Secret of Mana Map Palette(?) Bug

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 12:35 am

NSRT Output:
---------------------Internal ROM Info----------------------
File: Secret of Mana (U).smc
Name: Secret of MANA Company: Square
Header: None Bank: HiROM
Interleaved: No SRAM: 64 Kb
Type: Normal + Batt ROM: 16 Mb
Country: USA Video: NTSC
ROM Speed: 200ns (SlowROM) Revision: 1.0
Checksum: Good 0x51FC CRC32: D0176B24
--------------------------Database--------------------------
Name: Secret of Mana
Country: USA Revision: 1.0
Port 1: Gamepad Port 2: The Multitap
Genre 1: RPG Genre 2: Action

The picture explains itself:

It is like the palette is inverted or just plain messed up.

http://rapidshare.de/files/17695482/Sec ... _.zs3.html

Bug in occurs in 1.42 Official and all post 1.42 WIPs.

Both New Graphics Engine and Old Graphics Engine are affected by this.

Jipcy · Post by **Jipcy** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:20 am

How do you even get to that screen? I've never seen/used it before.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:25 am

For one that owns a cartridge, I'm surprised to hear that.

While on Flammie, you hit the Start button to access the "rotated world map". While viewing this map, you hit the "R" button to switch to the nicer world map (I hate the rotated map with a passion). Hit the "L" button to switch back to the rotated map. "B" to exit either map screen.

Just so you know.. that King from Mantago (that Mushroom Kingdom) tells you about that once you drop him off at his home...

Jipcy · Post by **Jipcy** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:27 am

Yeah, I guess I've never used either of the world map features very much. Oh well.

EDIT: Christ, the Flammie Drum sound is awful.

PAINTING PICTURE, PLEASE WAIT!!

Going to go check it on my SNES now.

EDIT2: Hmm, yeah. A green/brown ocean is definitely not very pretty. Definitely blue in the real thing.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:37 am

Jipcy wrote:Yeah, I guess I've never used either of the world map features very much. Oh well.

EDIT: Christ, the Flammie Drum sound is awful.

PAINTING PICTURE, PLEASE WAIT!!

Going to go check it on my SNES now.

I'll note that Snes9x+BSNES produces the proper picture..

If I recall correctly... the world map also changes its palette as well when the game changes the overworld's color.. but I'll have to get far enough to expose that.

The painting picture is rediculous part. This is probably one of the more obvious issues that Secret of Mana faced since it being incomplete. Even FF5 and CT have an instant map feature.

One other thing in the map feature.. is that you can scroll using the up/down/left right buttons.

Edit: The Drum sound is probably another SPC rape sound... go figure.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:03 am

A reference pic generated by BSNES (pretty much the same as what Snes9x generates) of what it should look like:

Jipcy · Post by **Jipcy** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:51 am

Deathlike2 wrote:A reference pic generated by BSNES (pretty much the same as what Snes9x generates) of what it should look like:

Careful saying what things "should" look like. You know pagefault hates emulator-emulator comparisons. But yes, the coloring is at least close to correct.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:54 am

Jipcy wrote:
Deathlike2 wrote:A reference pic generated by BSNES (pretty much the same as what Snes9x generates) of what it should look like:
Careful saying what things "should" look like. You know pagefault hates emulator-emulator comparisons. But yes, the coloring is at least close to correct.

Well, I understand that, but since I don't have the game (I did play it on the original console), this is the closest comparison...

You know something is wrong when the color of the water is yellow.

MajereDB8 · Post by **MajereDB8** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:36 am

Deathlike2 wrote:You know something is wrong when the color of the water is yellow.

May not want to drink that...

Yeah sorry. I got nothing. I'll try to post a screencap of the map from my NTSC SNES using my capture card tomorrow.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:39 am

Deathlike2 wrote:The painting picture is rediculous part. This is probably one of the more obvious issues that Secret of Mana faced since it being incomplete. Even FF5 and CT have an instant map feature.

Hey hey, they display the whole mode7 surfaces used for the world map on a flat plane... the resolution of this thing is HUGE, and the limited transfer rate can't make it appear in a go...
To compare with, say, LttP, the map in there is a single 256x256 surface.

How do you make the WHOLE map appear like that in CT/FF5 ?

