Bubble Bobble Bootleg info

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » December 27th, 2012, 8:49 pm

I found some curious differences between the original and bootleg boards while resurrecting mine:

The three Taito proprietary 5-bit video DAC chips at each video output channel where replaced by only two 74LS174 hex inverters and resistor networks. Because there are only 6 flip-flops in each of those TTL chips (12 in total), they ended up dropping the last bit of each color channel, so the bootleg uses a reduced color range of 4-bit per channel. Maybe they decided to use only two chips to reduce the cost or because there was not enough space in the board. Anyway, that color loss may not be noticeable at all in practice.

Also, the bootleg boards don't have a MB3771 voltage monitor / reset chip. That was replaced by a simple resistor charging a capacitor connected to a TTL port, in a timer configuration. This was likely done for cost reduction or due to chip availability. Now, I don't know how that could be working in the first place, since TTL logic abhors any voltage in between LOW (0.8V) and HI (2.0V) levels. I had to replace that TTL chip (74LS08, if I'm not mistaken) and, after that, sometimes my board would not work at all. On closer inspection, one or both Z80B CPUs would just go crazy, continuously fetching a byte for address 0xFFFF or something like that. I almost ended up replacing the CPUs, but then I got the idea of inspecting the reset signal and found it to be oscillating while the capacitor voltage was at the forbidden zone. That caused the Z80 CPUs to get locked into some wrong state. I ended up installing a 555 timer to supply a proper reset signal. I thought it would be interesting to mention that, in case anyone has the same issue (maybe this is not the best place in the forum for doing that).

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » December 30th, 2012, 1:08 am

I'm still playing the patch on MAME and comparing with the original game and it seems to me there are differences in the bonus items that appear after the second play since a reset. For example, in the original game I frequently get a staff, cross or even a potion. I never get those items in the patched bootleg version.

Also, I got it to sort of freeze once while in demo mode. All movement stopped but the coin counter and some enemy animation kept working. I could not reproduce this again so far.

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » December 30th, 2012, 1:16 am

I forgot to mention that I also see a lot of slow down in levels that have the whale monsters (Monsta), like 10 or 11, if I also have the rapid and long bubble candy power up and keep shooting lot's of them in the screen.

I could only reproduce a small amount of slow down in the original game while doing that. This may as well be due to the extra time spent by the main CPU running the PS4 code. I did not check yet in the non-patched bootleg version to verify if it also has that issue.

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » December 31st, 2012, 6:23 pm

I consistently get a "COMMON RAM ERROR" when changing levels after 15 and the game freezes.

So, I guess it is back to the drawing board...

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 1st, 2013, 1:35 pm

The crash ate level 15 was due to some code protection being triggered by a missing initialization done by the PS4 code. As I mentioned before, I removed some parts that I considered not necessary.

With that fixed, I will look into the slow down issue now.

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 1st, 2013, 6:56 pm

All known issues were fixed, the new patch is below. Please refer to the same instructions given before on how to apply the patch.

By the way, the items appear to be showing up fine, or at least I can't be sure of any differences. Maybe someone more familiar with Bubble Bobble may tell.

Punji

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ninn · Post by **ninn** » January 2nd, 2013, 12:51 pm

going for some new eeproms today.

Can you tell me what roms belong to which socket? Or do I have to probe/read them and compare them to the mame files to find out?

Anything I should have a special eye on?

Post by **idc** » January 2nd, 2013, 1:19 pm

ninn wrote:going for some new eeproms today.

Can you tell me what roms belong to which socket? Or do I have to probe/read them and compare them to the mame files to find out?

Anything I should have a special eye on?

Best read in your previous ROMs to compare, but on my sboblbob variant board, the three socketed ROMs are placed in the opposite order to what I would have expected had I not checked. With the board facing so the notched (pin 1) ends of the EPROMs are to my left, the ROMs are 5, 4, 3 from top to bottom.

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 2nd, 2013, 2:05 pm

As far as I recall, my board (which appear to be identical to Ninn's one) also follows the same order as Ian mentioned.

By the way, I verified the item counters in the code and they seem to be fine, i.e., the same behavior as in the original board. I was surprised that these counters are not reset when a new game start, so you may get some very rare items right on the first level, depending on what previous players have done. It would be interesting to implement a score / counter save circuit for these boards.

