Author Topic: HuCard games on CD  (Read 3380 times)

nat

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HuCard games on CD
« on: March 19, 2007, 07:25:20 AM »
As everybody knows there were a few games that started life as HuCards and eventually saw release on CD:

Bomberman
Bonk's Adventure
Bonk's Revenge
Nectaris

Any others?

My question is this... How does this work? What is involved in copying a HuCard program to a CD?

I would imagine you need some kind of bootstrap code to interface with the System card and then load the game, but is that it?

Has anyone ever looked into this?

rolins

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2007, 07:46:47 AM »
These come to mind

Daisenpu Custom
R-Type Complete
Side Arms Special
Super Raiden

FM-77

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2007, 08:02:10 AM »
As long as you've got the source code, turning a "hu-card" game to cd-format doesn't really require much work at all as far as I know.

GUTS

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2007, 08:49:05 AM »
Wasn't there someone who hacked the 4-1 cd to use other hucards, but they ran into problems with it and couldn't get it to work with more than the 4 games on the disc or something?  I remember reading about that a while back.  Having a ton of hucards on one cd that booted on a real Duo has been one of the holy grails of the PCE scene for as long as I can remember.

Necromancer

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2007, 08:54:18 AM »
You're probably thinking of the Super Hucard (search google for it).  It was limited to games that could be loaded entirely into the system memory.  There is a nice explanation of how it works on the website.
U.S. Collection: 97% complete    155/159 titles

esteban

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2007, 09:19:59 AM »
Wasn't there someone who hacked the 4-1 cd to use other hucards, but they ran into problems with it and couldn't get it to work with more than the 4 games on the disc or something?  I remember reading about that a while back.  Having a ton of hucards on one cd that booted on a real Duo has been one of the holy grails of the PCE scene for as long as I can remember.
IIRC, folks on magicengine said that you could replace 3/4 ROMS on the 4-in-1 CD (I think you had to leave Bomberman intact?). I've never done this, but I'd love to hear about it. Of course, the menu screen didn't change...

EDIT: Here is the old thread, but I think it was a joke!

Check out tg-drifter's final comment in that thread:

Quote
You cannot simply burn rom images onto a CD and expect them to work. Hucard games access data at different addresses than CD games. In other words, a hucard image that's burned on CD tries to load the data from the cartridge which is non-existent...


Ha! I didn't remember that final comment at all... now my dreams of sticking another ROM on Neo Nectaris have been dashed.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2007, 09:34:04 AM by stevek666 »
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hindsr1976

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2007, 11:50:24 AM »
I know you can download alot of the CD games through emule.

malducci

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2007, 01:21:08 PM »

 The quote by tg-drifter is dead on. The memory address of the system card ram is not in the same place as with hucards - so just copying over the games in 4-in-1 CD won't work.

 The method is to trace through a hucard and look for all instructions that change/handle memory bank swaps and change them to CD ram location. If you don't get all of them changed, the game will crash at some point when it calls that unmodified instruction.

 The Super Hucard iso is a project were people did just that - but not all the games work and some of them are incorrectly modifed (salamander was one of them). Also, you're limited to 2meg games since that's the size of the super system card.

 What is cool and has no been done yet, is change the music routine of the a certain hucard game converted to run on SCD unit and have it play CD tracks instead of PCM music.

-Rich


nat

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2007, 01:49:44 PM »
Thanks. That link to the MagicEngine forums told me what I need to know.

However, this "Super HuCard" project is a new one on me. Thanks for the heads up on that one, too.

FM-77

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2007, 03:11:52 PM »
Super Hucard rules. Tons of fun, I just wish it didn't take so long to start it up.

malducci

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2007, 04:18:27 PM »
I fixed the bug in Salamander - plays now. If anyone's interested I'll post an IPS patch for the ISO version.

nat

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2007, 04:27:53 PM »
I just tried to burn the ISO version but it won't run on my TG-CD.

Get a "LOAD ERROR!" almost immediately.

When I was burning it it prompted me to input some funky settings like:

Pregap
Postgap
Block size
Scrambled

Which I left at their defaults (0, 0, 2532 (?), and "NO"). I'm guessing this is where the problem lies. Anyone know the proper settings here? I'm guessing the block size is what needs to be changed but I have no clue what it should be set to.

malducci

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2007, 04:36:58 PM »

You're trying to burn the ISO version or the BIN version? If you burning the ISO version then you need a CUE sheet to go along with it for burning software to create it correctly.

open wordpad or notepad
put this in there...
Code: [Select]

 FILE "super_hucard.iso" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

then save the file as (dos)text format with a ".cue" extension in the same place as the ISO.

 Note: you'll need to change the iso (file) to match what I have listed or change the filename in the first line to match the ISO you have - either way.

Burn with Nero, Alcohol, etc.

If you still have problems, then I'll just upload the file(s) and post a link.


nat

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2007, 05:44:38 PM »
I'm burning the ISO by itself. Actually, I didn't need the .CUE file at all. But changing the "Block size" to 2048 (as indicated in the .CUE you've got there) made it burn correctly.

Incidentally, the "Super HuCard" CD is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I created this thread. There are a few titles on here so far I've discovered that don't work. Does anyone else get graphical glitchiness in the main menu (it can best be described as "snow", similar to the snow early CGA video cards used to produce in text mode for those that remember those days). The games themselves seem to be fine. I find myself really wanting for a shortcut back to the main menu short of toggling the system power.

Right now I've found myself deeply involved with a game of Pac-Land. A game I haven't actually owned in ten years but I used to play it *all* the time as a kid, I can't put it down. I played Xevious for the first time in my life just now. All I can say is.... wow. The graphics in Xevious look bad for a f*cking NES game. I had no idea the Turbo sunk so low.

I notice they've got Wonderboy in Monsterland on there. How hard would it be to apply the English patch to the copy in this ISO? I already own the actual Japanese cart. Malducci, you seem to have some technical know-how with this stuff. How about it? And yes, at the very least, please post your patch for Salamander.



EDIT: There are bugs in Pac-Land. Actually, just sprite issues. The fairy godmother that gives you your "special" shoes is a mess of pixels, as is Pac-Man's family and the "special" shoes themselves.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2007, 05:52:25 PM by nat »

malducci

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Re: HuCard games on CD
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2007, 06:33:37 PM »

 Yeah, I'll take game out, patch it, and insert it back in to see if it works. It probably will as I don't think the translation team did any sort of ASM hacks.

 I'll post a patch for Salamander included in it as one patch.