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:10 am

The game uses DirectColor mode in Mode3. Funny that vSNES displays the same picture as ZSNES, though I don't remember looking at its code for this feature... Both get the DirectColor map screen in Actraiser 2 right though.

anomie wrote:For the 256-color BGs of Modes 3, 4, and 7, $2130 bit 0 when set enables direct color mode. In this mode, instead of ignoring ppp and using the character data as the palette index, you treat the character data as expressing a color BBGGGRRR, and use the 3 bits of ppp as bgr to make the color Red=RRRr0, Green=GGGg0, Blue=BBb00

grinvader wrote:
Deathlike2 wrote:The painting picture is rediculous part. This is probably one of the more obvious issues that Secret of Mana faced since it being incomplete. Even FF5 and CT have an instant map feature.
Hey hey, they display the whole mode7 surfaces used for the world map on a flat plane... the resolution of this thing is HUGE, and the limited transfer rate can't make it appear in a go...
To compare with, say, LttP, the map in there is a single 256x256 surface.

How do you make the WHOLE map appear like that in CT/FF5 ?

SoM seems to convert the Mode7 tiles to Mode3 tiles in software... ie. non-bitplane to bitplane graphics. This should require lots of bit-shifting.

<EDIT> No, the graphics are apparently in the ROM. I don't know what the hell it is doing, taking that long to load the graphics... </EDIT>

FF5 and LttP use a Mode7 map, CT uses Mode1.

Post by **pagefault** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:43 am

Thanks for the heads up, I will make the required changes to fix. I wonder if this fixes Sim Earth as well.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 12:41 pm

EDIT: Disregard that. -_-

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:47 pm

pagefault wrote:Thanks for the heads up, I will make the required changes to fix. I wonder if this fixes Sim Earth as well.

Sim Earth's map uses mosaic that is enabled mid-frame. You have to simulate the BG countdown registers that TRAC described in order to get that working correctly.

Let's say you enable mosaic to 3px size during vblank, your display is thus:

111 222 333
111 222 333
111 222 333
444 555 666
444 555 666
444 555 666

However, if mosaic is off on scanline 1, and then it's enabled on scanline 2, you get the output:

111 222 333
444 555 666
444 555 666
444 555 666
777 888 999
777 888 999

So you see, mosaic's Y position is taken from when mosaic was enabled, and not always the first Y pixel in the 3-pixel block.

SimEarth relies on this, and fails without it.

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:46 pm

Jipcy wrote: Careful saying what things "should" look like. You know pagefault hates emulator-emulator comparisons. But yes, the coloring is at least close to correct.

And yet, when someone report a (presumed) bug...(sometimes it occur on the actual console) without confirming it happens on the real thing, you don't hear any objections

Best references imo:

1)Screenshot of the real thing
2) bsnes
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3) A user's memory

Jipcy · Post by **Jipcy** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:00 pm

My general point in saying that was just a reminder that pagefault has grown to dislike emulator-emulator comparisons, especially when comparing with bsnes.

One might say that some bugs are so obvious that it couldn't possibly be that way on the console. Especially with bugs that happen in widely-played games. On the other hand, bugs that are hard to reproduce, either in the emulator or on the console, need some more thorough testing.

People are free to report bugs however they want. Some will be taken as more credible than others. NSRT info, photographs/captures of the output from the real thing certainly help. Comparison with other emulators IS useful, but no one emulator is perfect. You could say that "bsnes appears to produce the correct behavior." But you can't take that evidence as infallible.

Most of the SNES core developers have a real SNES and a copier, so they can confirm what it should look like on the real thing.

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:22 pm

Jipcy wrote:My general point in saying that was just a reminder that pagefault has grown to dislike emulator-emulator comparisons, especially when comparing with bsnes.

One might say that some bugs are so obvious that it couldn't possibly be that way on the console. Especially with bugs that happen in widely-played games. On the other hand, bugs that are hard to reproduce, either in the emulator or on the console, need some more thorough testing.

People are free to report bugs however they want. Some will be taken as more credible than others. NSRT info, photographs/captures of the output from the real thing certainly help. Comparison with other emulators IS useful, but no one emulator is perfect. You could say that "bsnes appears to produce the correct behavior." But you can't take that evidence as infallible.

Most of the SNES core developers have a real SNES and a copier, so they can confirm what it should look like on the real thing.

Yeah, I understand now the point about the comparison with bsnes in that -just because it's the most accurate Snes emu, it shouldn't be taken for the gospel (though when the time comes when they are not a single working Snes and no perfect clone exists..they'll be no other way but to use an emulator as a reference)

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:32 pm

I'm surprised this hasn't been reported earlier.. but then again.. I'm somewhat surprised people haven't found this map feature (as obscure a reference it was in the actual game).

BSNES has a issue rendering the Mode 7 overworld in the SOM intro, and while on Flammie. There is always a possibility that another emulator is just wrong on rendering stuff. In fact, there's still the possibility that all emulators render the same thing wrong. There are major and minor differences between emulators and the real thing like slight color differences and sound effects.. and then there's the really really bad and obvious. Though one should check for known (non-emulator) bug references in such a game like Lufia 2.

