mer-curious

Hello Tux! Thank you so much for your efforts and time put into having this feature working similarly to FBNeo. There are some patches that greatly improve the options available in the original game, in a similar fashion ffman is doing with his cheat files. For example, I have five patches applied to KOF97, which give me a practice mode, an option to turn off the flash effect, an option to select the boss stages in versus matches, no time counter in character select screen and finally a random/roulette icon with all secret characters in character select screen. You can see them all here with screenshots if you would like to test them: https://imgur.com/a/oe6ok4z FBNeo generates an *.ini file in config -> ips with the ROM name and there we have all the patches currently selected for that game. In my very case, it is a kof97.ini file and inside we have: // FinalBurn Neo v1.0.0.03 --- IPS Config File for kof97 (The King of Fighters '97 (NGM-2320)) 2-Stage.dat 8r-hcsjh2n.dat 97lx.dat k1-TimePS.dat k4-flash.dat Perhaps you are already using that, or if not, this could be a good way to remember our selection to possibly share it with others and move it to a new installation if it's the case. These patches are all from the "Chinese pack" which was linked in the video description I posted in my first post. Interestingly there are many patches in this pack that claim to do the same thing but actually don't work here, so we have to set and test many of them to see which ones work or not. I still have to test the other packs to see if they have some good features too (to my taste, I mean). Anyway, apparently this seems all already possible in Raine, right? Thank you so much again for your recent work. 😊👍 Edit: after testing a little longer I found that the roulette patch obliges me to reselect my team before every match, which is not fine to me. So I removed this patch and added the following: 3-hchr2ps.dat This one shows all the secret characters in the character select screen including the final boss portrait in the middle and it won't oblige me to reselect the team before every match. You can see a screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/o3GOu7U

Hello Tux and ffman1985! I saw the discussion in the other thread about the recently added support for IPS patches in Raine and thought it would be better to split the discussion into a separate thread since there the focus is on ffman's cheats distribution, and the IPS discussion may become too long. After ffman shared the IPS file to remove the flash effect in K.O.F '96 and '97 I went and tried to find which other IPS patches people would have created and shared out there in the internet, and there's actually a lot of them. I link below some good IPS collections which I found for different arcade systems. Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JewKnkptZe8 This collection (link in the video description) is focused in Neo Geo games. Many patches are in Chinese with Chinese comments, so I could only understand what they did by copying and pasting the comment into a translator. Perhaps it's good to test this in Raine to see if the program can display the Chinese characters and comments correctly. Emu France's and Taoenwen's collection for FBNeo: https://github.com/taoenwen/FBNeo_IPS http://www.emu-france.com/emulateurs/6-arcades/89-final-burn/3794-ips-collection-v4-3-4-4-test/ Both these packs are targeted to FBNeo but should work with Raine too I suppose. They lack some of the patches present in the "Chinese pack", at least for K.O.F '97 (didn't test other games yet). To test Taoenwen's collection you need to download the complete master code in Git Hub. I tried to insert ffman "no flash effect" in FBNeo's IPS folder for both K.O.F '96 and '97 and the program didn't identify the files to patch the ROMs, so it's possible that some patches work and some don't depending on the emulators' IPS managers. If you check the video linked above you'll see how the patches work in FBNeo. You have to select the patches in the IPS Manager and then tick "Apply Patches" in order that the patches work. The IPS files selected are remembered after closing the program, but you always need to tick "Apply Patches" again every time you load the ROM so the IPS files take effect, which I don't think is very user friendly. For the patches that are applied before the ROM is loaded, I was thinking if Raine could show a message like "The game ROM needs to be reloaded for some patches to take effect. Reload / Cancel", and then the user would confirm or not reloading the game to see if or how the patches work. Finally, what do you think about renaming the option to "Game IPS patches" to keep the parallelism with the previous options? Anyway, I'm so glad you could add this feature to Raine to complement the cheats function already available in the program. I'm looking forward to test it as soon as you are happy with the stage of operation of this new feature. Thank you so much for your work.

