Trying to figure out Action53

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unregistered
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by unregistered »

blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 4:05 pm I suspect the ACTUAL problem is that the number of banks in the ROM is now greater than 255, meaning they can't all be counted. Or is that a thing?
The mapper used would determine the number of banks available to fill.

Our game uses MMC1, and I’ve got that set up to use 32 16kb banks. And I think, 32 16kb banks is the maximum number of PRG banks possible.

Remember, you can learn about your mapper at : https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Mapper
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

unregistered wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 4:30 pm
blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 4:05 pm I suspect the ACTUAL problem is that the number of banks in the ROM is now greater than 255, meaning they can't all be counted. Or is that a thing?
The mapper used would determine the number of banks available to fill.

Our game uses MMC1, and I’ve got that set up to use 32 16kb banks. And I think, 32 16kb banks is the maximum number of PRG banks possible.

Remember, you can learn about your mapper at : https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Mapper
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Action_53_mapper

According to this, the limit for Mapper 28 (which Action53 makes) caps at 8MB, which is huge. It doesn't specify how many 16kb banks that is, but simple math say it's 512 banks. Not sure how that's all counted when it can't go past #$FF.

I don't know why a 4MB ROM wouldn't be readable then. Maybe it doesn't like so many empty banks?
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by unregistered »

blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 4:41 pm
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Action_53_mapper

According to this, the limit for Mapper 28 (which Action53 makes) caps at 8MB, which is huge. It doesn't specify how many 16kb banks that is, but simple math say it's 512 banks. Not sure how that's all counted when it can't go past #$FF.

I don't know why a 4MB ROM wouldn't be readable then. Maybe it doesn't like so many empty banks?
Hmm… while reading about mapper 28, stumbled across this page:

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Action_53_m ... mentations
That may help you to understand the bank switching?


With my version of MMC1, only banks 0 through 15 are available… then if you change a bit in a certain MMC1 mapper register only banks 16 through 31 are available.

I’m sure mapper 28 is set up similarly bc, as you say, a byte maxes out at 255.


With MMC1, certain banks are stable/don’t change. My MMC1 has been setup to make those banks either bank 15 or bank 31.

When switching that bit, my bank 15 changes into bank 31. Or bank 31 changes into bank 15… the rest of the banks are switchable with limitation, of course. (The limitation is that bit.)
Last edited by unregistered on Wed May 11, 2022 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by rainwarrior »

blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 1:55 pmOkay, new problem. I tested it with all the ROMs I had planned -- eight at 256kb -- and Action53 compiled correctly (I think), but no emulator will play it and when I try to examine the banks with the NES Space Checker, I get the error "Floating point division by zero." What's going on there? How do I fix it?
If it can crash a tool like that, maybe there's something wrong with the file header? (Though it could just be that space checker was never written for iNES 2 headers, since it's not relevant to most games.)

In Mesen, in the Debug menu is an iNES header editor. Does anything look out of place when you inspect the header with that?
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 5:58 pm
blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 1:55 pmOkay, new problem. I tested it with all the ROMs I had planned -- eight at 256kb -- and Action53 compiled correctly (I think), but no emulator will play it and when I try to examine the banks with the NES Space Checker, I get the error "Floating point division by zero." What's going on there? How do I fix it?
If it can crash a tool like that, maybe there's something wrong with the file header? (Though it could just be that space checker was never written for iNES 2 headers, since it's not relevant to most games.)

In Mesen, in the Debug menu is an iNES header editor. Does anything look out of place when you inspect the header with that?
I literally can't open it in Mesen. It crashes immediately, so I can't check the header. In FCEUX there's a blank screen.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by rainwarrior »

FCEUX also has a header in recent versions you could try... or if not, here's a stand-alone utility:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1352/

Or just post the first 16 hexadecimal bytes of the file.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 6:18 pm FCEUX also has a header in recent versions you could try... or if not, here's a stand-alone utility:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1352/

Or just post the first 16 hexadecimal bytes of the file.
I don't get what I'm supposed to do here. Everything looks fine to me.
editor.jpg
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by rainwarrior »

blahblahblah wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 6:33 pmI don't get what I'm supposed to do here. Everything looks fine to me.
We're just checking in case there is a header problem. I don't see one either from what you're presenting.

I suspect the division by 0 in space checker is that it doesn't know about iNES 2 headers, so the size field is probably literally just 0 in iNES 1.

Dunno what would make Mesen crash... though answering that would involve debugging Mesen.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

It's been a while, but I'm back.

