Once upon a night, I wanted to verify Pseudo Saturn Kai products lineup and realized PRO edition was recently added !
The PRO edition itself was based on same technology as lite one, but requiring a small subscription (in one-digit dollar range) in order to allow installation. In other words, the same contents as lite (free of charge) edition, but financially supporting firmware development and maintenance costs.
Pseudo Saturn Kai PRO edition was so popular that it was attracting enough money to cover my daily personal expenses and at some point it was even enough for apartment rent as well as family's cost of fuel and light ! On the other hand, Pseudo Saturn Kai PRO edition support team was greedier and greedier about new features, visual improvements of the firmware's UI, and the longer it went the more oppressed I was to maintain Pseudo Saturn Kai code base.
And then, the poor man's alarm clock (= in simpler words, light of the morning sun) woke me covered in sweat and experiencing high heart pulsations.
I had to verify this was a nightmare ! ... But before that it was time to start the day with laundry, because procrastinating the laundry duty delays all the subsequent tasks after that until the end of the day
So during my earliest spare moment during that day (somewhere between 6:30PM and 7PM), I could verify that everything was normal regarding Pseudo Saturn Kai project : the lite version free for everybody, and the full version also free but usable only in my hardware projects.
So no deadline, no pressure, and no impatient users ! I was relieved because I have enough of that at regular work !!
On a more serious note, I'm glad to announce that release candidate version for next release of Pseudo Saturn Kai is ready !
This RC version was thoroughly tested by same beta testers who followed development from last public release, so the risk of bricking cartridge or facing bugs bigger than an elephant are quite low.
I'm however not confident about usage in unusual configuration, so that I would like it to be tested by a few more people for my peace of mind before putting it on the wild.
On the other hand, if you just want to use latest version and don't plan to give testing feedback, then please *don't* contact me and wait patiently for one week or two until RC version becomes publicly available.
What's new in upcoming next release : basically there aren't new major feature available (like cheat codes in previous v6.274 release), but enough changes and/or improvements to make everybody wanting to upgrade.
Show error message when SD card is not inserted into Rhea/Phoebe ODE.
Added RmenuKai : enjoy cheat codes on Rhea/Phoebe even without cartridge !
Improved compatibility of JHL loader-only games with Rhea/Phoebe ODEs. (Panzer Dragoon Saga can now be correctly loaded from Rhea ODE)
Improvements in automatic selection of game in cheats codes feature.
And there's also a small Easter egg hidden in some menus ... will you be able to trigger it ?
To shortly sum up the changelog, Rhea/Phoebe ODE users will be happy to find that this release will allow usage of cheat codes without the need of any cartridge And some Rhea users shall also appreciate Pseudo Saturn Kai finally loading Panzer Dragoon Saga correctly.
There are also some fixes and improvements around cheat codes (available for everybody, not requiring ODE or any special cartridge) and I sincerely hope theses will contribute to make more people enjoying playing Saturn
Rare footage of Pseudo Saturn Kai development room.
... One month ago, I wanted to announce that I wouldn't be available for several weeks, but I was suddenly taken in a storm of bringing/taking kids to/from schoolchildren care, washing bento boxes, going to work and the usual dish-wash/throw trash/laundry/whatever daily routines
Personally, I only had two rest days at the middle of August generously offered by employer as summer holidays ... two days !! That's one day, and ... one another day Moreover both are consecutive And that's ... so long I fear I would forget everything about work after such a long rest
Well, more seriously I took some day-off here and there during August too, and theses were a good occasion to refresh from everyday life
As a consequence, I completely neglected my email box during this period of time. Sorry to all concerned people !
I will try to tidy-up my mail box this week, but can't guarantee that everything will be done on planned time since day work went a bit crazy recently
So here comes some lines about my summer holidays ... hey, that's my homepage which I pay for hosting and where I installed and filled this blog, so I write whatever I want on it
So if you're not interested in me talking about my life, please skip until next horizontal separator
Summer 2018 activity #1 : going to the beach
As every summer, I celebrated the lapse of one year by going to the beach : four years ago, I spent nearly two months at hospital without any occasion to go outside, so that I like to take a revenge every year
At that time, I had around 50-60% of chances to be still here today. It's good to be alive
Well, there were a bit more medusa than usual, so I didn't swam so much, but that's better than not being able to go to beach at all anyway
Title: Japanese style toilet, by cafe-alpha kids, 2018
I like that they didn't spent half a day to do a instagram-compliant thing that would then be destroyed by the sea but had fun anyway
Summer 2018 activity #2 : watching typhoons
I don't know if that's limited to the region I live, but there were a lot of typhoons this year ! There wasn't any kind of major damage nearby, but not everybody in Japan could be that fortunate ...
