DraStic Compatibility


Kumaki

Kumaki

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I have a few things to add to DraStic Compatibility, including some homebrew stuff.

Also, there's a few homebrew things I have that are not working, which would be awesome if they could work.

These ones actually play MAME games. I have the MAME Roms...if anyone cares to have me send the file so they could tell me where you could put the MAME Roms so that these games would work, it would be great.

Regular NDS Compatibles

Brain Age (note you have to tell it you can't speak, since Pandy doesn't have the external microphone)

Brain Assist

Chessmaster

Cross WorDS

Jumble Madness

Konami Classics

Labyrinth

Mah Jong Quest Expeditions

Metroid Prime Pinball

Mr Driller - Drill Spirits

New Super Mario Bros

New York Times Crosswords

Retro Game Challenge

Scrabble

SEGA Casino

Solitaire Overload

Space Invaders Revolution

Sudoku Gridmaster

Tetris DS

The Dark Spire

The Price Is Right

Ultimate Puzzle Games - Sudoku Edition

USA Today Crossword Challenge

USA Today Puzzle Craze

These are all very playable. A few of them a a little choppy in some of the intro scenes and stuff.

Peggle Dual Shot - is playable but choppy.

The following Homebrew also wroks

1516

Blackjack

Mahjong

Reversi

Sudoku

Super Maze

Yahtzee

Breakout (it works but crashes the emulator after game over)

The following are the ones mentioned above, which I wish would work, maybe someone can pick them apart and figure out how to make them work??

I DO have the supporting ROMS for all of these...

1942 (plays 1942, 1942a, 1942b and 1942w)

1943 (plays 1943, 1943j, and 1943kai)

AemioDA (this plays Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Tempest, Lunar Lander, and Bttle Zone - several versions of each)

DSPack (this plays several versions of PacMan - PuckMan, Pac Man, Pac Man Hearts, Ms. PacMan, Ms PacMan with Speedup, Ms PacMan Plus, Super Zola Pac Gal, Ms. PacMan Champion Edition, and Jr. Pac Man)

Eye Kabob Game Pack (plays Battle of Midway, Froggah, Hangman, Log Dodger, Lunar Lander, Lunar Lander II, Meteor Mission, Millicent, Sabotage, and Side Tank)

Invaders - self explanatory!

Mr. Do (plays several version of: Mr. Do!, Mr. Do's Castle, Do Run Run, and Kick Rider)

Pang (plays several versions of Pang aka Super Buster Bros.) - plays the following: Pang (World), Pang (bootleg set 1 and set 2), Buster Bros (US), Pomping World (Japan), Super Pang (World), Super Pang (Japan), and Super Buster Bros (US)
 
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I am not sure how to go about editing the Wiki page to keep it uniform.

Not sure I even CAN edit the page.

In either case, I'm really hoping some folks would be willing to look at the homebrew MAME stuff for DS and find a way to make it work.

The game shells themselves will load, but it does not find the ROMS.  I need someone who can crack into these things, find the code, and figure out where the ROMS should go.

I have them all working on the real DS (thanks, Acekard!) but I'd also like to get them working on Pandora.

the problem is basically that the file structure (directories) are different on Pandora DraStic versus the DS Acekard.
 
Actually, the issue with the MAME stuff is probably that it relies on DLDI for its file access which isn't implemented in DraStic. (and which I understand is fairly low on the priority list given that the 3D engine needs so much work) In short that probably won't be working for a while yet.

RE brain training: the Pandora's internal mic works just fine and *is* supported in the current version of DraStic. (though for some reason the game doesn't understand me half the time when I say 'red')

Can you confirm what version of DraStic you tested each of these on? Also the speed and type of your pandora.

- Neelix
 
OK.

I just downloaded DraStic last night, so I have the most current version.

I had trouble with the microphone, too, so I assumed it just plain did not work on Pandora, I guess that was wrong.  Still, better to just say you can't speak, and not fuss with the problems.

I currently am using a ReBirth Pandora on these, overclocked to 800.

Don't understand why 3D would be such a priority, since it probably would not work on Pandora, as it is not a 3D screen - don't the 3DS have a special screen?

Also, since you can't play 3DS games on a regular DSiXL, I did not think that DraStic would even accept the 3DS files.

If it were solely up to me, I'd rather see the MAME stuff work first, probably easier, anyway.  Then again, I never got into the 3DS anyway, since I am more a retrogamer anyway.  couldn't be bothered to try a lot of the new stuff, when there is so much good OLD stuff.

Besides, I thought Pandy's main thrust was for RETROGAMING...not current stuff.

Well, anyway, I made my case, I'd REALLY REALLY REALLY like to see the MAME stuff work out.  I really think it is just a matter that the file path needs to be worked out, because the shells themselves WILL launch...it just does not find the ROMS.