Hello ffman1985 and Tux! It's nice that you are improving the cheats code and their way of working. I'd like to know from ffman1985 if he could possibly remove the "flash effect" which is present in the K.O.F games before K.O.F. '98. In K.O.F '98 and later titles SNK introduced an option to disable the flash effect probably due to seizure complaints. I don't suffer from seizure but indeed prefer playing with the effect off especially if in a dark room. You can see the flash effect in K.O.F '97 here, in minute 3:10: As you see in the video, when a character is defeated with a special move the screen will flash white and red and also quickly before and after the letters K.O. show in the screen. I doubt if it could be removed through a cheat, but since ffman is doing miracles with the Capcom titles, perhaps this could be possibly doable looking at what SNK did with the later titles? Anyway, just a request for the future of this thread perhaps. Thank you for your time. PS: by the way, Tux, in case you missed it, I finally replied to your concern about the "command/commands" discussion in the other thread. 👍

Hello Tux! I forgot to give a follow up on the "command" versus "commands" naming discussion. I looked for the way it is used in an American fighting game and they mostly seem to keep it like the Japanese ones, as you can see in these screenshots from Mortal Kombat 10 and 11 respectively: However, in Mortal Kombat 9 they used a different naming and now in the plural, as you see below: So finally in the MK games they used "move list" (in the singular) and also "super moves list" and "style moves list", in the plural. So I guess it's safe to use either or other in Raine, because it's the same case for the word "command". Now I guess I agree with you to vote for changing it to the plural, so "game commands list", at least it will be closer to other Latin languages, and some of them have translations in Raine. Are you still considering in making these changes eventually? Using the right directional pad in the controller to confirm/enter the options feels continually more intuitive now that I am playing with ffman1985's cheats every now and then. Anyway, I'm sorry again for the late reply. Thank you so much in advance for your time.

Hello Tux! Thank you for the tip. I don't really think that is the most intuitive solution for that (because there is no other common place in Raine in which we have to click to expand the text), but at least now I know there is this possibility. Anyway, if you ever find it easy and doable to horizontally scroll the line, maybe that would be a nicer solution for that, especially if you're using the controller and away from the mouse. Thank you again for your help.

Hello ffman1985! Yes, I'm talking about the winning messages each character has and that is displayed after every match, just like this: I think I've finally found the solution: you have to enable the region cheat and then hard reset the game, then it will be totally in Japanese, as the screenshot below shows: I think I didn't realize it the first time because the text is cut if you use Raine's standard window size: But if you increase the window size it will show completely. It would be a good addition if the text could scroll in that bottom bar. I don't know if Tux would find this doable anyhow, but it would let us see the complete information without the need to change the window size. Anyway, thank you for your reply and for your work again.

Thank you ffman1985. There is actually a cheat code to change the game region. Interestingly it keeps the language you selected in the service menu for the Euro version (either English, Spanish or Portuguese) but all the sprites are adapted accordingly, so Alpha becomes Zero, Charlie becomes Nash and M. Bison becomes Vega. It seems there's no way to display the winning quotes in Japanese though, or am I missing something? Thank you again. 👍

Hello ffman1985! I made a quick test here with the Arcade and Training modes for Street Fighter Alpha and they seem to be working fine. Do your cheats also work with the Japanese version of the game (Street Fighter Zero)? Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your work. PS: you could add a brief description of your "Console mode" in the cheats file in order to keep it more independent from your guides in the forums.

Thank you for the explanation on your cheats, ffman1985. Perhaps you could add some of these observations in the cheat as a comment as well as happens with other cheats and then reuse the comment in your other creations. We never know where these files might get in the inter webs and people might not know about the Raine forums if they break something eventually. I haven't tested the VS Mode cheat yet, but it no longer produces those errors in the latest Raine release. Thank you again for sharing your work.

Thank you. I've checked it already in version 0.94.10 and it's fine for me. That's a very good question. I guess you named it Commands list, right? I looked for references for how this feature was generally called when I suggested the renaming and incredibly they use it in singular. Take a look: Capcom vs SNK 2: Ultra Street Fighter 4: Street Fighter 5: Tekken 5: Tekken 7: King of Fighters 14: In Tekken 7 you see that they even use "command history" and also "move list" instead of "moves list", and in Ultra Street Fighter 4 they use "button config", instead of "buttons config". I don't know why they prefer the singular, perhaps it sounds better phonologically in English? Anyway, for that I decided to keep it in singular too to conform with how we see it out there, however weird it might be. The command.dat file also uses "command list" if you open it in a text editor. Ok, no problem. I agree with you with remapping the page down to a trigger button so we could keep the full keyboard arrow functions in the d-pad. Perhaps page up in the left trigger or shoulder button, and page down in the right trigger or shoulder button? Thank you so much for your work once again.

