mer-curious

Thanks for this quick update Tux! 😊 The Samurai Spirits IPS patch is now working correctly thankfully. But now I noticed something interesting with this game in Raine: the picture is not being shown entirely. Take a look and compare it to FBNeo: You see that FBNeo's borders are much bigger than Raine's in the character select screen. In Raine the new hidden characters portraits barely fit the screen. I noticed that the whole game has this picture crop too. It's not something related to the IPS patch, because it works the same in the previous version. I also disabled the blend files to see if it was the cause, but no. So something strange is going on here... I wonder if it also affects other games maybe..? As a second bug report, I went and tried Street Fighter Zero 3 with the muted announcer setting but found that the game is not working here. This is what I did: 1- I loaded the Street Fighter Alpha 3 ROM (I cannot find "Street Fighter Zero 3" anymore in the game selection list). 2- I changed the Region option in the GUI to Japan. 3- I select Ryu to play. 4- As soon as I choose the fighting style in the character select screen, the ROM reboots automatically. Interestingly I don't have this issue in version 0.95.5c, so maybe it's something to do with the Street Fighter Zero 3 driver removed from the current version? Anyway, I'll wait your comments in those issues. Thank you so much in advance for your time. 👍

This could be a good addition to the IPS thread since I've already linked three IPS collections there. Maybe they can be useful to other emulators too. Still talking about CPS1/2, doing my tests here with the SFA3 announcer in Winkawaks I've noticed Razoola did a great job with the Qsound chip emulation. I'm not sure about my impressions though, but the sound effects and possibly the music sounded a little cleaner than Raine and FBNeo. By the way, both Winkawaks and FBNeo feature an option called "low pass filter" that helps my earphones a little which have poor lows. I was wondering if you had ever tried such a feature or would be interested in adding it to Raine too? Thank you in advance for your time. 👍

Hello again Tux! You are correct, but I guess you mean here the driver/ROM file name, no? It's difficult to find uses of the game name with the acronym sfa3 or even SFA3. I was able to find one "good" mention in a fighting games moves site for "SFA3" in upper case, see here please (in the first paragraph): https://wiki.supercombo.gg/w/Street_Fighter_Alpha_3 Except this, I couldn't find "sfa3" references, just the extended official game title. Generally we write rom, neogeo, kof and all these emulation terms in lower case letters, but we tried to revise some texts in Raine recently to match what other emulators do. In this case I think it fits better to use SFA3 because we are referring to the game, not exactly the "driver". The announcer is a game feature, not a driver one, so "SFA3". Anyway, this is how Winkawaks named it. Maybe an alternative would be the official game name (Street Fighter Alpha 3) since now all region versions are supported through it? But it's just a tiny detail because you have already of course done everything important in relation to adding this forgotten emulation feature to Raine. Thank you so much for that. 😊

Great Tux! I'm happy it was an easy feature for you to add. Does it work on the fly? I mean, can I enable and disable it whenever I want? Also, could you revise the text a little to something like "Mute SFA3/SFZ3 announcer" with capital letters in the game acronym and with SFZ3 too to clearly state it works for the Japanese ROM? And by changing the term "speaker" for "announcer" we keep the reference to what Razoola did with Winkawaks many years ago so users can possibly refer to that option when they eventually try both emulators. Anyway, just some details to be consistent with the writing we mostly have now in the GUI. Thank you both again for these tiny interesting features. 👍 PS: I suppose this new string is translatable too, right? As well as the one to "Preload IPS *.dat files", as we discussed in GitHub.

Hello Tux and ffman1985 and thank you for these amazing cheats. I have a request for a cheat for Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3. There is an old emulator called Winkawaks created by famous CPS2 dumper Razoola in the beginning of the 2000s. This emulator has an interesting option in which you can disable/mute the narrator/announcer in SFA3/SFZ3, as you see in the following screenshot: I don't know why there was such an option there, but I guess Razoola didn't like SFA3 announcer that much, and I've come to agree with him that the announcer in this game is a little too excited in the fights, so it's an interesting feature in his emulator. I'd like to know if you could add such an option to Raine, maybe through a cheat like you are doing here? Raine would be the only emulator to feature this option after Winkawaks, which by the way isn't updated for years now. Thank you so much in advance for considering this request. 👍 PS: I suppose Winkawaks remains closed source until nowadays unfortunately, otherwise you could easily take a look at the code to see what he did to disable the announcer in this game.

