Samurai Shodown RPG translation (Neo Geo CD) hangs RAINE.

[Neville]

Earlier today I learned that an English translation for Samurai Shodown RPG (for the Neo Geo CD system) has finally surfaced.

 

You can get the patch here.

Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time patching the game and playing it. I've finally got a patched version that I think should work, but FB Neo won't recognise it (I've told them, just in case) and under RAINE it crashes the emulator after showing the introductory screens.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Neville

[Neville]

Alright. At the FB Neo message board they've told me to convert the patched CD image to MODE1/2352. That seems to solve the issue under both emulators, FB Neo and RAINE.

[Tux]

Thanks for posting, at least it proves that romhacking still accepts new entries, and this one is massive indeed. I'll take a look later, but it requires to find the same version he mentions with the given sha32, so it might take some time. Thanks for the info anyway !

Yeah found the original bin without too much trouble, some sites have the patched bin already. The xdelta patch applies without any trouble and is very fast, the surprise is that the resulting bin file is actually smaller ! But yeah it's still a 2352 bin file.

I found a crash in raine if using all bin files for audio like here and the audio requires some conversion because the soundcard is configured for something like 48000 Hz, and these files are for 44100 Hz, it's a stupid bug, just 1 forgotten line, but it's still a crash, it's fixed in git, if somebody else has the problem I'll make another binary.

Except that yeah, high quality patch, it took forever to make, and the guy had to be incredibly motivated to spend so much time on it, respect for the work done. Like most people I had played enough with the version released 10 years ago (already !) to understand that the game was very basic and a disappointment, which was probably the reason why there was never any official translation... But still, it's an impressive work he has done here. I remembered I needed some cheats to disable the automatic fights just not to become crazy with ultra easy repetitive fights all the time, since he changed some things for the eu/us version, you might have more chance, I didn't try that.

And indeed you have some soft dipswitches now, you can access them in "neocd options", there was nothing usable there before, I doubt the choice of ps1 / saturn elements was in the original japense iso.

Great work for sure !

Edited December 1, 2023 by Tux

[mer-curious]

Hello Tux and Neville!

I'm also having the same issue and came straight to the forum to file a bug report. 😅 Hopefully someone was faster than me and Tux even faster to already fix the problem!

Anyway, now that I know the issue is related to the bin audio files support in Raine, I just converted them to mp3 and the game works now. I didn't look further but everything seems ok. I also had to edit the CUE file.

The game size reduced from 690mb to 290mb with the mp3 tracks.

Please Neville, tell me if you need help with that or if you're fine waiting for a new Raine release. I'm posting my edited CUE file below in case anyone needs it:

 

FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 01.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 02.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 03.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00    
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 04.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 05.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 06.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 07.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 08.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 09.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 10.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 11.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 12.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 12 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 13.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 13 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 14.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 14 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 15.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 15 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 16.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 16 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 17.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 17 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 18.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 18 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 19.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 19 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 20.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 20 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 21.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 21 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 22.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 22 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 23.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 23 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 24.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 24 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 25.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 25 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 26.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 26 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 27.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 27 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 28.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 28 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 29.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 29 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 30.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 30 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 31.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 31 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 32.mp3" BINARY
  TRACK 32 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

Thank you guys! 👍

PS: Perhaps it's better to rename "BINARY" to "MP3" in the mp3 files in the CUE file but this hasn't caused any errors in Raine so far.

Edit: Ok, I cannot play the audio files in foobar if they are labelled as "binary", so it's indeed better to label them as "mp3". Here's an updated version of the file structure:
 

FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 01.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 02.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 03.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00    
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 04.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 05.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 06.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 07.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 08.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 09.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 10.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 11.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 12.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 12 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 13.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 13 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 14.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 14 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 15.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 15 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 16.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 16 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 17.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 17 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 18.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 18 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 19.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 19 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 20.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 20 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 21.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 21 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 22.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 22 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 23.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 23 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 24.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 24 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 25.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 25 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 26.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 26 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 27.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 27 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 28.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 28 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 29.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 29 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 30.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 30 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 31.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 31 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Samurai Shodown - Tales of the Bushido - Track 32.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 32 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by mer-curious

[Neville]

I didn't notice any problems with the audio tracks on RAINE, I guess I didn't progress enough into the game. But if there are any problems with the game I'm glad they have been fixed this fast. It's not like we're drowning in Neo Geo CD emulators.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Neville

[Tux]

You'll notice a problem only if your soundcard doesn't use 44.1 KHz by default, if it does then there is no problem.

The crash happens very fast in the intro sequence, as soon as the 1st leave appears. (errr, it's actually a petal !)

Released a new binary for that, 0.96.4, just 1 line added but it fixes this crash : http://raine.1emulation.com/download/latest.html

It's related to the changes done for sdl2, previously the soundcard was just opened in 44.1 KHz for neocd, no matter the configuration.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Tux

[Neville]

I should have noticed this before... but I probably tested the game with the sound off before. In my version there's an issue with the voices in the opening, they keep playing if I interrupt the intro, playing well into the animated prologue after you choose a character.

Or maybe it's just my version of the game. However, this doesn't happen under FB Neo.

[Tux]

36 minutes ago, Neville said:

I should have noticed this before... but I probably tested the game with the sound off before. In my version there's an issue with the voices in the opening, they keep playing if I interrupt the intro, playing well into the animated prologue after you choose a character.

Or maybe it's just my version of the game. However, this doesn't happen under FB Neo.

It does not happen for me neither in raine... ! For info the voice is one of the cd tracks, it stops playing when you press 1 which sends you to the game's menu.

It's always been like that, no idea how you got this.

[Neville]

Then I must have patched the wrong version of the game or something. Nevermind.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Neville

[Tux]

1 hour ago, Neville said:

Then I must have patched the wrong version of the game or something. Nevermind.

Maybe you have set the option in sound options "always stop neocd music while loading" to No ? Actually I should have removed this option long ago, I added it out of curiosity to see if it could be useful sometimes, but for the original hardware it's totally impossible not to stop the music while loading because both require reading from the cd. This option is always to "yes" by default, just make sure yours is.

After checking this option is from before 2009, which means before the start of the git log, I expected to get some feedback from it but since the feedback never came, I just forgot it. You are the 1st one who might have used it by mistake !

Edited December 2, 2023 by Tux

[mer-curious]

3 hours ago, Tux said:

Maybe you have set the option in sound options "always stop neocd music while loading" to No ? Actually I should have removed this option long ago, I added it out of curiosity to see if it could be useful sometimes, but for the original hardware it's totally impossible not to stop the music while loading because both require reading from the cd. This option is always to "yes" by default, just make sure yours is.

Hello Tux! I think ffman1985 was using this feature to mimic the NG MVS/AES game behavior in the NGCD port, so maybe there are some use cases for that? I generally prefer to use the MVS/AES version of the game to enjoy the sprites integrity, and then I use the sound associations option to add the soundtrack arrangements from the CD version, so I have "the best of two worlds". But maybe there are some NGCD games that could work well with that option...

Anyway, thanks for the new Raine version!