Gradius 2 enhancement patch

Nice!

Thumbs up to the smooth scroll! and suddenly I suck at the game due to the higher speed.
(tried it on a tR with mpazos megaflashromscc)

Maybe because it appends data to the ROM, I think IPS v2 supports that tough.

(you should be on IRC)

I got it to work in openmsx, it plays reaaally well, thanks a lot!

What I did: You need MSX-DOS, execrom.com, gradius2.xpc, and nemesis2.rom on the same disk (directory).
The trick is, nemesis2.rom must have the right md5sum. The ones on msx archive have the wrong one! You can find the right nemesis 2 rom with google on page 4 or 5.
Then in openmsx you enable extension megaram. Boot up in msx dos, and run execrom /Pgradius2.xpm /S /B nemesis2.rom

Feature request: if you have an MSX2 with a V9958, it doesn't do smooth scroll, please detect the VDP instead of relying on address 0x2D.

Otherwise, this ROCKS!

on bluemsx v2.8 it has glitches!
once each 8 frames the x offset is wrong....

Feature request: if you have an MSX2 with a V9958, it doesn't do smooth scroll, please detect the VDP instead of relying on address 0x2D.
Hi Manuel!

Unfortunately this is not possible, because those machines don't have the VDP wait-signal circuitry, which is mandatory for a MSX2+ and is required by the smooth scroll routines because I'm using the high speed VRAM transfer by enabling the WTE bit of the register #25.

A great enhancement for a konami game yet again. Would it mean much work to make this patch (or a seperate one) work for the so-called nemesis 2 beta?

As Metaion, I would like to have details on dynamic vsync
The answers I had are largely unsatisfactory
Please!

Sorry for my previous somewhat agressive reaction. Of course I value the work done, even more considering that Nemesis 2 is my favourite MSX game. Maybe I should follow the advise of counting up to ten before sending something to Internet.

I finally managed to make it work by directly patching the ROM file. However it does not work quite well in BlueMSX. The scroll is smooth, but every time it is supposed to show a new tile column, the screen horribly glitches, making it impossible to play.

I guess it is simply too much for an emulator, so I will try it later on my real Turbo-R. Anyway if someone manages to run it correctly un BlueMSX, please tell.

Yes, I use BlueMSX 2.8, the latest version available.

http://samor.nl/hap/crap/gra2m_ips.zip
This is an ips version of the scroll+turbo patch, works with BiFi's ips4msx too. Patch goodmsx "Gradius 2 (1987) (Konami) (J) [a1].rom" and it'll create a 256KB file with the end filled with $FF.

Would the smooth scroll be possible with Salamander?

"Aside note: yes, "the process is hard", both for IPS and for XPC patches. I can't wait for the day in which we finally abandon that political correctness and start distributing directly the patched ROMs. Piracy? Uh, yeah, we will send Konami to bankrupcy by distributing ROMs for a system abandoned 15 years ago."

The minute you do that, Konami will post on MRC one of those "Lack Of Respect" angry texts saying that they will abandon the MSX scene forever...

People, calm down. What kind of attitude is that?

I'm improving/bugfixing the games because I like a lot to play them, and decided to share those with the (I believed so) friends I made in the MSX community.

I was hoping to made the MSX community happy (just as it happened here), but the kind of reactions shown here is making me think if I did the right thing...

I decided not to use an ips patch because I feared the critics would raise their voices and shout "What?!? A 128KB patch just for that?!?!? The game doubled its size!!! Don't you know how to code properly?!? And it even don't work on my xyz ips 1.0 patcher! Make it work now!"

And fear is not quite the right thing to have in mind when developing this kind of project, or is it?

Also I do not post ROMs because MRC itself has a anti-warez policy in place. I'm not questioning this decision, but the case is: It would not be such a great news to have like "google somewhere in the Internet for the download link". Also, lawyers don't mind if a game or a mouse has a copyright of more than 50 years, right? So I want to avoid troubles with them. Both lawyers and mouses. :)

Changing the subject: My free time is falling like a rock, as RealLife (TM) is calling. I'll take some time to answer the good questions raised here, but some can require quite a lot of time if I was to answer it with deep details. Please have some patience until I can answer.

