Support for Paprium on Genesis-plus-gx?

[spielvan]

Recently a Paprium game dump was made available in 8mb bin format, it was played on a modified mame, would it be possible to support it on Genesis-plus-gx?

[ekeeke]

Not for the moment (and maybe never) as:

• the publicly available 8MB ROM dump seems to be partially encrypted and is definitively missing some parts (68k exception table) from what I have seen
• the information to somehow make it work (using partial high-level emulation of the FPGA mapper and stub of on-board MCU interfaces it seems) in a modified version of MAME were not publically shared
• proper emulation (i.e with sound and zero graphical glitch or missing effects) would likely require low-level emulation of the on-board ARM MCU and use of its internal ROM which has not been dumped yet (and might not be dumpable for what we know).

There is also the fact that this game is a newly developped game that just got released recently and is still commercially exploited so allowing piracy of it could be troublesome to emulator devs.

[spielvan]

Thanks for the reply bro. I had asked Neto to take a look at the rom and it got more or less the same result.

[ArcadeHustle]

"might not be dumpable for what we know)" ST STM32F446ZEJ6 MCU may indeed be in RDP2. Unlikely, but possible for sure.

[ArcadeHustle]

“There is also the fact that this game is a newly developped game that just got released recently and is still commercially exploited so allowing piracy of it could be troublesome to emulator devs.“

Weird that line in the sand doesn’t exist for Demons of Asteborg support.
ekeeke#381

It is also still “commercially exploited” https://www.demonsofasteborg.com/index.php/produit/demons-of-asteborg-rom-file/

which have you done? Enabled piracy, or enabled people to play their ROM ( without knowing if it was purchased or pirated ). I’d suggest the same morality apply to Paprium. You must assume someone can legally dump the Spansion flash themselves with the public information available.

Supporting this game is no more questionable than supporting DoA. Let’s not be bias in choices like this. It’s not a good look.

[Stephane-D]

We all know that there is no Paprium ROM to be purchased unlike the DoA game so yeah it's definitely different.

[ProjectLittleMan]

No @Stephane-D it really isn't. The problem is how quickly people forget that there was literally an anti-piracy mechanism that needed bypassed for the game to work in MAME. It shipped with a custom Blastem Emulator specifically to prevent piracy. Maybe everyone here has forgotten that in order to form their moral high ground.

" Did anybody fixed the anti piracy crash on this game?"

This game IS being "commercially exploited", and there ARE piracy problems enabled by MAME just the same as they would be with Paprium. Acting like they are somehow different all the while DoA folks literally currently like right now STILL have to copyright claim the Rom off the web, seems like a silly place to try to hang your hat.

Surely you recall all the crying in the scene over this protection before the patches were made both for Everdrive and emulators?
"I have tested this rom on real hardware, beware it DOESNT WORK, there is some kind of copy protection."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/oys3wu/comment/h81py8p/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

"Yeah this one has the anti-piracy message. I bought the actual ROM but I did give this a whirl for the hell of it on my Genesis Mini using the Pico core. It worked till I got the anti-piracy crash. Oh well"
https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/oys3wu/sega_mega_drivegenesis_demons_of_asteborg/h8czgui/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Please keep explaining how this is different a bit more. You continue to make yourselves look silly.

[Stephane-D]

I participated to the development of DoA game so i know a bit about it :)
There is no anti-piracy system in the game and what i can tell you is that people having that error message when playing the game did not bought the original game and are just using an (illegally) distributed broken ROM (made on purpose of course). The original ROM (the one you can buy) can run on BlastEm and many other emulators, but yeah you need to have the original ROM and not the pirated one (which again, is broken on purpose).

[ekeeke]

I can confirm what Stef said: there is no anti piracy in DoA, it uses a known mapper officially documented by Sega which was already emulated in this emulator, the only required changes were to increase the maximal ROM supported size from 10MB to 16MB because this game uses an unusually large flash ROM chip.