Personally, it was the occasion to do some cleanup on the balcony : I trashed several things that accumulated over past year, and Mr Typhoon helped to clean up dust after that
I wish typhoon and other similar kind of natural disasters could evolve into intelligent entities to clean up earth from climate-skeptical trolls
Rare footage from the birth of a French citizen
(That's not super related with typhoons, but this is my blog,
and I write whatever I want on it )
Summer 2018 activity #3 : going to several kinds of museums
The kids like museums, especially to watch insects, machines or similar stuff. But museums close early, unfortunately.
Close at 4PM ?!
That's not a museum, but an hideout for civil workers
Always should read the little letters : "open until 4:30 PM ... but can't enter after 4PM"
The rear door was still open, so we could sneak inside anyway ... that's funny to hack museum rules
Went to aquarium too. That's a Hammerhead Shark.
And it's also a multi-purpose drawing :
tilt your screen and E.T. will appear
Summer 2018 activity #4 : watering plants Kid bring back okra from school. One of summer vacations homework was to take care of that thing, but from the limited range I could see, only me was doing such boring duty
Mr Okra in all its glory.
I put it near the space for hanging
laundry so that I don't forget to water it
Summer 2018 activity #5 : watching Saturn for real !
Local astronomy group prepared an "Watch Jupiter, Saturn, and also a bunch of other stars I forgot their name" event ... so I was super interested in it
土星, during small explanations about how to locate things in the sky.
Saturn was so bright it's hard to miss it in the night sky
But Mars was even brighter this summer !
This was also an occasion to assemble a small telescope by oneself. That's a cheap "30 bucks" model, but with lens good enough to see Jupiter moons oO
Summer 2018 activity #6 : adventuring in Tokyo
In order to renew a identification paper, I had to go to embassy located Tokyo : this was basically one day spent in transports, except 15 minutes at the embassy itself to sign a couple of papers, have my fingerprints taken, and pay 12198 yens
That's a long time I didn't get lost in Tokyo Everything was more or less smooth in changing from plane → train/subway → bus, but in the last steps walking to the embassy, the battery of my phone decided take a little rest for the remaining of the day
I was aware that battery wouldn't last long, so I printed nearly all directions, but last "use your own foots" steps weren't detailed a lot Fortunately the "ask random people around" solution could guide me to the embassy
The return back to home without help from phone was more or less OK, and when back to home I finally could unlock my phone
Why unlock ? Because my phone's power switch is broken At a moment, I asked for an estimation to my phone carrier to get this fixed, and price was around 80 buck-ish, so I decided it would be better to live with this broken switch rather than paying that
Now, I'm used enough to my phone power in sequence that I no longer consider it as a problem, but instead as child lock feature : if kid try to play game on it while it is running on battery, it turns off after around 5 minutes
My secret method to turn the phone on is to tweak the debounce circuit with a small wire. Electronics components there are super small (which is probably why the power switch broke ...), why requires the usage of tweezers or a small pliers hence can't be done outside since I don't always bring my electronics toolbox with me when I go on travel
This was "just" a routine appointment for periodic screening, and everything was OK This time was the occasion to celebrate the fourth year still alive after surgery
This is an archive picture : all the "no pokemon go in hopital"
warnings were removed. Instead there was a notice that
North side parking is not available, but I didn't took a
picture of it since I doubt the average reader of this
blog is concerned by such news
End of the personal and boring news August was also a time do PCB design to celebrate the 10th birthday of my favorite PCB house
(More pragmatically, I rushed to finish PCB design until August 31st because they were offering discount coupons until that date to celebrate this event )
Among PCBs ordered, there was minor change for Gamer's Cartridge, and a small board to flash MAX3000A CPLDs used in Gamer's Cartridge.
