15 new Taito Type X / X2 games now working on domestic PC's

[Stormrider]

Maybe. I'll force Antialiasing off for both games in the Nvidia control panel and see if the problem is gone.

[81ramirez]

There`re just two problems that are really bothering me.
1 - I have glitches(horizontal lines) appearing in some character moves(specials) and in some backgrounds from KOF XIII(KOF XII is perfect). Is it happening to everyone?
2 - In KOF 98 UM, I can't see nothing in the test menu(black screen).

Is there any solution for these problems?

My specs:
Windows Xp 32 bits;
e6600@2.4 oc 3.25(stable);
2Gb ddr2 800 oc 875(stable);
8800 gts 512 oc 1.15v 700 - 1728 - 1000(stable).

ps.
I tried these games with processor and ram in stock speeds without any difference.

[shateredsoul1979]

Thanks Howard and DJVJ for your efforts.

I have yet to try them, but I can tell a lot of work has gone into these solutions.

I wonder if these solutions could be integrated into the taito type x frontend specifically designed for taito type x. Might be good for them to see your work. Plus there' would be less questions about rotating for non frontend users.  (can't link it because the site also has roms).

I have no issues running most games, but with KOF 94 UM, it seems that the game uses integrated graphics (at least this would explain why it works with my laptop and not my home pc). I wonder if there would be a way of blocking the graphic cards and then unblocking on exit? Is that a crazy idea that's impossible?

[joeH]

Thanks Howard and DJVJ for your efforts.

I have yet to try them, but I can tell a lot of work has gone into these solutions.

I wonder if these solutions could be integrated into the taito type x frontend specifically designed for taito type x. Might be good for them to see your work. Plus there' would be less questions about rotating for non frontend users.  (can't link it because the site also has roms).

I have no issues running most games, but with KOF 94 UM, it seems that the game uses integrated graphics (at least this would explain why it works with my laptop and not my home pc). I wonder if there would be a way of blocking the graphic cards and then unblocking on exit? Is that a crazy idea that's impossible?

I've never had an issue with KOF 98 UM, and didn't know that others were.  Only thing I can think of is that I'm using a Sandy Bridge 2500k processor which has integrated graphics built into the chip (although I use a dedicated card in my setup).  May be a solution if you were thinking about upgrading at some point in the future.

[Howard_Casto]

Tried the AH3 wrapper on my emulator setup that runs XP Pro and I have the same problem mentioned in my last post, but it does it every time.
I'm not real worried about it (doubt I'd play the game), but if you want to keep working on it, it is an issue.

There are issues with the AH3 wrapper aside from that.   I whipped it up in around 15 min. 

Your problems aren't unique and I know the cause.  Basically I need to put in smarter error handling.  The wrapper hides the taskbar (if not set to autohide) by making it invisible, BUT due to the timing and setup of various systems/oses, it could potentially hide your desktop instead.  I just need to purposefully get the handle of the desktop and mke sure when it hides stuff that it never uses the handle. 

As for those posting issues with framerate on shiki 3, well the wrapper is launching a frame limiter... what do you expect?  Remove those lines from the cfg if it's running too slow for you.

[Howard_Casto]

I've had Shiki 1, 2 and 3 for PC for years, as well as Raiden III. However, I've never found Raiden IV. Are you sure it's been released for PC?

I've tried the wrappers but the games run with bad framerate here.

Raiden IV is a little tricky. It seems it needs the folder window from which you run it minimized, but another window (no matter what), active, for the game to run. I've written an Autohotkey script to launch it without problems:

#notrayicon
Gui, -caption border
Gui, Color, ffffff
WinSet, TransColor, ffffff
run, %comspec% /c typex_loader.exe launcher.exe,, min
sleep 700 ; Adjust time here if it refuses to load. If you get IO error, reset your computer and try again.
WinClose, A
gui, show
sleep 7000
gui, destroy
exitapp

Well I haven't found it either, but it supposedly exists. 

Thanks for the code and explaination!  Now that I know the cause of the raiden IV lockups I can probably make a more stable fix for it.  I'll bet it has something to do with the taskbar, as winxp embedded doesn't have one. 


In regards to these wrappers, I'm just taking a  break on them.  I flip back and forth in regards to projects anymore.  Right now I'm working on a universal console header reader, but I'll get back to them once I get tired of that project. 

[Howard_Casto]

I ran into an error that might explain some of the odd issues some of you were having. 

Apparently irotate.exe show up as a (false) virus in many anti-virus programs, including avg!  The odd thing is avg didn't "see" it as a virus until a few reboots later.  The thing is irotate essentially hooks your display drivers, so if avg or another anti-virus blocks it, then it can cause all kinds of crazy graphical issues.  The solution is to add it as an exception in your resident sheild program (different for each anti-virus). 