Regarding the last statement I made which apparently offended you and caused all these rants, I think there is a misunderstanding (probably due to how it was worded, my bad but English is not my first language): this wasn't meant to be a morale stance from my side, just an observation that this game was still actively sold by WM and that reversing and emulating the anti-piracy protection could cause trouble to emu developers (or make them fearing the consequences) knowing how WM is protective of their IP and against any form of ROM dumping/emulation.

[ProjectLittleMan]

"which apparently offended you and caused all these rants" no one is offended simply for having a discussion. Nor are they "rants".

Back on topic, so let me get this straight. There was no anti-piracy involved, but people are supposedly using a "broken ROM" that was "made on purpose" and also "distributed illegally". So are you saying that your team seeded the internet with a broken ROM all the while selling a legit ROM? Or are you saying that the dumpers distributed an intentionally broken ROM? Neither claim makes much sense.

Of course some of this was spun as simply being a "modified header"
"Here's how to modify the header in HxD in order to make Demons of Asteborg work with Blastem"

Likewise I'm well aware of the supported emulators. They are in the FAQ. Mame has of course always been absent from the list for example, and Gens flat out listed as a non option.

https://www.demonsofasteborg.com/index.php/produit/demons-of-asteborg-rom-file/

The conversation seems to often go to "Where did you get the ROM!?" when folks mention it not working in other emulators. So my point still stands, acting like supporting one game vs. an other some how enables "piracy" more so than something else is a joke.
SmokeMonsterPacks/Mega-Sg-Jailbreak#98

For not being anti-piracy, the scene sure thought that was the intent:
"Apparently it’s using some advanced techniques and certain emulators won’t run it."

"Surprised they expect it to run in common emulators if Mister can't start It"

One can assume if DOA team wanted it to work with MAME, or Gens, or anything else for that matter at launch, they'd have enabled the landscape to be that way in the first place.

[Stephane-D]

@ekeeke already told it, there is no protection and anti emulator things in the game.
What make it not working on many emulators is its huge size first, lot of emulators didn't supported it in first place (but since then almost got patched for that). The other point is about the SSF2 mapper, some emulator recognize it using the header (only a single game officially used it back in time : SSF2) and the DoA team didn't wanted to use the same header for legal reason (the header contained the SSF2 keyword) but just patching 4 characters in the DoA ROM header is enough to make it works (and again lot of emulators got patched to support the native DoA header now).

[ProjectLittleMan]

"there is no protection and anti emulator things"

"pirated one (which again, is broken on purpose)"

did you break the game on purpose, or not? make up your minds.

[Stephane-D]

A broken copy of the ROM exists on the net and it's hopefully the one that pirates will first get when trying to download it illegally. Of course people who bough it has the good version of the ROM.
Why are you so interested by that ?

[ProjectLittleMan]

You are evading my question. You claimed it was broken intentionally... was it, or not. Did you seed the internet with a broken rom, yes or no? "it's hopefully the one that pirates will first get when trying to download it" seems to imply, yes? Or when you said it was broken intentionally were you talking out the side of your face? I'm getting confused.

[Stephane-D]

Of course it was intentional and we done it in a way so pirates believed it was the real game ROM but it wasn't.
Again i don't understand where you want to go with that. Is trying to protect himself against piracy a problem ?

[ProjectLittleMan]

So you leaked your own intellectual property into the public domain? Whoops. That certainly has some ramifications.

[Stephane-D]

You know you have a free demo version of the game right ?

[ProjectLittleMan]

Let me try this again, without discussing the "Free demo". You leaked your own IP into the public domain as a means to stop piracy? correct? yes or no?

[Stephane-D]

So you leaked your own intellectual property into the public domain? Whoops. That certainly has some ramifications.