Of course, then, loading the ROMS may well crash DraStic...since I can't get Pandy to even FIND them, there's no way to test this.
 
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Kumaki said:
Don't understand why 3D would be such a priority, since it probably would not work on Pandora, as it is not a 3D screen - don't the 3DS have a special screen?

Also, since you can't play 3DS games on a regular DSiXL, I did not think that DraStic would even accept the 3DS files.
Click to expand...
Are you perhaps confusing 3DS with games that use hardware accelerated polygons?
 
Personally I don't really understand why you want to run an emulator on an emulator.... especially given that we have native MAME ports.  I can't imagine the performance being any better for it.

As for the 3D stuff it actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the 3DS,  but rather the method regular DS games, even many of the  older ones, use to display stuff on the screen.   Many 2D games use the 3D graphics method to display things on the screen.

This includes for example Tetris DS.   That's why if you load Tetris DS and choose Options -> Music and look at the image of the record on the screen there appears to be a blue line under the label.   It's using the as yet un-perfected 3D graphics engine to  draw the record and the label, and because it still needs work the placement of the label is slightly off.   Once Exophase gets this right it should fix a lot of the current graphical glitches and hopefully improve performance somewhat too.

- Neelix
 
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If something doesn't work it doesn't work, and most likely the only way it'll get fixed is if I eventually manage to fix it. I have a million things to work on for this program and they take varying priorities in my mind. Like Loonie said, "3D" means the DS's polygon rasterizer, it doesn't have anything to do with the 3DS. This emulation is poor (slow and inaccurate) and this is critical because most DS games use it even if they aren't 3D games.

If you find something that doesn't work report it in the thread that was already started for this emulator and/or put it on the compatibility list. Starting a new thread won't get you extra attention, neither will insisting how much you really really want something to work. Neelix is right, until there's DLDI support you aren't going to use homebrew that expects a file system on a virtual SD card.

And to anyone else who is having problems with the microphone, I can't stress enough that you have to unmute it and set the volume to get an acceptable input level.
 
Starting this thread was not at attempt to get any extra attention, And I did NOT correctly understand what the 3D stuff was about.

I'll try with the microphone.

As to the MAME stuff, I just want it to work because it CAN.  I have several "dupes" of games on more than one system, I even have MAME4ALL, PanMAME and MAME-EX all on my system.

I just want it to work because it CAN...no other reason, really.
 
With regards to the mic,  once you hit 'record'  (the circle needs to be red for it to work properly)  on the capture tab in the xfce mixer, you also need to adjust the volume.  If it's already at max, adjust it down, then adjust it back up.

- Neelix
 
OK. That sounds good, PowerGod.

UPDATE - account created.

Waiting on the HOW TO....to post my updates to the Compatibility Page.

I don't want to screw up the existing format.

People editing Wiki's should be mindful of this.

that is why I am waiting now to post my updates.
 
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HOW TO EDIT "DraStic Compatibility List" Wiki page

1) Create an account on Pandorawiki from HERE and log-in

2) Go to the "DraStic Compatibility List" page

3) Click on "Edit" on the top of the page, just over the title

4) In the edit box scroll down the text until the end, you will see something like this:

|- style="background: #90FF90"
|0716
|Yoshi's Island DS
|1.3.3.0
|32MB
|Original CC
|900Mhz
|Perfect, no frame skip
| Green

|- style="background: #90FF90"
|0050
|Zoo Keeper
|1.3.1.0
|?? MB
|Rebirth 512MB
|600 Mhz
|Launches and plays perfectly now (no more crash)
| Green

[[Category:Emulators]]
[[Category: Compatibility]]
[[Category:List]]
 We are seeing the 2 last entries "Yoshi's Island DS" and "Zoo Keeper", them are defined by a sort of paragraph for each game.

In this case, we have to add the new entry between the last " | Green" line and the "[[Category:Emulators]]" like this:

|- style="background: #90FF90"
|0716
|Yoshi's Island DS
|1.3.3.0
|32MB
|Original CC
|900Mhz
|Perfect, no frame skip
| Green

|- style="background: #90FF90"
|0050
|Zoo Keeper
|1.3.1.0
|?? MB
|Rebirth 512MB
|600 Mhz
|Launches and plays perfectly now (no more crash)
| Green

|- style="background: #90FF90"
|12345678
|The New Entry Game Title
|1.3.1.0
|99 MiB
|Rebirth 512MB
|600 Mhz
|How the new entry works, or issues must be explained (Name of who inserted the entry, for reference)
| Green

[[Category:Emulators]]
[[Category: Compatibility]]
[[Category:List]] Now let's explain better how the paragraph must be composed:

|- style="background: #90FF90"This is the BACKGROUND COLOR, it can be:
|- style="background: #90FF90"    = Green

|- style="background: #F3F781"    = Yellow

|- style="background: #F7BE81"    = Orange

|- style="background: #F78181"    = Red

|-                                                   = White

The meaning of the colors are explained at the top of the Compatibility List page

|12345678This is the GAME ID, IT MUST BE 8 DIGITS, all the others present with less digits are wrong.
Them can be seen in the DraStic rom selection screen after pressing (Y) until you can see the rom short title and the ID:

"NEWGAME ENTRY                                  12345678"

ALSO you can find it in "/tmp/pndrun_DraStic.out" after launching the game, in this line:

"Game code: 12345678"

Homebrew games doesn't have a GAME ID, so you can insert "Homebrew" for them.