So Tux, I have finally made a quick test with this new version and everything seems to be working correctly. When I created my new install here I noticed two DLL files are updated in this release: SDL2.dll and libmuparser.dll. When I copied the ones from the DLL package I kept the updated ones, ok? Except that, I was thinking about renaming the "Action Replay cheats" option to just "Game cheats" because I couldn't find any reference of these cheats being related with the Action Replay product, and now we also have ffman1985 creating some new cheats for some games which are not related to the Action Replay either I suppose. So we would have something like this in the main menu: Game options Game command list Game cheats Is it a good idea? Finally, I'd like to know if it is possible to make the forward/right d-pad direction command in the controller to work in the GUI as the same as the right arrow key does in the keyboard, that is, to enter menus and to load the games in the game selection list. The other functions such as enabling or disabling cheats already work by using the right d-pad in the controller. I felt the need for that while navigating through the main menu using the d-pad and trying to enter the cheats list still using the d-pad because this is what we do when using the keyboard. Anyway, I know we can do that with the first button but perhaps that could be a nice alternative to use with the controller, if it's not too complicated to implement, of course. That's it for this post I guess. Thank you so much for your work. 👍

Nice job, ffman1985! The lack of a practice mode in older fighting games is really a down side for newcomers and/or for players who want to try new combos. I guess they weren't added even in recent releases of the games such as the ones for the Switch, which is a shame. I tried here your cheat and it worked Ok for the "Practice Mode", but the "VS Mode" is returning the following error: And then I have to click Ok many times to continue. Some times it works, some times it gets stuck there prompting "Ok" and I never am taken back to the game. My NG BIOS is set to "Unibios 4.0" and the region is "Japan" and Console". Hopefully this can be fixed. Thank you anyway for sharing your work here. 👍

Recently I tried to react to a post in the Raine forum and received this message: I don't remind how many reactions I made this day but it wasn't so many, maybe four or five. I'm not sure why we have this limitation, but it would be good if it didn't exist or if at least it was changed to accept a higher number of reactions. Thank you in advance for your time.

Great work Tux! 😀 I'm happy that the CPS1 and 2 save state function is finally operational again in Raine64. Thanks to ffman1985 for spotting and reporting this bug. 👍

I'm sorry for that, Gosseyn. It's just that I thought putting both "Game options" and "Game command list" together in the main menu would get the menu more organized instead of placing the command list option in the middle of other unrelated settings. But indeed it does require some adaptation when the disposition of a list changes in a menu. But I'm happy that you found it useful when navigating with the keyboard. I didn't even think about that when made this suggestion since I don't check the game command list too often. Anyway, at least we have now some feedback on these subtle changes. 👍

Thanks for this new release Tux. I can't give any feedback now because the server seems to be off line here when I try to download the files. I receive a "file not found" message and the download doesn't start. Hopefully this will be fixed soon and then I'll be able to try the new version. Thank you again. 👍

Hello Tux! Would this allow Raine to be translated to Japanese? Or could it already have a translation in that language before this addition? By the way, I saw the latest changes in the code and there is a typo error with the word Japanese, here: #: source/sdl/gui/tfont.cpp:52 msgid "Japenese font" It is written with A, though we may pronounce it with E, perhaps that's why you misspelled it. Thank you for your continuing work.

Thanks for this new release, Tux! And I am sorry for you tough month. 😔 I also apologize for breaking the region setup. I didn't think changing some of those texts in the GUI could break something in the program. By the way, I have reviewed some more texts in the code and created another two PRs for you to consider. I guess some of the texts I changed are just related to the debug, but I wasn't sure about that, so I changed it anyway. But if you think they can break something again you can reject them if nothing can be done to avoid it. Thank you so much again for your work and happy holidays! 😊

Thank you for this work-around, Tux! I'm glad that it was an easy implementation from you. By the way, I think it would be nice to also have the history.dat included in the releases, no? Therefore we would have the complete support files for the roms: command.dat, history.dat and hiscore.dat. Except that, have you thought about my suggestion for the Recent games list? Thank you very much again for your work.

Hello Tux! So I finally had the chance to test the new Recent and Most played games lists now and apparently they are working fine. But I am still a little bothered with the fluctuating information in the Recent list. Every time we visit it there is new data because even the seconds are counted. I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to just show the date in which the game was last played? I think this would let the menu more visually stable without many different information especially in a short period of time. Except that, I'd like to know if you could add "kof2001h" on the side of "kof2001" in the commands.dat file. This clone fixes the AES options screen in the game, but since it is a cloned rom it is not showing the game command list in the GUI. I know I could do it it myself by opening the command.dat file and adding a comma and "kof2001h" after the "kof2001" string, but perhaps if you do it in the original embedded file it could benefit others too. I don't know why dumpers decided the "kof2001" as the parent rom since it has the broken options menu in AES mode. But anyway, if there's a fixed version that's what I will use because I have my Unibios set as Console. Another way to work around this issue would be to add an option such as "Show command list to cloned ROMs", and this would take effect in every cloned rom which has a command list associated with the parent in the command.dat file. You could place this option in the GUI options. But honestly I haven't felt the need for that yet, since the only case which I really need it is KOF2001 as of now. Anyway, I'll wait your thoughts on the better solution. Thank you again for your continuing work. 👍

Thank you for this new release, Tux! I can't provide any feedback based on this version yet because the link to the update seems down in the downloads page. It is returning a "file not found" error. I've tried to refresh the page to see if it would take any effect but it didn't work. After this error I was wondering if it wouldn't be possible to also provide the releases through GitHub as well. Most emulators do that, and it could be an alternative if or when 1emulation presents any kind of issues in their servers. Thanks again for your great work.