Seeing your response i'm starting to understand which kind of guy you are :)

[ProjectLittleMan]

"starting to understand which kind of guy you are" someone who pushes for accountable answers? You've just exposed your reasons to not support Paprium as complete BS. And helped me understand what kind of guy you are. Please go on.

[Stephane-D]

Let me try this again, without discussing the "Free demo".

Why ?? the free demo ROM contains about the same except the limitation is done in a different way.

You leaked your own IP into the public domain as a means to stop piracy? correct? yes or no?

No, the game is broken and cannot be played more than the demo (broke at beginning of second level.. and that is more than just an error screen).

[hizzlekizzle]

"You leaked your own IP into the public domain" doesn't really make any sense. As the authors/publishers/rightsholders, they can do whatever they want with their IP, including distributing broken versions. I'm not seeing the problem here.

[Stephane-D]

"starting to understand which kind of guy you are" someone who pushes for accountable answers? You've just exposed your reasons to not support Paprium as complete BS. And helped me understand what kind of guy you are. Please go on.

Oh please, you perfectly know the difference between the 2 games. One was sold in ROM format and the other was explicitly protected against the ROM diffusion. I don't understand why you try to argue man... are you trying to convince yourself ?

[ProjectLittleMan]

Mate you literally just said you seeded the internet with a fake rom as an anti-piracy mechanism, but want to hang your hat on the protections being "in-game". As if you don't know perfectly well that your argument is literally to defend your incorrect stance that somehow supporting Paprium enables more piracy than supporting DoA. It is a complete farce, and you debunked your own argument the moment you chose to tip toe around admitting that you seeded the web with a broken ROM to stop piracy. Who are YOU trying to convince? Certainly not me.

[hizzlekizzle]

I think the DoA guys should be commended for choosing a flexible distribution and playback model, but their choices should not be used as a stick to thump emudevs into supporting a game whose devs chose a more restricted route. I think DoA's route was the smart, mature one, but the Paprium devs have their own rights and reasons.

The discussions here and in picodrive's tracker really give the impression that some people want to punish the Paprium devs for not being as flexible and open as the DoA devs, and the emus and emudevs are used as pawns in this endeavor. I don't think that's cool.

[Stephane-D]

Mate you literally just said you seeded the internet with a fake rom as an anti-piracy mechanism, but want to hang your hat on the protections being "in-game". As if you don't know perfectly well that your argument is literally to defend your incorrect stance that somehow supporting Paprium enables more piracy than supporting DoA. It is a complete farce, and you debunked your own argument the moment you chose to tip toe around admitting that you seeded the web with a broken ROM to stop piracy. Who are YOU trying to convince? Certainly not me.

Haha really you made my day !
I won't try to discuss / argue more with you, you totally rock guy 👍

[stry8993]

You are evading my question. You claimed it was broken intentionally... was it, or not. Did you seed the internet with a broken rom, yes or no? "it's hopefully the one that pirates will first get when trying to download it" seems to imply, yes? Or when you said it was broken intentionally were you talking out the side of your face? I'm getting confused.

Spiking a ROM and proliferating it to undermine piracy/distribution is DRM. Its anti-piracy. Its pretty simple. Littleman asked, and it was ya-buts and this not that's. DRM helps no one. It'll be cracked in time, games will be fixed in time, if you want to beat piracy, beat it on service, but accept that it'll happen. DoA did great on customer service, after the bevil issues, and went above and beyond. Was the initial actions taken for the ROM a bit underhanded and functionally useless in the long run? Yeah. Paprium, by comparison is scamware, bait-and-switch, and now they're double dipping. Its pretty obvious that once that ROM is liberated, and fully supported, WM will have no choice but to stop leading people on, and put up or shut up. And people who paid, and still haven't received their game because they unknowingly had to wait for OTHER PEOPLE to pay for them in a second run via Kickstarter, would be able to have their copies, at least in some form.