Gamer's Cartridge PCB rev 3.3 (c)
There's nothing changed nor deleted : I just added footprints for alternate voltage regulator : I'm using this alternate regulator in another project, so I would like to unify electronic components used in order to reduce stock management/space/etc to store theses two components. Additionally, this alternate voltage regulator is a bit easier to solder, so at the end I would like to stick with this one
CPLD flash board
That's a really simple board to interface between CPLD and programming hardware : so far I was flashing Gamer's Cartridge CPLD one by one after soldering each cartridges, but thanks to this board it may be possible to flash a batch of CPLDs in a row hence save some bits of time on my side
"Overlap check" ... yeah, I know that I'm always terrible when finding a name for a new feature or a new project
So, as its name may suggest, this feature check for cheat codes that would not work correctly together, and automatically unselect some cheat(s) in order to get things working as expected. One illustration would be level select cheat code : some games may have a list of cheats like "play level 2", "play level 3", "play level 4", and so on. (no, there is usually no cheat code to play level 1 )
Example with Sonic 3D blast cheat codes : it's no longer possible to simultaneously enable several "Play xyz level" codes thanks to this overlap check feature
When trying cheat codes for the first time, the reflex would be "enable them all !", and in that case this would lead to undefined behavior. In typical case, game just work fine and since cheat codes are executed in the order from their list, the last overlapping cheat takes priority.
But, some games are quite picky regarding execution time, so the faster cheat codes handler is executed, the better. In other words, the less codes enabled, the more chances game have to work correctly. Here is one example in video with NiGHTs into dreams : first half of the video shows cheat codes causing graphic glitches, and second half show updated Pseudo Saturn Kai version fixing theses glitches :
NiGHTs into dreams : graphic glitches caused by cheat codes slow handler. Video available on youtube.
Left : slow cheat codes handler, causing missing quads on screen Right : game as well as unlimited time cheat code working fine
Hrm, that's around half a year ago, and I'm still fixing things for the same main feature Well, that's how software development works : fixing bugs, adding new bugs, and returning back to step zero. Maybe smart people can develop things faster, but ... I'm not smart, so the best solution is to continue the endless development iterations until getting something OK for release
So well, let's go back to original topic, and let's add that I also felt bad each time I was enabling two incompatible codes. "Play level 2" : enable, "Play level 3" : enable, start game ... what will it do ? Maybe a thermonuclear meltdown because of some divide by zero error ?! Well, it actually plays level 3, but that's unpleasant anyway. I implemented cheat codes features from (basically) scratch first for fun (yes, I like 6+ months span software development projects ! ), but also for the freedom of making what I want. Especially, making cheat codes as user-friendly as possible ! So that this "overlap check" feature was added
Here is another example with cheat codes for Virtua Fighter Kids : this is an interesting example because some cheat codes for this game are using "enable code" (starting with `D') : this kind of code is sometimes used to prevent from executing other codes, typically when game module to cheat is not yet loaded, and that writing something to its location would make the game not working correctly. As a consequence, "enable code" have a global effect on all enabled cheats, hence multiple "enable code" can't be enabled simultaneously.
Virtua Fighter kids uses "enable code" for a slightly different purpose : setting player health to a given value (50% of maximum, one HP, etc) only when it is set to maximum, ie on fight start time. By using this trick, game can then decrease health value, allowing to set some handicap to a given player. This behavior is completely different in comparison to "unlimited health" cheat that always forces health value to maximum
Virtua Fighter Kids cheat codes list : "50% healt" and "1-Hit Death" codes are the ones using enable codes
And, Virtua Fighter Kids is a good example, because it uses "enable code" at two different locations : at player 1 health value (06045974) and player 2 health value (06046A74). As only one "enable code" can be used, it's for example not possible to enable "1-hit death" code for both players.
Left : 1-Hit Death code enabled for P1 Right : P1 1-Hit Death code automatically disabled after 1-Hit Death code for P2 is enabled
Additionally, unlimited health for P2 is also automatically disabled, which is normal because it is in contradiction with 1-hit death code for it. From cheat code point of view, theses two codes write to same address, which doesn't makes sense.
