Brikin'ger/Iron Clad Coming To The Wii Virtual Console

[werejag]

im very sure this will be easy

 

[Asure]

Slight problem. There is readable text inside the bin, it does not look like any other NEO-GEO rom i've seen before. (Normal M1/P1 roms are somewhat scrambled->byteswapped.)

I looked at Shock Troopers 2 to check for similarities and whatever we split to, it will need to be byteswapped in the end i think.
Edit: more discoveries:

- The first thing we have appears to be a header of 64 bytes
- Then what seems to be the P1 rom (non-byteswapped)
- P1 might end at 0x30040, giving it a size of 196608 bytes ? odd..
- M1 starts at 0x200040, and should be 131072 bytes..
- M1 contains the 'Ver 3.0 by Makoto' message, with a date of 04/03/2010.. ! (did they remaster this?!)
- Breakthrough!

Preparing some pizza to celebrate.. will post more findings+ways to go about for your own dump asap..
Then time to dig up some older emu that doesn't care about crc, and see where to plug stuff..

 

[SSS]

Slight problem. There is readable text inside the bin, it does not look like any other NEO-GEO rom i've seen before. (Normal M1/P1 roms are somewhat scrambled->byteswapped.)

I looked at Shock Troopers 2 to check for similarities and whatever we split to, it will need to be byteswapped in the end i think.
Edit: more discoveries:

- The first thing we have appears to be a header of 64 bytes
- Then what seems to be the P1 rom (non-byteswapped)
- P1 might end at 0x30040, giving it a size of 196608 bytes ? odd..
- M1 starts at 0x200040, and should be 131072 bytes..
- M1 contains the 'Ver 3.0 by Makoto' message, with a date of 04/03/2010.. ! (did they remaster this?!)
- Breakthrough!

Preparing some pizza to celebrate.. will post more findings+ways to go about for your own dump asap..
Then time to dig up some older emu that doesn't care about crc, and see where to plug stuff..

you can try neoragexp .8c. I have the older neo geo bios file it needs if you want it.

 

[NG:DEV.TEAM]

- M1 contains the 'Ver 3.0 by Makoto' message, with a date of 04/03/2010.. ! (did they remaster this?!)

They probably included chip music or at least programmed digi voice loops in.
Has anyone played it yet on VC? How is the music quality?

It seems Nintendo did a really bad job on protecting Virtual Console releases

 

[SSS]

They probably included chip music or at least programmed digi voice loops in.
Has anyone played it yet on VC? How is the music quality?

It seems Nintendo did a really bad job on protecting Virtual Console releases

that should be a

 

[metallizer]

(Normal M1/P1 roms are somewhat scrambled->byteswapped.)

According to the Spanish thread I posted before some spots are byteswapped (C rom is twice) and mirrored, if you run into any problems, make a post about it and I will help you to sort it out.

 

[Asure]

Ok. Here's the beef, it's all in the header Indeed, a poor protection. Then again WII is wide open, the common key is everywhere.. oh well.

About SNK's early xmas-present:

00000040 P1 size 20 00 00 = 2097152 bytes
00200040 M1 size 02 00 00 = 131072 bytes
00220040 ?  size 40 00 00 = 4194304  V roms ?
00620040 ?  size 02 00 00 = 131072 probably S1
00640040 ?  size 10 00 00 = 16777216 C roms ?
01640040 ?  size 02 00 00 = 131072   Neo-Geo BIOS 'Version 0'

I think i need to dig around for ucon64 to byteswap and mirror then.
Any games which this could easily slot into in mame ?
I'm splitting files as we speak. Users with mac / linux may get a split script from me soon to 'dd' the thing into digestable parts.

 

[metallizer]

it matches to order from the other thread:

header
P rom
M rom
V rom
S rom
C rom
bios

it´s definitely roms in there, no way it could be Cd audio tracks in 4mb.

now it´s dividing and byteswapping.

