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Since Warzard / Red Earth might be in MAME 0.117, I was wondering what the rules would be on this, since the game allows a player to input a password to increase their chosen character's level.

I don't really know what difference it makes to the game though, since I'm rubbish at it.

Increasing the character's level also increases the game's difficulty. Opponent energy and AI are notably higher.

Of course, I think we ought to hold off on Warzard, until the CD-ROM emulation is working, so that the original region can be used, instead of the current region hack, so that it won't foul up on checking the CD-ROM (it's the only CPS-3 game that does this in-game). Under Asia, the difficulty defaults to 8 (hardest, this is common Capcom practice), it is quite likely that under Japan (the dumped version) it would be set to level 4, at the most.

All other CPS-3 games are now left at their dumped regions.

Another issue, is how different regions are going to be handled. DIP switch, maybe?

mahlemiut wrote: Another issue, is how different regions are going to be handled. DIP switch, maybe?

probably with -bios

Haze wrote:probably with -bios

Isn't -bios tied to the ROM loading code, or can it be used to just changed the single byte necessary to switch regions? I seriously doubt you'd be creating fake ROMs, and I seem to remember mention of not really wanting people to kill the carts just to get the BIOS dumped.

Big issue for MARP use of CPS-3 games is, how to handle the CD-ROM loading.

Should we allow NVRAM? Should we just wait (assuming you don't have to reset after flashing)? Note that SF3 3rd Strike estimates 70 minutes to load from CD. Should we use only "No CD" versions, if any are dumped?

I'll make a proper post in the Regulation Play forum about this later.

hoepfully there will be no wait ones, but if it's 10+ minutes i think as long as the nvram file that makes it playback is in the uloaded inp zip would be fine.

Same thing for Seibu SPI games... the only solution is to allow using nvram.
Because although you can wait the initialization, the reset isn't recorded.
I've successfully recorded and played back inps made with default nvram, the only necessary thing to do is set the nv file to read only after the initialization.

If there are games where nvram is a necessity, there should be mention and a link for read only nvram in special rules, or something.

The NVRAM files are 96meg, and contain all the game ROM data. I somehow don't think linking to them would be practical, or legal under the terms and conditions which the site is hosted.

The Seibu ones contain all the game sound ROM data.

The wait is meant to be 70 mins for 3rd strike, although due to various reasons it's more like 20 min Mame.

Haze wrote:The NVRAM files are 96meg, and contain all the game ROM data. I somehow don't think linking to them would be practical, or legal under the terms and conditions which the site is hosted.

Ah ok, you got me there.

It's basically the same issue as with Seibu SPI, which loads PCM sound data into flash ROMs on initial startup. I doubt anyone wants to watch the loading screen for between 13 and 70 minutes while Capcom's insanely slow loader chugs along (and at assumes the game will start without needing a reset, unlike SPI, which is why no one is playing SPI games now).

Using only No CD BIOSes is probably the way to go, but this will mean that we'd have no choice but to have Warzard set to maximum difficulty (default for Asian region, thanks a bunch, Capcom).

except we don't actually have a valid Red Earth Asia NO CD set. Hacking the region to ASIA NCD still requires the CD to boot without a hack, it just disables the ingame checks, so its possible the actual cart rom is different. (or it's expecting the SCSI to report tray empty or something..)

Haze wrote:I somehow don't think linking to them would be practical, or legal under the terms and conditions which the site is hosted.

In that case I suggest we post the instructions to generate them.
For Seibu SPI games it's easy... just quit after the countdown ends.
Opinion of any editors?