Puzzle Bobble B System conversion help

BTW: Only d72-12.bin and d72-13.bin are patched. No need to reburn any of the other roms in the archive for this update....
I'm going to test this tonight. Can you summarize the changes thus far so I can verify them? And to be clear, you want me to test "Conv3" and not "Conv4"?
 
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Good. There is an small update "conv4" I posted before. That one includes a fix that correct the display of "Free Play" in attract mode. I'm also done with the region select patch for the next update. Just some small tweaks left to do. ^^
 
One interesting thing is that there are 4 regions (JAOO), not 3 as usual (JAO). So I did remove my English language hack. because that was no longer needed since the 4th region (O) includes everything from the Japanese region: music,sound, graphics and the title "Puzzle Bobble", but in English language. The third region is identical to the American region "Bubble Buster" except for the FBI disclaimer.
 
Another thing was some leftovers in the code. Coin handling, copyright strings and some other routines...

"(c) TAITO CORPORATION 1989"
"(c) 1989 TAITO AMERICA CORPORATION"
" (c) 1989 TAITO CORPORATION JAPAN "

I took a look at the other Taito (B-System) games released 1989 available in Mame, but the code is not from any of those games. Probably did the programmer use some old source code as a "template" when he programmed "Puzzle Bobble". Maybe a prototype game that never saw the light of the day... We will never find out but that small fragments was enough to make me curious8|?(
 
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@Pythagoras Great job on this!!! I was wondering, would there be a way to disable continues with a patch? I know Puzzle Bobble 2 and beyond have an option to disable them in settings, but the first one does not...
 
@mattpsu03
it's possible. There is no space for a new settings in service mode, but I could remove "BG.Music ON/OFF" and replace it with "Continue ON/OFF."
 
I'll take a look at it and post an update here when the patch is done...
 
@mattpsu03
@daskrabs

Here is the updated version of Puzzle Bobble with the "Continue: On/Off" option added & The VS. High-Score Bug fix.

This archive contains only the updated files. The BPS patches that also include the "Quiz Sekai wa SHOW by shobai" conversion can be downloaded from archive.org

Thanks for the donation :thumbsup:
 

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@mattpsu03

Discovered a bug that prevented the High-Score entry to work if "Continue" was set to OFF. I have fixed the bug and updated the file and link above...
@Pythagoras
ok thanks! Just did some testing. The continue option still comes up in a 2-player game. Works perfectly in the 1-player game though and high scores work correctly. I have it set to free play and region (o) Puzzle Bobble
 
Hmm... There is a bug in the original game. A check for VS mode (2 players) and it goes directly to the continue routine. This check make it impossible to get a high-score for any player and it also make my continue check to fail!

I will try to find a solution that fixes both problems...
 
Hmm... There is a bug in the original game. A check for VS mode (2 players) and it goes directly to the continue routine. This check make it impossible to get a high-score for any player and it also make my continue check to fail!

I will try to find a solution that fixes both problems...
@Pythagoras
I don't think high scores are meant to be recorded in a 2-player VS game. So probably the only thing needed is to bypass the continue routine if continues are set to OFF.
 
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Based on the code it was once meant to work for 2 players, it has conditional checks for 2 players, but the programmer did some changes to the routine some time during the development. It needed some changes how the routine was called. Now it works both for 2 players and with continue on/off feature. I will post the update soon ..
 
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