Metal Slug 2 slowdown reduction patch

mikejmoffitt

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I don't understand the confusion. I'm arguing that Metal Slug X's second mission has extra mummies littered in it to give it fake extra depth. It isn't making it any harder, it's just wasting more of your time by throwing more in your face. In the same way, TMNT: Hyperstone Heist for Genesis isn't harder than the other games in the series because it has more enemies, it's just more work.

There are other changes in MSX that are fine or even good, but I won't agree that adding spam to mission two is one of them.
 

Electric Grave

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Really? They add some but take away others, so I don't think it should take you much longer. Mission 2 is fine the way it is in MSX, to me it just comes across as nitpicking, not enough to worry about.
 

donluca

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The theme of people who prefer 2 over X seems to be "X is too hard for me."

Never heard that honestly.

I'm one of those 2 > X guys and I say so because I prefer the original design over the new weapons, enemies and swapped bosses.

MS2 is perfect as it is, but sometime the slowdown is a bit too much.

Using the MSX engine to reproduce MS2 would be a nice experiment.
 

Fakk2

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Never heard that honestly.

I'm one of those 2 > X guys and I say so because I prefer the original design over the new weapons, enemies and swapped bosses.

MS2 is perfect as it is, but sometime the slowdown is a bit too much.

Using the MSX engine to reproduce MS2 would be a nice experiment.

I actually agree with that. The things that bother me the most with Slug X is the strange new colors that they used for the backgrounds, (the purple sky on the train stage is most strange of all). The bosses being swapped around was really unwanted, and the added guns were okay, but only about 1 of them was really amazing to me.

As far as Slug 2 over Slug X is concerned, I think that if Slug X had the same amount of slowdown that Slug 2 had, more people would easily prefer Slug 2 over Slug X. The only thing I really liked about Slug X at all, were the dog mummies. It's a shame that SNK did not just use all that extra data in the ROMs that they worked on, and at least made one new final mission for Slug X with all new enemies, and bosses, similar to Slug 3's end stage that takes 30 minutes to beat. That would have made me like Slug X much more, but as the game is, Slug 2 was just better and felt more natural, although the slowness of it has annoyed me since the day it came out. ugh..
 

Xian Xi

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I always wondered if MSX was a replacement for MS2. By that I mean did SNK send them out to Arcade ops pissed at the performance of Slug 2?
 

mikejmoffitt

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Before I head to bed I decided to take a quickie look at metal slug 2 in the debugger:

JWQbAl0.png


Not sure why it's doing this. It's writing an incrementing value to the VRAM Read register ($3C0000) repeatedly. Many similar routines are called in a row. Anyone know what's going on here?
 

Razoola

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It is updating VRAM to display graphics.
 

FinalbossNYC

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I actually agree with that. The things that bother me the most with Slug X is the strange new colors that they used for the backgrounds, (the purple sky on the train stage is most strange of all). It's a shame that SNK did not just use all that extra data in the ROMs that they worked on, and at least made one new final mission for Slug X with all new enemies, and bosses, similar to Slug 3's end stage that takes 30 minutes to beat. That would have made me like Slug X much more, but as the game is, Slug 2 was just better and felt more natural, although the slowness of it has annoyed me since the day it came out. ugh..

Very Kool idea an extra stage that was built from the ground up for X would have defiantly made it stand further on its on ground and been a nice lil bonus, it could be a normal length level as far as I'm concerned


I always wondered if MSX was a replacement for MS2. By that I mean did SNK send them out to Arcade ops pissed at the performance of Slug 2?

I did know one Operator in NYC back in the day that told us he got X sent to him when he actually called SNK to complain (was notorious for complaining)
 

Razoola

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I just had a quick look at the code you pasted. It can defo be done quicker, in fact that code can be removed with minimal damage given all its doing is clearing the unused sprite tile information (which may already be clear).

I gave it a quick try. Patch P1 ROM from address 0x7F53C to 0x0060 0xFA00 (a branch to end of the table, byteflip the patch values if you do it in the MAME debugger). It causes some issues when sprite shrinking on the title page (metal slug 2 text) but apart from that game play looks unaffected. Not sure how much speed is gained however but it may be noticeable given this routine is called during gameplay.
 
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Fakk2

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I always wondered if MSX was a replacement for MS2. By that I mean did SNK send them out to Arcade ops pissed at the performance of Slug 2?

It certainly was not for free for AES users as I remember when SNK called me to tell me their "NEW Metal Slug that was available to order" when it came out, and I don't recall any of the arcade's around my area getting Slug X after having Slug 2, so I doubt it.
 

FilthyRear

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It certainly was not for free for AES users as I remember when SNK called me to tell me their "NEW Metal Slug that was available to order" when it came out, and I don't recall any of the arcade's around my area getting Slug X after having Slug 2, so I doubt it.

:spock:

They just happened to have you on speed-dial?
 

mikejmoffitt

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I just had a quick look at the code you pasted. It can defo be done quicker, in fact that code can be removed with minimal damage given all its doing is clearing the unused sprite tile information (which may already be clear).

I gave it a quick try. Patch P1 ROM from address 0x7F53C to 0x0060 0xFA00 (a branch to end of the table, byteflip the patch values if you do it in the MAME debugger). It causes some issues when sprite shrinking on the title page (metal slug 2 text) but apart from that game play looks unaffected. Not sure how much speed is gained however but it may be noticeable given this routine is called during gameplay.

I guess I'm not familiar enough with the Neo-Geo system architecture to know why that code works. Does writing to the address register implicitly write to VRAM as well? Is there no DMA unit to copy a sprite table into VRAM?
 

Razoola

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Nope, there is just a few ports from 0x3C0000
 

mikejmoffitt

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Interesting. How does writing to the address register copy data, though? I would expect you would write to the address port once to set the address, (optionally) set up an auto-increment, and then write the data itself to the data port. Am I just out in the sticks here?
 
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Razoola

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Yes that is what it is doing. The first word of the long word is the address and the 2nd word is the data. In this case its filling VRAM with 0x0000

Raz
 

erock

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Just popped it in- Fantastic!
Shout out to ShootTheCore for hooking me up!
The "Metal Slug2 Turbo" in the softdip slot selector is extra sexy.
 

matt5cott

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Just popped it in- Fantastic!
Shout out to ShootTheCore for hooking me up!
The "Metal Slug2 Turbo" in the softdip slot selector is extra sexy.

This, except for ChrisB gets my thanks, I soldered it in tonight and can't believe the difference!
 

Neo Alec

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I've been playing with this lately too, and it's better than I thought, especially in 1-player! Played through a full game on 2-player, and it can still be a slowdown fest, but the kind of slowdown that remains feels more natural and forgiveable.

I noticed some new graphical glitches on the title screen and stage clear screens on my MV-1C, but nothing major.

I wish they didn't change the title and NGH # though. This is an official cart that I felt bad about desoldering. I know it's nitpicking, but I'd rather keep my official cart as stock as possible.
 

Dandan

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hello mate, im in the uk, I have a eeprom burner to do this and would be happy to help.

I would be more than happy to pay you to help me out with this, just booted MS2 up today and the slowdown just ruins this wonderful game.
And yeah MS2>MSX
 

ChrisB

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I would be more than happy to pay you to help me out with this, just booted MS2 up today and the slowdown just ruins this wonderful game.

And yeah MS2>MSX

Hello Dan
I can burn the rom for you, do you have anyone who can solder it in?
 
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