[ProjectLittleMan]

If you come back and want to talk about PierSolar support starting in 2012 and how the game is still sold today we can. ;)
"Eeeke says that the ROM dump is incomplete -

https://code.google.com/p/genplus-gx/issues/detail?id=264

Not sure if I should merge this or not."

The morality of it all has certainly been a scope creep to say the least.

"Eke-Eke hasn't decided how/whether to proceed publicly with Pier Solar support given its only-recent commercial release and the potential harm to the developers' profits, so mainline genplus-gx may never run it, and if it does, it likely won't be with this code specifically."
https://gbatemp.net/threads/genplus-gx-with-pier-solar-support.333335/#post-4393050

Happily trying to reproduce issues on a game that has offered no ROM sold.
ekeeke#80 (comment)

Actively for sale now - http://www.piersolar.com

Where is the moral high ground? Suddenly falls apart with Pier Solar?

[ProjectLittleMan]

@hizzlekizzle "the emus and emudevs are used as pawns in this endeavor" willingly choosing sides on a per game basis. Are they being used as pawns, or are they willing participants in the game?

[ekeeke]

As I explained above, my last statement was not a moral stance so I am not sure why are you are still going on with this "discussion" and keep confronting me as if I commited a crime or had double standards. I only tried to explain why it was unlikely that Paprium get emulated soon in this emulator but I have personally nothing against it being supported one day.

[ProjectLittleMan]

@ekeeke "There is also the fact that this game is a newly developped game that just got released recently and is still commercially exploited so allowing piracy of it could be troublesome to emulator devs." THIS is a double standard mate, even if you don't want to recognize it. Flat out, Pier Solar and DoA are supported, despite rampant piracy.

@Stephane-D "No, the game is broken and cannot be played more than the demo (broke at beginning of second level.. and that is more than just an error screen)", so again there was intentional anti piracy attempts and you guys tried to hide it. They were intentionally put in both the demo, and in the leaked ROM that your team intentionally leaked. Why you tap danced around it and lied initially is beyond me. There clearly are protection mechanisms, support being in GensPlus allows piracy, period. End of story.

Now Eeke, if you want to get back to the TECHNICAL reasons that Paprium may not be supported you'd perhaps not feel like I was "confronting" you. As it stands, there is no valid moral reason to prevent someone with the technical skill to dump their own Spanison flash in Paprium, in an effort to play it, right? This is NOT piracy in and of itself, so therefore is not "enabling" it, correct? The only reason Paprium can not be supported right now, would be a) that our team has not shared the minimal STM32 commands to get it working b) that ROM of the STM32 has not been dumped to enable proper support. Nothing more, nothing less. Absolutely not some line about "commercial exploitation", Pier Solar, and DoA support prove that. It was a lame attempt at an excuse, that backfired.

[ProjectLittleMan]

If this was about anything but morality, any of you could have chosen to respond to this perhaps #275 (comment)? or even ask me (one of the leads on the dumping project) about the technical details holding this back. This conversation didn't head that way at all though.

If you have any questions about these points, please ask, there are people that know the answers:

• the publicly available 8MB ROM dump seems to be partially encrypted and is definitively missing some parts (68k exception table) from what I have seen
• the information to somehow make it work (using partial high-level emulation of the FPGA mapper and stub of on-board MCU interfaces it seems) in a modified version of MAME were not publically shared
• proper emulation (i.e with sound and zero graphical glitch or missing effects) would likely require low-level emulation of the on-board ARM MCU and use of its internal ROM which has not been dumped yet (and might not be dumpable for what we know).

Obviously some of the problems have been solved already pending the STM32 dump.

[ekeeke]

THIS is a double standard mate, even if you don't want to recognize it. Flat out, Pier Solar and DoA are supported, despite rampant piracy.