Even false positives annoy me though.  I know that screen rotation is integrated into windows vista/7 now so I'm going to try to track down the dll that does it and give the option of screen rotation that way.  As for xp users they'll be stuck with irotate I'm afraid.

[BadMouth]

As regards other games, I have problems with KOF XII and Battle Fantasia. Both run, but only if I chose low res monitor. Anyone with this problem?

They ran fine on my main pc, but won't run on my mame setup that's lower res and uses s-video out.  I will try the low res option and let you know.

Both those games and SFIV will only run in low res mode on my arcade setup (1024 x 768, 8600GT, XP32).
They all run fine on my main PC (1440x900, 8600GT, Vista64)
Not sure what the issue is since you're running an even higher resolution monitor.

[pokekil]

howard, i also get runtime error 53.
i  have all the necessary files in the folder.

typex_loader.exe
game.exe
is in the folder
DXWnd launches when i execute GigaWing Generations.exe.
irotate path is correct.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry guys, I can't replicate the error, and if I can't replicate it then I can't fix it. 

There really isn't much code in these little wrappers, the other two exes do most of the work. 

But here are some things you can check.

1.  It's a vb6 app and thus requires vb6 runtimes.  If you are on xp they should be preinstalled, otherwise download them.  (There should be a link on my site). 

2.  In terms of api calls, the wrapper calls very little and for the most part they are necessary system dlls so you should have them, but incase you don't do a file search for "user32.dll" and "kernel32.dll" in you windows/system(32) folder.  Those are the only two I call, period. 

3.  That blurb about irotate.exe that I mentioned above was IMPORTANT!  AVG, for example doesn't delete the exe, it blocks it from running! Not being able to access a file in vb will sometiems give a fnf error.  So irotate.exe would be in your folder, but nothing can run it.   

It must be something unrelated to the program and related to some dependancy because just for a debug test I started renaming all of the crucial files and I couldn't even get an error 53... the error handling I put in place gracefully exits the program if any of the necessary files are missing. 

[Howard_Casto]

Good News Everyone!

I was playing around with ChangeDisplaySettingsEX and the thing actually works for screen rotation now!

When I started programming seriously we were in win 9X and while the ChangeDisplaySettingsEX api call was supposed to let you change screen resolution it rarely did due to poor video card support (vendors didn't make their drivers properly announce to the windows drivers that rotation was supported). 

So I deemed The whole thing worthless and never looked back.   BUT  things have changed.  Starting with windows vista, miscorsoft required  video card drivers to properly report hardware rotation if the card supported it... third party dlls were no longer allowed.  So on vista and 7, if you can rotate the screen, you can rotate it via the api call!  But it gets better.  Ati And Nvida both release their drivers in "packs" ie one mega driver that supports multiple cards.  Because vista/7 come in 32 and 64 bit flavors the 32 bit drivers, which work in vista will also work in xp. 

So long story short I can rotate the screen within my wrappers.... irotate is no longer needed! 

I will keep the OPTION in for compatabilites sake, but in all honesty these games need so much juice to run that your pc is probably going to have a fairly modern video card in there anyway. 

[Dreygor]

Is this available in the TaitoX Rotate Wrappers 1.1 available on your web site or are you going to update the file for download?

[Howard_Casto]

I'm going to update soon, but for now I haven't programmed it in yet. 

[Howard_Casto]

I haven't released the update yet, but I went ahead and added in the code to remove irotate.exe.

I'm leaving it in as a option.  If you set the irotate path blank or "none" then it uses the internal rotate code, otherwise it uses irotate with the path you specified. 

I'll release it soon, but first I want to see if I can remove dxwnd.  If I hook the dx calls myself I might be able to restore the proper framerate. 

[Howard_Casto]

Fantastic news everybody! 

I was finishing up the wrapper updates when I ran across this:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37216&sid=5c6de27b4eec389b02150ecd04ac9f0f&start=90


Apparently they've heard of me. 

But anyway note the megauplaod link.... It links to some dx8/dx9 dlls... these are "override dlls" essentially pretending to be the real dx dlls whne they actually take the calls they need, modify when needed and pass the rest along to the real dlls.  This was what I had intended to write to fix the speed issues with shiki III but somebody beat me to the punch.  I tried them and they work great!  so bes can be eliminated from the equation.  I haven't done extensive testing with them but seeing as how they are essentially doing what dxwnd does to froce the screen in a window, I can assume that dxwnd is no longer needed either. 

So couple that with the elimination of irotate.exe and we should have pretty stable wrappers at this point.  Well all except for rainden IV... I'm still working on that one. 

I'll release some updated wrappers tomorrow or later this week.

