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Um... Japanese players, you know, the people who own around a third of the game copies. A widescreen patch should be what it says it is, a widescreen patch, especially if they are officially included with the emulator.

(11-15-2015, 10:15 PM)K.F Wrote: [ -> ]Um... Japanese players, you know, the people who own around a third of the game copies. A widescreen patch should be what it says it is, a widescreen patch, especially if they are officially included with the emulator.

I brought this up before. And I agree. You can leave the code in but comment it out.

(11-15-2015, 10:15 PM)K.F Wrote: [ -> ]Um... Japanese players, you know, the people who own around a third of the game copies. A widescreen patch should be what it says it is, a widescreen patch, especially if they are officially included with the emulator.

I sometimes include useful cheats and codes because they're a pain to collect elsewhere.

I didn't realize Japanese players actually use PCSX2 and my archive. I never see any here.

But fine, I'll disable it by default.

Anyone interested in Stretch Panic pnaches ?


Background:
A little while ago, sergx12 created ISO HEX codes for this game and mentioned its field of views (FOVs) are stored in binary files. That put Stretch Panic in a weird situation, in that it became the only game in Devina's widescreen hacks archive that lacked a pnach variant.

I decided to give creating a pnach a shot. So I checked out the game. At first I tried comparing PCSX2 save states of the original ISO against a fully patched HEX-edited ISO in the hopes of finding an static X FOV address in live memory. No luck.

Then I created 9 copies of a vanilla ISO, applied one "part" of sergx12's HEX edits to each one and tried running them all. I was hoping to find a single, specific "part" that covers the whole game, look for its HEX representation in live memory and go from there. That didn't pan out.

I paid special attention to my 3rd hacked ISO - which makes the hub level (MUSIUM.BIN) widescreen. I reviewed changes in the before and after HEX patterns for it (from sergx12's ISO hacks). I compared non-widescreen and widescreen PCSX2 save states to seek out the before and after HEX patterns for my level in live memory. Then I setup a write breakpoint in PCSX2's debugger to see what writes to those addresses (I assumed the HEX patterns were data that gets interpreted by the game's ELF file). No luck. Then I accidently switched one of my breakpoints into an execute one and had an "ahah!" moment. It stopped at the execute breakpoint and MIPS instructions were showing in surrounding addresses within the debugger.

This irritated me a lot. If each of the game's 21 BIN files are like "distinct" mini ELF files that handle all of their game logic independently, it'd make for very long and complicated live memory-only hacks, full of E-type conditions. I looked around at the registers involved in the MIPS instructions sergx12's ISO hacks changed for my level, and sought out the store word (sw) instructions that store those registers' values into live memory addresses. This lead me to finding the "active" X FOV addresses for my level. Both contain positive and negative versions of the same float number. All playable levels seem to use the same FOV values, but store them at dynamic addresses (lame...).

Furthermore, the FOV values aren't the same for all situations. They're different during the in-game cutscenes (like the intro) compared to playable levels. So there was a need to create a MIPS injection hack to multiply the FOVs (whatever they happen to be) by 1.333333373 on-the-fly while the game is running. To do that, I'd need a good spot to insert a jump (j) instruction to run the MIPS injection hack. A spot that'll always be at the same address and run after the MIPS instructions in the BIN files. So it had to be somewhere in the game's main ELF file. In IDA Pro, I looked for j/jr/jal instructions in my level's BIN file and found a jal that pointed to the address of a function situated in the game's main ELF file. That function ran occasionally, but not at the right points in time (it ran before the BIN files).

So I tried something else. I set read breakpoints on the X FOV addresses in PCSX2, hoping that maybe a function in the game's main ELF is what reads the FOV addresses to render the graphics (as opposed to MIPS instructions in those stupid individual BIN files). Luckily, it was the game's main ELF that does it. So I was able to inject my ELF hacks' jump instruction at the point in time the game attempts to read X FOV values from live memory. That means that every time the game reads the FOV addresses, my hack will kick in and multiply what got read by 1.333333373 (or something else for Y FOVs). If the BIN files had been responsible for reading the FOV values they wrote earlier to render graphics, I would've been stuck in a horrible situation where the read instructions are at different addresses in each level. Since the read instructions are in the game's main ELF file, they'll always be at the exact same addresses at all times.

I came very close to making this post over the past week or so, but kept running into last-minute snags with the hacks. The first time around, while taking comparison screenshots I realized the hacks weren't working properly for in-game cutscenes. They panned out the viewport in all directions. So instead of becoming widescreen, the cutscenes just looked zoomed-out. I wasn't able to come up with a fix. As a result, that left me with hacks that messed up cutscenes but worked when playing... To address that, I reworked the hacks to skip the widescreen calculations if a cutscene is playing. On my next release attempt, I noticed full booting PCSX2 with the hacks enabled caused the game to crash due to a bug in PCSX2 (game pnaches getting injected into BIOS memory), so I added conditional E-type codes to prevent the hacks from taking effect until the game's ELF file has loaded.