Again, it was not. Nowhere did I state that I was
AGAINST Paprium support in this emulator. All I wanted to state was that, ADDITIONALLY, emulation of this game and its anti-piracy mechanisms MIGHT be a sensitive topic among emu devs IN GENERAL because it is still getting a lot of public exposure (and associated drama). I remember the situation with Pier Solar was kinda different as it was first emulated officially in MESS/MAME and it was like 2 years after public release, the crazyness around that game was long gone. As for DoA, as already explained, it is obviously different as its emulation is officially endorsed by the developers.

There clearly are protection mechanisms, support being in GensPlus allows piracy, period. End of story.

No there are not. Sorry to insist but you completely misunderstood what he said (or are not clearly understanding how emulators usually work around protections): the leaked ROM fails to run in Genesis Plus GX just like in any other emulators and if you manage to patch it to get it recognized as a valid ROM (I think you just need to remove two extra bytes that were added at the start), it will be as much limited as in other emulators, because it has (apparently) the same limited content as the public demo ROM. From what I understand, it was just a lame joke to troll pirates with a fake ROM, nothing more. Only the official ROM works in Genesis Plus GX (and many other emulators by now) and as already explained multiple times, it has no anti-piracy mechanism: the only change needed to support it was to increase the max supported ROM size in the emulator. And the demo ROM works all the same in most emulators, it justs has a more limited size. Hopefully you got it now.

If this was about anything but morality, any of you could have chosen to respond to this perhaps #275 (comment)?

What was there to respond to this post ? It basically confirmed what was said above by adding a technical precision as to why it might not be dumpable. There was nothing to be discussed furthermore as it did not make the game more likely emulatable or addressed any of the indicated issues.

This conversation didn't head that way at all though.

Indeed, because instead of addressing the identified technical issues, you and your mate got triggerred by a single statement (that wasn't even the main point of my initial post) that you somehow found outrageous and choosed to immediately drive the discussion into some controversial ground, throwing out accusations and judgements.

If you have any questions about these points, please ask, there are people that know the answers:

No thanks. Having seen here how two apparent members of this team are unnecessarely confrontational and judgmental when it comes to discussion and how much time I already wasted arguing with you (as this is clearly going nowhere), I think I will wait for the info to be publically available some day... or for others to add support for it, as this game is definitively still way too much surrounded with drama and toxicity.

[ProjectLittleMan]

Again, it was not. Nowhere did I state that I was AGAINST Paprium support in this emulator. All I wanted to state was that, ADDITIONALLY, emulation of this game and its anti-piracy mechanisms MIGHT be a sensitive topic among emu devs IN GENERAL because it is still getting a lot of public exposure (and associated drama). I remember the situation with Pier Solar was kinda different as it was first emulated officially in MESS/MAME and it was like 2 years after public release, the crazyness around that game was long gone. As for DoA, as already explained, it is obviously different as its emulation is officially endorsed by the developers.

Your stance can still be a double standard even while you are for support in the future. I never claimed you were AGAINST support. What I claimed was that your stance is flimsy. "still commercially exploited so allowing piracy of it could be troublesome to emulator devs" was your stance. Both games are still commercially exploited, and "allowing piracy" by simply adding support or even the mere existence of an emulator is a farce to discuss. If you claim piracy is enabled for Paprium, by default you've enabled it for DoA. There is no way around this. THIS is where the double standard is. You seek to decouple the two some how. Even in the face of people extracting their own ROMs from broken Paprium carts you wanted to hang your hat on piracy. You seem to be back peddling on it now, and that is fine.

No there are not. Sorry to insist but you completely misunderstood what he said (or are not clearly understanding how emulators usually work around protections): the leaked ROM fails to run in Genesis Plus GX just like in any other emulators and if you manage to patch it to get it recognized as a valid ROM (I think you just need to remove two extra bytes that were added at the start), it will be as much limited as in other emulators, because it has (apparently) the same limited content as the public demo ROM. From what I understand, it was just a lame joke to troll pirates with a fake ROM, nothing more. Only the official ROM works in Genesis Plus GX (and many other emulators by now) and as already explained multiple times, it has no anti-piracy mechanism: the only change needed to support it was to increase the max supported ROM size in the emulator. And the demo ROM works all the same in most emulators, it justs has a more limited size. Hopefully you got it now.

