What is up with Soul Blazer's intro?

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:29 pm

Why exactly does Soul Blazer's intro play the music incorrectly?

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:52 pm

It is better to elaborate on that, than just have that statement made as is.

It doesn't help if you are not running the output @ 32KHz.

Post by **grinvader** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:41 pm

I know exactly what he (she?) is talking about. There's a slight slowdown early on in the intro tune in soulblazer (u).
Didn't test (j), and (e) does -not- have this. On the real PAL hardware, there's no slowdown either... and it's been ~15 years since I've played the NTSC one.

So what I'd like is someone with an NTSC snes to test the game and report if it has a slowdown like zsnes has. If yes, case closed, if not, boo us, I guess.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:02 pm

I've actually been playing that game. I've noticed no obvious slowdown in the intro. Is there something I should be looking for, specifically?

Btw, my SNES isn't originally NTSC, but it's running in 60hz mode with the American ROM, which should be identical AFAIK.

Post by **grinvader** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:04 pm

Then we probably have something wrong somewhere... (although I'd like a real native hardware test result).
How surprising !

<_<;

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:35 pm

I have the cart and ntsc snes. I'll go check.

I notice no slow downs on either the snes or zsnes. Although sometimes both will drop a sound chaneel for a couple seconds during the start of the intro.

Post by **grinvader** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:49 pm

Thank you for checking... can you please record the zsnes 'correct' output [i.e. not missing that sound channel] to a wav (or whatever compressed format you want) so we remove any doubt ?
Mainly because I always have this slowdown here. Every single time.
So maybe another runtime booya happening somewhere.

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:03 pm

grinvader wrote:Thank you for checking... can you please record the zsnes 'correct' output [i.e. not missing that sound channel] to a wav (or whatever compressed format you want) so we remove any doubt ?
Mainly because I always have this slowdown here. Every single time.
So maybe another runtime booya happening somewhere.

I don't have a reliable fileserver, so it is here on Megaupload. I recorded this from zsnes.

Post by **grinvader** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:26 pm

Ok, this doesn't have the slowdown I (and others) have, sounds exactly like the E version. So, we do have another runtime bork ala black omen, only with sound.
Grr.
Thanks a lot for clearing things up.

Ok, what I have about it so far:
- not related to blargg's code: it happened before, and still does in svn.
- when I dump that spc, the slowdown is reproduced by spc players. I would like someone without the issue (*cough*starman*cough*) to dump an spc of the 'clean' version, to see if it's linked to spc decoding itself or not.

Here is an spc I dumped. If it sounds right (no slowdown), please report immediately.

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:00 pm

grinvader wrote:Ok, this doesn't have the slowdown I (and others) have, sounds exactly like the E version. So, we do have another runtime bork ala black omen, only with sound.
Grr.
Thanks a lot for clearing things up.

Ok, what I have about it so far:
- not related to blargg's code: it happened before, and still does in svn.
- when I dump that spc, the slowdown is reproduced by spc players. I would like someone without the issue (*cough*starman*cough*) to dump an spc of the 'clean' version, to see if it's linked to spc decoding itself or not.

Here is an spc I dumped. If it sounds right (no slowdown), please report immediately.

My spc sounds broken too. Here. And yours also sounds broken.

Edit: Something I just noticed, I'm using 1.43... oops. Let me upgrade and see if it makes a difference. Do you prefer svn or most recent official?

ifulikejb · Post by **ifulikejb** » Wed May 02, 2007 10:36 pm

Sorry, the Snes version has slowdown in the intro as well, Its right in the very begining of the song, when the soul word comes across the screen.
Its normal......

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Wed May 02, 2007 11:12 pm

Is there a possibility for recording? I.e. cell phone camera should suffice if only the timing is required...

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Wed May 02, 2007 11:24 pm

creaothceann wrote:Is there a possibility for recording? I.e. cell phone camera should suffice if only the timing is required...