"Hey, but I like "One Punch Man" series, and really want to enable theses two 1-hit death codes when playing Virtua Fighter Kids !" would you say ? Well, that's not possible as-is, but adding a new cheat code setting both players health to 1 when health of any player is set to max value should do the job ♪ I didn't verified this code for real (in fact, I thought about it when writing this article), but it should be OK : "trust me, I'm an engineer"
1-Hit Death code for both P1 and P2 This could also be named "Two gentlemen duel"
I would like to finish this article with the introduction of a bug I fixed recently : I usually don't spend time in speaking about bugs I fix, because this would take too much time But the behavior of this one is very unexpected :
Text display is suddenly uncentered !? Never though though such goofy bug would be possible
So, this bug is triggered when selecting item in menu with scrolling text, and when text starts to scroll. The two features in relation with this bug (text centering and scrolling) are apparently unrelated, but the menu module used by Pseudo Saturn Kai is so spaghetti-ish that theses two features can collide into a bug
I'm honestly proud of this menu module It was initially designed for simple menu without even vertical scrolling, but evolved little by little in order to support each new features added to Pseudo Saturn Kai. It's a complete spaghetti monster, but it works ! Yes, it works : trust me, I'm an engineer !
Synthesis ... this is the kind of blog article posted at the end of December in normal blogs, but since this is not a normal blog, and that I can't respect any schedule for it, let's prepare this article at the beginning of January
Last year started well with an order of Gamer's Cartridge from IGK, who is administrator of Dezaemon DB homepage. More than administrating Dezaemon DB, he is also a dezaemoner who (among other titles) developed Biometal Nemesis, which deserves its youtube link in this blog :)
Biometal Nemesis - Click above if you like shmups
I really like the style of this Dezaemon game ! Thank you very much IGK for creating such gem
Thanks to IGK, it was possible to finish support of Saturn Floppy Disk Drive on Save Data Manager : initialization of this device is slightly different than with internal backup memory and backup memory cartridge, and consequently was causing troubles on various configurations such as no backup memory cartridge inserted, but floppy disk connected, etc. Fixing all possible patterns wouldn't had been possible without kind help and beta testing from IGK. Thank you
Save Data Manager (version around 2017/01/30)
Configuration when this screen was taken was no "backup memory cartridge inserted, and floppy disk connected", which was causing troubles because among other things, unavailable device in the middle of devices table wasn't supported.
Additionally, this was the occasion to add virtual floppy disk support on Gamer's Cartridge, making Saturn considering a floppy disk drive is available, even if not physically connected. Main purpose of this feature is to add 5 more save and load slots in Dezaemon 2, which, in addition of the 5 slots on backup memory cartridge, makes possible to manage up to 10 saves into a Dezaemon 2 session directly from a single SD card I don't remember exactly what was the trigger which started the addition of this feature, but I think that a suggestion from IGK like "it would be cool if floppy disk would be supported by Gamer's Cartridge too" and me "Ah yeah, that's a nice idea ... how many save slots do you want ?"
After that, IGK continued to surprise me by asking his friend beebaraka to draw a Dezaemon 2 themed label for Gamer's Cartridge ... As a result, I received images for two labels, which I personally consider as the masterpieces among Gamer's Cartridge label collection My preference goes to the white-themed label, but I suppose it's just a matter of personal taste.
Dezaemon 2 themed Gamer's Cartridges
Like shooting games ? Like DIY ? Theses cartridges are designed for you
In parallel of theses Dezaemon 2 adventures, generous contributors helped in dumping firmware of some exotic Saturn cartridges, and were successfully added to Pseudo Saturn Kai Save Data Manager. Most relevant dumps were for X-Terminator cartridge, and Urawaza Dataro cartridge : first one is a cartridge with extended support for cheat codes, especially with extra controller allowing in-game search of cheat codes. Later one provides special save data for several (around 34 IIRC) Japanese games. Special thanks to Madrom for providing dump of this cartridge !
All the points below contributed to prepare the "20170423" release of Pseudo Saturn Kai. Warm thanks to all contributors who could make it possible !
Second half of the year mostly concerned cheat codes addition to Pseudo Saturn Kai. It started in June (or May ... I don't remember correctly) from a Gamer's Cartridge user asking when cheat codes will be available in Pseudo Saturn Kai ... this reminded me I still had to finish that until next release
First working version of cheat codes
hander, with USB transfer support
It's not visible on this picture, but many polygons weren't
drawn because of performance issues.
