Hacking Commodore 64 VC Problems

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I cant do this myself as I dont know how to program or do any coding at all, but heres the site for the C64 emulator, Frodo. On the site is the source code that someone can use to make a Wii version. I hope that someone can take this task for all of us.

http://frodo.cebix.net/
 
FGOD said:
any more news on how to inject the roms?

It's been one week I touched my pc so I temporarily gave up. The last thing I saw was that Triad crack intro in the world games. Any luck in installing the game?
Does the Triad intro shows up?
 
Fantastic!
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I'm so excited that when I get home the first thing I'll try this emu. Hope it emulates sid nicely.

ps: just saw it was just screen
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The emulator is no where near complete yet. All he's got working is the display.

There's no support for loading files, keyboard, joysticks, etc...
 
All I want is for International Karate to work with an NTSC Wii. If anyone got the PAL wad to work, please PM me.
 
Knocks said:
All I want is for International Karate to work with an NTSC Wii. If anyone got the PAL wad to work, please PM me.

that was the whole reason i started this thread! it wont install after being region freed, however, if you use the region changer it will work.
 
Im also so glad to finally see a C64 emulator being made. Lets keep an eye on it and hope it continues to be worked on otherwise we would have to find someone who can work on it.
 
hello!
english isn`t my motherlanguage but i give my best...
tongue.gif

i´m not sure if anybody is still interested, but i thought it´s time to bring up this thread again because i´m actually experimenting with injecting c64 roms into vc games too.
does anybody know if it has already been done? if so,i could stop wasting more of my lifetime.
but i dont think it has actually been done.
if you know of any other threads with some more info, it would be nice if you could point me there.

why i´m doing this instead waiting for the (hopefully?) coming frodo for wii?
because i want a giana sisters channel
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so far, i tried to change ik against ik+(flt). i believe, i´m very close to get it to work but there must be something i´m missing. this is what i got until now:

-repacked wads boot up normally (no black screen, it loads perfectly normal)

-onscreen keyboard,guide,back to wii menu etc. work.

-i can see the 3 fighters from ik+ instead of the 2 from ik. but the graphics on screen looks weird and distorted and it´s not playable. it´s freezed, nothings moving and no sound.

i made another wad from ik, changed some other things and this is what i got:

-it boots up normally, after the white screen with the wiimote picture, the game does not start.
instead i get the blue c64 screen with a blinking cursor. i can now use the onscreen keyboard and type anything i want which is btw. a pain with the wiimote. so far i tried load"$",8,1 and load"*",8,1 (and ,9(,1) etc.)but i always get a "file not found error".

if anybody is interested i can explain further how i did this.
hope to get some help with this because i´m neither a coder, nor very experienced in using tools like hexeditors, comparing code etc.

long live the c64(on wii hopefully)!
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As you can see from my previous posts, I did a lot of wad unpacking packing to inject another game for ik+ and to no avail. Seeing you accompished getting it to the c64 basic prompt, I may give it another go. Could you tell me about your packing method? I guess I'm doing something wrong there, because whatever I put there to replace ik+ comes out again as ik+. There should be a problem with the packing & installing stage. Do you change the original title id? And how?

I know 6502 assembly, disk image, tape image formats and such so maybe we can work it out.
 
first i must say that i was talking about ik as host wad, not ik+.
ok,here we go:

-unpack the original ik.wad
-unpack the 00000005.app
-open the 00000005_app_out folder, there is a file named LZ77_snapshot.bin
and thats exactly what it is , a LZ77 compressed c64 "freeze file" or snapshot.
-uncompress with gbalzz (command prompt: gbalzss d LZ77_snapshot.bin snapshot.bin)

to prove that it is really a c64 "freeze file" you can:
-open a c64 emulator on your pc. i recommend WinVice.
-load and run the ik+d64 that you extracted from the original ik.wad
-when you are "ingame" select "save snapshot image" in WinVice and save the snapshot to your work dir.
-open your now uncompressed snapshot.bin and the snapshot taken with WinVice in your hex editor.

-now you see that theese two files are very similiar. i think theres now doubt that nintendo uses c64 ram-snapshots only for emulation. i dont think they use the d.64 image anyway, maybe other c64 vc games do. now you see why you always get ik, no matter wich .d64 file you use.
all whats needed is in the LZ77_snapshot.bin.

