Options for Trace logs?

[SephirothTNH]

What are my options for tracing with PCE games? 

I've got my table figured out and I've got how the text gets loaded mostly figured out.  It seems like the game actually searches by line number.  Like if it wants line 10 it reads bytes until it finds line 10 rather than having a pointer. 

It would really go a lot faster if I could run a trace and read the log rather than single stepping.  Mednafen has a logger but from what I've read on it and tried it won't work for my purposes.

[elmer]

What are my options for tracing with PCE games? 

Breakpoints and Savestates?

Sorry, I can't be of any real help, but felt that it would be nice if someone replied to your question. 

I've not needed trace logging while hacking Zeroigar, and have just got away with breakpoints and keeping annotated notes ... and that's with the 45 separate "programs" on the Zeroigar CD that I've had to hack so far.

If there's too much going on in the code for me to quickly figure out just *which* of many routines is doing the one thing that I'm looking for, then I'll put in "RET" or "NOP" instructions to stub-out the alternatives, one-by-one until I find the one that I'm looking for.

I just tried to get Mednafen's Trace Logger ... but can't seem to get it to display anything at all. 

[SephirothTNH]

Thanks for the reply.  There isn't too much going on so I guess it's not necessary.  I guess I'm just used to the comfort of the tools available for PC hacking. 

I've figured out most of the text routines.  The only thing I haven't figured out is how it handles lines that cross 8k banks.  I'm assume auto loads the next bank.  Either that or voodoo.  I'll probably just force the dialogue to a line that crosses the bank and see what it does.

What I don't have a clue how I'm going to do is hack the title screen.  Since it is so foreign to me.  I'm used to whole graphics not tiles that get reused. 

[Bonknuts]

Bizhawk is an emulator that supports tracing and logging (and PCE/CD). It has CDL support (I was able to disassemble a few nes games and one PCE game to near 99% completion through that CDL map). I had the support added for me, so I'm not sure if it's in the public releases or not. Check out the #mednafen channel (two of the authors hang out there) and ask there. Or download and try it out. It's listed as a TAS emulator, but it has other uses.

 Seems they moved from google code: https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk

[Punch]

Why no one ever mentioned Bizhawk before... god damn if it ain't what I was searching for all this time. I personally like the BG/Tile viewer, finally no more suffering

[DarkKobold]

Why no one ever mentioned Bizhawk before... god damn if it ain't what I was searching for all this time. I personally like the BG/Tile viewer, finally no more suffering

Interestingly, I'm a contributor to BizHawk. It was originally started as an emulator to do multi-platform TASes. adelikat, one of the two main programmers, is an admin at TASvideos, and a good friend.

But never forget, TASes are evil.

[NightWolve]

Why no one ever mentioned Bizhawk before... god damn if it ain't what I was searching for all this time. I personally like the BG/Tile viewer, finally no more suffering

Interestingly, I'm a contributor to BizHawk. It was originally started as an emulator to do multi-platform TASes. adelikat, one of the two main programmers, is an admin at TASvideos, and a good friend.

But never forget, TASes are evil.

Yeah, I had noticed you're credited on that BizHawk emulator... I mentioned it to Professor a while back when I demo'ed progress on my Emerald Dragon translation project and pointed him to an emulator to try. It is useful in hacking because it directly accepts a CUE file of a BIN or ISO/WAV image file set instead of having to first mount it to a CD/DVD emulator like MagicEngine requires you to do.

So, what did you actually manage to contribute to this emulator ?? I was curious.

[DarkKobold]

So, what did you actually manage to contribute to this emulator ?? I was curious.

I'm not interested in turning this into yet another photofest/pissing match. Your dismissive "did you actually manage" demonstrates that you are.

[NightWolve]

RAWR! I'm not answering you! You treated me like shit around here like sparky, PP, and the rest of 'em! HMPH!

Awwwww, alright DarkKo, never mind then.