Unlimited time cheat code working : it took me around
one month to fix missing polygons, because of unoptimized
implementation of cheat codes handler), but I did it
Cheat codes kept me busy for six solid months, basically in understanding to manage cheat codes in a similar way as is it done on Action Replay firmware, optimizing critical code, importing codes list, finishing cheat codes related interface, testing several games, etc. That's honestly a hard work, but this was also an occasion to add in-game USB transfer via USB dev cart. Thanks to this, the basis in order to fix or improve cheat codes is ready Proper PC software for cheat codes detection is still missing, but hopefully this will be done someday.
Akumajo Dracula-X illustration with Maria's inifinite jump cheat code.
This game was a nasty one regarding cheat code support, with very
tight CPU and RAM left for cheat codes handler. This was an occasion
to develop many cheat codes debug features
Summer was also the occasion for me to officially end manufacturing and support of USB dev cart : after 5 years involved in this adventure, I considered it was enough, because : 1. USB dev cart interests basically nobody 2. In the rare cases USB dev cart interests somebody, it is usually used for closed-source projects (But there are notable exceptions where USB dev cart contributed to Saturn open source projects. Big thanks to theses concerned peoples for making Saturn homebrew scene brighter )
I'm hesitating about the timing for next Pseudo Saturn Kai release : should I take some extra months in order to get proper cheat codes support for most popular games ? Or should I release it under few weeks with minimal cheat codes support (around an handful of games are currently tested and working), and hope to receive some feedback from users, so that I will eventually know which games need their cheat codes to be fixed ?
That's a very difficult choice : cheat codes is a niche feature (as everything else regarding Saturn !), so I shouldn't hope a lot of feedback. On the other hand, adding a cheat codes edition screen, and allowing cheat codes input on user side is (IMHO) a mistake too : maybe a motivated user would fix and/or add codes for some games, but rarely theses codes will be publicly available for everybody else, and in the other cases, user will simply consider Pseudo Saturn Kai cheat codes as a broken feature. Let's see ... I honestly don't have any precise idea when next release should be done. Any suggestion regarding this is welcome in the comments
Generally speaking, I'm tired about Pseudo Saturn Kai maintenance : I started it around two years ago (yes, largely over than nine thousands hours !!!), edit: that was around three years ago (I though we were at the beginning of year 2017 ), am finally seeing the end of my TODO list to realize that ... majority of users shifted to hardware ODE, or simply left the scene without any last final word ...
Well, whatever it may be, I continue development of Pseudo Saturn Kai because I went too far to stop so near of the end (that's quite a pragmatic argument, sorry), but also (and that's the most important), because that's a nice hobby, which is important in order to keep a balance between private and work
Also, my first steps in Pseudo Saturn Kai maintenance were made during my hospitalization for cancer, and keeping such hobby during theses hard times was worth gold. I don't know (and don't want to know) how things would had turned without my Saturn hobbies.
BTW, things concerning my health are getting well : I'm still undergoing periodical screening, which all were OK last year Last year was the celebration of 3 years all right after surgery, which is not bad for a cancer with 50-60% 5 years survival rate
Pokemon Go still not allowed in hospital. Fortunately, usage Saturn dev laptop isn't forbidden
To finish this article on a rant note (sorry if you went here for some final positive note ), I would like to say "thank you for nothing" to Rhea/Phoebe development team rmenu author. (← updated on 2018/06/20)
Why ? Reason is that I would like to add a rmenu equivalent to Pseudo Saturn Kai, but don't have any technical information to implement it, and it's not like I didn't asked about theses informations, but simply didn't received any relevant reply from concerned developer(s).
For a semi-commercial product, I can understand to keep schematics, source codes and other development resources private. But I don't request disclosure of theses resources, and just want some minimal information for interoperability, which isn't publicly available, and that's a pity.
Why is that a pity ? Because some cheat codes will certainly not work by having rmenu running between Pseudo Saturn Kai and Saturn game. I know there's the solution to use rmenu's full boot, which does a system reset of nearly everything (except Rhea/Phoebe, obviously) after selecting a game, so that cheat codes can be enabled after that ... but I really don't know anybody motivated to do this messy setup : everybody is using the rmenu's quick boot solution, right ?
