controller data multiple times until they get two consecutive reads which match.
It's just what I think, I never ecoutered it myself.

[kuja killer]

I can probably have him check out this thread.
I've personally talked with puresabe many times before, on japanese 2ch BBS, and his own personal forum on his site.

We're good friends so i can probably let him know about it.
This hack does use both controller 1, and controller 2..
Controller 2 is used for weapon swapping... dont know if that might be releated to the problem or not.

And i think he has modified parts of the sound/music engine to do some MMC5 mapper-specific stuff, but im not too sure because i know absolutely ZERO about how to do music/sound stuff.

[jpx72]

I can probably have him check out this thread.

That would be awesome! Can you please do that? You can tell him I can provide any necessary information on the reproduction or gameplay.

Let me add more info about the actual reproduction cart that I haven't added before:

Hack:              latest puresabe's version - Rockman 4 MI version 0.01
Donor board:    HVC-ETROM-01
PRG:               8Mbit UV EPROM: ST M27C801
CHR:               replaced by 8KB SRAM: GM76C88AL-15

[kuja killer]

Okay i got a reply, im not sure if  he'll make another patch just for this specific case considering 4mi is already finished anyways.
And because of this using the MMC5 mapper, which my game does as well...and its not expected to work perfectly 100% on real NES..

But here's what he said anyway just to show
------------------------------------
Hi, Kujakiller.
Thank you for your information about the project.

To tell the truth, I had given up to run 4mi on real NES machine because I don't have NES hardware knowledge at all.
But I hear the probability of real machine working, I was much surprised.
And I must try to fix the DPCM/controller problem.

Regards,
Puresabe

[curses]

Maybe somebody at NESdev can help??

[jpx72]

Okay i got a reply, im not sure if  he'll make another patch just for this specific case considering 4mi is already finished anyways.
And because of this using the MMC5 mapper, which my game does as well...and its not expected to work perfectly 100% on real NES..

Oh thank you kuja killer! That response is more than I have hoped for! At least I know he never thought about real hardware compatibility.
Well in the response you've quoted he said "I must try to fix..." so maybe he will look at it sometime. Hope never dies
From my experience, every rom that has no issues in Nestopia emulator is working fine on real hardware. He should know about this. Hell, I will make him a repro of his cart for free if he will fix the hack! 

Maybe somebody at NESdev can help??

Well maybe yes, but they will probably need some info from puresabe himself, some developement notes or uncompiled code....

[kuja killer]

Sorry that im a few days late..

Okay, apparently i was kind of wrong. i didn't think he'd make a fix, but he actually did though matter of fact.

He even updated his site 2 times (in japanese only).. and even went as far as completing translating your whole entire post (the first post of this topic), from english to japanese, for his japanese viewers.

That's pretty cool!!

http://borokobo.web.fc2.com/neo/index.html

the 9-15-12, and 9-16-12 updates.
He explained in alot of in-depth detail about the whole situation.

And then posted a small IPS patch that you should apply to the 0.01 MMC5 version release.

[jpx72]

Kuja killer, you are not late, not late at all! This is so AWESOME!
 
That is really unbelievable, he did it so quickly! I reposted this information to other related topics on Famicomworld and Nintendoage already so hopefully we will get some responses from testers of this new patch!
I will reburn my cartridge and test it on real hardware, so keep your fingers crossed people!
 
Thank you again kuja killer, without your help, this wouldn't have been possible!


EDIT: I've been testing the new patch for a while in Nestopia emulator and so far it looks great! Not a single wrong controller response or menu pop-up, I think he's done it! Will report tomorrow about real hardware test.

[kuja killer]

Good good, glad to hear that it worked out. Always expecting the best from puresabe.
----------------------------------------
I kinda wondered if my game would even be able to run on real NES someday in the distant future..  but it would probably have some problems.

Well, it was tested one time before a couple years ago with a powerpak by a person named "loopy" and the only single thing that didn't work was the pause menu, because the pause menu is stored directly in the 6000-7FFF RAM.

And i use more than the normal 8K save-ram, because the MMC5 mapper can have up to 64K ya know ?? And the menu runs inside of the 2nd page.

And the powerpak supposedly doesn't support that, heh.

[jpx72]

Ok so first impression from real hardware testing:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Works like a charm! Played for one hour and nothing weird hapened, no bug, no glitch, no nothing! Works PERFECT!
 
This calls for a celebration! 

PS: thanks for the added info from puresabe! If he ever wants his hack on a cartridge, tell him to let me know

[pemdawg]

What's the deal with the 0.05 patch? I dont want it, but I am curious about it, as it has been mentioned elsewhere. What are the changes? Is it an unfinished leak, or a mod made by someone else?

[guitarzombie]

I found it and as far as I know if you get to Dr. Wily without dying you'll find a really difficult Shadow Man.  I never did it personally but i think theres a vid of the fight on youtubes.

[pemdawg]

Is that the only change?

[guitarzombie]

As far as I know yeah.  I never played that version personally but thats just what I saw from that video.  Also I think its called the Shadow Man patch or whatever.  He released it and then pulled it, prob to work on some more extra stuff on it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG9Yp3wSIqw

[pemdawg]

Wow. That is intense! Good thing a repro is updatable. About to get a copy, and I will certainly upgrade once an official update arrives!