[Howard_Casto]

Even better news!  I thought about it and the way that those dlls worked could fix the issue with street fighter iv.  I tried them out and low and behold the game no longer freezes on the intro video!

[jimmy2x2x]

great progress!

[nick3092]

Everytime Howard starts off a post along the lines of "Good news everyone!" I can't help but picture the professor from Futurama speaking his post. I know, I need help.

[BadMouth]

Apparently they've heard of me. 

I keep waiting for your name to turn up on a certain Portugese site.   

[Howard_Casto]

Everytime Howard starts off a post along the lines of "Good news everyone!" I can't help but picture the professor from Futurama speaking his post. I know, I need help.

Well that's what I'm thinking when I write it so at least somebody gets as much of a kick out of it as I do. 


On an unrelated note I really need to take a few min and change the batteries on my keyboard.  The "typo-to-real" word ratio is getting pretty bad, even for me.

[Howard_Casto]

I was poking around a little more hoping maybe I could find something to get raiden IV working. 

You know these games are all supposed to have a windowed mode. 

How do I know?  Well opening the exe up in resource hacker shows that eveyr taito x game has a very simple menu.  I can't read Japanese, but from the hot keys used and the layout I can tell that the menu is:

File (F)               Help (H)
     Exit (X)               About (A)

There's Even a typical "About" dialog box stored in each on as well. 

Also each game seems to have an accelerator (shortcut key) defined.  ResHack's site is long dead and it's help file isn't very helpful, but I'm pretty sure that it's either Alt+?  or Alt+Numpad 8+?  It's probably nothing, maybe it opens the "about" window, but it's worth checking out. 

[Dreygor]

Even better news!  I thought about it and the way that those dlls worked could fix the issue with street fighter iv.  I tried them out and low and behold the game no longer freezes on the intro video!

Ok now that's awesome!  Are ya gonna make wrappers for all the games currently released? It seems tome running them this way would free up some resorces giving us a performance boost.

Btw you said you had some game running fast? I did too at first but I learned by forcing vsync on it would correct this issue.

[Howard_Casto]

Even better news!  I thought about it and the way that those dlls worked could fix the issue with street fighter iv.  I tried them out and low and behold the game no longer freezes on the intro video!

Ok now that's awesome!  Are ya gonna make wrappers for all the games currently released? It seems tome running them this way would free up some resorces giving us a performance boost.

Btw you said you had some game running fast? I did too at first but I learned by forcing vsync on it would correct this issue.

Well essentially what these dlls are doing is forcing a proper framerate.  I only get speedups when some of the games are forced into windows mode.  The cause is most likely that they used the refreshrate for timing and you can't do with with directx when in windowed mode. 

I'll let you in on a "secret" there's only one wrapper.  I just rename it and put in in folders because each game has a unique class/caption and thus It would be a ton of setup otherwise. 

If you are talking about the horizontal games, you really won't get much of a boost.  Unless something happens in the real world, I'll make a new pack tonight.

[Malenko]

stupid question, can you make it rotate the horizontal games and not rotate the vertical ones?  I have a 32" CRT mounted vertically in my KI2 cab.

[Howard_Casto]

It's not setup like that but yeah, I could modify it to do that option. 

But you are going to have to post pics as payment.... that is the craziest sounding setup I've ever heard of. 

[Dreygor]

Even better news!  I thought about it and the way that those dlls worked could fix the issue with street fighter iv.  I tried them out and low and behold the game no longer freezes on the intro video!

Ok now that's awesome!  Are ya gonna make wrappers for all the games currently released? It seems tome running them this way would free up some resorces giving us a performance boost.

Btw you said you had some game running fast? I did too at first but I learned by forcing vsync on it would correct this issue.

Well essentially what these dlls are doing is forcing a proper framerate.  I only get speedups when some of the games are forced into windows mode.  The cause is most likely that they used the refreshrate for timing and you can't do with with directx when in windowed mode. 

I'll let you in on a "secret" there's only one wrapper.  I just rename it and put in in folders because each game has a unique class/caption and thus It would be a ton of setup otherwise. 

If you are talking about the horizontal games, you really won't get much of a boost.  Unless something happens in the real world, I'll make a new pack tonight.

Ah ok. I just think it's awesome you not only solved the rotation issue without having to use any addition calls to other programs, but in the process you figured out how to make the video run without issue in SF IV (which is the most common problem everyone is having).

I guess what I was asking if the wrapper you are making for the SF IV could also be be applied to the other horizontal games. If it fixes problems with the SF IV it could fix a problem I have with KOF XII choking or not starting at all (which is odd because KOF XIII and KOF MIRA run just fine).

[Howard_Casto]

Try em!

They are override dlls... windows will automatically load them instead of the real dlls as long as they are in the same folder as the exe you are launching.  There should be a link somewhere in that post I linked to.