My plan was (if people really liked this enhancement) to proceed to Gofer no Yabō Episode II (aka Nemesis-3), that will require more time, of course. On a limited-time scenario, which one would you prefer?parodius in my case =p

best msx news of the year.

I finally could made it to work, by using the IPS patch (I'll try the XPC patch + file enlargement, anyway). What can I say? It rocks to the point where nobody has rocked before (TM). You took a perfect game and made it even more perfect. I'm sooo happy! ^___^

As a collateral effect, as the game goes now faster (at least in Turbo-R), it is also noticeably harder. For example, in the original game I had no problem beating the stage 2 boss fast enough to get two additional weapons. In this version, I have a hard time just trying to survive! I love that!

Aiming now for Nemesis 3 is a great idea IMHO. And simply to bother you a little more, could it be possible to implement smooth scroll on MSX2, by using the "set adjust" technique as in Space Manbow?

This was exactly what I was hoping someone would do. Thank you!
I too had problems with xps (probably because I didn't pad it), but ips works and the patched game is simply amazing. I always thought why Konami didn't do it themselves.
I am sure it is possible to contact Konami/D4E and get this distributed in some digital distribution form or as a new ROM if they want to, and you should be able to negotiate a deal to recoupe the patch dev cost. As long as the patched game is tested.

Great work, man!

Aiming now for Nemesis 3 is a great idea IMHO. And simply to bother you a little more, could it be possible to implement smooth scroll on MSX2, by using the "set adjust" technique as in Space Manbow?
I suppose the main problem about trying that is the same as Salamander's vertical stages... all sprites should be relocated everytime the screen scrolls.

I am sure it is possible to contact Konami/D4E and get this distributed in some digital distribution form or as a new ROM if they want to, and you should be able to negotiate a deal to recoupe the patch dev cost. As long as the patched game is tested.
It's already done... do you know MSX Gradius 2 for the PSP (included at the Salamander collection)??

So? ????

Amazing work! I'm impressed Thank you! Next step would be screen 4 and adjusted MSX2 graphics, maybe even with SM style scroll. Maybe we could make some contest, with some gfx guys and programmers? I'll contribute. Heck, i'll even consider starting up Polka then ;P
On a side note: I'll understand that explaining how you did all this with example code would mean considerable work. Still, this would allow the rest of us to help do some more games like Parodius and Nemesis 2 Beta. Please consider this, also considering your RL duties.

How about this for a next step in uplifting old games:

- Find out where the music/sfx player is, and where the tunes are
- hack 'em out
- insert a new player, new tunes, for new chips, and create a new ROM!

For instance, think about having SCCPSG music in Usas, Penguin Adventure, Vampire killer etc.!

Great work, man! I downloaded the IPS patch and it plays really nice, thanks for sharing it with us!

Would it be possible to do the same work with Nemesis 1?

I just now tried the rom combination patches. I noticed that if I apply all rom combinations neither of them works. Is that the same as when you would play nemesis 2 with a slotexpander and MOG, Q-bert and Penguin Adventure in it? Never tried that before...

@sd-snatcher: I only asked about nemesis 2 beta because I thought that it would have mostly similar routines and would probably be easier than another game. If you intend to pursue another game in due time that would be very cool as well. Two thumbs up for the great work.

Great stuff, to start with!

I've patched the grad2 ROM file on 2 desktops, both running BlueMSX2.8. On one it runs, on the other the emulator hangs.. huh?
It's exactly the same, patched, ROM file. weir. Oh well, I'd be using OpenMSX for this

And finally, the batch of the most technical questions:

By nikodr on March 25 2009, 00:49
Can you tell us in what place of the rom is the scroll routine?
As i have been trying to dissasemble konami roms it would be good to know specific places of the rom where various routines are located,that way we could learn a lot from the original routines of the game.
There is no single "scroll routine". But I'll list below some of the routines that might interest you.

