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BOUNTY for Taito G-Net CF Conversions.

On Tondemo the music is much too fast but so far the gameplay seems good! I forget how to get into test mode on these to check those settings but I’ll mess around some more. (For all I remember I set my pcb to easy or something and the music is just slower on easy.)
 
ekorz said:
On Tondemo the music is much too fast but so far the gameplay seems good! I forget how to get into test mode on these to check those settings but I’ll mess around some more. (For all I remember I set my pcb to easy or something and the music is just slower on easy.)
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Sounds good, let me know! Music was actually the area I had to troubleshoot the most with these conversions, and I'm more than happy to take a look anywhere that seems off.

Edit: You are right, music is playing at 1.48x speed. Found the root cause, I'll have a fix here in a bit. Will do a sweep of all games to make sure this bug isn't present elsewhere.
 
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Tondemo Crisis, Gallop Racer 3, and Tecmo World Cup Millennium all had incorrect music speed due to a wrong (and dumb) calculation on my part; these have been fixed and the new versions have been added to the Google drive. Thanks for the heads up, @ekorz !

I'll write up how I accomplished the Yamaha (and hopefully Q-Sound) music conversions once I've (again, hopefully) been able to prove it out on Q-Sound too. Will be working on that this evening.
 
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Hi :)

By the way, Brave Blade is working great so far!

The first stage music plays nicely during gameplay, and I installed it on a 256 MB CompactFlash card.

I'm also going to test Gallop Racer 2 in link mode since you can connect two of them on the TPS,
and I happen to have two G-NET systems equipped with the Linkboard module.


 
kyletwentytwo said:
Tondemo Crisis, Gallop Racer 3, and Tecmo World Cup Millennium all had incorrect music speed due to a wrong (and dumb) calculation on my part; these have been fixed and the new versions have been added to the Google drive. Thanks for the heads up, @ekorz !

I'll write up how I accomplished the Yamaha (and hopefully Q-Sound) music conversions once I've (again, hopefully) been able to prove it out on Q-Sound too. Will be working on that this evening.
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Testing it now, sounds good so far!
Edit: yep, seems good! I still have no idea what to do on the subway level though, I hope it can be translated someday
 
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DOA++ seems to slowdown/stutter a bit when you win a round and the tournament report is being drawn. Anyone else see that? Other loading screens may be a little slower than the pcb but it’s not as noticeable.
 
ekorz said:
DOA++ seems to slowdown/stutter a bit when you win a round and the tournament report is being drawn. Anyone else see that? Other loading screens may be a little slower than the pcb but it’s not as noticeable.
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@chacal231077 it sounds like you've got an original PCB and were comparing, could you let us know if you ran into this slowdown/stutter on G-Net and if it differs from your board?
 
I was able to prove out Q-Sound conversions after my Yamaha conversion process, and that means Rival Schools is ready for ya'll. Added to the Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1NLAoPO-s4LCNvB4XO5yoHFswxy-t1erN

I converted the US release but if there is any burning reason to have the JP release instead just let me know, I'm not familiar with any differences outside of language.

Due to the lack of a kick harness on G-Net, button 4 is moved to the standard JAMMA input instead.

I'll write up the technical details of how I handled the Yamaha and Q-Sound conversions later today or tomorrow; it is an extensive process and even within Yamaha and Q-Sound some games need to be handled a bit differently. At the highest level, I'm literally recording all of the music in each game, figuring out how each track loops and terminates, and inserting those recordings to the game rather than having them be handled on the fly like the normal PCBs with the Yamaha or Q-Sound chips doing the heavy lifting with much smaller file sizes. This may sound a bit janky, but it is actually incredibly effective. AI is a massive help here for dumping the music from MAME rips and figuring out timing for loops and termination.

Please note that with these music conversions, I'm working at a deeper level than the simpler conversions due to the way the music handling and sound chip in general interact with graphics being drawn. This means potential for impact to the game. The only place I've seen this so far is flickering graphics due to graphics and music access interactions overlapping and creating issues with drawing the polygons properly for each frame, but I was able to determine the cause and resolve it.

One other important note is that due to my architecture for these conversions, some of them will be lacking the same punch and volume as the original Yamaha/Q-Sound chips provide. This mostly manifests two ways: The removal of reverb in some titles, and lower volume equalization in some titles. The reverb part means you will miss some of the crunch in sound, particularly in punches and kicks in fighting games. In my testing this isn't much of a problem unless you were to put this version next to a real PCB. The lower volume equalization simply means you may need to turn your cab volume up a bit. Another thing to note is that due to the way I'm directly recording and inserting the tracks into the game, the size of the game images will be considerably larger than they would be otherwise.

Please enjoy Rival Schools and let me know how it goes. I would love community feedback to make sure the actual gameplay and music matches the PCB in full.
 
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ekorz said:
DOA++ seems to slowdown/stutter a bit when you win a round and the tournament report is being drawn. Anyone else see that? Other loading screens may be a little slower than the pcb but it’s not as noticeable.
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I noticed a slight input lag in the Test Mode menu when navigating between the different sections and when confirming with the button.
However, after turning the machine off a few times and testing other games, the issue was completely gone when I went back to DOA++."
 

