Homebrew Saturn emulation using Cotton/Guardian Force testing and debug

[Deleted member 323844]

You guys got mentioned on Digital Foundry..

GiriGiri, developed by Shinya "MegaDeath" Miyamoto, was actually the emulator that Sega bought and, eventually, became the "Cyber Disc Service".

https://web.archive.org/web/20030807190727/http://cyberdisc.zaq.ne.jp/

SSF already emulated games before the supposed first release of GiriGiri, that never came out for obvious reasons. After that, GiriGiri was leaked and hacked under various names, being the infamous Cassini-gav (or just Cassini) the most famous hack. It was pretty popular back in the day because it had WAAAAAAAAAY lower requirements than SSF. It took quite a while to have a machine powerful enough to run SSF at decent speeds, 20 years ago.

SSF ran the first commercial games around August 2000.

https://web.archive.org/web/2000121...ne.jp:80/phantasy/saturn/preview/preview.html

https://web.archive.org/web/2001060....ne.jp/phantasy/saturn/preview/preview_4.html

 

[proffk]

This kind of reminds me of the time when a hidden psp emulator was discoverd in ps4 version of parappa the rapper albeit compatability was low. Anyways theirs a ps4 version of Cotton Guardian Force as well. If it ever gets dumped we should find the same contents & emu This thread will provide valuable info.

 

[gersonzero]

*sighs* I am truly lost after reading nearly 40 pages of this insightful thread. Is there any reason why Atmosphere wouldn't read the "contents/romfs" folder? It's as if my switch isn't reading it. I'm starting to wonder if my switch has something disabled preventing the files from being "activated" or read.

 

[Deleted member 323844]

This kind of reminds me of the time when a hidden psp emulator was discoverd in ps4 version of parappa the rapper albeit compatability was low. Anyways theirs a ps4 version of Cotton Guardian Force as well. If it ever gets dumped we should find the same contents & emu This thread will provide valuable info.

"Low" is WAY too optimistic

As far as I recall it only emulated Bust A Move 4 and nothing else. It did not even have a 3D rendering engine.

ZebraEngine is much more similar to the PC Engine/CD emulator "hidden" (not very well, tbh) in the PC Engine Best Collection for Playstation Portable. It had mostly the same structure and it was hacked exactly the same. The only difference was that assets were open, it was not a Unity thing. The only proprietary assets were the AT3 audio files.

ZebraEngine, to me, is a deja-vu of those days

 

[EddieRiggs]

GiriGiri, developed by Shinya "MegaDeath" Miyamoto, was actually the emulator that Sega bought and, eventually, became the "Cyber Disc Service".

https://web.archive.org/web/20030807190727/http://cyberdisc.zaq.ne.jp/

SSF already emulated games before the supposed first release of GiriGiri, that never came out for obvious reasons. After that, GiriGiri was leaked and hacked under various names, being the infamous Cassini-gav (or just Cassini) the most famous hack. It was pretty popular back in the day because it had WAAAAAAAAAY lower requirements than SSF. It took quite a while to have a machine powerful enough to run SSF at decent speeds, 20 years ago.

SSF ran the first commercial games around August 2000.

https://web.archive.org/web/2000121...ne.jp:80/phantasy/saturn/preview/preview.html

https://web.archive.org/web/2001060....ne.jp/phantasy/saturn/preview/preview_4.html

Yeah, it really brings memories of me playing Nights via GiriGiri leak on Pentium 4 or something... It was practically THE reason for me to get a Saturn (not an easy task in Russia back then even for serious Sega fan), which I successfully accomplished, albeit a couple years later.

A quick question: is there any way to enable scanlines (I change the value to 1, but it doesn't affect picture)?

 

[Levine91]

*sighs* I am truly lost after reading nearly 40 pages of this insightful thread. Is there any reason why Atmosphere wouldn't read the "contents/romfs" folder? It's as if my switch isn't reading it. I'm starting to wonder if my switch has something disabled preventing the files from being "activated" or read.

You gotta show us a picture of your folder & it's contents otherwise that's impossible for us to say.

 

[matt!]

I've been testing, comparing to RetroArch, and there does seem to be a frame or two of lag on the golf games I'm playing.

Any ways I can try to reduce that using the .ini file settings?

 

[EddieRiggs]

I've been testing, comparing to RetroArch, and there does seem to be a frame or two of lag on the golf games I'm playing.

Any ways I can try to reduce that using the .ini file settings?

