Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

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ocdgamer
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Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by ocdgamer »

Has anyone ever used the MMC3 hack for Splatterhouse before? I tried it out the other day and everything seemed to go fine. When I burned the game and put it in my NES it seemed to play okay, but then on the second level after the fight with the dancing vampire, the screen glitches!!!! I read another post of someone having the same problem but there are no solutions or suggestions. If anyone has any experience with this I could use a little advice. Here is some info that may be important to the way I did it.

Ran MMC3 .exe on the original (J) Rom, patched english .ips, split file to 128 PRG & 256 CHR.

I tried running the english patch rom through the MMC3 .exe and it did the same thing in the same spot on hardware. I also tried different roms. Help?
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

This problem was only reported to me later on. By coincidence it was not spotted immediately. Check your private messages.
SkinnyV
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Post by SkinnyV »

I s there any solution as I was wondering the same thing last time I played.
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

Might as well put this out there.

If you have a Game Genie, use this code. EZLVAZ

It will fix the game. If it does try this.

Or open the NES file in a hex editor. Goto 1E248 and change $C0 to $A0. Reburn PRG. Please don't sell cartridges.

The problem for anyone that wants to know is back when I wrote the Splatterhouse MMC3 port/hack I forgot to initialize NameTable Mirroring. This wasn't noticed until later on because the initial cartridge and the PowerPAK all had power on values for mirroring of Vertical Mirroring. However many other MMC3 revisions and date codes have Horizontal Mirroring on powerup.
SkinnyV
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Post by SkinnyV »

Thanks for the fix, I had the issue on my dev board before getting a Powerpak and tought it was something I did wrong while soldering the socket to the board. Maybe it would be good to update the patch distributed at Romhacking.net? Fun little game. I got to say I'm always pretty impressed when I see people tackling mapper conversion, must be alot of work for a game like Splatterhouse.
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

It was alot of work for Splatterhouse because the game's original mapper has CHR-ROM swapping capabilities beyond the MMC3. I had to rearrange CHR-ROM banks and duplicate banks and reprogram various CHR related bits and change tables to get the game functioning with the same result on MMC3 as the original mapper.

I haven't updated the patch on RomHacking just because it's not a priority for me. Also since it's a patch program and not an IPS it takes a bit more effort. Because of the mentioned shuffling of CHR-ROM, a simple IPS patch wasn't really appropriate. I might update just by including a tiny IPS patch in the distribution. It would be the simple thing to do. But I'm not sure if I will bother.
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

Try Xdelta, it can move blocks around.
Here come the fortune cookies! Here come the fortune cookies! They're wearing paper hats!
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

I'll keep that in mind if in the future I do another project that requires that. The Splatterhouse project has long since been complete and there is no reason to spend time making minor updates.
guitarzombie
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by guitarzombie »

I wanted to bump this. I also burned this game (and also changed the hex address) and have some graphic issues.

I first burned the game and the graphics game out looking kinda atari like but also with normal looking graphics. Then I took a look at this thread, and just re-burned the PRG and still have this same problem. My wiring is perfect (im wondering if my chip is just bad) but im wondering if i would need to re-burn the chr. This also happened to another cart I made where i made a custom title screen but i figured it was just the hex code that was all messed up.
guitarzombie
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by guitarzombie »

Bumping this again. Any ideas? I just reburned it and the same problem. Could it be its also because im using not only the mmc3 version but also the translated rom too?
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MottZilla
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by MottZilla »

Yes it could. You should patch the ROM with the translation first, then the MMC3 patch. However, without a screenshot, it's hard to speculate.
guitarzombie
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by guitarzombie »

Hrm, I might have done it out of order. And I didn't even think of taking a screen shot. The title screen works fine but its weird because certain graphics instead of being detailed are just a block of color.

Im gonna patch it the way you said and hex compare them to see if theres a difference. If there is none i might just forget the translation. Thanks for responding.
guitarzombie
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by guitarzombie »

I translated it and then applied your mmc3 patch and in the CHR bank files ARE different. I hope that'll fix that problem. I'll wire it up over the weekend.
guitarzombie
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by guitarzombie »

Now this is confusing. So I have two different version of this game hex wise.

One where I applied the translation patch, THEN the MMC3 patch and the other where the MMC3 patch was FIRST and the translation patch was last.

The files in their .nes state are different (in the CHR bank) BUT when i split them, both the prg.bin AND chr.bin of both files are identical!?

How is this even possible?

*EDIT* Looks like it was something in the nes mapper prg i was using. For the famirom prog it split differently the way it should have been. Ill have to test that out. Never had a problem with the nes mapper program I used until now.
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MottZilla
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Re: Graphic problem with Splatterhouse MMC3 Hack

Post by MottZilla »

Sounds like if it's identical when split, you're probably losing the last 128K of the CHR data. It sounds to me if you have solid color blocks, your problem may be related to the translation. Why not just try it without the translation? The game is already in english, all it does is change the title screen from what I recall.
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