Hacking Commodore 64 VC Problems

[WiiCrazy]

Here is the vice snapshot format detail, I'll do a quick investigation to compare the ik+ snapshot for wii and the one from vice.

http://www.viceteam.org/vice_8.html

 

[FGOD]

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

maybe only a idea, but like wiicrazy said, what if you left out the snapshot and only replace the d64 what would happen then? not just a blank snapshot, but really leave out the snapshot... or make the snapshot in hexeditor only 00000000 for the fulll lenght of the snapshot...

 

[WiiCrazy]

maybe only a idea, but like wiicrazy said, what if you left out the snapshot and only replace the d64 what would happen then? not just a blank snapshot, but really leave out the snapshot... or make the snapshot in hexeditor only 00000000 for the fulll lenght of the snapshot...

I'll try deleting the snapshot file, emptying out with zeroes probably will result in a crash of the emulated c64. So do u8 tools support deleting files from the archive?

 

[Bo Frost]

u8coes.exe can not repack the 00000005.app if you leave out the LZ77_snapshot.bin , it must be there. as i said, inserting random data in an empty file and renaming it to LZ77_snapshot.bin will drop you to the c64 basic prompt.

if anyone has the ik+ vc, i believe we can figure it out.

 

[Bo Frost]

just wanted to add that i believe that the games do always start from snapshot, never from c64 image file.

 

[WiiCrazy]

just wanted to add that i believe that the games do always start from snapshot, never from c64 image file.

Edit: Can't get it, I wrote a long reply to this and the server just stripped all of it

And now shortly, I'm not sure that should be the right way for the emu since user can crash the c64 game and when he returns to the wii menu there is no way for the user to start off clean. So there must be a way to clean the snapshot and then the emu starts off the disk image. My wii is ntsc so I can not buy and try these.

Here is the my ik+ vice dump,

-- header --
--- 37 byte --
19 magic "VICE Snapshot File32", padded with 0
1 vmajor
1 vminor
16 name of the emulated machine

-- cpu module -- (16+1+1+4 header)
name: MAINCPU (16 bytes zero padded)
major : 01
minor : 01
size : 41 00 00 00 (0x41 bytes)

-- 31 byte --
4 clk AA 7C 33 20
1 ac 00
1 xr 00
1 yr 01
1 sp BA
2 pc 84 1F
1 st 22
4 lastopcode F0 01 00 00
4 irqclk 88 6D 33 20
4 nmiclk BB 86 BC 01
4 0F 00 00 00
4 EA 6D 33 20
+12 byte padding (all zeroes)

-- c64mem --
name : C64MEM (16 bytes zero padded)
major : 00
minor : 00
size : 1D 00 01 00 -> 00 01 00 1D

1 CPU port data byte - 25
1 port direction byte - 2F
1 state of the EXROM line (?) - 00
1 state of the GAME line (?) - 00
64k RAM dump

0x80-> onwords ram
E8 E8 00 AA B1 91 B3 22 22

then comes cia, vic and sid stuff

 

[Bo Frost]

i stop it now until i get the ik+. if anyone wants to help me out, i need 1 euro club-nintendo pin to get a 500 wii points card so i can download that ik+ game.

need a break...

 

[Bo Frost]

one last thing:
this is what i get on wii with the patched wad, emulated in vice.
i "converted" the cut part from ik+ back to vice format and its looking exactly the same in vice.

dont know if it is any helpfull

 

[FGOD]

i've tried finding the ik+ version, but i couldn't find it online... sorry Bo Frost

 

[Da_GPer]

I know where you can get every C64 ROM ever made as well as other systems, but I dont want to post it here because Im sure the Mods will delete it. If you want the link, IM me.

 

[HowardC]

Keep me posted guys... i'm currently writing a companion to injectawad that fills in the gaps.. I've already determined how to do the master system, I've found the data to support neogeo and of course I want to add c64 support.

Let me know if I can help, but honestly I just started looking at the c64 files.

 

[Bo Frost]

today i bought a 2000 points wii card from my last 25 euros. now i got ik+,uridium,nebulus and pitstop 2.

maybe someone can profit from my experiences, hope so...

after examining the unpacked data i decided to start with paradroid as host this time.
games like ik+,nebulus or paradroid dont come with .d64 files. instead they come with some file without extension. for paradroid the game-image is "paradroid".
theese files actually are c64 .prg files.("c64 executables" extracted from a .d64 disk image)
you can open theese files directly with vice ("open with...").

btw. you can extract .prg files from d.64 images or import .prg or whatever to c64 diskimage with a nice tool named d64 (D64Editor).

so what i did today:
-opened the file "nebulus" from the original vc game in vice, noticed that it is cracked by A.C.S.(actual cracking entertainment). the intro remembers me somhow of my childhood.

