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Hacking Hydro Thunder..err Offroad Thunder (Updated)

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Howard_Casto:
No this isn't going to be an endlessly long project like Outrun Fxt. 

Badmouth wanted me to take a look at the Midway Arcade Treasures port of Hydro thunder.  The port isn't a super great one, but it's all we have atm aside from the dreamcast version.

Anyway.....

I managed to get the game to run in windowed mode via Dxwnd.  Also of note is the fact that Dxwnd will allow you to change the fullscreen resolution.... not that it renders anything higher, but it might be useful for oddball setups.  The issue with this game is two-fold.  First off no force-feedback (lame!) and secondly all controls are converted to digital.  I found the digitally converted inputs straight away and confirmed that, yes they are being converted to a simple 1, 0 and 2 for left, center and right respectively.  Analog triggers are also converted to digital buttons.  I also found a single byte address which seems to be broken force-feedback at first glance.  I can confirm that there is a call to HID_setOutputReportData, which is how you do rumble the hard way in some cases. 

So anyway the task at hand is to find out how big the data width is for the steering on the unmolested arcade game (probably a single byte), find where they are pumping a fake value (again, probably 0 for left and 255 for right) and instead send the joystick value.  I'll work on this tomorrow.  If things go smoothly I might do the other unemulated or hard to emulate games in the pack. 

BadMouth:
The programmers must have been given zero time to work on MAT3.  I mean a collection of arcade driving games without analog input?!?!
(while MAT2 only had a few driving games, but supported analog input)
The mind boggles.

VirtuaIceMan:

--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on February 02, 2016, 02:11:57 am ---Badmouth wanted me to take a look at the Midway Arcade Treasures port of Hydro thunder.  The port isn't a super great one, but it's all we have atm aside from the dreamcast version.
--- End quote ---

Incorrect; there are 2 versions on the PC; the Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition version, and the earlier version, sold under the Sold Out label, ported by Eurocom. The earlier version had worse sound, but less compressed textures and an extra track in the game! However it lacks split screen (I think MATDE has that?).

You can find the Eurocom version (they also ported Mortal Kombat 4 around the same time) here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=hydro+thunder&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR2.TRC1.A0.H0.Xhydro+thunder+pc.TRS0&_nkw=hydro+thunder+pc&_sacat=0

BadMouth:
Thanks.  I didn't know there was a PC version other than the one with MAT3.

The big plus with the MAT games for me is that they can be launched individually without the launcher menu.
By default, they will launch windowed, but if you add -f to the command line they launch fullscreen (albeit stretched on widescreens).
Easy peasy to add an individual game to the frontend on your cab.

They don't really have a PC game feel either.  No extra menus.  No superfluous controls.
They just have a flashing Press Start at the title screen.
I would have no problem including them in my front-end as if they are arcade games
...if the controls didn't suck so bad.

POOTERMAN:
The version of Hydro Thunder on Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition is just the emulated Dreamcast version.

Howard - If you need the original Eurocom version just msg me!

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