Hello again Tux! Thank you so much for this fix! 😊 So I was right that you hadn't found the patch I was trying here, right? So it was good in the end to attach it to the post. But I also get confused with these IPS collections because there are three of them in my original IPS thread. However, the ones I mostly use are the "FBA pack" (in the YouTube video description) and the Emufrance one (in the Emufrance website). These seem to have the most interesting and useful patches as far as I've tested. I didn't find many useful ones in Taoenwen's, but it's good that it's still maintained and "updated", even if you have found some kind of incompatibility with them. Anyway, it seems now that all patches I tested are working fine in both FBNeo and Raine emulators, and the only thing left is the bug with changing from one IPS patched game to another. Hopefully you'll have some time and motivation to investigate it any time soon. Thank you again for your great work and for your super fast support. 🙏

Thanks for the fast reply, Tux! I'm not sure if you tested the same patch I was trying here. It's the one in the Emufrance IPS pack, not in the Taoenwen GitHub one. Or you can get it in the attached file in this post. Raine doesn't crash here, actually nothing happens, it's as if no patch was loaded at all. I posted the FBNeo screenshot just to show the effect on screen so you could easily check whether it worked or not. FBNeo also had some issues with the IPS feature, which I reported recently and fortunately got fixed. I used Raine in my report to show that the patches were functioning somewhere else. Anyway, I reported this issue because I always think a fix can benefit other games and patches and users too, but personally I don't play this game very much, so I could live without this patch working in Raine. I also couldn't guess it would be so much complicated to fix it. Do you intend to take a look at the crash with changing games with IPS patches enabled? Thank you again for your time and attention. 👍 samsho2.zip

😊 Hello Tux! I made a quick test with the new 0.95.5 revision and finally could load my KOF2003 IPS patches. Thanks for that fix! This revision also allowed me to try some more games and they all seem to be working fine, except for one: Samurai Spirits 2. This is the patch I'm trying to load and which it's not working: 3-EnHiCharV2.dat You should find this patch in the Emu France IPS pack which I shared in the other thread (folder 4.4 test). Please let me know if you cannot find it. This patch does work in FBNeo as you can see in the screen capture below: You can see that the two hidden characters are shown in the character select screen, the one in the bottom left (a guy with the face all covered in black) and the one in the bottom right (a green leaf portrait). Perhaps there's some incompatibility with IPS patches that you didn't notice yet? Finally, there is another bug with the IPS feature: if you load a game with IPS patches enabled and then try to load another game with IPS patches enabled too, the program will crash. Maybe you are already aware of that, but I noticed this while using Raine from a distance from the computer, and when that happens I need to get up and reach the computer in order to reopen the emulator and then load another game with IPS patches enabled. This is not so user-friendly if we are using Raine in this very situation in which we control the GUI functions mainly with the game controller, because we would need to approach the computer to restart the program in case of loading another game with IPS patches. So I would be glad if you could consider checking this issue too. Perhaps we could see a "d" revision for this version then..? 😁 Anyway, thanks a lot again for this new release and for your work as always. 👍

Thank you! I am glad the fix was easy to do. And yes, I was quite busy during the last weeks, so I hadn't much time to play with many IPS patches yet. But anyway, I should report any issues I find as soon as I test other games. Yes, I agree with you. By the way, I was able to edit my last pull request on GitHub and updated it with a text revision for the IPS error messages. For this particular error message I also thought of adding "Raine will close." in the end because that's what's happening in Windows. Is it a good idea? I actually don't know if Raine closes intentionally or not (that is, a crash). I have to press OK two times for it to happen. Or maybe the game could continue without any patches enabled for this case? Anyway, I'll wait your comments on this and on the text revision too. Thank you so much again for your time. PS: I suppose the KOF94 graphical glitch is harder to fix than the CPS2 one?

Hello again Tux! Still talking about KOF2003, I went and tried to activate some IPS *.dat files for this game and ended up with this error: I have the following patches enabled: 2-Lunlck.dat 2-prExit.dat 3-Boss2.dat 3-FxCBos.dat 3-FxCRos.dat 3-FxMakC.dat 3-KvCPU.dat 3-LeadBo.dat 3-MakBug.dat 7-BdFix.dat 7-chest.dat 7-gun.dat You can get these files in the YouTube video description I linked in the other thread. Is it possible to change the emulator in order to use such a number of patches? Incredibly they all work fine in FBNeo. I haven't tested so many patches there though, but all of these do seem to work. Thank you in advance for your time and work.

I'm sorry Tux. The sound associations are OK with this game. It's just that the path in the games.cfg file wasn't matching the one in my computer. I lowered the volume of the official KOF2003 arranged sound track album release a while back in a sound editor because it was too loud compared to other NGCD audio tracks and it was difficult to here the game's sound effects while playing the game. Then I added the word "lower" to the KOF2003 track folder. I may have removed this word accidentally, so the emulator would never find the tracks. I added it again and everything is OK now. I'm sorry for wasting your time on that. The path extension wasn't the issue in the end. But yes, it is so long that I didn't see it well in the folder: I'll try renaming this folder for something easier to read to avoid that in the future again. Thank you so much for your fast reply. 👍 Edit: I renamed it to "King of Fighters 2003 AST (lower)" and edited the corresponding strings in the games.cfg file.

Perhaps this thread could be pinned in the Raine forum? This would maybe let more users know about this feature in the emulator and ask about how to configure the sound associations.

