I also have better results on my debug with VC3 also. At firstI could not get it to run on the trusty board with the whole mameox thing. But the debug was ready all the time.
Most of the time the music cuts out after you die, and the speech that follows the text on screen cuts out at any time and doesn't come back. I don't have a trusty or a debug Xbox, I am using an upgraded retail Xbox. You can see it happen for yourself at the end of this video I made
my trusty plays vcop3 with no issues at all, ive never noticed slow down. I did get the 1.4ghz upgrade too though
Yes it does have buggy sound at times, but I have only tried the 512mb version of Ghost Squad so far, hopefully it will be a different story with the 1gb version. If you meant, "does virtual cop 3 have buggy sound" then no, it plays it perfectly.
I confirm bug sound after die with debug kit. Please, someone could explain me what's the use of testmode, mame hack and devkit fake in chihiro. More generally someone explain quickly how to run chihiro_launchers.xbe? I try to read code sources but it's too harder for my poor programmer's skill. Jayfoxrox it's a great coder.
I have explained it before. - Testmode is obvious: Instead of starting the game it will start the Testmode binary (Just like the Chihiro / segaboot would probably). If the test menu does not come up it's because the menu closed itself / decided to skip itself. I believe test mode doesn't work all the time because of the missing flash / eeprom which probably stores a flag to enter it - MAME Hack changes the cache fallback, this should never do anything if you patch it properly (Done automaticly (without holding) in my launcher iirc). It was added on request - Devkit fake will flag your console as Devkit like a devkit bios would. However, this will change some behaviour of the kernel - most likely it will shut off your USB for example. It was added for testing Basicly if a features is necessary it works without button presses with the exception of the "Back" key to abort (Broken in newer releases as the hacks stay enabled, IGR instead to clear resources) and "A" for Testmode. The other buttons are used to add experimental features I can't test on my 64MB Xbox or which might break something. Also I wouldn't recommend the default.xbe's on my scratchpad. They are experimental builds which might just crash at startup. Second, if any, I'm a horrible coder looking at those source code: Lots of dirty crap. I started with my uni learning phase today so the xbox was off all day. However, I still couldn't keep my hands still and started a "common" project in which I will move my files which I use in multiple projects. So once I have time again the Chihiro-Tools will be updated so they can be compiled easier on Windows (even using MSVC) and they won't require as much RAM anymore either. They will also be a lot faster then. The point is to clean up the sourcecode so it's actually part of my portfolio and not some piece of code which looks like it was written by a methhead. Also I want to improve the portability so it works on Windows NT, and more specificly on Xbox. That way I will be able to extract GDROMs or FATX images directly on the Xbox. (There probably won't be MAME CHD support though because I don't want to add the bloaty CHDMAN to my code + it would probably put a restrictive license on me) If you check the GitHub you will see a lot of features which weren't included before. The last chihiro-launcher.xbe was compiled with about ~500 lines of code if I remember. The project now has around 4000 lines of code. New features (still not working) are a kernel hook (so the launcher can log any kernel function call to see what succeeds and what doesn't), a hardware cpu debugger (which can monitor 4-8 (out of 19?) ports of the Sega I/O space to emulate the baseboard), a software debugger (to be informed about crashes and kernel debug information to find out why the game crashes). There is also a completly unfinished feature Myria helped a lot with. It basicly reduces I/O permissions of your Xbox (which is TONS of work - trust me..) to filter out access to all I/O ports used by Sega and keep track of all kernel calls at the same time. These features will eventually end up in a stand-alone Xbox debugger too. This could be used to find problems in incomplete leaked games for example. It can also help homebrew coders once the Xbox is retro enough for coders who want to write code for it again but without the Microsoft XDK. //Edit: (The following part can be ignored because espes plans to use xbdm over ethernet for real hardware) And lastly it will serve as a tool to generate traces which can be used to compare espes xqemu to real hardware + to step the GPU to figure out behaviour for more accurate emulation. I did this in the past with the Microsoft XDK but the code present in the launcher could (probably) automate the process in a debugger (Think of features such as pausing the game, stepping through it frame by frame, enabling wireframe, seperating different draw calls, list uploaded textures / shaders, disable the renderer, etc.).
To use the Chihiro loader you do this. All things in quotes are what you name stuff. Leave the quotes out. In the E drive of the Xbox make a folder named "chihiro". In that folder make 2 more folders. First one is "mbrom" and second one is "mbcom". Then put the chihiro loader tool in the root of the game you want to run. Launch the loader, hold X for the memory hack, and you're good to go. If you want to make the game show up in the games list in XBMC or UnleashX then just rename the chihiro loader to "default.xbe" and it will show up in the games list as "chihiro loader". I edited it further in UnleashX to have the name of the game it loads. There you go. Hope it helps. Really need to get my Trusty 1.4Ghz board from the mail so I can get my Xbox going again...
Okay, I just tried the 1gb version of Ghost Squad and it works perfectly no more sound problems. I don't know what makes the difference, but I am guessing that maybe the 512mb version found on Neo-arcadia is a bad dump. I noticed right away with the 1gb version that you can hear the enemies and even yourself every time you hit the X button, something that isn't present in the 512mb one from Neo-arcadia. With the 1gb version the music never stops, and there is always speech that follows the text on screen. There is no slow down either, their wasn't on the 512mb version either, but I am just stating it if anyone is curious. This is all on a upgraded retail Xbox as well if you were wondering.
cool. What mame dump did you extract from? I might aswell get same one then also, what light gun do you guys use for ghost squad? Ive got EMS Topgun 3 but it's unplayable on ghost squad
I think I got the .chd and rom file from emuparadise. I use a EMS Topgun 3 as well, and yeah it definitely doesn't work well in Ghost Squad. I think it does alright in Virtual Cop 3, but has a little lag.
