Update: I'm looking for tracer, CDL, and logging support for any PCE emulator that supports the SF2 mapper. The video/sound emulation doesn't even need to be that accurate. FCEUX is open source and could be used as an example (it's what makes hacking NES stuff, and disassembling - pretty awesome). I know of no PCE that supports these features. Mednafen has simple logging, but nothing close to this.
If you can code in C/C++, but no PCE related stuffs/code, take a look at to see if you can help out in this department (for an open source emulator). Or maybe get some emulator authors to support this. This would help out tremendously.
I'm curious if there was any desire (any real desire, not just 'yeah, that'd be cool') to hack and reconfigure SF2 to the arcade card. What do you guys think?
If enough knowledge was researched and recorded, the game could be hacked in many ways. Including adding in additional characters, new moves, etc. As stuff gets known/understood, it can evolve into a pseudo source code project as well (similar to the Sonic decode projects, and some for NES as well). The idea works like this; you include binary parts of the original game to be assemble along side new source code. You eventually work your way towards full source code - but that's not entire needed or required. I use this method for a lot of my hacking (Dracula X would be a good example). Stuff can be relocated without actually fully understanding how it works. Just the basics are need. Most games are divided down into subroutines anyway. It's possible to hack or completely replace them, as long as you know what the input parameters are and what the output is supposed to be. It is actually that simple.
The problem lies with time. While I have the skill, I don't exactly have a lot of free time on my hands. I have other stuff that I'd like to do (both related to pce and coding, and not related). I swear that it seems like that I'm the only person that does any sort of in-depth hacking for PCE. Especially outside of translation hacking. The only thing that comes to memory, is Ccovell's Rtype hack project for the Supergrafx (not sure how far that went). And recently, cabbage's SF2 translation hack.
Would anyone be interested in working on this as a public community effort (mostly talking about coders/hackers)? Do fighting games on the PCE actually have that big of a fan base? Once it's hacked/reverse engineered to a certain level, it wouldn't even have to be SF2 specific anymore. It could be ~something~ more along the lines of OpenBOR or Mugen (though that makes me cringe a little). The arcade card CD platform would allow for quite a bit of flexibility for graphics and animation. Even SGX support could be added (that would be fairly easy).
I already have quite a bit of info about the game structure. And it didn't take that long to get that info, either. I have decent experience with writing hooks and relocating code for hacks (needed for hucard and CD translations). But I am not interested in doing something like this alone. It'd be more something along the lines that I could help with; jumping in and out of the project.
Let me know your opinions. Be brutally honest. If you like the idea, but not the targeted game - don't be afraid to say so. While I'm looking for coder/hacker opinions, anyone's opinion is welcome. The reason I bring this up, is that it's pretty doable. And I have a bit invested in this. I want to see Fragmare's upgraded backgrounds added to the game. But if that's all the comes of this, then so be it. This would be a project that blurs the line between homebrew and hacking (much like the Sonic recompile hacks).
PS: If you choose the last option, I have no LSD to give you. You're on your own there.
