Written by cafealpha 8 comments
As usual I'm not very on time for sending my best wishes but I hope that everyone spent a nice Christmas and are appreciating winter vacations To add even more fun to theses vacations, I'm happy to announce that latest flavor of Pseudo Saturn Kai is -finally- publicly available !
To be frank, there are no new major feature for Pseudo Saturn Kai in this release : the most important news is not hidden in Pseudo Saturn Kai itself, but in Save Data Manager, with a new edition of Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager, featuring 11 new opus !
Regarding this new edition of Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager, I really want to thank each respective contributor for their passionate work in shmup creation : - mk2, designer of DAIOH Huricane Special - WANG, designer of Houkou Tiger
Also featuring screenshots gallery of DAIOH Hurricane
I also would like to give a special thanks to Dezaemon DB (wiki) for all his support around floppy disk emulation in Gamer's Cartridge and motivating me in developing a new blend of Save Game Manager for Dezaemon 2, which then turned into Save Game Manager 3 (released on last Winter) and Save Game Manager 4, freshly releasing right now. Unfortunately I didn't received any news from Dezaemon DB for more than two years, but I continue to believe he will be back in action in Dezaemon community someday.
Regarding Pseudo Saturn Kai itself, majority of changes in this release concern fixes in automatic game loader and cheat codes list. So if previous version of Pseudo Saturn Kai installed on your cartridge are working fine with your favorite games library, then ... theses games will continue to play fine with latest version.
All theses improvements were directed by privateye, who really deserve warm thanks for this huge work !!
It's a big task to get a project working more or less correctly as it was in previous releases of Pseudo Saturn Kai. But it's an even bigger task when trying to fix all the little details around that project Without privateye, Pseudo Saturn Kai certainly wouldn't had its edges polished so well
And, Gamer's Cartridge users may appreciate that a problem sometimes happening when retrieving Saturn date and time has been fixed in this release.
This bug was introduced in previous (6.314) version because I didn't checked enough side effects of modification done at that time to add support for wireless pads.
Concretely speaking, this fixes the file time stamp of save data files as well as folder naming (which is based on Saturn date) when dumping save(s) to SD card.
Except that, Gamer's Cartridge support is equivalent to previous version, so if you don't want to brick your Gamer's Cartridge (risk is super low, but I can't assert it to be zero), then continuing using previous version may be a wise choice. After all, rather than upgrading to latest firmware, the most important is to play your favorite games
The kids are currently on winter holidays, I don't want unexpected and messy task at work before entering new years holidays, so today was spent at movie theater with kids
We went to see Dragon Ball Super - Broly, and it was cool !! I really appreciated the "フリーザー！「カコク」ってなんだ！？" from Goku just after Freezer used "過酷" word in a dramatic scene
So well, it seems it's the good moment to announce a new public section in my homepage, which is about Dragon Ball cards
More than 15 years ago (but it feels like last week ... I'm really getting old !), I spent many afternoons in scanning my collection of Dragon Ball cards, and then put everything on a CD-R ... because internet was paid for each minutes connected, and my maximum transfer speed at that time was around 7KB/s, hence not suitable for uploading hundreds of megabytes of data
All theses limitations are no longer a problem, so please enjoy my digital cards collection
Broly when I was a kid
Oh, I forgot to say that everything in more or less in its original state, including the html, so in advance I'm sorry for any reaction to Comic Sans MS font and flashy image background Also, the textual contents are left as-is in omelette du fromage language
But ... there's currently a bug so I shall re-release it soon
After everything will be fixed and verified, I shall make a proper announcement in this article, so if you don't want to flash your cartridge twice, please keep tuned for one day or two !
Edit (2018/12/31) : version v6.274 was released a couple of a days ago, and so far I didn't received major claims about it, so let's consider this version a stable one ! Please find below an overview of the changes and additions in this release.
