Nintendont HPS playback patch

[SuperrSonic]

If you've used nintendont to play Melee, you probably have run into the BGM randomly getting cut out or looping improperly.

The "solution" or rather cheap workaround is to enable disc read speed emulation, i.e. slow down loading times.

If this really was the case then I'd be OK with it but since there are two other loaders on Wii (DM2.11, devo) that can playback .hps tracks perfectly with near instant load times, I thought there was something awfully wrong with nintendont.

So I looked and looked and found something that is totally wrong and fixed it, so now .hps files work as they should.

Please test http://www.mediafire.com/file/verdk72fgyparqk/nintendont_hps_patch.zip

If it works(or doesn't) please let me know, if it works I'll bring this up to the devs, I'm a bit hesitant, I like first knowing that it's 100% fixed and since this affects every game I want to be extra certain.

 

[XModxGodX]

Just tried it out because for some reason Melee crashes at random for me after messing around for a while and I can't really enjoy Melee knowing there could be a loud buzzing sound looming over my head. This wasn't the case with Dios Mios back in the day when I still could use my vanilla Wii.
At any rate I tested it without the accurate speed emulation (since I'm assuming it wouldn't matter with this version) still crashed after a few minutes of menu testing. Don't know if this bug happens to anyone else because I couldn't find any info on it happening to others but I think it's related to this one.
Also worth noting I play Nintendont with the games on my SD card but every other game works perfectly fine it's just Melee with this issue.

 

[SuperrSonic]

Unrelated, the music going mute would not cause a crash.

Either way, is your copy verified? Is the SD card formatted to either 32/64 KB clusters? Can you try another storage device?
Has this issue been present for a long time, or did it suddenly come up in a recent update?

 

[XModxGodX]

I just checked and it looks like it's in a 8192 byte cluster that would explain a lot as soon as I back up all the junk on my SD card format it and such I'll try to give a better test. This was an issue I had since Nintendont was actually stable I guess Melee is way more memory intensive than the other GameCube games I own. (even though the menus were the only place I've encountered the crashes...)

EDIT: Changing the cluster size didn't work... I did notice the game usually crashes when the game is autosaving I don't know if it's the case but would changing the size of the emulated memory card make a difference? I have it at the default size which from what I've heard shouldn't cause any problems...

 

[SuperrSonic]

It shouldn't matter. Is your copy verified? If you say it has only crashed on the menu you should make sure the copy is 1:1.

 

[XModxGodX]

Checked the MD5 checksum via dolphin: 0e63d4223b01d9aba596259dc155a174 seems to match the 1.2 (usa) version on this thread: https://smashboards.com/threads/finding-out-your-melee-revision-for-sure.329103/

 

[SuperrSonic]

Well, looks like nintendont just sucks at melee. I'd try a different device or default settings just in case.

 

[jmlee337]

can you describe the problem and your solution in detail? Or post a link to a github commit?

 

[SuperrSonic]

can you describe the problem and your solution in detail? Or post a link to a github commit?

Testing doesn't matter anymore, I have submitted a pull request a while ago.

If interested in the bug itself; the issue comes from a "feature" of nintendont, where about 15 MB of MEM2 are used to store read game files, in order to seek/load in-game instantly. Of course this only works if the game tries to use those files again.

Get rid of this function and you've got perfect HPS playback, zero crashes in Fire Emblem 9 and accurate load times from your storage device. If you still don't get what the problem is I suggest looking around, this issue has popped up in the nintendont thread various times, not necessarily for Melee but any game that uses HPS audio.

An unrelated but interesting part of the cache code is that it tries to preload files by guessing, which in turn serves as a loading speedhack for Animal Crossing, so my patch still enables it for this game but only if read speed emulation is disabled.

The other two loaders DM/Devolution don't have this problem, for DM I'm sure it would be impossible due to GC mode, but for devolution, I would assume tueidj didn't think to have such a pointless feature, since SD/USB loading is quite faster than disc.

It has been more than three weeks since I submitted the patch, odds are it won't get in but at least the solution is out there if anyone wants this fixed.

 

[jmlee337]

Nice

I made a Nintendont fork that locks Native Control on (https://github.com/jmlee337/nintendont) I'll consider including your patch. From what I've seen FIX94 doesn't update Nintendont very much any more, so you may still have a chance. They may simply have not seen it yet

Can you link me any other info about HPS playback issues with Nintendont? Anecdotally I've never noticed issues when running relatively stock ISOs with no custom music. I'm wondering if the problem is specific to bad custom HPS converts, or bad dol mods/gecko codes.

 

[SuperrSonic]

I only use clean rips to test things, no gecko codes, just emu memory card and default settings.

It's not reported anywhere but Zatch Bell Mamodo Battles has the same problem from personal playing.

Chibi-Robo
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/issues/485
Kururin Squash
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/page-1257#post-5368534
It's mentioned here but no one acknowledged that it also happens on vanilla Melee
https://smashboards.com/threads/fix...-of-silence-when-used-with-nintendont.434039/
Mentioned here 2
https://smashboards.com/threads/how-bad-is-melees-lag-on-nintendont.422126/#post-20416815
Mentioned here 3
https://smashboards.com/threads/the...ck-v4-07-7-04-17.351221/page-79#post-18457785
Mentioned here 4
https://www.reddit.com/r/WiiHacks/comments/40bcrk/music_cuts_out_randomly_in_melee_pal_with/

That's pretty much it, most users were content when it got fixed by emulating disc speeds.