mer-curious

😊 Hello Tux! Thanks a lot for this new release and for the quick follow-up fix. I haven't tried the new cheats system yet, but I certainly will eventually, and then I'll come back here to report any issues with that in Windows. But I still have my quick feedback from my previous report: - The Guide button from the X360 controllers are automatically mapped to the "Stop emulation" function now, but you cannot leave the GUI with the button as you would with the ESC key. Isn't it possible to make it work as exactly as the ESC key does in this function? Otherwise it's just another "Return to the GUI" alternative as we discussed in the other thread. For reference, you can open and close the GUI in Retroarch with the Guide button. - By the way, the GUI glitch in the Inputs menu is still present in this version, as you see here. But now you need to connect a controller with the program already opened and displaying the "Raine controls" menu in order to trigger the glitch. A little uncommon to have this scenario, but it's still there if you would like to take a look. - Finally, I was thinking about a new way to remember the cursor position in the game selection menu. Currently if you select a game from the Recents or the Most played lists, run the game and then return to the game selection list, Raine will take you to the game name in the main list instead of the top of the list which is where you were (the Recents and Most played are placed there). My suggestion is to implement the following condition: if you load a game from the Recents or Most played lists, the cursor will be in the top of the list when you return to the game selection menu; likewise, if you load a game directly by its name in the main full game selection list, then Raine will remember the cursor position in that game and take you back there when returning to the game selection list. I thought of this because playing using a controller from the couch becomes easier if you can quickly select a game using the Recents and Most played lists, but when you return to the game selection then the cursor is down there in the game name, so it takes a few moments longer to return to the top and enter the lists again. Anyway, just some minor details which I come through when using your emulator in some different scenarios. If it's easily doable, OK, if not, let it for another time. I really appreciate your attention to read my posts. Thank you so much again for your work.

Ah, so the function is already there and I hadn't realized it yet... Now I was thinking that I was mislead by the way these options are named in this menu. Perhaps we could call the "Stop emulation" function as "Show/hide the GUI (stop emulation)" or "Stop emulation (show/hide the GUI)" to more clearly state what this function does? I wouldn't probably be mislead by the other option in this menu if this option was named liked this I guess. What do you think? I think I wasn't clear here. I was thinking about making the Guide button in X360 controllers as the default button for the currently named "Stop emulation" function (that is, for calling and leaving the GUI), but without the need of configuring it, just like happens in Retroarch. As soon as Raine identified an X360 controller it would assign the Guide button to that function (of course with the possibility of changing it if desired). This would give that button an useful function by default in the program. Do you like this idea? No problem, I just found it annoying when I mapped the Guide button to that function and couldn't see the new binding correctly in the GUI, but playing with the window size eventually works around the issue as you see in the video, at least while you don't take a look at it. No problem, I was just thinking of an easy, quick menu function to swap/invert the B-A, Y-X Nintendo button layout to the SDL "standard" X360 A-B, X-Y button layout which is what Raine uses for NG games. But since I don't intend to use this Switch Pro controller much in Raine I may just follow your suggestion and remap the buttons and live with a custom configuration for it. Thank you anyway for your fast reply and continuing work in the program.

Hello Tux! I was wondering if it would be possible to have the "Return to the GUI" function work similarly as the ESC key? That is, not only to show the GUI but also to hide it too? This would come in handy when we are using a controller away from the keyboard and then map the "Return to GUI" function to a controller button. Maybe you could mimic the behavior of the ESC key in this function then, no? Or you could make it work in such a way that using this function in a sub-menu (by hitting Tab or the associated button) would instantly return to the game, instead of going back all the sub-menus until the main menu, and then finally to the game, which is what the ESC key does. Anyway, if you could implement this feature you could rename it to something like "Show/Hide the GUI" or "Leave or return to the GUI" to better reflect its new behavior. Also, is it possible to have the GUIDE button in the X360 controllers mapped to this function as default? This would give this button the same function it has in Retroarch, which is to toggle the user interface. As a final comment, I've found a minor GUI glitch while trying to associate the Guide button to this "Return to the GUI" function. It seems the menu width does not instantly adapt to the the new bindings and then the joystick control is mostly hidden, as you see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t103CAOzUV7RPGjkTz7-aU4__udjauc-/ As you see in the video, it also happens in resolutions higher than the default 640x480, and when the window is restored down to the default size the width is fixed. It's really a minor glitch, but I decided to report it to see if it could be easily fixed. Thank you so much in advance for your time. 😊 PS: Did you happen to think about this feature?