What's new in Pseudo Saturn Kai v6.274
Automatic Game Loader
So far in Pseudo Saturn Kai 6.074, user had to choose which game loader to choose before starting a game, but this is now done automatically on Pseudo Saturn Kai side. There's no magic around this feature : it just uses a list of games not compatible with CWX loader, and decides accordingly
Pseudo Saturn Kai boot menu
No need to worry about which loader to choose ♪
Cheat Codes
That's a big addition for this release. Its development spans around June 2017 to Spring 2018. The main features for cheat codes are :
Built-in : don't need to manually enter the cheat codes
User friendly : just push X button when booting a game, and then select the cheat(s) to enable.
Maintained by cafe-alpha () : rather than adding an "enter cheat codes by yourself" feature, I plan to continue improving and maintaining the cheat codes list
Back in 2015, I added a stub of alternate rmenu to Pseudo Saturn Kai, but didn't had the technical information regarding Rhea/Phoebe API so the feature was disabled in its unfinished state. And this summer, an enthusiast friend helped a lot to get this technical information, so that I could finally finish this feature Development of this feature was an occasion to bring usage of proportional font in image selection menu, thus showing more information on a single screen. Base of menu module was developed around 2010 without any consideration for proportional font, so development of this side feature was a nightmare, but I don't regret for having done it now it is finished
Image selection menu for Rhea/Phoebe ODEs
Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager 3
Dezaemon 2 is a shooting game maker application for Saturn. And Save Game Manager is a collection of user games for Dezaemon 2. By the past, there were two volumes released by Madroms : SGM1 in 2007 and SGM2 in 2008. And 10 years after that, SGM3 is released and contains some new user games as well as all the games from SGM1 and SGM3 : one SGM to rule them all
Special thanks to Dezaemon DB for gathering a community around Dezaemon 2, and dumping the user games
A stylish logo for Pseudo Saturn Kai
That's maybe a detail, but that was really missing from a long time ! Special thanks to Alien^PDX for the logo, and CyberWarriorX for putting me in touch with him
Pseudo Saturn Kai logo, 2017/12/31
Yes, taken one year ago !
In-game connectivity for USB dev cart
This uses cheat codes routine, hence requires at least a valid master code to be set. It can do USB connectivity while doing transfer with PC, but that's a bit slow (because of unoptimized C running from cartridge ROM), and consequently may cause glitches on some games.
As a countermeasure, there is another mode who does only USB connectivity (hence no cheat codes) but does it fast since the code for it is written directly in assembly and running in RAM.
That may be cool for game hacking, or looking for new cheat codes ... but I still need to add a proper cheat codes finder feature on SatLink before looking for cheat codes on my favorite games
to work correctly with Pseudo Saturn Kai cheat codes
Virtual Memory Cartridge support via USB dev cart
This is similar to "Virtual Memory Cartridge" used in Gamer's Cartridge, but access save data files on PC via USB dev cart instead of SD card.
That's convenient for save data hacking, or testing several saves, but for normal use then using SD card is (in my opinion) a better choice.
As a consequence, full firmware can now be installed on USB dev cart. But cartridges not using SST39SF040 flash chips are not supported (because there's not enough room in flash ROM) and in that case only lite firmware can be installed.
In previous version, using 3D pad would sometimes cause an emergency exit to multiplayer screen when touching analog buttons. This is now fixed, and additionally supports input from analog buttons.
Pseudo Saturn Kai is not a 3D game, so the interest of using analog buttons is a bit questionable, but at least it is supported now
And the most voluminous change is ... : Fixed many bugs everywhere, added other bugs here and there Everything should work now ! Trust me, I'm an engineer
Congratulations, you reached the end of this long article
Last but not least, I wish you a Merry Christmas, happy new year 2019 and happy gaming
I was away from keyboard (and fortunately away from shopping malls too) during this Black Friday, so I am a bit late to celebrate this marvelous commercial event.
