Yoko Image Test Results

[GamingMackie]

Hi,

I made some tests using the Yoko image and would like to report my findings.

I compiled the information in this google sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v6fd3p2Q7CBZ6wV_fAA0XpqsqHW_F4u61hwI4jSGMLg/edit?usp=sharing

I have the feeling that most behaviors are related to the same few underlying issues:

• [EDIT][FIXED: Probably my drive was so messy at some points that I did something wrong] Games that do not launch, are probably related to an issue with the video card driver. This applies to Samurai Showdown and Space Invaders only. Some other games do not launch but this was expected as they were commented in the attract mode game list, therefore I considered them not supported for now.

• [EDIT][PARTIAL FIXES]: Games that do not allow to access the test menu are also probably related to an issue with the video card driver. I have the feeling that these games actually try to show the test menu but for some reasons it does not display the content of the menu, on some games while trying to hit some buttons I ended up getting the screen test but that's it.

• [EDIT][FIXED: I explained in this thread how I fixed it] Games that have "cross issues", for Raiden III and Raiden IV, this is happening because all settings are saved directly at the D: partition root folder instead of storing the games settings in their respective folders. Raiden III and Raiden IV have both the same naming convention for their settings, therefore when saving them for one, when launching the other game, it will try to load the settings but the binary format won't be recognized and the game will launch with it's own default settings.

• [EDIT][FIXED: I explained in this thread how I fixed it] Games that have "cross issues", for all the Arc System games, this sounds to be the same behavior mentioned in the previous point, however here the games do not try to load or save any settings from the D: drive. I suppose it interacts with either the RAM or more likely the windows registry and that there is only one entry for these games instead of having their very own entries.

I have not tested in more depth, but I expect that having all the settings saved under the D: root location will also create some border effects for other capabilities like score.

Hope this is helpful.

[ArcadeHustle]

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for taking some time to learn about the innards, and share more.

[thedevient]

Great work, I wish I had more knowledge about this then I could do more, I got a few working but didn’t try them all and looked at a few files to see what was linking to what but then my brain went into melt down so I gave up for a bit lol.

[mantis151]

When you transfer the games to the nesicaxlive folder are you replacing files that are already inside each individual games folder or deleting and installing the files you got with the rom download

[GamingMackie]

When you transfer the games to the nesicaxlive folder are you replacing files that are already inside each individual games folder or deleting and installing the files you got with the rom download

Hi,

no I did not replace them and I kept the original files from the image, sometime for example there was already a game.exe for or another versions of some dlls and I guessed they were here because they probably have been patched for a reason so that the games work.

[mantis151]

I’m having issues with the Roms I have gotten then. I sourced them from emuline but they have being hacked for normal pc. I heard there is a romset floating around untouched it’s just trying to find it

[GamingMackie]

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for taking some time to learn about the innards, and share more.

Thank you.

I did a little bit of digging and I found that the games listed after that are failing to load the test menu on my side had all the same thing most other games did not have: an external .exe file for the test menu:

• Hyper Street Fighter
• Vampire Savior
• Street 3 Third
• Street Alpha 3
• Psychic Force

I did a quick test by moving the game.exe to another place and renamed the test.exe to game.exe so that once attract mode calls the launcher it starts the test menu instead of the game, and it worked, I can see the test menu so it is probably not related to graphic cards drivers as I was thinking at first.

My guess is that something goes wrong when the main exe for the game stops and test is started in the Launcher.exe.

Hope this can give you some clues.

[ArcadeHustle]

yeah you are going to want to use clean ROMS, and not replace files that are already on the Multi.

[ArcadeHustle]

@GamingMackie thank you for taking the initiative the scene needed to continue off our work. salute to you for your efforts at helping educate folks. We appreciate you.

[thedevient]

Err I’ve been trying, just because I’ve no idea what I’m doing doesn’t mean I don’t like being thanked 😂🤪

[MagusIncognito]

Awesome work! Thank you for sharing!!!

[ArcadeHustle]

We love your passion too @thedevient ! hugs

[thedevient]

Cheers @ArcadeHustle at last I feel appreciated in life 🥰 Ha Ha.

[GamingMackie]

Hi,

so I had a look closer to the two following issues that I mentioned in my first post when I opened this thread:

• Games that have "cross issues", for Raiden III and Raiden IV, this is happening because all settings are saved directly at the D: partition root folder instead of storing the games settings in their respective folders. Raiden III and Raiden IV have both the same naming convention for their settings, therefore when saving them for one, when launching the other game, it will try to load the settings but the binary format won't be recognized and the game will launch with it's own default settings.