All offsets are relative to the file beginning.

4845h: Scrolls the background on RAM
497Ah: Starfield scroll
77F1h: Transfer the tiles (nametable) from RAM to the VRAM

By wolf_ on March 25 2009, 21:25
sd_snatcher: I'd say that (obviously) tile-enemies or other moving tile-objects can cause a problem when their scroll speed isn't the same as the level.

You mentioned Salamander above, but how about ripple lasers (which iirc move non-sync with the level) ? You'd get very odd movements I bet!

The effect is similar to the tile-objects of Space Manbow. The movement is fast enough to make it imperceptible. Gradius-2 has a temporary power-up similar to the ripple of the Salamander, which is the "Vector". Try playing Gradius-2 with the Vector on the 3rd stage and you'll see the movement is quite satisfactory.

By Metalion on March 25 2009, 05:27
Could someone explain to me the principle of dynamic vsync ?

The principle is: The vsync is automatically disabled if the game begins to get too slow and also automatically re-enabled when the game is running at the correct speed.

I believe you wanted to ask about the algorithm, which is this:

Repeat
   GameLoop();     /* runs 1 game interaction */
   If ( NOT ( Am_I_too_slow() )   wait_for_vsync();
While ( 1 );

"Am_I_too_slow()" is a routine that answers if the game is running slower than expected.

Quite simple, isn't it?

Last night I had a weird dream: I was about to patch the Gradius 2 ROM file when the XPC utility patched the Basic and Disk ROM instead... Since that my MSX showed at the BASIC bootup: "MSX International Basic 4.0" (the MSX was a NMS8245). I wonder what the dream could mean, maybe I should get a little rest from work

I discovered that ExecROM has a bug that only manifests itself on MSX-DOS1. This bug causes the patch to be applied incorrectly.

So, the easier way to use the XPC patch is to boot a MSX Turbo-R with MSX-DOS2 and a megaram.

I´ll try to fix the ExecROM bug on the next weeks.

Just tried the patch on my real TurboR, the results are awesome, not only the scroll, but the new palatte. Great work!

Confirmed: the XPC-patched version loads fine on a real MSX (I am using an ESE-SCC cartridge) when the patched file is expanded to 256K. By the way, here is how I expanded it by using Linux (assume GRA2.ROM is the original patched file and GRA2-P.ROM is the expanded file):

dd if=/dev/zero of=pad.dat bs=1 count=130385
cat GRA2.ROM pad.dat > GRA2-P.ROM
rm pad.dat

karloch: I want to have this kind of dreams!! How do you do it??

@konamiman: Like I knew it... Futhermore, that's not the weirdest MSX-dream I have had, but I think it's better to stay quiet about the other ones... xD

cat gradius2.rom gradius2.rom > gradius2_padded.rom
OK if the file is exactly 128K long, but the problem here is that we have a 129K file. So you end up with a 258K file.

Anyway, for sure there must be a simpler way for padding files than the one I used.

A terrible blasphemy : sd_snatcher what about a port of Parodius or Nemesis 2 to the P1 mode of the gfx9000?

:-)

Really, having disassembled all the I/O VRAM, why not going further ?

You should patch mainly this routine
77F1h: Transfer the tiles (nametable) from RAM to the VRAM

Moreover you could disable the code for sprite multiplexing to gain CPU
(well, you could disable it even now when on msx>=2)

Just an update to blueMSX users. I confirmed the bug and fixed it. If people are interested I can release a patch with the fix next couple of days or so.

dvik: Please post the patch! We will devour it!

And just one more question about patching, this one could apply to all SCC games:

In Turbo-R, the SCC sounds a lot louder than PSG; actually PSG is almost silent, which results in (for example) drumless music.

Would it be possible to patch these games so, when pressing some key at boot time, the SCC volume is decreased (or the PSG volume increased)? I remember the "Masters SCC" by Martos doing something similar.

cool dvik!

