[GUIDE/INFO] Flash Carts, ODE, and more!

[Sarge]

I do still wonder how accurate it will be, but from what I've read (specifically, something byuu said on NESDev), most SA1 games didn't actually use a ton of the features of the chip, which may be why this is possible in the first place. I'm definitely hoping he releases some test builds like he did with the SFX stuff.

[nightrnr]

Just checked this page to see if everyone heard the news.
Yep!

This is awesome.
Of course, now my SNES classic as a worthy SD2SNES companion is no longer impressive.
Also the extra cost of the cart over the venerable Everdrive is now completely justified. It plays a lot more heavy hitters now.
SD2SNES is the flash cart to have, I predict fresh demand for the thing.

So once this is finalized, THEN can we get Street Fighter Alpha 2 working? The example has been set with Star Ocean, the chip compatibility is not really needed... in theory.
I tells ya, no one cares about this port (I just knew Doom would be playable before it). Just not a need I guess (what with all the better ports of the game).

[Tanooki]

Also the extra cost of the cart over the venerable Everdrive is now completely justified. It plays a lot more heavy hitters now.
SD2SNES is the flash cart to have, I predict fresh demand for the thing.

So once this is finalized, THEN can we get Street Fighter Alpha 2 working? The example has been set with Star Ocean, the chip compatibility is not really needed... in theory.
I tells ya, no one cares about this port (I just knew Doom would be playable before it). Just not a need I guess (what with all the better ports of the game).

I can't strongly agree more with that statement right there. The SD2SNES had no value unless you were deeply infatuated with Mega Man X2 and X3 (which I dislike strongly and did own a few years back.) So I ended up with the upper tier of the Super Everdrive with the DSP installed.

SFA2 it should be doable, at least it was in pre-SDD1 emulators using all the assets decompressed into its own files and then polled by another file to use them in tandem with the cartridge to feed the data. There is a less needy demand that Star Ocean needs so a more basic patch that expanded the game allowed that one to already run as a larger file. I guess SFA2 is more demanding/needy so that would need some kind of added labor and I question if someone would bother unless they were a SF2 series capcom nut or a completionist sadly. I'm glad I own the game, it's great on SNES other than the decompression pause before each round of a fight.

[nightrnr]

@Tanooki
Hmm, yeah, I may qualify as a "SF2 series capcom nut" .
So I guess I'm still learning about SFA2. If it was more than just moving where the chip reads from, I guess I do understand a little why I hasn't been done. But there's got to be a way, now that the impossible FX and SA1 has been done.

I actually did like the X2/X3 option, but I also had X Collection by the time I got the thing. The 1st is still my favorite anyways, but still haven't played X3.
Not sure how much it played into my purchase though; I think it was loading to ram and the potential of it all (which is paying off big this year it seems).

But then what am I using most right now? A Super UFO Pro 8 that's what. I am an odd duck indeed.

I think I just see SF Alpha 2 as so damn impressive. Fighting games really we're not viable at home until the 16-bit consoles hit. And Super Combos were almost unheard of: you had finishers and Desperation moves, but Super Combos were "next gen" at the time, and really changed up the feel of fighters. It would have blown my mind had I afforded an SNES back in the day. I almost wonder if a Marvel Super Heroes game would have worked on SNES.

[Sarge]

Also the extra cost of the cart over the venerable Everdrive is now completely justified. It plays a lot more heavy hitters now.
SD2SNES is the flash cart to have, I predict fresh demand for the thing.

So once this is finalized, THEN can we get Street Fighter Alpha 2 working? The example has been set with Star Ocean, the chip compatibility is not really needed... in theory.
I tells ya, no one cares about this port (I just knew Doom would be playable before it). Just not a need I guess (what with all the better ports of the game).

I can't strongly agree more with that statement right there. The SD2SNES had no value unless you were deeply infatuated with Mega Man X2 and X3 (which I dislike strongly and did own a few years back.) So I ended up with the upper tier of the Super Everdrive with the DSP installed.

SFA2 it should be doable, at least it was in pre-SDD1 emulators using all the assets decompressed into its own files and then polled by another file to use them in tandem with the cartridge to feed the data. There is a less needy demand that Star Ocean needs so a more basic patch that expanded the game allowed that one to already run as a larger file. I guess SFA2 is more demanding/needy so that would need some kind of added labor and I question if someone would bother unless they were a SF2 series capcom nut or a completionist sadly. I'm glad I own the game, it's great on SNES other than the decompression pause before each round of a fight.

I think that depends totally on how much you value instant loading, to be honest. I think, after putting up with slow flash times in the GBA era, I've had enough of that. For me, the SD2SNES was well worth the cost, even without the add-on chips.

[Tanooki]

@Tanooki
Hmm, yeah, I may qualify as a "SF2 series capcom nut" .
So I guess I'm still learning about SFA2. If it was more than just moving where the chip reads from, I guess I do understand a little why I hasn't been done. But there's got to be a way, now that the impossible FX and SA1 has been done.

I actually did like the X2/X3 option, but I also had X Collection by the time I got the thing. The 1st is still my favorite anyways, but still haven't played X3.
Not sure how much it played into my purchase though; I think it was loading to ram and the potential of it all (which is paying off big this year it seems).

But then what am I using most right now? A Super UFO Pro 8 that's what. I am an odd duck indeed.

I think I just see SF Alpha 2 as so damn impressive. Fighting games really we're not viable at home until the 16-bit consoles hit. And Super Combos were almost unheard of: you had finishers and Desperation moves, but Super Combos were "next gen" at the time, and really changed up the feel of fighters. It would have blown my mind had I afforded an SNES back in the day. I almost wonder if a Marvel Super Heroes game would have worked on SNES.

I love SFA2, 1 I can deal with and 3 I detest as it's bloated and poorly aped the multi-combat style SNK did already. I know other than I guess some FMV clarity and it's a bit of an in joke, but hte PS1 game is worse than the SNES one when it comes to SFA2 though SFA2gold fixed that on PS1.

The deal with the SDD1 is that it doesn't do much other than what it is intended, hard core decompression chip. Being overly crude here, but think of old PKZIP for DOS how companies would license a flavor of it to crush game data onto 1 floppy instead of 3. Similar concept. Mass crushed data sits on your stock SNES chip, then the coding of the game talks to the SDD1 and it runs a decompression routine pulling the required data for each place it is used (typically in combat and one of the menus where the data is just too much for the SNES.) The data on the game is just beyond the storage capacity at the time on SNES so the chip handles bypassing it. I would think that something similar in storage size and capability to SFA2 would have worked, so maybe MSH would have, SFA1 would but they did the stripped GBC game there.

[Sarge]

Interestingly, where everyone thinks that pause before rounds is the SDD1 chip decompressing, it's actually the audio loading into the SPC700.

I played a lot of SFA3. It's a great game.

[Tanooki]

That's interesting, where did you come up with that? Everything I've read going back to when that decompressed set of files was done for emulation work around people were on about it being all the graphical data being too much to store. Guess I'll have to google attempt this.

[Ziggy]

Some guy implemented S-DD1 on an FPGA...

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17538




Also, I just updated to the latest official FW release for teh Sd2snes and tried out Super FX for the first time. It works amazing well. I played the first two levels of Star Fox and didn't notice anything being off. Of course, that game pretty much runs like ass so it might be hard to notice if anything was slightly off.

Now that I finally can, which one should I pick...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2658/

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3945/

[Tanooki]

I'd go with the second one, it retains the purity of the game without that damn screeching mess that's baby mario.

That SDD1 info is nice to know, too hard to follow it, but hey if it gets it going on some devices naturally that would be nice.