I'll use my camera(has a video function with sound) when I get home. I'm at school right now. I'll be home in about 2 1/2 hours.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Thu May 03, 2007 1:25 am

I haven't verified this on real hardware yet, but bsnes does the same thing. Also, bsnes' "reset" actually makes the music slowdown not occur after being reset. If "power cycle" is used, it reoccurs. ZSNES' lone reset option has the same behavior as bsnes' "power cycle."

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:06 am

It seems to happen sometimes. Here is a video I made of it working fine on power-on. I made sure you can see me do a hard-power on.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:11 am

Even after all of this, I've beaten the game in the same amount of time, and still no new info provided by the op.

ifulikejb · Post by **ifulikejb** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:39 am

The Ntsc version has the slowdown, Its a bug in the original game, I have the snes and game. There is no problem with the zsnes and rom, thats how the game is!

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Thu May 03, 2007 3:58 am

For what it's worth, I've also verified that it does happen on real hardware. It's weird... I power cycled and reset 20 times and it never played right like Starman's did or bsnes' reset option. Maybe it's got something to do with that crazy WRAM thing that no one could agree on. Whatever, though, it's not an emu bug. Still wondering how the developers didn't catch it when it's ONE SECOND into the game.

Post by **Nach** » Thu May 03, 2007 4:31 am

FitzRoy wrote:For what it's worth, I've also verified that it does happen on real hardware.

Were you using a copier or the original cart?

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:41 am

Nach wrote:
FitzRoy wrote:For what it's worth, I've also verified that it does happen on real hardware.
Were you using a copier or the original cart?

Flash cart. USA game and system.

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Thu May 03, 2007 7:46 am

So I went and inserted my Soul Blazer SNES cartridge (US) into my SNES, booted it up, and it had the slow intro music glitch! But only once. I reseted the system, normal correct music. Turned power off for 10 seconds, correct music. Unplugged the SNES, correct music.
I'm guessing there's a bug in the game that's dependent on uninitialized memory, and its actual behavior varies depending on how long the SNES has been powered off. The SNES hadn't been used for several months when it exhibited the slow music glitch.
Snes9x does not have the slow music problem, maybe it picks different values to initialize the memory with.

Edit: 5 minutes seems to be enough time to cause the slow music again. I'll try to determine the amount of time it takes to cause the uninitialized memory to change.

Edit: After 30 seconds of the SNES powered off, it does the slow music bug again. It would be interesting to see if someone could make a demo to read or display the contents of uninitialized RAM, VRAM, SPC RAM, etc, and see how it changes in time. Maybe you could see the contents after a cold boot, then you'd need to see how known values degrade with time.

Edit: Does ZSNES emulate the soft reset correctly? The game always has the slow intro music glitch in ZSNES.

Post by **Nach** » Thu May 03, 2007 4:36 pm

FitzRoy wrote:
Nach wrote:
FitzRoy wrote:For what it's worth, I've also verified that it does happen on real hardware.
Were you using a copier or the original cart?
Flash cart. USA game and system.

Does your flash cart do any kind of RAM initializing on boot?

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:16 pm

Tototek's does. It has a special program that runs to detect which game images are there. If only one, it will boot right into that game, but it still runs the BIOS to detect that one game and setup the on-cart MMIO chip to support that mapper. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it flushes all of the registers and WRAM before starting the game. If someone wants to dump that BIOS I will verify.

The only way I'll believe this is not the case is if you have to manually add the BIOS as the first ROM on the cart.

It's the only reason I never bought the flashcart. It's no more useful than my copier, and probably has a limited number of writes somewhere between 1,000 - 10,000x. You may think that's plenty, until you spend six hours a night, every night for two years constantly uploading test programs to your SNES :(
Besides, the flash program is probably Windows only. I like the use of floppies, as it works great with FreeBSD when I want to run that instead.

It's possible that bsnes' reset option is resetting too much state, avoiding the bug, however. Hard to say, as a lot of the internal state variables are not possible to probe from registers with a test. Purely conjecture here, but I believe ZSNES' sole reset option is currently somewhere between a soft and hard reset. Nach had it stop resetting WRAM a while back, which got the SFII high scores to remain after resets, but I think it still mostly resets everything else.