Pier Solar: Official Thread

[QuickSciFi]

Dude, stick to your original stance. Now you're just repeating what I said in the first place.

[The Jackal]

Forget emulation, if a ROM dump of Pier Solar ever does turn up, that would mean anyone with the right equipment could make their own hardcopies of it.

[QuickSciFi]

I'd still buy the official copies, though.

[Barone]

Dude, stick to your original stance. Now you're just repeating what I said in the first place.

No, you said:

I don't understand the fear.

Forget emulation, if a ROM dump of Pier Solar ever does turn up, that would mean anyone with the right equipment could make their own hardcopies of it.

This too.

[The Jackal]

I'd still buy the official copies, though.

Yeah, but alot of people might make cheap knockoffs on Ebay and pass them off as the real deal for big bucks.

[Kamahl]

Well... Russians already dumped the game, now all that's missing is either emulator support, or changes to the game code. The second case is necessary for it to work in flash carts.

[Barone]

They're going for the second case AFAIK, apparently trying to modify the code to avoid the "problematic" instructions. Those guys also love to use gopher-like devices, so they will probably try to make it compatible with that abortion.

The first guy that I saw hacking it is the same hacker that made those bizarre Rock N' Roll Racing hacks. I don't know how far he can get but other guys where suggesting to organize a hacking group around this task. If they convince r57_shell and Nemesis_c to work with them things can go crazy.

[QuickSciFi]

I'd still buy the official copies, though.

Let me rephrase that:

I'd still buy the official copies from Watermelon.

[Kamahl]

Everyone will hate me for saying this... but I do look forward to be able to have the game in my rom collection. It's hard to beat a pendrive filled with emulators and roms of all my favorite games that I can use on any PC I come across.
I'd prefer they took the first option though (being the big proponent of accurate emulation that I am). Wouldn't surprise me if EkeEke did add support to it in Genesis Plus GX.

[Barone]

I don't hate you, ahahah.

I would like to be able to play it using the Everdrive MD just for the sake of my laziness. I'd keep my PS copy but just for collection purposes.

[Joe Redifer]

I'm a bit confused. Didn't Steve Snake write a routine that's built in to the game to make it incompatible with most emulators, especially the emulator that he authored called Kega Fusion? Good luck with that one, fellas. I can understand why they'd want to get it to work, though... it's a challenge. Even if they do get it to work I don't think their intent is nefarious unless I am missing something. And there's be no way we'd allow anyone here to sell fake copies of the game. Instant ban.

The Everdrive can't run the game because it is limited to 32 MEGA POWER. I doubt Pier Solar takes up every bit of 64 MEGA POWER, but it's still way over 32. Maybe if you removed the non-English languages it might fit, I have no clue. Also, the game save routine might also be incompatible with how the Everdrive handles it.

[Kamahl]

The game is incompatible with ALL emulators since it has code that's not emulated anywhere, it also makes it incompatible with flashcarts. There's nothing preventing people from fixing that however, either in the game itself or in emulators. Kega will never support it but EkeEke will most likely do so in Genesis Plus GX (homebrew genesis emulator for the wii) since he strives to make his emulator perfectly accurate.

[Eke-Eke]

To clear things up a little bit:

- the so called "full" dump available on the internet is nothing but a few kB bootcode repeated all over 8MB ROM size. I know this because I already had many requests by email about "adding support" for this one and this is always exactly what I got when dumping my own cartridge with a retrode. So you can stop hoping about emulators being "updated" to support that ROM because it's useless and only 0.5% of the "full" ROM. Off course, it's possible to have access to more ROM by analyzing what that bootcode does before testing checksums and mimic it (probably what those russian hackers managed to do) but it needs a custom hardware setup in the end and there is high risk you could permanently damage the cartridge during the process, without even knowing it.

- Even if fully dumped, the game will not be compatible with emulators, not because of some kind of anti-piracy conspiracy from emu authors or because it's a 64Mb game but simply because it uses on-board hardware (that is obviously only on the real cartridge) which has its own purposes, one being necessary for the game to run. I doubt there is any "unemulated" 68k instructions involved as it does not make much sense for anyone having minimal understanding how an emulator works. The reason you got garbled graphics is probably because the cartridge extra stuff is used for graphic/code decompression...among other things . I hardly see this "fixed" soon considering 1) it's most likely not a known chip (even the SVP was) being used but some kind of specific FPGA 2) the people involved with the protection know their stuff when it comes to hacking

[Joe Redifer]

There's no "unemulated code" that could be written into the ROM that would prevent it from running on a flashcart since a flashcart does not use emulation. So I believe Eke-Eke is correct that it is an added chip that exists solely for copy protection. The game needs to see whatever is on the chip or memory block or whatever to run. This additional thing doesn't add any extra capabilities like the Super FX 2 chip. I don't think it aids in graphics decompression because the actual game already draws its stuff very slowly. You can see the H-sync tears in sprites as they page-flip. They can't let it be known what kind of hardware this is otherwise it could probably be cracked fairly easily. Nothing is impossible, just improbable.

[Barone]

To clear things up a little bit:

- the so called "full" dump available on the internet is nothing but a few kB bootcode repeated all over 8MB ROM size. I know this because I already had many requests by email about "adding support" for this one and this is always exactly what I got when dumping my own cartridge with a retrode. So you can stop hoping about emulators being "updated" to support that ROM because it's useless and only 0.5% of the "full" ROM. Off course, it's possible to have access to more ROM by analyzing what that bootcode does before testing checksums and mimic it (probably what those russian hackers managed to do) but it needs a custom hardware setup in the end and there is high risk you could permanently damage the cartridge during the process, without even knowing it.

Thanks for the info.

- Even if fully dumped, the game will not be compatible with emulators, not because of some kind of anti-piracy conspiracy from emu authors or because it's a 64Mb game but simply because it uses on-board hardware (that is obviously only on the real cartridge) which has its own purposes, one being necessary for the game to run.

This what I expected from WM when they assured that the game would not run on any emulator, never... Great to hear that.

I doubt there is any "unemulated" 68k instructions involved as it does not make much sense for anyone having minimal understanding how an emulator works. The reason you got garbled graphics is probably because the cartridge extra stuff is used for graphic/code decompression...among other things . I hardly see this "fixed" soon considering 1) it's most likely not a known chip (even the SVP was) being used but some kind of specific FPGA 2) the people involved with the protection know their stuff when it comes to hacking

I said that I was reading a Russian conversation, so of course it was google translated. The "unknown" term may have appeared for any reason. I never assured anything... It's hard to try to understand anything but there were more crazy comments like saying that the game used just 4Mbit. I think this makes sense now since you said that just a fraction of the ROM was actually dumped, so feels like they were really lost about what they were trying to do.
I thought we were just speculating here since we had no sure about WM putting a custom hardware in the cartridge.