Pseudo Saturn Kai's rmenu, dated 20151214. Latest version have some major improvements, such as scrolling title of select game, etc Because of lack of Rhea/Phoebe API, this feature is disabled.
I'm personally (and honestly) not concerned about this problem : my modded Saturn + USB dev cart are enough for my development needs, and I don't want to pay for a device costing an arm and a leg (plus a kidney when buying from ebay ...) and then having to do the reverse-engineering job for it after that ! So unless I got external help, clean support for Rhea/Phoebe will be done ... without me
From what I could found from static analysis of rmenu itself, version is checked by seeking to the last available data sector of the CD track, and game is selected by seeking to sectors just before that last available one.
After that's it's difficult to guess what data should be expected from Rhea/Phoebe without testing on real hardware. And reverse-engineering is usually a sluggish and hard work (I estimate the remaining as around a two weeks course ... and hope this to be a pessimistic estimation), and really would like to spend this time to other projects funnier.
2018/06/20 update : there will be proper support of Rhea/Phoebe image selection in Pseudo Saturn Kai, and consequently an user-friendly way of enabling cheat codes when using theses ODE
Very big thanks to Deunan Knute for the great job, providing the technical informations and everything else
And also I would like to thank privateye for contacting Deunan, his patience and great help in beta testing
Among the boring tasks remaining in Pseudo Saturn Kai development, there was "IP header CRCs merge to cheat codes list" task remaining ... ... There was, because I finally finished to merge the CRCs I could gather here ! Well, I think there are still 20-30% of the games in cheat codes list still not associated with any CRC, but anyway that's a fair amount of work done so far
Last CRC merged, at the end of cheat codes list Left text file : list of IP headers and their CRCs for each games I have here Right text file : Pseudo Saturn Kai cheat codes list
What is that CRC thing ? That's a value I use in order to identify each Saturn games. Thanks to such CRC value, it's possible to easily associate each cheat codes to a given game, and consequently automatically select game in cheat codes list according to CD-ROM inserted in Saturn CD lid. You don't like to manually select a game from cheat codes "select game" menu ? Me too So that I added this "automagically select game" thing in Pseudo Saturn Kai cheat code feature
By the way, it's probably a bit late for a surprise effect, but I'm glad to to announce that cheat codes feature will be available in Pseudo Saturn Kai next release
Basically, cheat codes handler now works ... for a majority of games tested so far. And user interface regarding cheat codes stuff is more or less okay ... but still needs to be perfected here and there.
So as you guessed, there are still details to complete until considering Pseudo Saturn Kai cheat codes feature ready for public release, and unfortunately polishing details usually (always) require time in software development, so let's hope next release will be available in a near future, which is "this year" in my own time scale regarding Saturn projects
Nights into dream cheat codes working ! That's the first game I used in order to test assembly version
of cheat codes handler
Having fun with cheat codes and USB connectivity on Radiant Silvergun
In-game memory contents are mine ! Ph34r my l33t h4Cklng sKI1lZ
So, the next development jobs are to support multiple CRCs per game : cheat codes list have several CRCs defined for some games (this is typically used for games using several CD-ROMs), but Pseudo Saturn Kai currently supports one CRC per game. Modifying the cheats list → data conversion utility in order to support multiple CRCs will be also an occasion to add some extra verification stuff regarding CRC, such as verifying that two different games don't collide on the same CRC, which is something like around 2500 different CDs versus 4 billions possible CRCs ... hence should be OK, but who know what may happen when developing software
After that, it will be probably be the time to do some testing on as many games as possible, in order to verify that cheat code and game are correctly associated, and to verify that cheat codes are correctly working, etc. Such task will require a significant manpower, hence to find a lot of beta testers. So if you're ready to give a hand, please stay tuned
And some Rhea users shall also appreciate Pseudo Saturn Kai finally loading Panzer Dragoon Saga correctly.
Moreover both are consecutive 
Fortunately the "ask random people around" solution could guide me to the embassy 
)
?! Well, it actually plays level 3, but that's unpleasant anyway.
), but also for the freedom of making what I want. Especially, making cheat codes as user-friendly as possible ! So that this "overlap check" feature was added 
), am finally seeing the end of my TODO list to realize that ... majority of users shifted to hardware ODE, or simply left the scene without any last final word ...