But any date isn't late to celebrate something, so let's tweak a little the event name and officially open the ...
Written by cafealpha 10 comments
Normal sales people make announcements when their things to sale are available ... I personally don't like aggressive advertisement, hence prefer to make announcement when things to sale are not available
So I don't plan to process Gamer's Cartridge for a while ... reason for this is simple : I can't go to post office during winter vacations (and probably won't have time for emails too), so I prefer to temporarily stop selling cartridge rather than asking people for waiting
Sorry, that's the only picture I found for this article (Grabbed from here )
So I wish you nice winter vacations ! I don't know there, but weather here is cold and windy, hence well suited for playing Saturn
Edit (2017/01/12) : cartridges are back for sale ! More informations on my Saturn cartridges page. During winter vacations, I found a couple of cartridges with "Rev 3.3 (a)" PCB (one revision before latest revision, only position of LEDs is different) while tidying up my apartment BTW, happy new year
Written by cafealpha 6 comments
I sometimes check this blog in order to verify if there are some interesting news, without success, and then I realized that I am the only author of this blog (), hence though I should write something here in order not to deceive my countless fans.
So, sorry for the lack of news recently, I was busy with Saturn things, but also in deciphering Christmas presents lists ... and now busy in tidying up lego blocks and trashing used wrapping paper
I hope you're spending nice Christmas vacations ! I'm a little late for wishing you a merry Christmas (), and a little early to wish you an Happy New Year (), hence the broken title
So what's new with my Saturn projects ? In fact, nothing worth writing an article, but here is a short (and probably incomplete) list anyway :
1. SD Memory Cart : when overwriting save on Saturn side, keep the old save file on SD card (but remove it from saves list, of course). Basically, it automatically keeps old saves somewhere on SD card, so that it is possible to revert to a previous state. I hope Saturn RPG fans will like
2. USB dev cart mode : when USB cable is detected, allow to unlock CD-ROM and then prompt for data upload. This feature allows to makes tests on Saturn main program using data from CD-ROM without the need of installing a modchip, and without the need of burning a CD-R on each program changes Special thanks to Shazz for reminding me to add such a feature, antime for wiring FTDI's PWREN signal to Saturn (it was unused for 3 years, but it was useful in order to detect USB connection, and hence hiding USB dev mode for normal users not using USB), and of course CyberWarriorX and jhl for Pseudo Saturn
3. PCB changes : basically removing few debug "in case of" stuff, and also moving SD card socket in order to fit better with cartridge shell. It is still WIP, but plan to send the updated gerber to the PCB house on next month.
4. Few changes to the sources of yabause I'm using for testing my projects. Especially, I added position save/restore and keyboard shortcut to each debug dialogs ... long time I wanted to do this
5. In Backup Data Manager, some additions to "Import" feature : backup data dump file read and parse was done a while (4-5 months ?) ago, I just added something to select where (Internal Memory or Cartridge or Floppy) to save selected saves, and plan to port save data extract algorithm next month or so Thanks to hitomi2500's ss-save-parser project, such "Import" feature is easy to integrate in my Backup Data Manager project
Last but not least, I also want to thank Stac user on Assembler forums He's doing good job in beta testing, and thanks to his reactivity and good communication, project is progressing faster than I was expecting. Beta testing is far from being a funny job, especially with me as main programmer (), and when testing requires to play games (this requires time, and bugs on my Saturn project may lead to loose of progress in game), so once more, thank you
but I hope that everyone spent a nice Christmas and are appreciating winter vacations 
Without privateye, Pseudo Saturn Kai certainly wouldn't had its edges polished so well 
Also, the textual contents are left as-is in omelette du fromage language 
) : rather than adding an "enter cheat codes by yourself" feature, I plan to continue improving and maintaining the cheat codes list 
80% OFF on First Download 
Second Download Offered 
... and now busy in tidying up lego blocks and trashing used wrapping paper 
), hence the broken title 