(p.s., ignore the bat file and rotate.dll that comes with the package, they are crap thus why I sill need to make a wrapper for the vertical ones.)

[Dreygor]

Confirmed that it does work for SF IV as long as you get rid of any other directx file that is also in the SF IV folder. The movie played all the way through for me. I tried it twice just to make sure.

For fixing my problem with KOF XII .. not so much.

[joeH]

Confirmed that it does work for SF IV as long as you get rid of any other directx file that is also in the SF IV folder. The movie played all the way through for me. I tried it twice just to make sure.

For fixing my problem with KOF XII .. not so much.

Are you using multiple monitors?  I have a tri-monitor setup, and while most of the games will load fine, some will not until I disable two of the three monitors.  I believe KOF XII is one of those.

[shateredsoul1979]

I'm a bit confused, I still see irotate and dxwind mentioned in the .cfg file, I thought the new wrapper eliminated the need of those programs for rotating. Was I wrong about that? Is the difference between this solution and djvj's solution that this wrapper doesn't need hyperspin?

[djvj]

But anyway note the megauplaod link.... It links to some dx8/dx9 dlls... these are "override dlls" essentially pretending to be the real dx dlls whne they actually take the calls they need, modify when needed and pass the rest along to the real dlls.  This was what I had intended to write to fix the speed issues with shiki III but somebody beat me to the punch.  I tried them and they work great!  so bes can be eliminated from the equation.  I haven't done extensive testing with them but seeing as how they are essentially doing what dxwnd does to froce the screen in a window, I can assume that dxwnd is no longer needed either.  

That's what I included with my script on the HS ftp  

I didn't know that they would help those with the SFIV problem though. I don't have that freezing video problem, my SFIV is a different version from last year.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm a bit confused, I still see irotate and dxwind mentioned in the .cfg file, I thought the new wrapper eliminated the need of those programs for rotating. Was I wrong about that? Is the difference between this solution and djvj's solution that this wrapper doesn't need hyperspin?

I haven't released the new version yet. 

[shateredsoul1979]

I'm a bit confused, I still see irotate and dxwind mentioned in the .cfg file, I thought the new wrapper eliminated the need of those programs for rotating. Was I wrong about that? Is the difference between this solution and djvj's solution that this wrapper doesn't need hyperspin?

I haven't released the new version yet. 

woops sorry about that

also, I still prefer the pc version of sfIV arcade edition, 2player games are a must.

[headkaze]

That's what I included with my script on the HS ftp  

Why don't you just release your wrapper to the public? It would've saved Howard all this work. I can host the file (on a free public server that anyone can access) if that's the problem.

[djvj]

That's what I included with my script on the HS ftp  

Why don't you just release your wrapper to the public? It would've saved Howard all this work. I can host the file (on a free public server that anyone can access) if that's the problem.

My wrapper is no good unless you are running HyperSpin. Then if you are, you most likely have FTP access anyways.

It requires parameters sent to ahk that HS provides. Besides, Howard has learned alot about these games, if I just provided all my research up front, he wouldn't be so knowledgabe about them and you'd all be looking to me for help 

[shateredsoul1979]

[satsun]

In regards to SF4.  When I use the typex_configuration.exe to configure my controls to a stick or gamepad it's difficult to hit diagonal directions; am I doing something wrong or do I need to be using something like joy2key?

I did play two player SF4 between two computers in my house.  I couldn't get it to work over a switch but it might because that was before I gave my other PC a static IP address so static IPs might be a requirement before SF4 will recognize them.  I ended up connecting both PCs directly with a net cable (a modern PC should detect this and adjust properly) and both PCs had static IP addresses.  I booted SF4, went to the config screen and set one as the slave then rebooted them at the same time and they found each other.  You can play a game on one system and if another person presses start on the other system then a two player game will begin.

Odd thing I noticed was that KOFXII was in surround sound.  Various crowd noise and voices come in from the rear speakers.

Having a JVS board from a TypeX box would probably be nice.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok guys, 1.2 is up.  In addition to fixing the frame rate issues with the vertical games, the included dlls also fix the video freeze on SF IV and the missing video/ long boot time issues with Matrimelee.

I also removed a lot of the bulk (only dxwnd is needed now, due to a bug in a game or two) and fixed some issues (desktop getting corrupted, cursor visible, ect).

[nestoracebo]

 

One question.

I am making my own wrapper for Raiden4 but I donīt know how to hide windows borders. How did you make It?

Thanks in advance

[Howard_Casto]

One question.

I am making my own wrapper for Raiden4 but I donīt know how to hide windows borders. How did you make It?

Thanks in advance

Well if you can manage to get raiden iv to rotate without crashing then you are one step ahead of me.  You'll have to explain how far you've gotten and I can help.