If you can only see filenames for non-homebrew ROMS in the title and Rom-title views then you could be using an old or corrupted database file, or perhaps you were when you first changed viewing method.

To fix this, delete the file called drastic_file_info.txt from your ROMs folder.

If that doesn't fix the problem, delete the file called game_database.xml from appdata, then delete the drastic_file_info.txt file from your ROMs folder again. After that it should work.

Note: After deleting the drastic_file_info.txt file, DraStic will need to recreate it the next time you try to load the title or rom-title view. If you have a lot of ROMS this could take few moments.

|The New Entry Game TitleThis is the official name of the game

Code: 
|1.3.1.0
This is DraStic version used to test

Code: 
|99 MiB
This is the size in MEBIBYTE (just in case a converter is here, just put the size in bytes there and get the MiB) of the ROM file (NOT THE .ZIP, we are speaking about the extracted file)

Code: 
|Rebirth 512MB 
|600 Mhz
What type of Pandora was used to play, and at what clock speed

Code: 
|How the new entry works, or issues must be explained (Name of who inserted the entry, for reference)
The description of the issues or gameplay experience and a note to identify who added the entry.

Code: 
| Green
The last line is just the name of the color used for the background (so the playability of the game).

5) After entering all the entries, just press the button "Save page" on the bottom

It can happen that while you were editing the page, someone else modified it first... in this case you will see a "comparison" that will show all the lines that differs from your version, and you will have again the edit box to correct your modified page accordingly before saving again.
 
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Thanks for the How-To PowerGod. :)

One thing I wanted to note though:

PowerGod said:
|12345678This is the GAME ID, IT MUST BE 8 DIGITS, all the others present with less digits are wrong.
You can find it in "/tmp/pndrun_DraStic.out" after launching the game, in this line:

"Found game in database: titled The New Entry Game Title. Flash backup: 40000 bytes, ID 12345678"
Click to expand...
An easier way to get the Game ID is to highlight the ROM in question and press (Y) once or twice when viewing the ROM list to get to the rom-title view. (twice from the filename view, once from the title view; the current view is named at the bottom of the screen) This should give you a list of abbreviated titles on the left, and GAME IDs on the right. Homebrew games will still be listed by filenames.

If you can only see filenames for non-homebrew ROMS in the title and Rom-title views then you could be using an old or corrupted database file, or you perhaps you were when you first changed viewing method.

To fix this, delete the file called drastic_file_info.txt from your ROMs folder.

If that doesn't fix the problem, delete the file called game_database.xml from appdata, then delete the drastic_file_info.txt file from your ROMs folder again. After that it should work.

Note: After deleting the drastic_file_info.txt file, DraStic will need to recreate it the next time you try to load the title or rom-title view. If you have a lot of ROMS this could take few moments.

- Neelix
 
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Neelix said:
An easier way to get the Game ID is to highlight the ROM in question and press (Y) once or twice when viewing the ROM list to get to the rom-title view. (twice from the filename view, once from the title view; the current view is named at the bottom of the screen) This should give you a list of abbreviated titles on the left, and GAME IDs on the right. Homebrew games will still be listed by filenames.
Click to expand...
Yeah, indeed this is a thing I still don't understand completely, because in my case the IDs showed by the emulator are exadecimal, while the ones on pdnrun seems decimal, and are different... even if them are both 8 digits

For example, in pndrun I have THE SAME ID for "Brain Age" and "Brain Training", BUT in the emu them have 2 different exadecimal IDs...

I wrote about the pndrun only because Exophase confirmed it was the right code

But I'm a little lost here...
 
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*takes another look*  

Oh  I see what's happening.

The line you are looking at  in the pndrun_DraStic.out file is showing the flash backup id, not the Game ID. (and it is in fact a hexadecimal value)

For the Game ID,  look a few lines above that line,  you should see something like this:



Code: 
Gamecard title:  DS TRAINING

Game code:       50444e41

That code should match the one shown in the ROM list, and that's the code you should use.

- Neelix
 
Oh, I'll correct the guide ;)

EDIT: done

EDIT: I hate those code boxes... at every edit them becomes bigger...
 
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