Translated versions behaving badly of Xak 1 on turbo R

Prophet (3954)

08-07-2021, 21:11

So I was playing around a bit and started the translated version of Xak: The Art of Visual Stage on an FS-A1ST. I tried both the Delta Soft translation as well as the Woomb translation. Both enable R800 on the turbo R but this causes issue with the sound in the game. The original game stays in Z80 mode. I could not find any post about this issue (but searching MSX stuff can be challenging on a good day )

I can understand playing the game in R800 mode has it's advantages but the sound is so distorted that the game is not enjoyable.

Does anyone know if there is a patch/fix somewhere? I can see 2 solutions to make the translations enjoyable on turbo R:

1. Remove the switch to R800 mode.
2. Fix the sound replayed (possibly by lending some code from The Tower of Gazzel?)

By Zandig Slaytanic

Resident (44)

12-07-2021, 13:26

When using a turbo R, the Woomb translation has a setting in the game options (F4 -> Game Speed) to select the CPU from R800 or Z80A. You probably already know that however. Tested it out and did not notice any difference in the music when switching CPU option.

By Grauw

Ascended (10768)

12-07-2021, 15:30

@Zandig Slaytanic Did you test on the real machine or in an emulator? The emulators do not currently implement the access speed restrictions of the MSX-MUSIC sound chip so they will sound alright when accessed too fast, but on the real machine the sound will be corrupted.

By sdsnatcher73

Prophet (3954)

12-07-2021, 17:02

There is a patch by TNI that fixes this issue here. Apparently the replayer code in Xak1 actually uses some obscure and undocumented Z80 instruction that the R800 does not handle.

The patch is for the Woomb release (which is superior I believe, judging from the intro translation at least). Still a fix for the DeltaSoft release would be appreciated. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl sometime…

By Zandig Slaytanic

Resident (44)

12-07-2021, 18:57

@Grauw - I used openMSX. Thanks for the clarification on real hardware.

By Grauw

Ascended (10768)

12-07-2021, 21:00

openMSX: [Bug] Limit OPLL I/O access

They’re actually much closer to emulating it than before, the new Nuked OPLL core does implement the precise logic for the timing. However the issue is now that because the audio core is run independently from the emulation to avoid clicks from buffer underrun or overrun issues and to avoid pitch change in slow motion and fast forward speeds, a hack was implemented to prevent too-fast access. At least one possible solution involves complex audio signal processing to do some sort of adaptive resampling.

But, getting sidetracked from the topic :).

By Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

12-07-2021, 21:15

I released a patch for Xak / R800 a long while ago here: https://www.louthrax.net/mgr/turborpatches.html. This should allow correct OPLL music playback in R800 mode.

Maybe it can work together with the Woomb and other translations.

By Randam

Paragon (1431)

12-07-2021, 21:18

Yes the Woomb version is the superior version. So use that if you have it.

But the Deltasoft version didn't by default switch the r800 on. So either that is a change someone else put in or some weird result of trying to boot it in r800 mode.

By Zandig Slaytanic

Resident (44)

17-07-2021, 14:36

Grauw wrote:

openMSX: [Bug] Limit OPLL I/O access

But, getting sidetracked from the topic :).

Perhaps this is the reason that the game will now crash using the latest version of openMSX ?

Using the latest version of openMSX ( openmsx-17.0-73-gde4988719-windows-vc-x64-bin.zip - 2021-07-13 18:33 ) openMSX will silently close down after about 5 minutes of gameplay. Going back to my previous version I was using ( openmsx-17.0-8-gd3057a10d-windows-vc-x64-bin.zip - 2021-06-02 01:06 ) with the exact same config in openMSX: Xak - The Art of Visual Stage (Woomb translation) using Panasonic FS-A1GT the game plays fine.

By sdsnatcher73

Prophet (3954)

17-07-2021, 17:12

Louthrax wrote:

I released a patch for Xak / R800 a long while ago here: https://www.louthrax.net/mgr/turborpatches.html. This should allow correct OPLL music playback in R800 mode.

Maybe it can work together with the Woomb and other translations.

The Woomb translation already enables R800 but they did not fix FM playback to work. That is fixed with the patch from TNI.
Your patch works well on original release of Xak, as well as version 2 and the Deltasoft translation (which indeed does not enable R800 like the original releases).

By Manuel

Ascended (19465)

17-07-2021, 20:47

Zandig, can you please contact me, so we can investigate what's going on?