I'm looking at a couple of other minor bugs to see if I can fix them easily. Then I hope we can release 2.8.1 within a week or so. We've done other fixes too since last year that would be nice to finally release.

I made a direct capture of my MSX turboR, so you can see the patch in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a13QWpZ1Cao

Ohh, activity, I may do some minifixes too then.

Yeah I've been doing some debugging last couple of nights. Lets coordinate and decide on a possible release date.

Can somebody upload again the IPS patch?

I'm so very surprised that no one has yet mentioned that they'd want Nemesis 3 as the next MSX/Nemesis related game in line to have the smooth scroll patch applied!? Here are a few main reasons why it's the game that most deserves this in the Nemesis series;

- both MSX Gardius 2 and Parodius allready have smooth scrolling version via 2 PSP collection packs (and before that Gradius 2 had Nemesis '90 Kai & fan made Nemesis '9, both for Sharp X68000)
- Salamander is the least popular game with Gradius fans (it's main appeal is with for more casual shmup fans, like I was at one point and actually too at one point way prefered it over the Gradius series, lol. Definately not the case anymore) + it's the hardest to apply this patch to because of them vertical scrolling levels
- Nemesis 3 is sooooo under-rated it's should be a 10 year minimun sentence punishment. That, and with the smooth scroll patch, more people are likely to give this game the proper chance it so rightfully deserves
-I know at first I too was a little disappointed in this game, thus preffered Nemesis 2 more like everybody else. But now the other way couldn't be more true. I mean, look at it this way. This game has 4 ship selections Vs Gradius 2 & 1 only have 1; Parodius has 5 & Salamander has 2 but they all have the same weapons for both these games!? Nemesis 3 has 3 type of optiion select VS Nemesis 2; Nemesis 1; Parodius; and Salamander only one. Nemesis 3 has 2 shiled type select VS Nemesis 2; Nemesis 1; Parodius; and Salamader only one. These are very major points to consider as they greatly add to replay through a much greater variety between plays.
- Nemesis 3's has optional repeating levels if you know where to look for the missing maps on your first playthrough through said levels that have them. Gradius 2 makes you repeat most of the levels every single time, and this greatly hits the games replay value if you ask me because this series doesn't need this since it allready gives you the option to play same said levels at increasing difficulty with each loop you complete (I also, before I played Nemesis 2, thought that you'd do the repeating levels backwards since your going the other way around. Too bad it wasn't the case as it would of helped it greatly with this problem).
- All these games have great graphics in my opinion, though I can see how most people at first may believe that Nemesis 2 has greater graphics/level design than 3 (as I was one of them). Only difference is that Nemesis 2 uses a brighter colour palette + has s stronger fantasy VS 80's science fiction theme. While Nemesis 3 has darker colours to add more greatly to an 80's science fiction theme VS fanatsy. Both are really great in the end to me.
- if you go over to a Gradius dedicated forum like GameStone, you'll see people crying for the fact that Nemesis 3 sooo needs a remake. We'll I say screw Konami making a remake, as I'll be 100% more happier when this smooth scroll patch comes out for it just like I was for Nemesis 2 (what great news that was when I heard about it. As it was my gateway drug to the wonderfull world of MSX ).

Allright, sorry I went overboard a bit, but this game needed some much needed appreciation. And yeah, sd_snatcher, this smooth scroll patch is like the ultimate holy grail to Gradius and MSX users everywhere. You can't imagine how happy I and others are that you've done this to Gradius 2 and that you still want to do more Gradius and other MSX game that neeed it. So I think I speak for everybody when I say how great this work of yours towards MSX are and will always be.

Well, I personally can't wait to see Nemesis 3 and other MSX games get enhanced by your magic touch, sd_snatcher (though I understand yours busy and have a persobnal life too). Here is looking to a great start at being a new MSX fan thanks to you. (Oh, and is it possible to release an early build of Nemesis 3 without that troublesome levels 9 completed? lol I'm so eager to play this game with mooth scroll patch)