Posted: 8/21/2006 5:03 AM
Post subject: Good ROM, good emu, won't start (#424 - NES StarTropics)
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SmashManiac
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Hi guys, having some trouble viewing some TAS with FCEU. I was able to find all solutions by myself, but this one is really strange since every check is okay. So usually I use FCEU 0.98.15.rerecording to listen to FCM movies. I noticed some movies that were desynching using this emulator, for example #444 - NES Maniac Mansion. So when I tried to play #424 - NES StarTropics and noticed it showed nothing when I try to play it, I checked the submission details and noticed that it was made with FCEU 0.98.12-blip. I immediately tried to play this movie within it. Same problem. Ok then, I use the same emulator version than the creator of this FCM. My ROM has the same filename and the same CRC. However, when I try to load the ROM, I have only a grey screen. Trying a power off/on or a reset won't change anything. Trying to play the FCM only gives a black screen with the PLAY logo in the bottom-right corner as if everything was okay. So I thought "MAYBE I'm really unlucky and that the ROM I have is corrupted EVEN if it comes from a goodset and has a correct CRC check", so I tried playing it on other emus. My emulator of choice is G-NES, so I started with this one first. Surprise: still grey screen! Maybe the impossible happened! Tried Famtasia: "Mapper #68 is not supported", which doesn't help in this case. Tried even with my old Nesticle for Windows 95... and OMG it worked! Just in case, also tried it on NESCafe: works too! So I DO have a working ROM, it IS the correct version of the ROM because of the CRC check, and I use the SAME emulator version that was used for creating that FCM. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??? Okay seriously any troubleshooting ideas?
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Posted: 8/21/2006 5:05 AM
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SmashManiac
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Just forgot to put a link to the StarTropics FCM.
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Posted: 8/21/2006 7:08 AM
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nitsuja
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Computer TASer of 2011 TAS of 2011 First edition TAS of 2011 Computer TAS of 2011 Sega TAS of 2010 Sega TAS of 2008 Sega TAS of 2007 Glitchy TAS of 2007
That ROM opens and the movie seems to play fine for me in 0.98.15. Maybe you're really using 0.98.16, which fails to run that ROM. It should work in 0.98.12. If it doesn't, I think the problem might be that you are hitting Enter to choose the menu item or start the movie, and Enter is the pause button by default in that version, which pauses the game at the grey screen until you hit Enter again.
Posted: 8/21/2006 11:19 PM
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SmashManiac
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Nice guesses, but unfortunately aren't correct. I actually haven't installed 0.98.16 yet because the FAQ currently recommands of not using it, and tried both 0.98.12-blip AND 0.98.15-rerecording. Also the Enter explanation isn't correct, since the game boots only a grey screen from File/Open, while other ROMs do not. Just noticed there was a message log in FCEU. Here is the output with 0.98.15-rerecording: 
Loading C:\TASVideos\fceu-0.98.15-rerecording\Startropics (U).nes...

 PRG ROM:   16 x 16KiB
 CHR ROM:   32 x  8KiB
 ROM CRC32:  0x889129cb
 ROM MD5:  0xb1eddbb71994db079aa1dc16c05e7de5
 Mapper:  68
 Mirroring: Vertical
The iNES header contains incorrect information.  For now, the information will be corrected in RAM.  The battery-backed bit should be set.
Maybe it has something to do with the incorrect header? If somebody can get it to work, can you send your own message log to compare values? Oh also I wrote CRC in my first post all the time, I meant checksum. My bad: the FCM only gives the checksum.
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Posted: 8/21/2006 11:41 PM
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Serj
Joined: 4/21/2006
Posts: 97
Mine doesn't seem to have any problems. My message log says the same as yours, except it says "Mapper: 4" My emulator is 0.98.15, it says 17:57:54 Feb 28 2006 gcc 3.4.2 (mingw-special)
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Posted: 8/22/2006 12:09 AM
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Bladegash
Former player
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 484
Location: ­­
Open the ROM in a hex editor and replace the DiskDude! thing with 00 00 00 etc. (Assuming that's the problem in the first place.)
Posted: 8/22/2006 1:17 AM
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SmashManiac
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Same emulator version as Serj, values match with mine. No DiskDude! in the header, but it might have some other kind of corruption. But in that case, it wouldn't affect the checksum. And yet, still mapper 68 for me. Weird weird weird.
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Posted: 8/22/2006 2:18 AM
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nitsuja
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Computer TASer of 2011 TAS of 2011 First edition TAS of 2011 Computer TAS of 2011 Sega TAS of 2010 Sega TAS of 2008 Sega TAS of 2007 Glitchy TAS of 2007
Your ROM has a bad header. Open it in a hex editor and the first 8 bytes will probably look like this: 4E45 531A 1020 4140 The 4140 means mapper 68, so change that to 4100, which means mapper 4. The first 16 bytes are supposed to look like: 4E45 531A 1020 4100 0000 0000 0000 0000
Posted: 8/22/2006 3:23 AM
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SmashManiac
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Yup you were right, my header is 4E 45 53 1A 10 20 41 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Changed byte 0x7 from 40h to 00h as you suggested. Guess what: it worked! Thanks a lot! Wow, it's hard to believe that all versions of the StarTropics rom that I have tried all has the same bad header!
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