TL;DR All of this game's levels are stored in BIN files, which are like "mini" ELFs. The BIN files write FOVs to dynamic addresses... but the game's "main" ELF reads them to render graphics. My ELF hacks intercept the reads to manipulate the FOVs. Cutscenes are a no-go.


Pnaches:

• Freak Out (PAL-Unk) [SLES-50310] [FE191134] [attachment=58039]
  
• Stretch Panic (NTSC-U) [SLUS-20182] [854D5885] [attachment=58041]
  
• Hippa Linda (NTSC-J) [SLPM-62109] [D4D45FF4] [attachment=58040]
  

Changelog (compared to sergx12's ISO HEX codes):

• Created pnach widescreen patches, via ELF hacks.
  
• Ported the hacks to other regions' versions of the game:
  • Freak Out (PAL)
    
  • Hippa Linda (NTSC-J)
    
• Added two 16:10 modes:
  • 16:10 (Normal) - Uses a wider X field of view (FOV) than 4:3, but isn't as wide as 16:9.
    
  • 16:10 (Ultra) - Uses the same X FOV as 16:9, with a taller Y FOV to account for 16:10's increased height.
    

What's missing (sorry - forgot to include this in my last few release posts):

• Company logos (FMVs?) need to be thinned-out.
  
• In-game cutscenes (like the intro) need FOV hacks. Might look strange though since it's really obvious they were designed with a 4:3 aspect ratio in mind.
  
• HUDs need to be thinned-out and repositioned to the far left/right edges of the screen.
  
• 2D text needs to be thinned-out.
  

Note:

• To enable one of the 16:10 hacks, comment-out the 16:9 hack and uncomment your desired 16:10 one.
  

Other:

• @monsterjamp I'll try to follow up on post #4.642 at some point.
  
• @Devina I'll also follow-up if I notice any other requested games or WIP/incomplete hacks missing from the widescreen archive post.
  

Screenshot descriptions:

1. 4:3
   
2. 16:10 (normal)
   
3. 16:9
   
4. 16:10 (ultra)
   

Wow, that sounds like a big pain in the ass. Glad you got it working. Thank you.

Can anyone check out Gitaroo Man (NTSC-U)?
There's a widescreen patch in the archive, but it makes the HUD non-centered to the left. Could be improved.

It'd be nice if everyone could help chip in with attempting the requests, some of them have been on there for a long time.

Some of this thread's best widescreen patchers seem to have left or are busy.

I'm also surprised Magic Pengel hasn't been done yet. Seems tricky.

(11-17-2015, 02:46 PM)Devina Wrote: [ -> ]It'd be nice if everyone could help chip in with attempting the requests, some of them have been on there for a long time.

There's a reason for that, at least for the games I've tried. And most of the requests are for NTSC games, which I don't own, and I don't own any of the PAL requested games.

(11-17-2015, 04:38 PM)FlatOut Wrote: [ -> ]There's a reason for that, at least for the games I've tried. And most of the requests are for NTSC games, which I don't own, and I don't own any of  the PAL requested games.

I, myself, don't mind if people temporarily download .isos, make a widescreen patch for them, and delete the .iso right after.

I don't think it's ethically or morally wrong if you do it for this sole purpose, as long as you don't encourage it.

I'm just speaking for myself, however, not the forum, so whether you do this is up to you.

Yes I will say that we as the forum can't condone that. I personally agree with what you said, but it's one of those things where I have to follow(and in my case enforce) rules that I don't always agree with. For the greater good.

What you do is your business, but obviously if it becomes obvious that sort of thing is happening then there will be a warning.

(I'm not here to be a *****, I just wanted to clarify the forum's position)

^ Pretty much.

If you do decide to do it, don't admit it on the forum. This goes for everyone here.

Evidently, there are tons and tons of people on this forum, and even in this thread, who pirate games, but at the end of the day, it's your decision and we can not publicly condone piracy.

However, by saying "I don't own any NTSC-U games and I don't own any of the PAL requested games.", you just kinda back yourself in a corner because if you suddenly do fulfill a request for any of the games on the (current) request list, then we'll know you pirated it.

Just keep this in mind for the future.

(11-17-2015, 07:11 PM)Devina Wrote: [ -> ]However, by saying "I don't own any NTSC-U games and I don't own any of the PAL requested games.", you just kinda back yourself in a corner because if you suddenly do make a request for any of the games on the (current) request list, then we'll know you pirated it.

No we won't. He could have bought a used copy of the game. People still do that.