Hello Tux! I'm so glad you agreed with the suggestions for the interface. I wish those subtle changes can help others using the program eventually. Ah, ok. Now I got it. I'll see how it goes when I try the next version. Thanks again for clarifying. Yes, I don't use that option that much because I don't like to cheat in most arcade games when I can try again and again with infinite credits. But fortunately it was easy to fix. Ok, no problem. After you said FBNeo took the code straight from MAME I was wondering if you couldn't do the same or at least take a look and see what they did to avoid this issue in the game? Anyway, thank you again for your time and for your fast work. ☺️

Hello Tux! Thank you for taking the time to clarify this issue. So if I understood it correctly, next version we won't have any information on the recently opened games, not even the date of when it was last opened as I suggested? We will have in the list just the game name, right? If this is right I'm OK with that too, because to me the most important is to just keep track of the opened games in the order they were recently opened. Except that, I reviewed some more texts in the GUI and created just one pull request with all the changes. I also re-positioned the "Game command list" option to a place which I think makes more sense to have it in the GUI, which is close to the other game options. I hope I haven't broken anything in the code by doing that. Please check it and see if you agree with the changes. Finally, I found that the mouse does not work in the Action Replay cheats option. I can't use the mouse to select the cheats nor can I right-click the menu to return to the main GUI options. I found this bug while reviewing the texts in this menu. I used the game Art of Fighting to do that. That's it for now. Thank you for your time once again. PS: perhaps you may have missed my comment on the KOF94 graphical glitch which I reported in my previous post?

Hello Tux! Thanks for this new release! So, I've checked the new "Recent games" feature and it seems to be working good, except that the default time which comes for the played games is a little random, as you see here: I didn't play these games in that time passed, so I don't know why it's showing that. Also, every time I visit and leave the list it updates the time, which I think distracts me a little there. Perhaps it would be better to just show the date in which the game was last played, instead of the immediate time? It probably doesn't make much of a difference if a game was played "yesterday morning" or "afternoon", so maybe just showing the date would let the list more static for a moment. It could be something like this: "game name 10/14/2022" (using the standard English date notation). And if you thought it was doable, the date notation could adapt to the applied translations. For romance languages, the format would be 14/10/2022. And for Asian translations such as Japanese, it would become 2022/10/14. Anyway, if it's too complicated I would also be happy with just the game names there (in the order they were last played, I mean). Except that, I've noticed there are still some few text messages which I missed in my revision. So I should be requesting you to review those later in GitHub. Finally, I came to remember about that small graphical glitch in KOF94 which I have already reported in the old forum. I think you said back then it was related to the raster effects. Now that you have added some K.O.F. hacks, I was wondering if you were in the mood to check it again. I've made a short video showing the bug, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xi1mHtqkQKDQTNRKdwB8KHb3p_ugXlLD/view As you see, when the camera goes through the ground in the stage animation effect it will break and become black in the end, which doesn't occur in FBNeo, for example. It's surely a very minor issue, but maybe it's what's left to fix in the KOF games emulation in Raine. Thank you so much again for your work.

Hello Tux! I'm sorry for creating a lot of pull requests. I didn't know how to gather them all in one pull only, so I did what I could to do it quick. Anyway, I'm grateful for your understanding. I meant the "Decrease cpu skip" option in "Raine controls". I couldn't find any of those options in the source looking in the cpp files using the browser find tool. I wanted to be able to review the "Load game" and "Save game" there too and possibly other text. Thanks for pointing me the file. I have already pulled a request for the changes there. I'm OK with keeping the same folder name if it would cause problems both for you in the code and for the current users who update by replacing the executable. The change would be mostly for keeping the reference with the new wording adopted for the function. Either way, I think that "savestates" is clearer in terms of what files are there, because the saved game data is in "savedata", therefore in "savegame" we actually find the saved game states, hence the folder being called "savestates". But you can decide however is better in this case. Thank you! It was a pleasure to help you on that. I would certainly do more if I understood a thing about coding. By the way, I guess you forgot to merge the changes in the sound options. At least I couldn't notice it in the master files. Curiously this was the only changed file which created a "dezraj-patch 1" branch instead of a standard "patch" branch. Anyway, I deleted it from my repository. Please let me know if you can merge that, otherwise I can recreate a new patch with the changes in this menu. Thank you so much again for your work.