-comparing the original uncompressed snapshot.bin to the snapshot from WinVice, i believe i found the beginning of the "rom" at 0x0142 in the snapshot.bin, it begins with 00AA B191 B322
-now switch over to your WinVice snapshot and search for that string.
-copy everything from before 00AA B191 B322 to the beginning and paste it into a new file in your hex editor.
-scroll to the very bottom where you can read joystick,keyboard etc. theese are WinVice related and we have to copy it later.
-switch back to the original snapshot.bin
-search for the string 0C09 3000 0D09 which i believe is the end of the "rom".
-copy everything from there, uncluding 0C09 3000 0D09, to the beginning of the rom we´ve just found und paste it in your new file as second.
-switch back to vice snapshat
-copy everything from after 0C09 3000 0D09 to the bottom and past it in your new file as third.
-save the newfile as ik.vsf
-in vice select "load snapshot image" and load your new created ik.vsf it works!

now i think we´ve proven that it actually is a ram-snapshot. i also ran the original ik.d64 in vice, made a snapshot in the middle of the game,when fighters were jumping and build a new file, using beginning and end of the originnal snapshot.bin this time.
after repacking the wad it worked perfectly and it did start exactly where i took the snapshot, in the middle of a jump.

ok after modifying the snapshot.bin we want to get it back in our wad:
-compress new snapshot.bin with gbalzss (command prompt: gbalzss e snapshot.bin LZ77_snapshot.bin)
-open u8coes.exe and point it to the original untouched 00000005.app
u8coes.exe should select the 00000005_app_out folder automatically as second
be sure that your mofified file(s) are in the 00000005_app_out folder or point to the right folder.
as third chose an empty folder as output dir.
-press make
-overwrite the original 00000005.app in your unpacked wad folder with the new created one.
-pack your wad.
-install.

it runs, as in the vice emulator, from the point we took the snapshot.

with this method i tried to exchange ik with the snapshot of an ik+ c64 image,cracked by fairligt, which i downloaded.
took my snapshot after the crack/intro (ingame) of course.
the game was only showing me weird things i mentioned before.
probably i do not have the right beginning/end for ik+ or there is something else i dont know.
if i only had the original ik+ vc game, i would be able to compare more and probably understand better. other vc titles were not helpfull since most do not come with .d64 files which you can use in emulators.

to get to the blue c64 screen you just have to:
-create a new snapshot.bin (empty file). put some 000000000 in it, save, compress again with gbalzss and so on...
-install it and enjoy your blinking cursor.

sorry,i´m tired,
to be continued...
 
I got it now,

Possibly the emulation core checks if there is any snapshot available and run that if exists, otherwise it starts of the d64. (for the very first run) It would be silly to use snapshot everytime since that will not work for disk based games.

Maybe problem with the dumps we have is that they contain snapshots so loading from the d64 never happens. We can examine the nes & snes injections, there should be a similar case like that.

And for the problems with the snapshot, probably the reason is, for the snapshot to work along with the full contents of c64's memory, correct cpu registers, io registers values should also be reflected in the modified snapshot.

If you only modify the vice snapshot from where you found that binary string as I stated above won't work. There are cpu entries before that, that tells where the last instruction was, the state of the registers. And after the memory, there should be io dumps of chips like sid, vic, cia and such.

What we should do is to find a clean snapshot file and patch the wad file so that emu would load the game of the d64 file. Yet I'm not sure the dumper of the game can actually dump his played state along with the game. If the actual release contain that snapshot dump then actually d64 file in the wad probably is of no use.

Tomorrow I'll try to patch the snapshot file from another game's snapshot.
 
OMG! Why didnt I think of that? Im going to see if I can make a snapshot of a different game and give it a go.
 
Either I did something wrong or something, but I tried using a snapshot of Boulder Dash, which I still have, and when I ran it on my Wii, I just got a black screen. I think its because I did something wrong and not because the game didnt work. Ill wait until easier to follow instructions are made.
 
i tried to change the ik snapshot and the d.64 image with a snapshot from a cracked nebulus and its .d64 file. i took nebulus because its snapshot looks somehow similiar to ik snap in a hex editor. i copied over everything from the command "RUN" to the end of the nebulus snap and pasted it into the ik snap, overwriting only what i believe is the rom, leaving the beginning and the end of the ik snap untouched.
its almost the same like i got with ik+, i can recognize some graphics and text from nebulus.
for example i see:
player one --- player two
000000000 --- 00000000

SOUND ON

but the graphics look still weird and the game is freezed.

i think i just couldn´t figure out the correct point yet, where the rom starts and ends.

maybe you guys have more luck with it
 

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