One other thing is not to compare ports of the same game to the original.. I think we had some earlier threads of FF3 and CT of one guy not sure of the original effect... though he was most likely comparing to the PSX version of the same games.

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:43 pm

Deathlike2 wrote: One other thing is not to compare ports of the same game to the original.. I think we had some earlier threads of FF3 and CT of one guy not sure of the original effect... though he was most likely comparing to the PSX version of the same games.

Definitely. A port could correct bugs that was present in the original version. Then you have people saying

"There's a bug with FF3 in Zsnes. Here's a screenshots from the PSX version".

Unknown to him it could have been an actual game bug present on the real hardware.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:50 pm

My general point in saying that was just a reminder that pagefault has grown to dislike emulator-emulator comparisons, especially when comparing with bsnes.

Probably because the comparison is always used in a negative manner, eg this thread.

Personally, I like it when people mention what bsnes does in regards to bug reports. This is how I found out about the Krusty's Super Funhouse bug and was able to get it fixed with Overload's help. It saves me the trouble of having to go through and test all of these troublesome games/spots for these bugs myself.

One has to understand that really, only SNES emu developers and extreme hobbyists have access to SNES backup units that now cost hundreds of dollars a piece in some cases. Therefore, a comparison between two emulators is better than nothing at all. Just don't assume one emulator is right and the other is wrong. bsnes has plenty of problems too, see this list of bugs. And for the love of all that is holy, we aren't competing here. No reason to be condescending in your comparison, ever. It's offensive to me regardless of which emulator is being touted as superior.

In this exact case, it's pretty obvious that it's an emulation bug. I was already aware that ZSNES did not emulate direct color mode. I didn't say anything because I didn't realize there were any commercial games that actually used it.

But for the most part, it shouldn't be assumed to definitely be a bug, but possibly be a bug. Regardless, if two emulators are getting different results, then one of them likely has a bug, and it's good to report what both do so that the correct behavior can be verified and the problem corrected.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:39 pm

Dmog wrote: And yet, when someone report a (presumed) bug...(sometimes it occur on the actual console) without confirming it happens on the real thing, you don't hear any objections

Best references imo:

1)Screenshot of the real thing
2) bsnes
3) A user's memory

I would say user memory is a pretty good reference, and I would put that above bsnes or any other emu any day of the week. As it stands now, zsnes has a lot of bugs that bsnes doesn't have, and bsnes has a lot of bugs that zsnes doesn't have. If you recall a recent thread on Krusty's Super Fun House, that was a bug that both emulators shared. The real thing is obviously the best comparison, but I think as human beings we can use reason just as well depending on the bug. Let's take a bug where a game freezes right after the title screen. Obviously a bug, and we needn't verify if it occurs on the real thing. Same thing with severe graphic glitches like garbled sprites and palette issues. Krusty was obvious. The ocean being brown and not blue is obvious. Speed problems, infrequent crashes, audio glitches, and graphic glitches are a little less clear cut. Games like Lufia 2 are the reason for that.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:22 pm

byuu wrote:SNES backup units that now cost hundreds of dollars a piece in some cases.

Man, really? That sucks. I'd wanted to get one some day but I'm not sure it's worth that much money to me. : (

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:49 pm

You might be able to find a cheap Game Doctor or something for under $100, but a good copier such as the DX2 usually goes for $250+.

My UFO cost $250 (+$100 shipping+$20 deputy fees), but the seller screwed me over by inflating his own bid. That's the risk you take when you set your max bid higher than you're willing to pay when using a deputy service :(

UFOs usually go for $120-$200, and are lousy as far as developer copiers go. I could do so much more if only I had a copier that allowed me to pass all cart accesses through the copier and directly to the cart, and run my own test program out of RAM or something. Or at least allow passthru for $2000-$5fff for SPC7110 reverse engineering. Probably wouldn't work with the decompression stuff, but it'd be a good start for the $48xx registers it uses.

Post by **pagefault** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:10 am

Back on topic. SoM is now working properly, I am looking at Sim Earth now.

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:24 am

but I think as human beings we can use reason just as well depending on the bug

Enter the false bug reports. Ex: There's slighly garbled graphics in X game, we "reason" it obviously shouldn't be there (nor do we recall it was ever there) yet sometimes it was indeed there in the original console all along.

Worse case scenario you end up "fixing" a game bug because you really thought it's an emulation bug.

That being said: of course there are some things that are obvious. For example if in Zsnes or bsnes the FF3 overworld map didn't appeared we'd know there was an emulation bug.

Edit: edited to add *FINAL FANTASY III OVERWORLD* map...not Zsnes -bsnes overworld map which doesn't make sense...