• Games that have "cross issues", for all the Arc System games, this sounds to be the same behavior mentioned in the previous point, however here the games do not try to load or save any settings from the D: drive. I suppose it interacts with either the RAM or more likely the windows registry and that there is only one entry for these games instead of having their very own entries.

I was wrong for the assumptions taken for the second point, all arc systems games actually also save their settings to the D: partition, so the issue is exactly the same as for the Raiden games.

As mentioned the second partition on the drive (D:) was having overlapping settings which was causing the issues I found but also potentially others I did not find yet. So I tried to see if I could find a solution that would separate the settings for each games.
I had a closer look at the drive and its structure and how things are working together and I came up with a potential solution. However I am not an expert in the windows operating system in general and there are probably way more elegant ways to do this.

I'll try to explain here after what I did.

STEP 1 - Get Command Access to the drive while running on the machine

This will help us to launch a cmd prompt window directly on the multi while it is running on the machine. I used the entry for Puzzle Booble because it is one of the game that is not used by default, but you could do the same using any game on the wheel.

1. Plug your imaged drive on a PC
2. Open the file "Nesicagui.txt" located under "NESiCAxLive\AM\romlists" on the third partition.
3. Uncomment (Remove the "#") in front of the line that starts with "#Puzzle Bobble;..."
4. Save the file
5. Open the file "Puzzle Bobble.bat" located under "NESiCAxLive\Games\NESiCAxLive" on the third partition.
6. Change the original Script from this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=**Launch.exe**"
set "GAMEPATH=\Puzzle Bobble\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%**GAMEROOT**%%GAMENAME%"
exit

to this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=**cmd.exe**"
set "GAMEPATH=\Puzzle Bobble\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%**HOME**%%GAMENAME%"
exit

7. Save the file.
8. Unplug your drive and plug it to your TTX unit, plug a keyboard to your TTX unit and power it on.

STEP 2 - Change the Drive Letters for our Games Settings

So the issue is that the environment expects to read and write game settings on the D: partition, and on a normal usage there would be only one game using that partition, but in our case we have multiple games. so here we are going to change the drive letter where the settings will be really saved to another drive letter so that D: does not exists anymore.

1. Once the menu is started, select "Puzzle Bobble" and launch it as usual. It will open a cmd prompt.
2. Type "diskpart" (this will start the command line disk part software).
3. Type "select volume 1" (This select the second partition where normally the game settings are stored, not that the first partition is named volume 0).
4. Type "assign letter=F" (this will now assign the letter F: to the partition that stores our data, so we do not have D: drives anymore declared for this installation. The Operating System is mapped to C:, the games data are stored in E: and the game settings are now stored in F:).
5. Type "exit"
6. You can check that your drives are mapped correctly by typing "explorer".
7. Turn the TTX off and let take our hard disk drive back to a pc to work on it.

STEP 3 - Modify the batch file that launches the game to have proper separated settings structure

Now that our D: does not exists anymore, we can modify the script that launches a game so that it will create a virtual drive on the fly when executing a game and this drive will be based on a specific folder physically located on our second volume (that is to say the partition that was named F: in the previous step). This will create a D: while the game runs and only when a game run, once the game is closed, that virtual drive will be removed.

In this example, I will take the first game, "3D Cosplay Mahjong"

1. Open the file "3D Cosplay Mahjong.bat" located under "NESiCAxLive\Games\NESiCAxLive" on the third partition
2. Edit the script from this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=Launch.exe"
set "GAMEPATH=\3D Cosplay Mahjong\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%GAMEROOT%%GAMENAME%"
exit

to this:

3. Save the changes, unplug the drive and plug it back to the TTX unit, launch the game, play it, exit the game.

If you unplug the drive and you check your hard disk drive content, you'll see now that on your second partition, the one that physically stores your game settings, there will be a new folder with the game of your name and that stores the various files for that particular game and only that game.

Now, you can

1. Delete the entire content of you game settings (not the game data :)) if you have some.
2. Edit all the 46 .bat files for all the games like demonstrated before.
3. You can also comment back "Puzzle Bobble" so it does not show up on the wheel anymore.

This solves all the issues related to "cross issues" and the original spreadsheet was edited to reflect this.

Next, I'll have a look at why some of the games I do not see the test menu when I try to access it.

Hope it helps and it eventually gets integrated to the drive image at some point.

[MagusIncognito]

I followed the steps above to fix the save issue with drive D, but am now getting the error below when trying launch any game.

Any advice?

[GamingMackie]

I followed the steps above to fix the save issue with drive D, but am now getting the error below when trying launch any game.

Any advice?

Can you show me the content of the script you use to launch that game (the .bat file you modified).

[ArcadeHustle]

Missing a \ perhaps?

[GamingMackie]

Missing a \ perhaps?

My feeling is that GAMELAUNCHER and/or GAMENAME are not correct or inverted either in their definition or their usage.

[MagusIncognito]

Unfortunately I already reflashed the drive to run other tests. I literally just copied and pasted what you had down onto the bak file. I only changed the game name to the appropriate game name for that bak file. Do I need to also change “Launcher” as well? Say to “Nesica”?

…

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 18, 2020, at 1:51 PM, GamingMackie ***@***.***> wrote:  Missing a \ perhaps? My feeling is that GAMELAUNCHER and/or GAMENAME are not correct. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[GamingMackie]

Unfortunately I already reflashed the drive to run other tests. I literally just copied and pasted what you had down onto the bak file. I only changed the game name to the appropriate game name for that bak file. Do I need to also change “Launcher” as well? Say to “Nesica”?

No problems, let's wait to see when you have your new image, just edit one game to test first, and if the issue occurs once again, please post the script you have.

[MagusIncognito]

Alright here we go.

Got pics of the cmd commands and the bat file. Did 3D Cosplay Mahjong to keep it simple and just copied and pasted your example to the batch file.

[GamingMackie]

Alright here we go.

Got pics of the cmd commands and the bat file. Did 3D Cosplay Mahjong to keep it simple and just copied and pasted your example to the batch file.

Oh yeah sorry there is actually a bunch of missing \ at several places. It's because the character is escaped with % by git as a special character so you can't see it. I updated the original post with a screenshot. Thanks.

[ArcadeHustle]

if you use three ` in a row it will escape the original text.

test

[MagusIncognito]

Oh yeah sorry there is actually a bunch of missing \ at several places. It's because the character is escaped with % by git as a special character so you can't see it. I updated the original post with a screenshot. Thanks.

That worked, thank you!!!

[ArcadeHustle]

I edited the original comment to use the escaped text so the backspaces are retained.

[MagusIncognito]

Found an issue with Rumble Fish 2 with the new saving format.

Unfortunately the batch file either needs to be adjusted or the file structure of the game itself.

If you look at the original bat. file for it; it has a unique GAMEPATH when compared to the others. It appears the game.exe is located in "Rumble Fish 2\Release\game"

Tried moving some stuff around but no luck.

[GamingMackie]

Found an issue with Rumble Fish 2 with the new saving format.

Unfortunately the batch file either needs to be adjusted or the file structure of the game itself.

If you look at the original bat. file for it; it has a unique GAMEPATH when compared to the others. It appears the game.exe is located in "Rumble Fish 2\Release\game"

Tried moving some stuff around but no luck.

Oh it's not an issue, it's just that in my post I gave one example to explain the overall idea, but yes, some games need to be adapted.
For this one that would end up being:

@echo off
set "GAMELAUNCHER=Launch.exe"
set "GAMENAME=Rumble Fish 2"
set "GAMEPATH=\Rumble Fish 2\Release\game\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
set "GAMESETTINGSROOT=F:\%GAMENAME%"
if not exist "%GAMESETTINGSROOT%" (mkdir "%GAMESETTINGSROOT%")
subst D: "%GAMESETTINGSROOT%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%GAMEROOT%%GAMELAUNCHER%"
subst D: /D
exit

[MagusIncognito]

Cool, just added the line set "GAMEPATH=\Rumble Fish 2\Release\game" and it works.

Thank you so much, this is all a learning experience for me and your input is golden!

You truly are a scholar and a gentleman, and your contributions are greatly appreciated by myself and anyone else reading this ;) Mad props to "EVERYONE" involved!!!

[ArcadeHustle]

Try a hard link! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/hard-links-and-junctions#hard-links

[GamingMackie]

Some news on the remaining issues I have.

I mostly looked at the games which the settings menu do not show up on my machine.

1. A Simple workaround

For Homura, even though I did not find a fix, there is a workaround. If you try accessing the settings while the "Region Disclaimer" is shown at the beginning then it will work. Not perfect, but still at least you can access it.

2. The Capcom Games

I was also able to fix the settings menu access for all the Capcom 2d games (hyper street, street 3, street alpha, vampire) as they all share the same architecture and therefore face the same problem.

Indeed, all these games have a game.exe and a separated test.exe. I changed and renamed in one of these game the game.exe to game.exe.keep and the test.exe to game.exe. When I launched the game through Attract Mode, then I was able to see the test menu as I was expecting.

My guess is that there was something wrong that prevents the system to properly launch test.exe from game.exe when it is running. To fix the issue I created a new Launch.exe which basically does the following (written in pseudo code) :

While game.exe runs
	If test.exe runs Then
	   stop game.exe
        End If Condition
End While Loop

If test.exe runs Then
   wait for test.exe to not run anymore
End If Condition

You can implement that overall logic in your favorite dev language or you can use the attached Launch.exe that I developed which acts as replacement for the 4 games I mentioned (you should still make a backup of your original Launch.exe for these games, like renaming it to Launch.exe.original just in case something goes wrong ).

Thanks, Hope this helps.

Launch.zip

[G3ORGE573]

I'm currently having trouble downloading the Yoko image at https://archive.org/details/x-3-multi-jvs-yoko-noroms-final.-7z

It's showing up as a full 119 GB .img rather than a compressed .7z file like the Tate image.

The archive.org servers are extremely slow for me, so this would likely take about a week to download

[ArcadeHustle]

Hrmmm I'm pulling the .img at 1.1meg a second from Archive now...
https://archive.org/download/x-3-multi-jvs-yoko-noroms-final.-7z/X3_Multi_JVS_YOKO_NOROMS_FINAL.img

[ArcadeHustle]

Let me see if there is a mega link. @TypeX3Mod do you have a link handy?

[G3ORGE573]

I'm getting around 100 kb/s a lot of the time from there, maybe it's due to where I'm located. A mega link would be very much appreciated

[TypeX3Mod]

Let me see if there is a mega link. @TypeX3Mod do you have a link handy?

Something like this?
https://mega.nz/file/XVYDQKYT#wnoAYh3tGeG637YHVXDD5tJy0H-GbGyhGPbJl8LDUTs

[MagusIncognito]

For those of you who had previously downloaded the JVS-YOKO.img and did all the work stated in the previous posts to create individual save folders for each game on Drive D, I recommend starting off with a fresh install of the YOKO.img before installing the FIO package.

Otherwise your previous save states won't be recognized and the games will fail to create new save files. In other words, you won't be able to save any settings.

Strangely enough Chaos Code still created its on save folder and save files but put it on Drive E with the NesicaXLive folder. Another thing to note is that the name of the save folder is slightly different than the name of the game folder.

Also if you start off with a fresh image, Chaos Code will still create its own unique save folder, this time on Drive D. So far Chaos Code is the only game I've found that does this, all other games I've tried are storing their save files directly onto the D Drive.

[GamingMackie]

Yes there is something not conventional with Chaos Code. I need to have a look at that one too, not that it is extremely important as the save files are still isolated from the others anyway, but it is just not clean.

[DaNightSlasher]

I have had Chaos Code resetting as well.

So, I have used Launch.exe (crc32 3AA8904D) from NxL2 games to get it working.
I have sometimes noticed gfx gliches, when charas are jumping.

[jaycaesar]

Hi,

so I had a look closer to the two following issues that I mentioned in my first post when I opened this thread:

• Games that have "cross issues", for Raiden III and Raiden IV, this is happening because all settings are saved directly at the D: partition root folder instead of storing the games settings in their respective folders. Raiden III and Raiden IV have both the same naming convention for their settings, therefore when saving them for one, when launching the other game, it will try to load the settings but the binary format won't be recognized and the game will launch with it's own default settings.
• Games that have "cross issues", for all the Arc System games, this sounds to be the same behavior mentioned in the previous point, however here the games do not try to load or save any settings from the D: drive. I suppose it interacts with either the RAM or more likely the windows registry and that there is only one entry for these games instead of having their very own entries.

I was wrong for the assumptions taken for the second point, all arc systems games actually also save their settings to the D: partition, so the issue is exactly the same as for the Raiden games.

As mentioned the second partition on the drive (D:) was having overlapping settings which was causing the issues I found but also potentially others I did not find yet. So I tried to see if I could find a solution that would separate the settings for each games.
I had a closer look at the drive and its structure and how things are working together and I came up with a potential solution. However I am not an expert in the windows operating system in general and there are probably way more elegant ways to do this.

I'll try to explain here after what I did.

STEP 1 - Get Command Access to the drive while running on the machine

This will help us to launch a cmd prompt window directly on the multi while it is running on the machine. I used the entry for Puzzle Booble because it is one of the game that is not used by default, but you could do the same using any game on the wheel.