You support the working ROM, the one that people would be pirating... implying folks are using a broken ROM makes literally no sense. So simply by supporting the official ROM you enable piracy, right? Regardless of IF the development group has signed off on, written off, attempted to mitigate, or accepted said piracy, you enable it. Period. Just like Paprium support would, or support of ANY other game. Point being, it could have been left out of the conversation all together.

But let me once again get this straight one last time. You refuse to call this seeding of a broken ROM, anything but an anti-piracy attempt? It was "lame joke", and defiantly not a "anti-piracy" mechanism. Lol wut?

What was there to respond to this post ? It basically confirmed what was said above by adding a technical precision as to why it might not be dumpable. There was nothing to be discussed furthermore as it did not make the game more likely emulatable or addressed any of the indicated issues.

Oh come on dude. You could have easily move into discussing what it took to support the game in it's existing state sans sound. The game IS emualatable NOW sans sound, some reason we are acting like it isn't. There was something to discuss, but it wasn't attractive to the original message of "this won't be done for now cuz $reasons".

Indeed, because instead of addressing the identified technical issues, you and your mate got triggerred by a single statement (that wasn't even the main point of my initial post) that you somehow found outrageous and choosed to immediately drive the discussion into some controversial ground, throwing out accusations and judgements.

No thanks. Having seen here how two apparent members of this team are unnecessarely confrontational and judgmental when it comes to discussion and how much time I already wasted arguing with you (as this is clearly going nowhere), I think I will wait for the info to be publically available some day... or for others to add support for it, as this game is definitively still way too much surrounded with drama and toxicity.

Always great when people act like others are "toxic" but fail to see their own passive aggressiveness and projecting.
offended you and caused all these rants

Nothing about this discussion has been "toxic" short of acting like there wasn't an intentional attempt at anti-piracy with DoA. Someone got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and just doesn't wanna talk about it.

Likewise as far as "already wasted arguing" no one made you login and comment here. You could feel free to ignore the comments at any point. Your time was wasted trying to act like an out of game anti-piracy attempt wasn't simply what it was.

Take care, don't want you to waste any more time on this. Sorry to take up your brain power. Cheers!

[darleiv]

"which apparently offended you and caused all these rants" no one is offended simply for having a discussion. Nor are they "rants".

Back on topic, so let me get this straight. There was no anti-piracy involved, but people are supposedly using a "broken ROM" that was "made on purpose" and also "distributed illegally". So are you saying that your team seeded the internet with a broken ROM all the while selling a legit ROM? Or are you saying that the dumpers distributed an intentionally broken ROM? Neither claim makes much sense.

Of course some of this was spun as simply being a "modified header" "Here's how to modify the header in HxD in order to make Demons of Asteborg work with Blastem"

Likewise I'm well aware of the supported emulators. They are in the FAQ. Mame has of course always been absent from the list for example, and Gens flat out listed as a non option. https://www.demonsofasteborg.com/index.php/produit/demons-of-asteborg-rom-file/

The conversation seems to often go to "Where did you get the ROM!?" when folks mention it not working in other emulators. So my point still stands, acting like supporting one game vs. an other some how enables "piracy" more so than something else is a joke. SmokeMonsterPacks/Mega-Sg-Jailbreak#98

For not being anti-piracy, the scene sure thought that was the intent: "Apparently it’s using some advanced techniques and certain emulators won’t run it."

"Surprised they expect it to run in common emulators if Mister can't start It"

One can assume if DOA team wanted it to work with MAME, or Gens, or anything else for that matter at launch, they'd have enabled the landscape to be that way in the first place.
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work in Kgen+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NP4qMFKax0