Game patch for Zanac EX

Poor me who wanted to go to sleep early in order to be in good shape for work tomorrow ... Anyway Thanks again Victor !

Awesome work!! Thank you Mstz80ax for your great musical arrangements and Víctor for the improvements.
Good way to start the year for MSX!!

Amazing! (Should be) good times to have a (working ) real MSX really!

Mstz80ax: any plans on making the soundtrack available (YT video and/or (source) music files (XPL-A format?)) perhaps? Cheers!

Great work! But I don't really understand the smooth scroll remark. Wasn't it already fully smooth? I think hamlet is confused with the original Zanac

Thanks to Mstz80ax for these great arranged songs... and to PAC for making this possible.

These days I'll try to fix some small issues than have been reported.

Thanks for your patience...

Fantastic! Thank you both.

Victor, have you had a look on Undeadline?

Really great work and fantastic music!

/me picks up his jaw and put it back in. A M A Z I N G

I agree.
Thanks Victor, congratulations!

Wow! Zamac Ex Is really a great game, now it's on pair with Aleste. Thank you Victor

Zanac-Ex is one of my favorite MSX games. This rocks. Thanks, Victor.

Original ROM = 128 Kbytes ASCII16
Patched ROM = 128 Kbytes ASCII16

Songs are in MGS format, according to Mstz80ax they will be uploaded shortly to the MRC.

Well ... I've fixed the known issues. This evening I'll update the patch.

Can someone confirm that the patched game works in RAM or Megaram on real hardware?
I tried a few loaders and the game doesn't work (but works if installed in ROM): It either freezes on the bumper screen (with the "press ..." blinking) or gives a white screen.

@Pentarou, have the same issue on real hw. Freezes are detecting MSX-MUSIC (i.e. does not react on any key).

Made some more tests this morning:

• The problem is not related to "AB" header.
• Games works fine with SofaROM on devices requiring no ROM patching (MFR, Carnivore, GR8Net, Multi-MSXRAM), if you use the "No disk driver" option (/X). The disk driver is enabled by default by SofaROM, is option frees some RAM.

Fantastic job, Zanac was already one of my favorites and now it is perfect!

Is there any way the line interrupt glitch under the score can be fixed? Maybe using one display off line to mask it?

The game works with EXECROM and a Megaram! But without FM music
Load the ROM with the /R5 option and then force PSG sound (keep "P" pressed).
It seems that OPL detection doesn't work correctly, as it always says "OPLL(MSX-Music) found!!", even if the device is not present, and then freezes.

thanks Victor, for the great improvement I love play games at 50hz refresh because I used to see more details when everything is almost slow motion
My test with GR8NET was excellent I just fake the OPLL detection via _netfkopllr command before call netbrowse that make the trick for get FM Music.

What's the problem ? No sound in the other PSG, or it doesn't boot??

Ok.. really strange.. but you can do this:

- Take an HEX editor with the patched ROM. In position 3DC6h of the file, change the C0h with a C8h.

With that, you will get the "D" key function inverted

But, do you hear the sound FXs?? Those must be heard in the second PSG (ports 10h & 11h)

Sorry, but if you don't hear any FX is because the routine works correctly... That's a GR8NET problem... are you sure you have activated the second PSG in the GR8NET??

Here you'll find a version with the Double PSG forced

Patch is broke game. I go full game to the end, and it hang on last boss with music. Nothing going on.
Original game is working nice.

Working now! I guess it was some error when i patching with online service (idk, it was random site)

Now its working pretty nice.
Thank you for this good work!
You gift me lovely game again, with best music for MSX!
Good luck ;)

Hey Victor, nice work!

I am adding a "Double PSG" Extension to WebMSX so it can play this version to the full!
It already has the 2 PSGs working OK with the "D" forced mode.
But if fails to enable the 2 PSGs by default since the check for the MegaFlash SD fails.

WebMSX does not yet support the MegaFlash SD (and there is no plans to fully support it, since it already has Nextor support and FlashROMs are not really needed in emulators).

I read somewhere that the 2nd PSG is undetectable by itself, so this is probably the gotcha here.

So I ask you: can you please explain the check that is performed to detect the 2nd PSG? Does it NEED to check for the MegaFlash, or could it check in any "more generic" way?

Maybe I can emulate just the part that gets checked so we can activate the double PSG by default.

Thank you!
Paulo

I'm a bit confused with the double-PSG thing. Is it really necessary for the OPLL soundtrack?

I mean, I originally thought that it was meant to be used to play the SFX, only for the PSG soundtrack, since the original game steals music channels to play the SFX and the music ends up being played on a single PSG channel most of the time.

But for the OPLL soundtrack, I thought that this would be unnecessary, as there are plenty of channels available, and Mstz80ax's in-game soundtrack seems to use only the PSG channel-1 for complementary drumkit sounds, leaving its channels 2 and 3 free for the sfx.

And, of the game sound effects, only two of them use the channel 1 (sfx 0Bh and 1Ch), but:

- 0Bh was remade as "WARP.MGS" in the OPLL soundtrack.
- 1Ch was remade as "BOSSDEST.MGS" in the OPLL soundtrack.

So, is the double-PSG feature really necessary when the OPLL soundtrack is played, or is this feature only necessary for the PSG soundtrack? If that's the case maybe it could be made a bit more clear in the README?

Victor, thanks for the reply.

I see...
Maybe you could try to detect the PSG from reading its ports first, and if that is undetectable, then try to find the specific devices?

I think it would be a good approach, and also much more future-proof, since it would correctly detect any extra PSG that is already readable now, and also any new hardware that may have it in the future!

Would that be possible/not too difficult?

Paulo

Done. Version 1.03 is available here.

This is so awesome. I love this game and with the new music it feels like an epic upgrade. Thanks and well done.

Sorry, but I think that the problem is your computer audio mixer...

GR8NET PSG is not configured on port 10H by default I think. It shows on the boot screen, if it says A0 then you need to use CALL NETSETPSG(3) and then CALL NETSETPSG. See GR8NET manual §8.4. (Not sure why it’s not just immediately reconfigured and you need to call it a second time without argument.)

Impressive what you've been doing.

Did you ever consider remastering the sprites with more colors to take advantage of MSX2/+/etc.? Or would it be too much work/too taxing on the games as is?