Some basic questions concerning Kawaks

[Last Exile]

I've always used NeorageX 0.8c and ECGC to run my NeoGeo roms, but the new Kawaks (1.53) has much better rom support than before so I've decided to jumped ship.

 

I'm new to Kawaks so please excuse my noobish curiosity, here are a few things I was wondering:

 

 

1/ Are there Kawaks specific romsets like there are for NeoRage?

 

2/ In the case of kof2000 it accepts the 77MB set (MAME rom) rather than the 40MB one (NeoRage). So is it correct to presume that when it comes to kof2001 & 2002 I will need to find the larger romsets for them to work in Kawaks? I ask this because all I can find are the small romsets for these two games and none of them work in kawaks, even though they are now supported.

 

3/ I've also downloaded Kawaks 1.45 + Loader which allows mslug4 & 5 to work. So to run svcplus/samsho5/kof2003 do I need to find specific loaders for each of them? If so I cannot find them anywhere.

 

4/ Why is it that the same mslug4 rom that works in 1.45 Loader doesn't work in 1.53, even though mslug4 is now apparently supported?

 

5/ I remembered when I used to use MAME a long time ago that everytime an update was released the list of compatible roms would change, which meant re-downloading certain roms to keep up to date (The reason why I gave up MAME). Is this also a problem when using Kawaks? The fact that it takes MAME roms and is regularly updated suggests yes...

 

6/ Am I a frickin' idiot?

 

 

Sorry about this dumbass post, but I've been wondering about these points ever since I first tried kawaks, I only gave it up cos NeoRage roms were much easier to find. I'm interested because Kawaks is obviously a much better emulator technically and I want to use it, I just need to know which roms to get.

 

Thanks in advance.

[James]

Not to offend But you should stay with NRX and it decrypted sets (Not Correct Sets)

 

 

The kawaks 1.45 ( Loader ) works for some of the neogeo games simply because it uses decrypted sets like NRX Where Kawaks 1.53 and Mame use encrypted sets which are bigger in file size.

Since you only care about playing the game then I suggest you stay with NRX .

 

Any neogeo game made after 1998 were encrypted That is why NRX died and is no longer offically supported Because it only emulates decrypted sets

[L.S.D]

Out of curiousity, what is ECGC?

[Gryph]

Out of curiousity, what is ECGC?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think it's the name of the team that hacked NRX to allow those games.

[L.S.D]

Out of curiousity, what is ECGC?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think it's the name of the team that hacked NRX to allow those games.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tot it is an emulator Oh well.....

[Robert]

To answer each question as best I can:

 

1. Usually the same as mame but not always

 

2. I wouldn't presume anything. I can tell you what roms are needed, but as to whether they are encrypted or not, I couldn't say.

 

3. don't know

 

4. Loaders are unofficial, they are usually different from an official release.

 

5. Yes

 

6. No

 

The rom requirements for kawaks are very similar to mame. All that matters is that each zipfile has the correct name, and that each rom is the correct size and crc. The filename of an individual rom is irrelevant. Kawaks, like mame, has parent and child relationships.

 

The changes per version are not as profound as with mame. For example, the other day I downloaded the complete set for kawaks 1.53 ; when checked against 1.52 there was one game changed (matrim). Against 1.50 there was 4 games missing. Against the unofficial 1.48dev, there are dozens of differences.

 

Kawaks is good on older computers; on my 333 all kawaks games run at what appears to be full speed (no fps display available). On mame, most neogeo games run at 4 fps, which is noticeably slow.

 

I think Kawaks is a good emulator, it all depends if you consider the rom requirements too difficult.

[Agozer]

Out of curiousity, what is ECGC?

I think it's the name of the team that hacked NRX to allow those games.

I tot it is an emulator Oh well.....

Well, it is an emulator; EGCG NeoARGEx is it's name. EGCG is the name of the team that made it.

 

Last Exile: 3. No, one loader will work for all games.

 

6. No, but like James said, if you only care about playing the games rather that correct emulation, stay with NRX.

 

Personally I could never get kawaks Loader to detect my sets that I added into the DAT. So I switched to Nebula Loader and it works fine. If you want to play you NRX sets in Kawaks Loader/Nebula Loader, so can do so without getting new sets just by modifying Asr.dat or Neogeo.dat

Edited January 27, 2005 by Agozer

[neo04]

EGCG= Emu Games Cool Group

[Gryph]

Also, you should get RomCenter to check your ROMs against MAME and Kawaks dats. It's a very useful tool. Get it at -bleh-

Mod's edit: You know, as horrible as it sounds, the RomCenter homepage has links to rom sites.

Edited January 27, 2005 by Agozer

[iq_132]

Last exile, if you're quite familiar with computers, I might suggest compiling your own version of FBA or MAME. That way you'll be using a non-crappy emulator and be able to use the roms you have.

BTW. there are ways to convert decrypted roms to encrypted ones if you have enouh ram and care about correct emulation.

[Gryph]

Oh crap, I forgot about RomCenter's rom link. I thought they were legit...

[Agozer]

Oh crap, I forgot about RomCenter's rom link. I thought they were legit...

So did I, until I wandered to their page by accident. Eh, the intarweb never ceases to amaze me.