Hi! :) kyletwentytwo ,​

​

Here is the list of my original PCBs for ZN1, ZN2, and TPS (all Japanese versions), so we can compare and run some tests with your versions:"​

ZN1
  • Star Gladiator Episode I: Final Crusade
  • Battle Arena Toshinden 2
  • Street Fighter EX
  • Street Fighter EX Plus
  • Heaven's Gate
  • Fighters' Impact
  • Bloody Roar (Hammy currently has my ROM board, lol😆)
ZN2
  • Rival Schools (Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Legion of Heroes)
  • Star Gladiator 2: Nightmare of Bilstein
  • Street Fighter EX2
  • Street Fighter EX2 Plus
TPS
  • Dead or Alive ++
  • Gallop Racer 2
  • Gallop Racer 3 (currently in transit 🐌🐌🐌😋 by boat 🚢, 😆)
  • Cool Boarders
 
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kyletwentytwo said:
I was able to prove out Q-Sound conversions after my Yamaha conversion process, and that means Rival Schools is ready for ya'll. Added to the Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1NLAoPO-s4LCNvB4XO5yoHFswxy-t1erN

I converted the US release but if there is any burning reason to have the JP release instead just let me know, I'm not familiar with any differences outside of language.

Due to the lack of a kick harness on G-Net, button 4 is moved to the standard JAMMA input instead.

I'll write up the technical details of how I handled the Yamaha and Q-Sound conversions later today or tomorrow; it is an extensive process and even within Yamaha and Q-Sound some games need to be handled a bit differently. At the highest level, I'm literally recording all of the music in each game, figuring out how each track loops and terminates, and inserting those recordings to the game rather than having them be handled on the fly like the normal PCBs with the Yamaha or Q-Sound chips doing the heavy lifting with much smaller file sizes. This may sound a bit janky, but it is actually incredibly effective. AI is a massive help here for dumping the music from MAME rips and figuring out timing for loops and termination.

Please note that with these music conversions, I'm working at a deeper level than the simpler conversions due to the way the music handling and sound chip in general interact with graphics being drawn. This means potential for impact to the game. The only place I've seen this so far is flickering graphics due to graphics and music access interactions overlapping and creating issues with drawing the polygons properly for each frame, but I was able to determine the cause and resolve it.

One other important note is that due my architecture for these conversions, some of them will be lacking the same punch and volume as the original Yamaha/Q-Sound chips provide. This mostly manifests two ways: The removal of reverb in some titles, and lower volume equalization in some titles. The reverb part means you will miss some of the crunch in sound, particularly in punches and kicks in fighting games. In my testing this isn't much of a problem unless you were to put this version next to a real PCB. The lower volume equalization simply means you may need to turn your cab volume up a bit. Another thing to note is that due to the way I'm directly recording and inserting the tracks into the game, the size of the game images will be considerably larger than they would be otherwise.

Please enjoy Rival Schools and let me know how it goes. I would love community feedback to make sure the actual gameplay and music matches the PCB in full.
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Once you manage to fix the sound issues and whenever you have some free time, keep my idea in mind for a version of Battle Arena Toshinden 2 with the Arranged soundtrack from the PlayStation version! 😋😆
 
Hi! That was my feedback from testing the Rival Schools (ZN1) conversion on the Taito G-NET system.
Here are a few bugs I noticed:
  • ROM Test (Test Mode): Once the check finishes, the system freezes and becomes completely unresponsive, forcing me to power cycle the board.
  • Opening / Intro: There is a sync issue between the character dialogues, the music, and the on-screen action across the different scenes (the audio is delayed). Also, the voice volume is too low during the dialogue scenes in the intro.
  • Setup Menu: When I entered the Setup menu mid-game, the stage music kept playing all the way into the menu.

  • Also worth noting: I put the game on a 2GB Compact Flash card, and the system reboots on its own right after the attract mode ends, even when pushing the +5V line up to 5.1V
Also, would it be possible to set the game to the Japanese version ?
I'm just much more used to it and find it more comfortable to play."
 
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chacal231077 said:
Here are a few bugs I noticed:
  • ROM Test (Test Mode): Once the check finishes, the system freezes and becomes completely unresponsive, forcing me to power cycle the board.
  • Opening / Intro: There is a sync issue between the character dialogues, the music, and the on-screen action across the different scenes (the audio is delayed). Also, the voice volume is too low during the dialogue scenes in the intro.
  • Setup Menu: When I entered the Setup menu mid-game, the stage music kept playing all the way into the menu.

    Also worth noting: I put the game on a 2GB Compact Flash card, and the system reboots on its own right after the attract mode ends, even when pushing the +5V line up to 5.1V
Also, would it be possible to set the game to the Japanese version ?
I'm just much more used to it and find it more comfortable to play."
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Thanks for this! I'll look into these as well as the DOA++ feedback by tomorrow. And yes, I'm happy to put out a Japanese version, should be incredibly easy.
 
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