Thank you so much for this new release, Tux! I did a quick testing here and everything seems to be working OK. I tried some CPS2 games that I remembered had some graphical glitches in Raine and apparently they are not visible anymore. I tried Marvel vs. Capcom in the Onslaught stage and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter in the Apocalypse stage. Everything seems to be good as far as I've noticed. By the way, if you're ever inspired again to work on these graphical glitches maybe you could take a look at that old KOF94 glitch which happens in the Japan stage. I still have the comparison video with FBNeo, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xi1mHtqkQKDQTNRKdwB8KHb3p_ugXlLD/view Finally, one bug report: I could no longer make the sound associations work for KOF2003. Maybe it's not related to this new version, but something you changed in a version before since it's been quite some time I played this game. I have the directory set as that: 53 = d:\unzipped\games\NEO-GEO CD\The King of Fighters '03 Arrange Tracks Consumer Version [SCDC-00386] - [17-11- 2004] lower\01. 2003 (Title).mp3 Here's the audio track I use for the title demonstration, if you wanted to try: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VcAj1mcNaxm5MtCxw-yKfkHtXDn2wguu/view Hopefully it's something easy to figure out. And here's my complete track list in the games.cfg file, which also has all associations for KOF2003: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LpbYDWrc16tmuQMuY2LSLL3H8cekTkNO/view?usp=sharing That's it for now. Thank you so much for your work as always. 😊

Hello Tux! I've seen you've been working a lot in Raine in GitHub. I have just submitted a pull request to change some texts a little bit, a very minor revision. See if you like it. Ok, no problem. By the way, I would suggest a change for the text in the "Stop emulation" function too, I would perhaps call it "Stop emulation (show/hide the GUI)" because that's exactly what the Escape key does in this function, right? But since there's no way to leave the GUI with the Guide button yet, I would have to ask you first to unbind the Guide button from this function and bind it again to the "Return to the GUI" one, which I had it bound to before. We still can't hide the GUI with the Guide button (or any other button assigned to that function), so my new description would be a little misleading for the controller button, unfortunately. Perhaps when you have some free time and interest in this issue you could check it out again? Yes, in Retroarch the Guide button closes all the menus at once, which is quite a nice feature (especially when playing with the shaders). But in Raine this button could just mimic what the Escape key does, that is, go back and go back all the menus until show the game. Maybe this would be easier to do? Anyway, if you think it's too difficult or time consuming you could just unbind the Guide button from "Stop emulation" as default and bind it to "Return to GUI"? I guess this would make more sense for now because currently both keyboard and joystick button work the same in this function (you can't leave the GUI with Tab as well as with a controller button). Thank you for tip. I'll try to use that and see if I get used to it. By the way, the keyboard left arrow key is also loading the games when pressed in the game selection menu. Is this correct? I thought maybe just the right arrow key could be allowed to do that, because it also works to "confirm" some actions and enter the menus. Maybe it was implemented by mistake? Anyway, I'll your comments on that. Great! Thanks for letting me know. When playing from a distance of the keyboard these controller shortcuts always come in handy. Thank you so much again for your continuing work. 😊

😊 Hello Tux! Thanks a lot for this new release and for the quick follow-up fix. I haven't tried the new cheats system yet, but I certainly will eventually, and then I'll come back here to report any issues with that in Windows. But I still have my quick feedback from my previous report: - The Guide button from the X360 controllers are automatically mapped to the "Stop emulation" function now, but you cannot leave the GUI with the button as you would with the ESC key. Isn't it possible to make it work as exactly as the ESC key does in this function? Otherwise it's just another "Return to the GUI" alternative as we discussed in the other thread. For reference, you can open and close the GUI in Retroarch with the Guide button. - By the way, the GUI glitch in the Inputs menu is still present in this version, as you see here. But now you need to connect a controller with the program already opened and displaying the "Raine controls" menu in order to trigger the glitch. A little uncommon to have this scenario, but it's still there if you would like to take a look. - Finally, I was thinking about a new way to remember the cursor position in the game selection menu. Currently if you select a game from the Recents or the Most played lists, run the game and then return to the game selection list, Raine will take you to the game name in the main list instead of the top of the list which is where you were (the Recents and Most played are placed there). My suggestion is to implement the following condition: if you load a game from the Recents or Most played lists, the cursor will be in the top of the list when you return to the game selection menu; likewise, if you load a game directly by its name in the main full game selection list, then Raine will remember the cursor position in that game and take you back there when returning to the game selection list. I thought of this because playing using a controller from the couch becomes easier if you can quickly select a game using the Recents and Most played lists, but when you return to the game selection then the cursor is down there in the game name, so it takes a few moments longer to return to the top and enter the lists again. Anyway, just some minor details which I come through when using your emulator in some different scenarios. If it's easily doable, OK, if not, let it for another time. I really appreciate your attention to read my posts. Thank you so much again for your work.