Increased input lag is common "feature" of SSF emulator, compared to newer ones, sych as Yabause/Yaba Sanshiro/etc. While it varies from game to game. The most efficient way to decrease it right now is to overclock your Switch, I believe, but in certain games only.

 

[helvetinperkeles]

Damn. No matter i try i fail. I dumbed keys and still fail after fail. Something i'm missing but i just can't figure out what it is.. and yes i would post a full error log file but its nowhere to be found. I guess should be somewhere in folder in hacktools but there is none.
Edit: Found indeed the log

 

[shadow256]

Damn. No matter i try i fail. I dumbed keys and still fail after fail. Something i'm missing but i just can't figure out what it is.. and yes i would post a full error log file but its nowhere to be found. I guess should be somewhere in folder in hacktools but there is none.

I've fixed some bugs in my last release and I also made the Unity files and doc clean up to reduce NSP size. I've also rewrite the NSP generation to be more correct, no meta files unusful and logo is now integrated.

To have the log you must select to use the full debug when the script ask to choose a log mode and after the log could be find in script's root, named "ultimate-switch-hack-script.log".

In my today's research I've not find how to extract the logo from NCAs extracted from original NSP, I don't understand some things in NSP and NCA structure, for example I can extract three diferent "exefs/main" file (don't tested yet the two that I have discovered), three times the "control.nacp" and icons files, two times the "romfs\data" folder... realy rebuild NSPs is a difficult task to understand and to do correctly. For now at least it works even if it's not perfect.

 

[helvetinperkeles]

I've fixed some bugs in my last release and I also made the Unity files and doc clean up to reduce NSP size. I've also rewrite the NSP generation to be more correct, no meta files unusful and logo is now integrated.

To have the log you must select to use the full debug when the script ask to choose a log mode and after the log could be find in script's root, named "ultimate-switch-hack-script.log".

In my today's research I've not find how to extract the logo from NCAs extracted from original NSP, I don't understand some things in NSP and NCA structure, for example I can extract three diferent "exefs/main" file (don't tested yet the two that I have discovered), three times the "control.nacp" and icons files, two times the "romfs\data" folder... realy rebuild NSPs is a difficult task to understand and to do correctly. For now at least it works even if it's not perfect.

Got the log. I sended PM to you.

 

[bloodfalco]

Anyone test Guardian Heroes?

 

[shadow256]

Anyone test Guardian Heroes?

Yes and work perfectly.

 

[iLL wiLL]

I'm just gonna wait till someone fine tunes this emulator and makes its easy to use like retroarch were you have the emu with options.all this injecting and decrypting just to play Saturn games.don't get me wrong this is awesome but ill wait.

 

[Levine91]

- I played the entire Elevator Action Returns. At the penultimate stage, the "-" menu (with save states, et cetera) does not work. If I get game over during that stage, I need to close and reopen the whole game before being able to use the "-" menu again. If I manage to finish the stage and get to the last one, the "-" menu is back again.
- My copy of Elevator Action Returns is made of several bins (many more than 2) and it works perfectly (apart from the funny issue mentioned above, but I guess the two things should be unrelated)

An update on this, the split vs multiple is not a factor here, but the reason you're encountering the options menu issue with save states is due to having the 4 MB RAM cartridge enabled.

 

[rafaelia]

Deep Fear (Europe) seems to be working fine

 

[Aphixe]

i can't find the right folder in atmosphere\contents I have
00FF0000636C6BFF
054e4f4558454000
420000000007E51A
0100000000001000
0100000000001007
0100000000001013
420000000000000E

the installer i used has checksum 4DBA83A8 and installed it to sdcard with goldleaf
I'm using atmosphere with a emuMMC hekate v5.5.6

 

[fortunachanko]

Any idea for a non hacked mod of this "hack"

 

[andre_int]

So far so good for me using the steps I shared here earlier, got all the games I wanted to play nicely installed on my home screen : )
Couple of questions though...

Question 1:
Has anyone noticed weird artifacts at the top in Dracula X (english patched)?

Question 2:
How do you guys edit the tex files? Can't quite recollect the info from previous threads.
The Texture.tex file shared earlier doesn't work in Guardian Force, but I'd like to remove the lower-left options graphics.

 

[chobochobo]

Regarding Baku Baku Animal. I just tried it again on a Windows machine with Mednafen - the game running on the Switch is much slower particularly with the menus etc, gameplay is better - playable, but defintely slower than on a PC. What are the possible remedies please?