megadriv/cavestory missing ja, zh, ko characters

[soundsnow]

MAME version

0.262

System information

Google Android 12
Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G

INI configuration details

No response

Emulated system/software

No response

Incorrect behaviour

Open these three files and start a new game. It shows "???????"
Cave Story - Doukutsu Monogatari
Chinese, Japanese, Korean
megadriv/cavestory_zh.zip/doukutsu-zh.bin
megadriv/cavestory_ja.zip/doukutsu-ja.bin
megadriv/cavestory_ko.zip/doukutsu-ko.bin

They're green, but I think they should be orange.

Expected behaviour

Chinese
数？你在吗？是我。
English
Sue? You there? It's me.

Steps to reproduce

No response

Additional details

another question, how to switch between NTSC-J, NTSC-U and PAL? Some Mega Drive games include English and Japanese, but it can only change languages ​​by detecting the region. There is no option to change the language in the game
Streets of Rage II (Japan, Europe) (En,Ja)

what's snap and software folders?
how to use?
snap is snapshot? or it's screenshot?

[angelosa]

Probably just requires to be mounted thru megadrij instead of genesis (NTSC-U) / megadriv (PAL).

[soundsnow]

Probably? No! Impossible! @angelosa
I created Mega Drive Japan and Genesis USA folder. Run Japanese version, ???????
You can try it yourself, useless
It's a bug. MAME should be fixed for this.

[FoxhackDN]

... okay, they got a point. Something's up.

If you load cavestory_zh from the software list or the command line, and start a game, your "Load Save Data" screen (where you select where to save your game) starts up in English, and then the game text only shows question marks.

BUT. If you go into the game options in the menu first, back out, then start a game? The text shows up correctly.

My guess is the game does some sort of initialization at the start which fails in MAME. I tried the game out in Gens GS and it worked fine right away.

Edit: Forgot to mention, the system region doesn't matter here, it behaved the same in megadriv and megadrij.

Edit again: This also appears to affect cavestory_es. It's got to be something related to how it loads non-English (Extended ASCII / Unicode?) characters.

[soundsnow]

Another choice Genesis Plus GX

[angelosa]

Found a workaround: if you enter options and apply then the text fixes itself.
I'm not sure if the bug is upstream or a MAME bug (pending real HW check), IF latter then this is a side effect of #7403

Another choice Genesis Plus GX

BlastEm, MAME core is unmaintained by the original author and basically deprecated for all I care.

[FoxhackDN]

Found a workaround: if you enter options and apply then the text fixes itself. I'm not sure if the bug is upstream or a MAME bug (pending real HW check), IF latter then this is a side effect of #7403

You don't need to hit apply, just going into the options and exiting with the right button will fix the text issue.

[angelosa]

I'm not sure if the bug is upstream or a MAME bug (pending real HW check), IF latter then this is a side effect of #7403

Errata: I forgot that rom_sram also needs a default length set in XML.

[soundsnow]

Found a workaround: if you enter options and apply then the text fixes itself. I'm not sure if the bug is upstream or a MAME bug (pending real HW check), IF latter then this is a side effect of #7403

Another choice Genesis Plus GX

BlastEm, MAME core is unmaintained by the original author and basically deprecated for all I care.

Yes, it's a MAME bug. They tested for real hardware and high compatibility Mega Drive emulators

[angelosa]

Yes, it's a MAME bug.

It was, you see that purple button that says Closed? Means something that is fixed already, and my original point was right all along -> missing SRAM hookup.

They tested for real hardware and high compatibility Mega Drive emulators

So how do you explain this? It technically tries to write to the SRAM, it fails, it starts up the game in the wrong language path, it fixes itself if you go to the options and back, all symptoms that smells like a bug/issue in the software if it flags itself about being unable to save.

[soundsnow]

I don't know, I'm not a developer. I just remember seeing someone play the Japanese version of this game using a "RA" software. He plays from start to end without saving. It also seemed to have chosen something with a "GX" ending. Later I found out that it was a Mega Drive emulator on GameCube.

[soundsnow]

Why not delete these old versions? 0.8.0 is the latest
0.7.0: English, Italian, French, Portuguese

[rb6502]

MAME preserves all versions of software. Same as we do for arcades.

[ICEknigh7]

They tested for real hardware and high compatibility Mega Drive emulators

Looks like there's some more testing left to do on real hardware: