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Access to game sources
#361437 - 12/19/16 08:27 PM
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Hello.
First let me applogise if this is in the wrong section... If it is, tell me how or kick it to the right place, thanks.
The Question: Is it possible the get access to the game sources for corrections?
Let's say i was a BIG player on some game and found an error on the Mame emmulated game. Is it possible to have access to the roms sources and correct TRY to correct the error?
The error in not due to the emulator. It its a conception error that goes unnoticed on the game hardware but shows in the emulation (cant tell you why yet)...
Thank you.
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: AFelix]
#361439 - 12/19/16 08:43 PM
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> Hello. > > First let me applogise if this is in the wrong section... > If it is, tell me how or kick it to the right place, thanks. > > The Question: > Is it possible the get access to the game sources for corrections? > > Let's say i was a BIG player on some game and found an error on the Mame emmulated > game. Is it possible to have access to the roms sources and correct TRY to correct > the error? > > The error in not due to the emulator. It its a conception error that goes unnoticed > on the game hardware but shows in the emulation (cant tell you why yet)... > > Thank you.
the original game sources? no, that's very, very, very unlikely, most of the time we're lucky to even have dumps of the roms, most of the sources probably don't even exist anywhere these days.
that doesn't mean you can't fix bugs in the original games, you can always disassemble the code in the roms, study it, use the MAME debugger to help you trace bits of it, work out what they do etc. but that's the best you can do for 99.9% of cases.
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: Haze]
#361440 - 12/19/16 08:54 PM
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Thanks for replying.
That was what i had in mind... I'm a programmer and know assembly, c & C++. Can you point me to some tools? Are there any specific tools for this? (MAME and GAMES)
I have never done anything in this area...
Thank you
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: AFelix]
#361443 - 12/19/16 09:57 PM
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> Thanks for replying. > > That was what i had in mind... > I'm a programmer and know assembly, c & C++. > Can you point me to some tools? > Are there any specific tools for this? (MAME and GAMES) > > I have never done anything in this area... > > Thank you
well if you just want to be able to see the code running then you can run MAME with -debug the code you see disassembled and running there is the game code.
there's a decent set of help available if you type 'help' there
beyond that, if you actually want to edit / write code it's very much going to be determined by the system you want to look at, there are tools out there for most of the major processors.
it's not really the kind of subject where there's a single 'good' answer to give you, it's a lot of work and research that will need doing however you look at it.
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: Haze]
#361444 - 12/19/16 10:05 PM
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Ok. I think i got it.
I'm going to look for tools to disassemble and reassemble. In this case it is a visual efect. I probably need to get into the graphics of the game. Its Pinball Action and the error is when the ball passes "over" or "under" the game bariers or objects... going thru them...
Thank you for your help...
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: AFelix]
#361448 - 12/20/16 12:32 AM
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> Ok. I think i got it. > > I'm going to look for tools to disassemble and reassemble. > In this case it is a visual efect. I probably need to get into the graphics of the > game. > Its Pinball Action and the error is when the ball passes "over" or "under" the game > bariers or objects... going thru them... > > Thank you for your help...
some of it might just be limitations of the original hardware, not coding bugs.
the developers of the games had to be very smart back in the day to deal with certain situations
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Re: Access to game sources
[Re: AFelix]
#361482 - 12/20/16 12:19 PM
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>In this case it is a visual effect. I probably need to get into the graphics of the game. >It is Pinball Action and the error is when the ball passes "over" or "under" the game barriers or objects... going through them...
Maybe what Haze posted could be correct. There also may be some actual bugs that does occur with actual pcb hardware of the game. You would have to do a search such as find a video clip on Youtube or elsewhere that shows game play from actual pcb that shows whether the bug occurs or not or you will need to find a pcb owner of the game to verify if actual hardware does same thing.
There are 5 different sets of Pinball Action supported as source file indicates: src/mame/drivers/pbaction.cpp
There could be a revised/revision version that did fix the bug description. But if the same bug occurs with all supported sets, then next guess could be emulation error.
Sometimes the service manuals that came with the arcade cab might include pcb game logic schematics for helping trace hardware logic. I don't know if Tehkan made that available for their games like other companies such as Atari did.
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