Thanks but when I spoke about how to run, I talk about the algorithme from code sources. Not necessary it's seems if you don't edit vsg.xbe the chihiro launchers run directly the games. For the gun, I think we need to calibrate with option mode (in option mode gun calibration we must shoot 5 white point in all corner's screen).
Not talking about that at all. Talking about making the loader itself show up as the game in the list. Talking about the loader tool itself, not the game .xbe
Hence the newer (very unstable and experimental) builds are also called default.xbe They are also debug XOR'd - still not signed though. I already mentioned it but the reason for it launching boot.id instead of returning to the dashboard is that I'm not sure yet wether the boot.id informations must be passed to the game itself on launch. So it's better to have it ready if find out. Second, I'm not sure but some games might have more than 2 XBE files and users would possibly launch the wrong file. Then I can also log what the user launched which makes better bug reports possible. And last of all it's extendable so that I can have a ROM folder one day where you can simply drop your games. Then select the game+version you want to play from a menu, possibly also install games to ROM directly from a gdrom image + pic dump. An alternative would be to have one launcher per game then inspect the boot.id and let my launcher rename itself. So once you started the game the first time it would show up correctly in the menu. However, I dislike this approach because it wouldn't work on DVDs, so I'm not sure yet wether I'm going to this route. The only real advantage I'm seeing is that I wouldn't have to write a menu. But it would also mean that any update has to be uploaded to the Xbox numerous times (Unless I put the real launcher into a savegame and only launch that, updating any launcher would then update the actual global launcher automaticly). I plan to move the mbrom / mbcom folders to the cache partitions soon by the way. The Xbox eeprom will be emulated soon and will probably end up in savegames. Not sure about baseboard flash and eeprom yet, couldn't figure out exactly how they work.
Nice progress Jayfoxrox, keep it up. Hey guys, I was wondering why we don't have any of the American versions of these games. Is it just because the American GD-ROM's for these games have not been dumped? If this is the case, where would one go to find out how to dump a Sega Chihiro GD-ROM? Also, do you think that the lightguns that were used for the Sega Chihiro, could be used on a upgraded Xbox? I am not sure how the Sega Chihiro lightguns were attached, but if it was just attached to a controller port then it should work, don't you think? I would also like to start helping out with creating crashlogs, but don't quite know where to start on learning how to create them. It might of been mentioned already in this thread, which is why I starting reading it again from the start, but it has gotten long. Could anybody point me in the right direction? Thanks
Just attempt to fill the list of tested games, add library versions etc. Also try to add what cables these games work with. The next version will probably be able to produce crashdumps on its own. I also have enough games to test with probably. I'm still investigating the crash in the Virtua Cop 3 Test menu and on Crazy Taxi startup. I was probably wrong about JVS never reaching the system (which was my original assumption from about 3 years ago which I had until a couple of days ago). So very likely the lightguns are connected to the baseboard via JVS. And it probably converts them to gamepad USB joystick analog values in the baseboard, but if wanted the developer could probably also do the raw JVS communication on the Xbox board. I still haven't found out exactly how the baseboard works or where exactly the games crash. But it appears as if the games can upload their own firmware to the baseboard (which is either ASIC or FPGA based - hence 2 firmwares(?): firmware.bin and firmware2.bin). This might only be used for networking though. All I know and see is that some (or all of them?) games come with a JVS stack very similar to what I'm used to from Lindbergh. I'm not sure wether that is going through "mbcom" yet and if that is firmware controlled. I'm also not sure wether the JVS stack is used at all. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before in this thread (I remember talking about it on IRC) but the xbox will IN'put data on port 0x401E, 0x4020, 0x4022, 0x4024 (?) and expected 'X', 'B', 'A', 'M' as answer. If that is not found it will never open "mbcom". For a while I thought this was the reason for games crashing. Because the device is never opened it would mean that writes / reads to the file handle would probably freeze or fill up the io-queues. However, I couldn't verify this yet. When I checked VC3 and CT they never even attempted to input data on those ports. It either means my debugger doesn't stay in memory properly, it's set up wrong or it just never happens. Once I'm done with my uni stuff I'll try injecting breakpoints in the games to see what exactly goes on. My debugger is also only informed about entering kernel calls - not when leaving them. I'll add some more code to catch that too. At the moment I can't be sure wether the game crashed in an interrupt handler after a kernel call or in a kernel call itself.
I saw that in mame Chihiro dump website: or this I think it's very hard to use arcade hardware, and the return is too low (it's very expansive), morever we need led captor from arcade system. Light gun EMS topgun seems very good but calibration needed, why test mode (more difficulty select) is essantially One thing, in VC 3 arcade, exist an bullet time mode with pedal, on Xbox pedal is white button, but it doesnot take in charge by ems light gun, it could be to remap this button.
arcade is very different, requires a gun I/O board which you then attach guns too aswell as sensors for around monitor.
I just picked up a Chihiro today to play around with. Anybody here a netboot expert? If so please PM me. Hopefully I can get this up and running soon to do some tests. Unfortunately, I just had a TSOP flash screwup on my 128MB retail box so that's out of commission until my modchip arrives in the mail.
