Top gear 3000, Stupid AI Problem

[Mirda]

Hi,

I've read most post regarding TG3K and I see no mention of this. The game work Great and smooth but.... every single cars use te same line (except mine) at all time and never move, Which result in a super easy and boring game. I can't believe no one noticed yet so I'm probably doing something wrong.

BTW thanks for making this great game work.

I'm using zsnes 1.51

[snkcube]

http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3821

[FitzRoy]

I haven't gotten around to playing this game through with any emulator, but when I played it on the actual system years ago, I remember it being relatively easy up until the very late stages when your car is way faster and the tracks are narrower and more obstacle-ridden.

I'm sure someone with coding knowledge will be able to tell you if the DSP4 has an AI aspect within it. If it doesn't, it's pretty doubtful this is an emulation bug.

[Mirda]

I also own a topgear3000 cartridge and I play in with a snes. Rest assure it isn't the same. I like this game a lot and played thru it so many time I'm sure it isn't the way it is on emulator.


Thing is.... running it with zsnes (same bug in snes9x btw) the ennemie cars never change line except at the start when they mvoe in the same one. In late race it's even a much bigger bug when the 1st car reach the last one because the race leader get stuck behind the last one simply because he can't get pass him.

I took some screenshot so you understand the problem better...










if you look carefullyand the last the screenshots... you could tell that the race leader was stuck in that batch of very slow cars.



I'm using zsnes 1.51
Windows xp pro sp2
P4 3ghz
ati 9800xt

snkcube... I guess I forgot the crc32... sry there you go:

crc32: 493FDB13

I also took a screenshot at the "loading screen" just in case I forgot something.




I hope this can be fixed!

Thanks

[Agozer]

have you tried the NTSC version?

[Deathlike2]

I get the feeling this is timing related. I think games like Mortal Kombat (original) have the AI being too powerful, even of the lowest difficult is directly related to this.

[Mirda]

What's NTSC and where can I get it?

Btw game difficulty was set to hard when I took the Screenshots.

[creaothceann]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC

aka the (U) version.

[Agozer]

Stuff explained in PM. It would be better if you'd post your questions in a public board rather than resorting in PM's. Like the rest of us, I'm not here all the time. Have some patience.

@Deathlike: I wouldn't be too surprised if this was timing related, knowing the rather sorry state of the PAL timing code in general.

[Mirda]

ok If I got it right, I have to try the US version of the rom... which I just did:



It still doesn't work. Exact same bug.

I not sure if that is relevant, But I always play on my Computer monitor and I use Dual monitor display.

[Agozer]

Your monitor setup is irrelevant as far as emulator bugs are concerned.

EDIT: I just tested TG3000, on 1.51, on both Easy and Normal. While the race does start without problems, the AI racers get stuck on one lane after a while and it's not too difficult to pass them after the first lap or so.

I honestly can't say if this is the intended behavior of the game at the beginning, but the races are kinda anti-climatic.

[Kajuru]

I honestly can't say if this is the intended behavior of the game at the beginning, but the races are kinda anti-climatic.

The cart behaves normally from the start.

[Mirda]

the cars behave normaly from the start if you play the game on a real snes.

in Top gear 3000, the best bonus come from completing the race without bumping another car. It doesn't make sense that all cars always use the same line.....


Deathlike2: you mention advance AI, fact is the "ai" work the following way in TG3K.

example:
if the car move to the left the first time.... if will go to the left as long as it doesn't reach the last lane. At that point it start going right until it reach the extreme right.... etc.

Only the time at which they move and the starting direction seem to be random.

I think we are very far from advance AI if we could call that AI

[FitzRoy]

So is this another one of those "chip not treated like a real coprocessor, so weird timing errors occur?" Or is it actually the DSP4 emulation itself?

[Deathlike2]

If I knew the answer, I'd let you know.

This is the same game everyone wanted emulated (and annoying enough to get a filter)?

[byuu]

So is this another one of those "chip not treated like a real coprocessor, so weird timing errors occur?" Or is it actually the DSP4 emulation itself?

I suspect it's both. We know for certain that the DSP-4 emulation is not bit-perfect (nor is the DSP-3.) We also know that the DSP-3 and DSP-4 games are more timing sensitive than the bit-perfect DSP-1 and DSP-2 games (though Suzaku 8 Hours shows some obvious problems, too.)

I doubt it's related to the base SNES emulation, given how well nearly every other normal game works. But we can't really test that with the state DSP-4 emulation is in.

[Agozer]

If I knew the answer, I'd let you know.

This is the same game everyone wanted emulated (and annoying enough to get a filter)?

Yes. Frankly speaking, I still don't know what the fuzz was all about. TG3000 isn't exactly groundbreaking or anything like that.

[snkcube]

If I knew the answer, I'd let you know.

This is the same game everyone wanted emulated (and annoying enough to get a filter)?

Yes. Frankly speaking, I still don't know what the fuzz was all about. TG3000 isn't exactly groundbreaking or anything like that.

It had guns on the car hoods!

[grinvader]

If I knew the answer, I'd let you know.

This is the same game everyone wanted emulated (and annoying enough to get a filter)?

Yes. Frankly speaking, I still don't know what the fuzz was all about. TG3000 isn't exactly groundbreaking or anything like that.

It had guns on the car hoods!

Actually not. Which was the older filter to begin with ("racing game that sucks because it lacks guns on car hoods" or smth) before we got around to the "racing game that is emulated on the latest zsnes WIP" one.

[snkcube]

Ah, damn. I was wrong all this time. That filter brings back funny times.

[Ricardo]

The bug started in this zsnes release :

July 10 2005 WIP (ZSNES 07/24 WIP ) so the release before that the cars were allright like top gear 3000 snes cart ....

it was: May 19 2005 WIP (ZSNES 05/19 WIP ) that was the last release that the car in tg3000 were fine.....so that's it...

i hope u fix when u can, thanks!!

[kode54]

PS. The exact filter was "some racing game that doesn't have a gun on the hood and therefore sucks"

(Also, if anybody is feeling nostalgic, I have some board database backups from 2003 and 2004. Like, from the day before the last reset.)

[Jonas Quinn]

I fixed the issue. The problem was that I fixed some unused variable warnings and forgot to recreate some code that was essential.

To fix it you have to replace the code at line 2090 in dsp4emu.c:

Code: Select all

//int16_t in1a = DSP4_READ_
int16_t in2a = DSP4_READ_WORD();
//int16_t in3a = DSP4_READ_WORD();

with:

Code: Select all

/*int16_t in1a = */DSP4_READ_WORD();
int16_t in2a = DSP4_READ_WORD();
/*int16_t in3a = */DSP4_READ_WORD();

[Ricardo]

anyone can explain how i can turn the debugger off on zsnes 1.51 src..it ask of some files called lpdcurses... can't finish compiling it with Mingw so how can remove the debugger.. i want to play Top gear 3000 with that fixed i already fixed that in the code.Thank u

[Ricardo]

is that possible to do a research in the code so what functions activate that secret bobus B that thing is a mystery since long time ago.. some ppl ahve acquired without knowing how to get it....and most ppl cannot get it anyway...maybe there's no code to activate that bonus after the end of the race...