flashmasta savegame fix

[tired]

Hi Loïc, can I put in a request for a Crush Roller patch? Cheers.

Hi Kicker,
Yes, you can.
I'll take a look at this game.

Loïc.

Hi. I know this is a couple years old, wondering if a patch for Crush Roller was ever done?

Also Puzzle Link 2?

TY

[Loïc]

Hi. I know this is a couple years old, wondering if a patch for Crush Roller was ever done?

Also Puzzle Link 2?

TY

Hi,
Crush Roller patch added to the list.
If you try it, leave me some feedback as it's mostly untested.

I'll try to write one for Puzzle Link 2 later

Loïc.

[tired]

You are awesome. Thanks.

Initial testing of Crush Roller patch looks good. With patched, I finished two rounds with high score data retained and a captured irkster retained in the collection menu. With unpatched rom, a "save error" will flash between stages.

[Loïc]

Puzzle Link 2 patch is available too.

[tired]

Amazing. Thank you.

[BrianE]

Puzzle Link 2 patch is available too.

Just got my Flash Masta and wanted to say thanks for all the save patches

[Loïc]

You're welcome !

[manks]

Put me down as another recent owner and very grateful person for these patches! Crush roller is pretty neat, I've been particularly enjoying that these past few days.

[fbfiso]

I've experimented the Biomotor Unitron crash with the patched ROM on my NGPc.
I didn't tried the unpatched ROM as you said it was the same.

The crash occurs after a short animation. I don't think I'll try to track it as it seems rather complex and the bug isn't much annoying.

It's running fine on either Neopop or RACE, that makes the tracking harder. To fully understand the problem, it may be necessary to modify the ROM to add some techincal display on the handheld screen to compare the values with emulator.

However, it's an odd case you've found...

Ed, Thor, or others, any idea about that case ?

Sorry for bump your old reply.
As kickerofelves said, I reproduced his crash in option on both unmodified and modified ROM. After set the message speed to low and pressed B, the door close animation played and code crashed. And if the battery is replaced, and boot the NGPC again, the boot system setting menu shows up.

I mention this because it seems the code erased the boot system setting. So is it possible that the block erase/write operation require more timing cycles on flashmasta(which the FPGA implementation caused) and the code in game software write too quick before the actual hardware is ready and start waiting write end signal(which will never happen since the write command happened too quick, no actual write operation started or write to the wrong place like system setting area)? So will some no-op code inserting before actual write command issue help solve this problem.

I have no idea on NGPC programming, I just once dealed with similar problem on a genesis unlicensed cartridge that require several nop instruction after save data bank switch or it will not be able to save. But NGPC uses flash chip. I have no idea if there will be similar things happen on such hardware.

[Loïc]

Sorry for bump your old reply.
As kickerofelves said, I reproduced his crash in option on both unmodified and modified ROM. After set the message speed to low and pressed B, the door close animation played and code crashed. And if the battery is replaced, and boot the NGPC again, the boot system setting menu shows up.

I mention this because it seems the code erased the boot system setting. So is it possible that the block erase/write operation require more timing cycles on flashmasta(which the FPGA implementation caused) and the code in game software write too quick before the actual hardware is ready and start waiting write end signal(which will never happen since the write command happened too quick, no actual write operation started or write to the wrong place like system setting area)? So will some no-op code inserting before actual write command issue help solve this problem.

I have no idea on NGPC programming, I just once dealed with similar problem on a genesis unlicensed cartridge that require several nop instruction after save data bank switch or it will not be able to save. But NGPC uses flash chip. I have no idea if there will be similar things happen on such hardware.

What's odd is that it's the only known issue with savegame on flashmasta, and it occurs only in this specific case. I should try this one on neoSD too...

Either way, tracking it would require to disassemble the code and figure out when exactly the bug occurs. Without a hardware debugger, I don't know if it's worth the pain ^^