Thunderforce Iv Hangs On Picodrive

[Segata Sanshiro]

As you all know, TF4 is quite a popular game and I'm sure many people have tried it on Picodrive. What puzzles me is that after searching on the forums for a while, noone seems to mention that it crashes when you get to a boss.

I just read someone on gp32spain reporting the same happens on his GP2X-F200 (I've been encountering this problem on the Wiz, so it seems to affect both Picodrive versions). As soon as he gets to a boss, the game hangs: everything freezes and stops responding to keypresses BUT the music keeps playing and the emulator is unaffected (you can exit to menus and even load and save states).

Is this a known bug? Maybe I'm using a bad dump? I promise I spent a few minutes searching but couldn't find anything relevant.

I can provide savestates if needed.

 

[emjay]

I don't think Picodrive is perfect as a lot of people seem to think it is. There are a few games with graphics glitches or dont work. I tried 'Test Drive 2' the other day and none of the traffic is displayed, you keep crashing into invisible cars.

 

[Amon_Re]

You might want to mention this in this thread

 

[Reesy]

Have you set all of the options for "accuracy" rather than performance?

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Have you set all of the options for "accuracy" rather than performance?

Thanks, it works now! I can't remember exactly what I changed but it doesn't hang anymore. I couldn't defeat the boss (it's a tough game...) but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have crashed, had I survived that giant mechanical locust or whatever it is. It always crashed before getting that far, so the problem seems solved.

These options might be relevant, although I'm not sure what made the difference:
-Frameskip 0
-Renderer 16 bit accurate
-Vsync ON
-Disable sprite limit OFF
-Disable idle loop patching ON (maybe this?)

 

[sbock]

-Disable idle loop patching ON (maybe this?)

Yes, that's very likely.

From the readme:

8. "Disable idle loop patching"
Idle loop patching is used to improve performance, but may cause compatibility
problems in some rare cases. Try disabling this if your game has problems.

 

[dogeymon]

As you all know, TF4 is quite a popular game and I'm sure many people have tried it on Picodrive. What puzzles me is that after searching on the forums for a while, noone seems to mention that it crashes when you get to a boss.

I just read someone on gp32spain reporting the same happens on his GP2X-F200 (I've been encountering this problem on the Wiz, so it seems to affect both Picodrive versions). As soon as he gets to a boss, the game hangs: everything freezes and stops responding to keypresses BUT the music keeps playing and the emulator is unaffected (you can exit to menus and even load and save states).

Is this a known bug? Maybe I'm using a bad dump? I promise I spent a few minutes searching but couldn't find anything relevant.

I can provide savestates if needed.

I KNOW!!! I find it not only horrible about that, but also Thunder Force 2 doesn't work right on the top-view levels. There's an invisible line across the middle of the screen that hides enemies above it so you can't see them.

 

[MrRetrostage]

Does it work with the newest PicoDrive 1.80 version? I have the problem, that the game hungs up (sound will continue!) even if I turn on "Disable idle loop patching".

I can provide savegames if you want...

Edit: Ok, it was a bad dump. With a new one it worked

 

[MrRetrostage]

And again: Sound began to hang at the forth boss, when I defeat him, the game hungs. I'll upload the savestate, perhaps there is someone who can fix it with the correct settings...

/e: Problem solved! I reloaded a previous save state and played through the level again and I did not hung. So you have to save the continuously.