I figured out how to shrink all my games to 256kb, which lets Action53 compile properly. More importantly I found out there's a huge leap in price if you have to order a Mapper 28 board that's 4MB instead of 2MB. So....2MB it is!
multicart1.jpg
multicart2.jpg
I've compiled all 7 of my games onto a single ROM that I'd like to sell as a physical multicart later this year. There's a configure script called "example.cfg" that lets you alter the title screen, title text, menu text and preview screens. But it doesn't let you change everything. I can't change the Action 53 theme song that plays over the title screen or remove the "Make a selection NOW" voice that plays after it. They don't provide a way to do this.

There's a notice on the github page that says all of Action53 is royalty-free to use as long as the original author is credited somewhere, but the default theme and voice don't really fit. How do I change these things?
multicart3.jpg
Also, the description paragraphs turn out double-spaced, even though they're single-spaced on the original Action53 cart. This isn't really a problem since my descriptions aren't that big, but I don't think it's supposed to be intentional.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by tepples »

Are you editing the file a53.cfg using a Windows text editor? If so, use of CP/M newlines (also called CRLF or \r\n or 0D0A) may be causing double-spacing. I use Linux, whose text editors default to UNIX newlines (also called LF or \n or 0A). Please upload a53.cfg if you want me to help troubleshoot.

To change the voice, change the file audio/selnow.wav (must be 16000 Hz mono 16-bit LPCM and roughly the same length). To change the music, edit the file src/musicseq.pently following the Pently score language documentation, or see Pently for FamiTracker users to learn how to convert a FamiTracker module.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by creaothceann »

I'd think a modern text editor would auto-detect the line break type...
My current setup:
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

tepples wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:02 pm Are you editing the file a53.cfg using a Windows text editor? If so, use of CP/M newlines (also called CRLF or \r\n or 0D0A) may be causing double-spacing. I use Linux, whose text editors default to UNIX newlines (also called LF or \n or 0A). Please upload a53.cfg if you want me to help troubleshoot.

To change the voice, change the file audio/selnow.wav (must be 16000 Hz mono 16-bit LPCM and roughly the same length). To change the music, edit the file src/musicseq.pently following the Pently score language documentation, or see Pently for FamiTracker users to learn how to convert a FamiTracker module.
Yes, I am on Windows, so all my text editors are going to be Windows-based (I'm using Notepad++ for this). I can't upload a53.cfg because it says it's an "invalid file extension" when i try to attach it to this post.

I'd rather have no sound bite there at all, but I don't know how to get rid of it. I tried just saving a silent sound file as selnow.wav, but the compiled ROM still had the voice in it somehow.

Get this -- I actually moved ALL the sound files out of the sound folder and compiled to see what would happen. It compiled with no errors and had the voice in it. What the heck? Is this file stored anywhere else?
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by tepples »

blahblahblah wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:41 am
tepples wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:02 pm Are you editing the file a53.cfg using a Windows text editor? If so, use of CP/M newlines (also called CRLF or \r\n or 0D0A) may be causing double-spacing. I use Linux, whose text editors default to UNIX newlines (also called LF or \n or 0A). Please upload a53.cfg if you want me to help troubleshoot.
Yes, I am on Windows, so all my text editors are going to be Windows-based (I'm using Notepad++ for this). I can't upload a53.cfg because it says it's an "invalid file extension" when i try to attach it to this post.
Please upload the a53.cfg file in a zip file.
blahblahblah wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:41 am Get this -- I actually moved ALL the sound files out of the sound folder and compiled to see what would happen. It compiled with no errors and had the voice in it. What the heck? Is this file stored anywhere else?
What command are you using to build it? If you aren't going through Make, such as because you don't have ca65 and Make installed, it may be using the already compiled menu program obj/nes/a53menu.prg. If you are using Make, try make clean then make obj/nes/a53menu.prg.
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by blahblahblah »

tepples wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 5:34 am
blahblahblah wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:41 am
tepples wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:02 pm Are you editing the file a53.cfg using a Windows text editor? If so, use of CP/M newlines (also called CRLF or \r\n or 0D0A) may be causing double-spacing. I use Linux, whose text editors default to UNIX newlines (also called LF or \n or 0A). Please upload a53.cfg if you want me to help troubleshoot.
Yes, I am on Windows, so all my text editors are going to be Windows-based (I'm using Notepad++ for this). I can't upload a53.cfg because it says it's an "invalid file extension" when i try to attach it to this post.
Please upload the a53.cfg file in a zip file.
OK, here it is.
example.zip
(1.14 KiB) Downloaded 20 times
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Re: Trying to figure out Action53

Post by tepples »

I don't see any 0D bytes in the file. There must be something else going wrong with the config file reading process. When I get time, I will run your cfg file in my copy of the builder.
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