 

[Asure]

Those with linux/macos should try this on game.bin..

dd if=game.bin of=noheader.bin bs=64 count=1 skip=1 # get rid of header.
dd if=noheader.bin of=P1.ROM bs=2097152 count=1   # 16 blocks = 2M
dd if=noheader.bin of=M1.ROM bs=131072 count=1 skip=16 #
dd if=noheader.bin of=V1.rom bs=131072 count=16 skip=17 # skip 16 + 1 and get 2M
dd if=noheader.bin of=V2.rom bs=131072 count=16 skip=33 # skip 32 + 1 and get 2M
dd if=noheader.bin of=S1.rom bs=131072 count=1 skip=49  # 33+16 and get 131xxx
dd if=noheader.bin of=C1.rom bs=131072 count=32 skip=50 # 49+1 get 4M
dd if=noheader.bin of=C2.rom bs=131072 count=32 skip=82 # 32+50 = 82
dd if=noheader.bin of=C3.rom bs=131072 count=32 skip=114 # 82+32 = 114
dd if=noheader.bin of=C4.rom bs=131072 count=32 skip=146 # 114 +32 = 146

 

[werejag]

NGEV.TEAM

seems no last hope vc for us eh

 

[Asure]

They could have protected the WII much better but didn't. They can't even ban users
Plenty of options for NG : Dev.team remaining still. They could have built a few more hurdles into the VC. Enforce more updates on the end users and encrypt the whole damn thing better..

 

[rarehero]

I'm a fan of capt tomaday, not a fan of the carrot shooting form though.

 

[BigTinz]

yay!

 

[Ruell]

interesting.

 

[metallizer]

so anyone got it working besides Asure?

I don´t know what linux flavor he used for it but looks like the logic might need some tweaking to work in a mac.

I guess he wanted to make a game file without the reader part, but I only got the reader part in the noreader file.

 

[Asure]

Still need to find out how to plug a new game into Rage and how to handle the C roms. Not working yet..

 

[ilazul]

Still need to find out how to plug a new game into Rage and how to handle the C roms. Not working yet..

I think if you put the .zip in the rom directory and hit import, it should show up on the bottom of the game list. as like ironclad.zip (?)

 

[Asure]

I've heard the music and seen the fonts.Now i need to unscramble the C roms..

 

[Battlesmurf]

wow. If this can be pushed into an MVS cartridge- I am there. Such an awesome little gift. Anybody confirm if the music is still neato?

 

[metallizer]

Still need to find out how to plug a new game into Rage and how to handle the C roms. Not working yet..

well, one easy solution would be using the c files from that cd to mvs hacked ironclad that was floating around a few years ago (without sound) or anyone with the Cd can make new ones with that ngcd to ng sprite converter.

i´m also working on directions to do the conversion from the wii files.

 

[NeoTurfMasta]

i´m also working on directions to do the conversion from the wii files.

Cool, cause I'm having issues with the bin extraction. Thanks

 

[Asure]

I need something to un-swap the C roms. So far, i've tried
ucon64 -swap and -swap2 options (no good)
NGCD -> NG option in a tool from SPEKSNK (gfx appear a bit better, still broken)
Waninkoko 'swapper' from the thread here

I think i need a different tool to convert back to original format C roms

 

[metallizer]

I've heard the music and seen the fonts.Now i need to unscramble the C roms..

to scramble a normal C rom into wiiVc format:

Archivos C: Utilizar la utilidad de "kikex-box" el NGTONGCD.exe para pasar de formato neogeo a neogeo CD. Seguidamente los archivos obtenidos los reordenamos con otra utilidad, el "reordenar.exe". (Estas utilidades están en el hilo) Muchas gracias!!

regarding reordenar.exe

La parte correspondiente a los archivos de gráficos del game.bin, son muy parecidos a los de Neogeo CD (o los convertidos desde neogeo). Pero para que sean "identicos" hay que cambiar los bytes de sitio. Hoy solo he tenido tiempo de mirar un poco el foro, pero no de mirarme bien los archivos ni de buscar algún programa que me lo recoloque.

El problema es colocar este:

El esquema sería AB CD EF GH --> CD GH AB EF

so we need to backward this steps, first create a small program to interpolate the files from: CD GH AB EF --> AB CD EF GH

now files should be identical to ngcd ones, there is a program NGTONGCD.exe that is able to convert sprites back and forth from ng to ngcd
http://www.gp32spain.com/foros/attachment.php?attachmentid=10897&d=1146109422

 

[Asure]

This is after speksnk tool..

Testing the one you just posted now.. fingers crossed..
It's the same tool.. but i have some options left ...

A bit better result, but there's still something wrong, that i can't figure out.
I've dropped a MAME dev a line, maybe he can see what's wrong..

 

[metallizer]

did you remembered that the last 20000 bytes is the bios file and not a part of the C roms?

also there´s still the NGCD to NG approach to sprites using the original game CD.