1. Plug your imaged drive on a PC
2. Open the file "Nesicagui.txt" located under "NESiCAxLive\AM\romlists" on the third partition.
3. Uncomment (Remove the "#") in front of the line that starts with "#Puzzle Bobble;..."
4. Save the file
5. Open the file "Puzzle Bobble.bat" located under "NESiCAxLive\Games\NESiCAxLive" on the third partition.
6. Change the original Script from this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=**Launch.exe**"
set "GAMEPATH=\Puzzle Bobble\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%**GAMEROOT**%%GAMENAME%"
exit

to this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=**cmd.exe**"
set "GAMEPATH=\Puzzle Bobble\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%**HOME**%%GAMENAME%"
exit

1. Save the file.
2. Unplug your drive and plug it to your TTX unit, plug a keyboard to your TTX unit and power it on.

STEP 2 - Change the Drive Letters for our Games Settings

So the issue is that the environment expects to read and write game settings on the D: partition, and on a normal usage there would be only one game using that partition, but in our case we have multiple games. so here we are going to change the drive letter where the settings will be really saved to another drive letter so that D: does not exists anymore.

1. Once the menu is started, select "Puzzle Bobble" and launch it as usual. It will open a cmd prompt.
2. Type "diskpart" (this will start the command line disk part software).
3. Type "select volume 1" (This select the second partition where normally the game settings are stored, not that the first partition is named volume 0).
4. Type "assign letter=F" (this will now assign the letter F: to the partition that stores our data, so we do not have D: drives anymore declared for this installation. The Operating System is mapped to C:, the games data are stored in E: and the game settings are now stored in F:).
5. Type "exit"
6. You can check that your drives are mapped correctly by typing "explorer".
7. Turn the TTX off and let take our hard disk drive back to a pc to work on it.

STEP 3 - Modify the batch file that launches the game to have proper separated settings structure

Now that our D: does not exists anymore, we can modify the script that launches a game so that it will create a virtual drive on the fly when executing a game and this drive will be based on a specific folder physically located on our second volume (that is to say the partition that was named F: in the previous step). This will create a D: while the game runs and only when a game run, once the game is closed, that virtual drive will be removed.

In this example, I will take the first game, "3D Cosplay Mahjong"

1. Open the file "3D Cosplay Mahjong.bat" located under "NESiCAxLive\Games\NESiCAxLive" on the third partition
2. Edit the script from this:

@echo off
set "GAMENAME=Launch.exe"
set "GAMEPATH=\3D Cosplay Mahjong\"
set HOME="%~dp0"
set "GAMEROOT=%~dp0%GAMEPATH%"
cd %GAMEROOT%
start "" /WAIT "%GAMEROOT%%GAMENAME%"
exit

to this:

1. Save the changes, unplug the drive and plug it back to the TTX unit, launch the game, play it, exit the game.

If you unplug the drive and you check your hard disk drive content, you'll see now that on your second partition, the one that physically stores your game settings, there will be a new folder with the game of your name and that stores the various files for that particular game and only that game.

Now, you can

1. Delete the entire content of you game settings (not the game data :)) if you have some.
2. Edit all the 46 .bat files for all the games like demonstrated before.
3. You can also comment back "Puzzle Bobble" so it does not show up on the wheel anymore.

This solves all the issues related to "cross issues" and the original spreadsheet was edited to reflect this.

Next, I'll have a look at why some of the games I do not see the test menu when I try to access it.

Hope it helps and it eventually gets integrated to the drive image at some point.

Just wanted to say thanks for this!

I'm slowly going through all the files and editing it. I'm doing it for the JVS version of the image, but I would imagine it's the same logic for the FastIO version too.

It just makes the game save directory much neater where each save/setting/coin etc record is per game.

Now everything is in one neat folder under their respective game name

I really need to make a build with all these fixes plus your launch.exe for the Capcom games - in time. I hate software side of things.. I'm more of a hardware tinkerer :)

edit: it's "K" drive because it's on my PC. That shows up as F drive on the ttx3

[Guybrush-Threepwoods]

• [EDIT][PARTIAL FIXES]: Games that do not allow to access the test menu are also probably related to an issue with the video card driver. I have the feeling that these games actually try to show the test menu but for some reasons it does not display the content of the menu, on some games while trying to hit some buttons I ended up getting the screen test but that's it.

Your hunch was correct on this one for the KOF games.

Using a d3d wrapper fixes the test menu,