Punji

ninn · Post by **ninn** » January 2nd, 2013, 2:11 pm

Thanks! Will update you once the eeproms are installed.

btw, the feature I miss most is a timeout, once both players are dead. Just saying.

If you are not fast enough, and unlucky, the game just ends.

ninn · Post by **ninn** » January 2nd, 2013, 9:00 pm

It works!

joaoljr, you are my hero!

so hero!

I played to level 16, found some new items, witnessed shooting ghosts and read the japanese instruction text!

ninn, very happy.

p.s. got a stiff neck now.

Post by **emphatic** » January 2nd, 2013, 9:33 pm

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 2nd, 2013, 9:37 pm

Thanks Ninn! The monsters firing is a must, I can't believe people have been playing on these bootleg boards for so many years that way! And I changed only two bytes to fix that!

I also hate the original game continue behavior, it looks like a bug to me, so I have changed it... please apply the patch below on top of the previous one and you should have 3 seconds to press the start button.

Just curious about the rotated screen, are you using a cabinet from another game to test?

Punji

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`
end

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 1:22 am

I just verified that the clock item behavior is not exact. Although it stops the monsters for 10 seconds like in the original, the screen colors are not restored to normal after the effect finishes.

Looking at past posts in the forums about MAME and the PS4 simulation, it seems there was some relation to the clock item, but I can't see anything in the actual source code yet. I will try to debug it and compare with the original.

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 2:37 am

Problem fixed. The code to restore the colors as disabled by the bootleggers, go figure. To restore it, change image bb5, offset 06A2, C9 -> C8.

I will publish a new patch soon, including this change and the game continue enhancement.

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 3:20 am

I have removed some unused PS4 code, so the patch is now much smaller.

It is pretty late, I hope I didn't do anything foolish...

Please follow my previous instructions and apply the patch over the original "boblbobl" images (i.e., this is NOT an incremental patch).

Punji

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`
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ninn · Post by **ninn** » January 3rd, 2013, 11:01 am

joaoljr wrote:...hate the original game continue behavior, it looks like a bug to me, so I have changed it...

I patched that, and tried it. 3 seconds are very fast thou... but I am pretty sure I saw the two bubble dragons with their "push start"-sign together, at once... but, very fast, hard to see. Maybe 10 seconds would be better?

How do you do that?! So cool!

decompile, reading/modding asm?

joaoljr wrote:Just curious about the rotated screen, are you using a cabinet from another game to test?

I just got that one cab, I rotated it to play ibara and dodonpachi.

---

Will have to wait till I get my uv-eraser back to try out some of your newer patches! Will take some days to get that back and try again.
But so far, all your patches worked great!

If I remember correctly, there was a rom-checksum-error in the beginning, but it started nevertheless some seconds later.

Thanks a lot again!
Will keep you updated!
ninn

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 2:10 pm

I can increase the continue timer to 10 seconds, but are you sure we had an extra coin inserted before loosing your last life? The extra waiting time will only be available in that condition.

At the beginning I used DASM to disassemble the ROMs, which is not easy because Bubble Bobble uses paging. Now I'm mostly using MAME in debug mode to follow the code. It helps a lot because I can place breakpoints to stop the execution anywhere I want and also place watchpoints to verify when something changes in RAM. It is very trick, sometimes it takes a lot of luck to find what I'm looking for. I also use SJASM to compile the patches, in case they are not trivial, otherwise I just insert the Z80 opcodes directly.

That check-sum error is something curios. What exactly was the message? Can you grab a screenshot? It may also help if you send me your original images.

By the way, I have some bad news: the game crashes some seconds after entering the secret room using the portal item...

Punji

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 5:12 pm

Secret room crash fixed. It seems I accidentally triggered a protection while doing some changes, so I just disabled it. The latest and great patch is below.

Punji

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`
end

joaoljr · Post by **joaoljr** » January 3rd, 2013, 8:10 pm

I have used MAME to validate every item available, all three secret rooms and all three endings without noticing any issues. I have also played the first few levels in super mode.

I'm now waiting for my EPROM burner to arrive....

Punji

Bubble Bobble Bootleg info

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