Edited January 27, 2005 by Agozer

[Swithin]

I'll give you a little scene-history just so you know the backgrounds to these answers (might help give a little context.)

 

NRX requires each individual rom to be decrypted and incorporates hacks to makes portions of the emulation easier for the program. Newer emulators run "clean", and as James will tell you, MAME is by far the cleanest (and Final Burn Alpha is also up there.) Kawaks and Nebula are the two easiest programs to use for CPS* / NG emulation nowadays. Each have distinctive advantages (for the casual end user: Kawaks can do blitters and motion blur at the same time, has an easy keyboard pause button, and some other stuff, Nebula can do Neo CD emulation, can run at higher resolution, and can use the HQ2X blitter.) Recently (within the last year or so) both these emus are moving towards mirroring the sets MAME uses.

 

NRX requires the least system resources (by a large margin), then Kawaks, and then Nebula.

 

As for your questions:

 

 

1/ Are there Kawaks specific romsets like there are for NeoRage?

 

Technically yes, but you need to be using a morally ambiguous copy of Kawaks. Basically, there was a developer-only version of Kawaks that ran KoF2003 at a time when no other emu could get past the protection. This version also had support for more recent roms. These sets were odd, and as far as I know some of them were only supported in this version of Kawaks. I don't recommend using this version, nor do I recommend finding these sets, as this is sort of beyond the grey of old-school emu and is trodding blatantly on corporate well-being as well as disrespecting the Kawaks team. Please don't.

 

2/ In the case of kof2000 it accepts the 77MB set (MAME rom) rather than the 40MB one (NeoRage). So is it correct to presume that when it comes to kof2001 & 2002 I will need to find the larger romsets for them to work in Kawaks? I ask this because all I can find are the small romsets for these two games and none of them work in kawaks, even though they are now supported.

 

No. Kawaks and Nebula (and MAME) support the decrypted sets. There is no functional difference between sets, the only difference is that the emu itself doesn't have to decrypt them while loading the roms (that's what it does) as it's "temp-decrypted roms" are the ones you're using from the offset. Note that admitting to this will accrue some scorn from the hardcore crowd... but in effect you're just saving hd space.

 

3/ I've also downloaded Kawaks 1.45 + Loader which allows mslug4 & 5 to work. So to run svcplus/samsho5/kof2003 do I need to find specific loaders for each of them? If so I cannot find them anywhere.

 

What the loader does is bypass the emulator's protection against playing newer games. It's a hack, end of story. This means you can feed it *any* rom and it will work. What you need to play <insert game> is feed it that games information so it will know what to load (archive name, file names inside the zip, and crcs of those files so that it knows it's loading the right files.) These are called.dats. Some loaders use a big list that compiles all your add-on dats, some simply circumvent the emu's protection and you can add the game-specific dats next to the legit ones.

 

4/ Why is it that the same mslug4 rom that works in 1.45 Loader doesn't work in 1.53, even though mslug4 is now apparently supported?

 

While I don't know the specifics, most likely because the files are different. The previous answer should give an idea how precise your information needs to be to get an emu to run a game. If even one file is different inside the archive (or something more obvious like *all* files are different or the archive has a different name) between what the dat in the loader says and what Kawaks 1.53 wants, no dice. Check this manually, you might have the same rom but under a different naming scheme. As always, check the CRCs to see if the files are actually the same (because nomenclature is fairly universal, so the files will have the same name even if, say, the m1 required to play on 1.53 is a newer version.)

 

5/ I remembered when I used to use MAME a long time ago that everytime an update was released the list of compatible roms would change, which meant re-downloading certain roms to keep up to date (The reason why I gave up MAME). Is this also a problem when using Kawaks? The fact that it takes MAME roms and is regularly updated suggests yes...

 

Neogeo emulation is virtually complete. Don't expect too many changes from this point on out. The only things that can change are the newer unsupported roms being officially supported at some point (under a more correct set than the ones floating around for loaders) or the emus syncing to MAME across the board and changing some sets. Since dumping-procedure is pretty well documented and practiced, "corrected sets" aren't really a likelihood anymore.

 

6/ Am I a frickin' idiot?

 

Nope, you're just doing your research. You're new at this, no worries. Of course, you *could* have found everything out on your own... but that's what we're here for.

[Last Exile]

My humble thanks to all for your prompt replies. I'm starting to grasp the complex nature of NeoGeo emulation (well, compared to most other formats anyway) little by little.

 

Basically, to get the full "correct" encrypted sets one must simply be patient and wait for encrypted romsets to trickle out, meanwhile decrypted hacked roms and hacked emus are the only viable option. I remember reading somewhere that the general gap between the games release and the rom release is about 3 years... which means we won't be enjoying a slice of encrypted kof2003 in Kawaks well until 2006/2007 maybe!?!

 

Just one more thing though; since the official Kawaks is now supporting both kof 2001 and 2002 (also Martimeele and rotd), why is it I cannot find the encryted versions anywhere, all the sites only list up to 2000. May I just ask whether they exist or not? Or am I again just jumping ahead of myself...

 

Looks like I'll have to make do with the black-bordered goodness of NRX or try fixing Kawaks'.DAT files for now.

 

Thank you all.

[Wizard]

2008 i think.