MKII Unlimited ROM Patch

[NeoVamp]

Thank you for your dedication and hard work!

You're very welcome, I'm quite proud that i managed to finish it all,
it always bothered me so much that they took out all the art.
I still remember that day in.. 93? when i walked into that game store,
and they had MKII Genesis playing, and as the demo rolled there was nothing..
no story, nothing! and it pissed me off to no ends, and in a way it feels like
i managed to rectify a mistake from the past.

(Now if you could just get someone to reprogram the music... I kid, I kid... )

Hah, you don't have to kid, the music always bothered me as well.
I don't know how to go around changing it though,
maybe.. get the tools from the guys who wrote the sound engine and try to find a skilled musician to redo them on my Atari Mega ST?
that or implement the GEMS music engine, which seems to be better documented.
(but also much worse when it comes to music, though i have heard some great music done with GEMS)

Not sure, and Smoke is on a break for now, and so am i. (my hands are hurting like hell)

so who knows when work on a new version will start, but i'm sure it will happen eventually,
there's still a lot that can be done, like the music.. and missing sprites (smoke is trying to figure out MKII sprite compression)
ehm, and maybe fix some MKII stages and redo some MK1 stages to look better.

And of course i would love to convert Arcade Kano/Sonya to MKII Genesis format.
(never gonna use the mk1 genesis sprites, they are just too fucked up)

and then of course the tiny fixes, like i'm still not happy with Liu Kang's bio background,
and Kung Lao's bio sprite, and some text fixes here and there. (rayden/raiden)

so we'll see what happens, but for now its break time.

Awesome! Thanks for the link. I'm curious though, is it possible to do the pit fatality in the MK1 pit?

I actually have no idea, nothing in the move list?

[djshok]

Nah man, I tried the pit fatality for a few characters but it doesn't seem to work there, just in the MKII pits. It would be cool if in the next version you could do it there as well, but no big deal. Great job guys, this is by far one of my favourite rom hacks of all time. Thank you for making it.

[djshok]

I just found Ermac as a secret boss! He is in place of the question mark spot up on the upper end of the tower. I'm not sure what I did to fight him though since I can't seem to get it to work again.

[cleeg]

Just downloaded this, I forgot all about it! I'm going to sound a bit ungrateful here, but I'd really hoped the low punch would be in there, but otherwise awesome work.

[NeoVamp]

Just downloaded this, I forgot all about it! I'm going to sound a bit ungrateful here, but I'd really hoped the low punch would be in there, but otherwise awesome work.

If Smoke ever does another version then Low Punch will definitely be in there,
I actually converted some stuff already, wasn't that difficult, I just ripped the LP from the 32X rom and converted the colors.

Biggest problem right now is that Smoke needs to figure out how the sprite compression works for characters,
if he figures that out I would love to get Kano and Sonya in there. (complete new conversions, not mk1 genesis sprites)

[djshok]

Would you be able to fit them in? I thought you guys absolutely maxed out all the cart space with that last release?

[Lastcallhall]

Make it 40 megs!

[NeoVamp]

Yeah thats what i suggested to Smoke, to use the Super SF2 mapper (for flashcart compatability)
that way we'll have an extra 8megabits to store 2 chars and bio/ending and the low punches.

and hopefully an improved "you found a secret fighter" thingy, with the question mark and all.

8mbit would be plenty for that, so maybe he'll be able to even fit in some of the still missing voice samples.

[Barone]

NeoVamp,

I've talking about and working on another hack these last days, and I must say that port the game to the SSF2 mapper can be impossible... Sometimes, the 68K instructions are stored within the rom like data, to be read by M68K registers and not write on the RAM. In such cases, the location of data is used like an subroutine address during the execution flow...
Well, if you change the mapper and it changes the data locations and addresses... Man, it will be painful as hell to corrected every single value and location to work properly again. Furthermore, I don't have a clue about the SSF2 mapper (the range of addresses and etc...) and the Russian hackers seem to be in the same situation.
I think Smoke should drop those lame MKI backgrounds and soundtracks and try to improve only the MKII content.
The question is: He knows how to store new sprites but, maybe, does not know how to change and exchange the old ones... There's compression used there and might not be easy to change/exchange and repack all the data.

[sheath]

This is completely awesome, thanks to everybody involved!

[NeoVamp]

NeoVamp,

I've talking about and working on another hack these last days, and I must say that port the game to the SSF2 mapper can be impossible... Sometimes, the 68K instructions are stored within the rom like data, to be read by M68K registers and not write on the RAM. In such cases, the location of data is used like an subroutine address during the execution flow...

Hmm, Guess we'll see how difficult it is "if" work ever continues on this hack.

Worst case scenario it will become a flat mapped rom like the MK Trilogy hack, so will work with emu's but not real hardware.

[Barone]

Worst case scenario it will become a flat mapped rom like the MK Trilogy hack, so will work with emu's but not real hardware.

I don't think that Smoke will choose this route.
Kabal_MK is alone with some of his crazy ideas... r57_shell, Nemesis_c and Smoke seem to think more "normally" than him.
Smoke said about a new version other day but he talked about removing bugs and etc... IMO, Smoke thinks that the hack is good enough as it is now. Sadly, I don't think so and agree with you word per word about your thoughts.
Maybe in the future Nemesis_c could get it and take the right route. I think he shares the same thoughts of us. Right now he is improving his already great UMK3 32Mbit hack...
I'm on a crazy quest related to Samurai Shodown samples... I want to add ALL arcade samples missing.
Nemesis_c will take SS as soon as he finishes UMK3 and will add VDP-related stuff. He wants to add Earthquake. I told him it was crazy (using the original arcade sprites size) and I think he will resize it to something like Wan-Fu or a little bit bigger, but not that monster original Earthquake that IMO Genesis hardware can't handle. Also, probably he will go for the arcade-style dialog screen (pos-fighting) and the original introduction...
The graphical part is still a dream now and he has little time to do the hacks.

I've already found the entry points for the samples, the addresses that are used in Z80's RAM for DAC playback and the DAC-play function inside the ROM.
I still have to find out how it builds and sets the bank address in Z80's RAM (I'm close to finish it, just need a few more hours of work during the weekend).
Once I have done that, I will be able to change the jsr (jump to subroutine) instruction to reach my new function and send a different bank address to Z80 (for the added samples at the expanded space of the ROM).
That is exactly what Smoke did on MKII to add the arcade samples... But in some aspects his work was easier cause he already had all the samples in the proper audio driver format inside the 32x version ROM. OTOH, Samurai Shodown uses the SMPS 68K, so I have several tools (thanks to Sonic!) to convert the original arcade samples to the SMPS audio driver format. But, probably, some adaptation will be needed once it changes a little from game to game. As soon as I managed to change/add samples I will post a video in this forum.

[NeoVamp]

I don't think that Smoke will choose this route.

Well thats what he told me, but then he agreed with my suggestion about the Super SF2 mapper.

Nemesis_C also has an UMK3 hack going on? man i need to pay more attention!

Wonder if he'd like to use my converted Graveyard stage...

[Barone]

I will talk about your Graveyard stage with him... But the sad point is that we'll have to use it with a generic soundtrack from UMK3. There's a lot of ROM space limitation problems too, but one background could fit maybe (some trade-offs probably).

AFAIK, to use the SSF2 mapper means Hex-only editing since we don't have a proper IDA Pro plug-in for that mapper. God bless Smoke if he really intends to do that...

[NeoVamp]

Its a shame none of them is interested in porting the leaked UMK3 source code to Genesis,
that way they could program it for Krikkz everdrive flashcart and just use wav music directly from the SD card.