ROM requiring GameDrive

[trufun101]

Hey there,

 

I'm getting things ready for the pre-alpha release of my Mortal Kombat port.  I will be releasing the ROM; however, I've been warned that if it doesn't require GameDrive, then people will put it on a cartridge and sell it.  I really don't care about people trying to sell it, but the game isn't done.  I'd rather release it GameDrive-free once it's totally done.

 

To force a ROM to be run on a GameDrive is it just a matter of setting useGD to 1 in rapapp.s?

 

if useGD=1          

            include             "RAPTORGD.INC"                              ; Include RAPTOR library labels

endif

 

Thanks

 

[+CyranoJ]

No, that will include the JaguarGD libraries for file access.

 

Please do not post GD / skunkboard detection routines publically as it will aid in their removal.  Let's keep such things behind the curtain.

[42bs]

On 3/15/2024 at 11:28 PM, CyranoJ said:

No, that will include the JaguarGD libraries for file access.

 

Please do not post GD / skunkboard detection routines publically as it will aid in their removal.  Let's keep such things behind the curtain.

I think splitting the demo and reading the assets from GD would be also a good protection.

[+cubanismo]

On 4/6/2024 at 7:33 AM, 42bs said:

I think splitting the demo and reading the assets from GD would be also a good protection.

That does not work unless loading from USB though, currently. Would *love* to have this fixed, but I don't think @SainT has been able to circle back to JagGD issues (understandably) yet. See this thread:

 

@trufun101, Might want to read up on this already-public thread

 

[SainT]

Working on these things at the moment. Just having a look at the USB upload stability currently, then I'll have a look at the other dev stuff.

[42bs]

I for my part cannot see any USB upload issues. 

[SainT]

7 minutes ago, 42bs said:

I for my part cannot see any USB upload issues. 

It may depend on your USB setup and definitely depends on the data size. I think @CyranoJ said it improved when he got a new hub or went direct to the PC with the USB cable, or something along those lines. The good news is, I've been able to replicate it quite reliably by loading up a ROM via USB and rebooting the console and getting the Jag to do a CRC check. 2MB ROM's will work most of the time, but do red-screen pretty randomly, while 4MB ROMs rarely work. I'm now trying to figure out where along the pipeline data is getting dropped or corrupted. 😬

Edited April 11 by SainT

[42bs]

Ah, ok. My setup is somewhat simple. Direct connection and max 1MBytes.

[Ericde45]

2 hours ago, SainT said:

It may depend on your USB setup and definitely depends on the data size. I think @CyranoJ said it improved when he got a new hub or went direct to the PC with the USB cable, or something along those lines. The good news is, I've been able to replicate it quite reliably by loading up a ROM via USB and rebooting the console and getting the Jag to do a CRC check. 2MB ROM's will work most of the time, but do red-screen pretty randomly, while 4MB ROMs rarely work. I'm now trying to figure out where along the pipeline data is getting dropped or corrupted. 😬

i can confirm this : uploading Xenowings ( 3.72 MB) give sometimes broken graphics. i have direct upload, no hub but a quite long cable, several meters. a checksum on each side, compared by jaggd would be a very intersting improvment ( with my bugs + Jaguar's native bugs, i don't need USB bugs )

 

and by the way, glad you are back on GD. it is really an outstanding tool, not a lot of consoles have a so efficient way to code, upload and run home devs.

Edited April 11 by Ericde45

[SainT]

I’ll figure out where the issue is! I’ll go step by step and crc each section to figure out where the issue is. It may be a timing issue between the Jag and GD or might be USB. I don’t have much of a clue yet, as I’ve not dug very deep, I’ve got as far as confirming it’s not a write error on the Jaguar side into cartridge RAM, which I thought it may have been. So one step down…

[SainT]

Ok, I now have USB transfers of 4MB ROM's working reliably. I *think* it's resource contention on the microcontroller, I had an inkling it might be this as this was actually one of the problems with WTR. As there's lots of DMA activity going on between the memory card and Jaguar, somehow some of the clocks were being missed from the memory card causing data loss.

 

In this case I think similar weirdness is happening between the USB and Jag DMA channels, although you have no control over the USB DMA priority, so I've just opted to make sure the USB and Jag DMA channels aren't active at the same time. The actual data coming in from the USB was always correct as I CRC'd and displayed it on every read (USB actually has CRC checking as part of it), so the data going to the Jag was somehow being dropped or corrupted due to contention.

 

The result -- it's now working solidly with 4MB ROM's, where it really just would not work at all for me.

[+cubanismo]

Thanks for getting back to this @SainT. This is going to make dev with the JagGD much less frustrating! Now I can go back to just yelling at the Jaguar itself. 😁