btw. most wii c64 vc titles come with cracked game-images. exceptions i know:uridium ank ik
-went to my favourite c64 source on the net.
-searched for nebulus and found it, cracked by A.C.S. (!)
-exported the .prg out of the .d64 disk
-run in vice *its identic with the vc game-image(run in emulator on pc)*
-compared both in a hexeditor, 100%percent identic

next, i changed the game-image and snap of wii-vc paradroid against the ones from wii-vc nebulus. i had to rename "nebulus" to "paradroid" otherwise i could not repack it.
-installed the repacked wad on wii. it shows everything from paradroid(menu etc.), except the game is nebulus

next i "blanked" the game-image. just created a new file, put in some 00000, saved it as "paradroid" and packed it again as wad. i unpacked it again to verify that the game-image has really really changed..
-installed it and there is no difference, nothing. still nebulus playing, hosted by paradroid wad.
i tried even to copy over the whole 00000005.APP from one game to another and it works in the same way.

as i said, theese games dont seem to need the game-image at all. the emu just runs the snapshot. maybe it is just done this way for skipping the cracker intros. it´s really hard to get any usable uncracked c64 games, so maybe thats the reason they use snapshots for this emu, who knows.

what i believe is, the only thing we have to look for is the right snapshot "format" to get foreign snaps to run on wii. i couldn´t figure it out yet even i compared all of my original wii-vc snapshots to many others i made with vice,frodo or css. i took snaps from the game-images from wii and foreign games from net too. most originals look somehow similiar but i just dont get it.

maybe on another day...


btw. does anybody know where the emu is stored in the vc?

 

[WiiCrazy]

Here I am with a good information

c64 vc emu is probably a frodo port for wii, first found the strings SIDRenderer and DigitalRenderer in the elf file, googled it, it's from the sources of frodo emulator.

loaded ik+ in frodo and made a snapshot, voila, files look very similar.

the only difference is the endianness, we need a frodo on big endian machine to prove it.

 

[FGOD]

this is starting to look nice i noticed the same about the hacked vc games though

 

[Bo Frost]

i forgot that the wii is basically a power pc....

 

[WiiCrazy]

today i bought a 2000 points wii card from my last 25 euros. now i got ik+,uridium,nebulus and pitstop 2.

maybe someone can profit from my experiences, hope so...
...

btw. does anybody know where the emu is stored in the vc?

Sorry If I made you bought those games

The emu is in the 1.app.

For the frodo evidence, hunt for the strings "SIDRenderer", "DigitalRenderer" and "flags & SNAPSHOT_1541" string.

Compared the snapshots with mine and minor differences out there.
In the wii one,
Header is absent, integer values are big endian instead of little endian and probably use an old version so that there are extra data out there.

We should find the correct version of the frodo that is ported and of course a big endian machine. Any emu of big endian machine that runs frodo? (Mac or similar)

ps: To align the snapshots, notice the array of sixteen 3f hex values starting from 0x41 in the wii snapshot (this is for ik+ of course)

 

[Bo Frost]

i decided to buy the games and its ok for me.

for paradroid its sixteen C3 starting at 0x41 too.
i copied everything from 0x41 upwards to 0x00 from ik to paradroid,overwriting that part and made a wad from it.
its not working, drops to the c64 basic prompt.
maybe someone should take a closer look at this.

ok,enough trial and error now for me

 

[WiiCrazy]

i decided to buy the games and its ok for me.

for paradroid its sixteen C3 starting at 0x41 too.
i copied everything from 0x41 upwards to 0x00 from ik to paradroid,overwriting that part and made a wad from it.
its not working, drops to the c64 basic prompt.
maybe someone should take a closer look at this.

ok,enough trial and error now for me

Edit: I don't know why, whatever I write just getting lost when I just send...(Mods can delete this message cause I already posted twice

)

 

[samsam12]

if i could rename this thread i would call it Commodore 64 Injection Discussion

 

[WiiCrazy]

i decided to buy the games and its ok for me.

for paradroid its sixteen C3 starting at 0x41 too.
i copied everything from 0x41 upwards to 0x00 from ik to paradroid,overwriting that part and made a wad from it.
its not working, drops to the c64 basic prompt.
maybe someone should take a closer look at this.

ok,enough trial and error now for me

Well it's not that simple, enough hex stuff for me too for now.. But I think I got somewhere, already found the cpu & vic states too. It's just a matter of putting the right pieces into right locations.


ps: by the way those 3f's belong to the vic state, for the wii emu state dump goes like this

something
vic state
sid state
something
cpu state
memory dump [64k]
color memory dump [256*4 bytes]
zero padding

key to the glory is in putting the cpu state in its correct location.