Hey Tux! Thanks for the fast reply and for trying this again. I can reproduce the crash consistently here in two different Windows installations, one with version 8.1 and other with 10. In Windows 8.1 Windows crash report shows something after the crash, but I'm not sure if it's useful for you, here (in Portuguese, sorry): Nome do Evento de Problema: APPCRASH Nome do Aplicativo: raine.exe Versão do Aplicativo: 0.0.0.0 Carimbo de Data/Hora do Aplicativo: 642e6e02 Nome do Módulo de Falhas: msvcrt.dll Versão do Módulo de Falhas: 7.0.9600.17415 Carimbo de Data/Hora do Módulo de Falhas: 545055fe Código de Exceção: c0000005 Deslocamento de Exceção: 00000000000011f1 Versão do sistema operacional: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101 Identificação da Localidade: 1046 Informações Adicionais 1: de15 Informações Adicionais 2: de15584db83bd265c681fd35068d70bf Informações Adicionais 3: ae58 Informações Adicionais 4: ae5856772cf22858e984437f0d69b60a Maybe Wine is not able to accurately reproduce the Windows environment then? As for my setup, I just have in the IPS folder: - the kof97 folder with all the *.dat files from those online packs (the Chinese, the EmuFrance and the GitHub one); - an empty kof98 folder; - the kof97.ini with my selected patches. As you can check here: Yes, it would be much better if Unibios was updated with this change. Perhaps when it becomes open source this could happen? Interestingly it hasn't become yet, even if it's mostly used nowadays with emulators for digital software preservation... I think the game was Agressors of Dark Kombat, indeed. Perfect! I'm very happy you liked this idea and that it wasn't so difficult to implement. 😊 Yes, I thought of using the Controller mapping option to work-around this issue in the first place, but since this could apply to other Nintendo-based controllers, I thought of suggesting such a feature to quickly and easily swap the Nintendo layout B and A and Y and X to match the NG/Xbox/PS face buttons layout. I don't know why the SDL database maintainer accepted that order for the Switch Pro controller when they seem to adapt every controller layout in the database to match the XBox A-B-X-Y (this is what they did with my Ascii Seamic Controller when I suggested it). But with the Switch Pro controller they kept the Nintendo layout... Anyway, maybe it's different to Nintendo controllers then? I wouldn't mind if you added this buttons swap function just for the games though if it was easier, that is, preserving the GUI Confirm and Return functions to Nintendo's A (right) button to confirm and the B (down) button to return/cancel. But I can of course live with the remapping if adding that function could be difficult. Thank you so much again for your fast response and for your continuing support of the program. 😊

Hello Tux! I was finally able to check the new version and here I am with my brief feedback. It seems that the issues I reported in my previous posts are finally corrected, except for the crash when clicking in an empty folder in the IPS selection menu. Do you intend to fix this eventually? Whatever you decide, I'm already very glad for these fixes. Now for some new discussions, I would like to report an issue I'm having with the Unibios: whenever I call the Unibios in-game menu with Start + Select/Coin it will go black after some moments. If I want to show the menu again I have to either touch the directional pad or the buttons, as you see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VDqGCYPrRRjP258wOhGh4nmFUnmdxzme/ I think this is a feature from the Unibios menu to protect CRT displays from the burn in effect, but recently it started to turn off too quickly in Raine, I don't know why. Maybe it's something on my side? But I don't remember changing anything related to the Unibios behavior... Anyway, I'll wait your comments on that. Now I have two feature requests: Request 1: an "Enable IPS patches" option to allow us to toggle the patches on and off just like in FBNeo. Currently if someone wants to disable the patches it is necessary to deselect all the *.dat files in the IPS selection menu, and repeat the process again to enable them. This is not so user-friendly, so this feature would make this process much easier and quicker. I have an idea where the feature could be placed: in the "Game options" menu or in the "Options" in the Game selection menu. If you place it in the Game Options menu it would become a game dependant setting, no? This could be interesting, except that it would require the user to load the game first in order to turn on/off the patches, and then a hard reset or a restart of the program so the option take effect, right? Now if you place it in "Options" in the Game selection menu it could be enabled or disabled before the game is loaded, so it would be more user friendly if placed there. Also, it would be "visually" closer to the "Preload IPS dat file" option, which is better for navigation and organization in the GUI. So I think it's best to place it there and set it to on as default. What do you think of this idea? Request 2: a "Swap controller face buttons layout" (I don't know exactly how to name it) in the Inputs menu to quickly adapt the XBOX 360 controller face buttons layout to the Nintendo controller layout. I felt the need for that because recently I bought a Switch Pro Controller to play with my friend's Switch and then tried it in Raine to see how it would perform there. It turns out that it is recognized and mapped automatically but the official SDL mapping for the controller (and possibly for other Nintendo controllers) follows the A, B, X, Y button layout instead of Nintendo's B, A, Y, X. So in NEOGEO games, for example, NG button A becomes the right button (instead of the down), NG button B becomes the down button (instead of the right), NG C is now the top button (instead of the left), and finally the D button is mapped to the left button (instead of the top). This is the NEOGEO original button layout: D C B A The X360 button layout Y X B A PlayStation button layout triangle square circle cross Nintendo button layout X Y A B You see that both the X360 and PS button layout respect the NG one in the SDL configuration database, but that's not the case for the Switch controller. It is registered in SDL as exactly as it looks, so the NG buttons don't match with the original order. This new option would allow us to keep Raine's default configuration as suggested from the SDL database while easily adapting it to correct the face buttons layout for such controllers. I don't know if this could be easily doable but it would really come in handy for these uncommon SDL configurations. That's my comments for now. Thank you so much in advance for your time and for considering these requests.

Hello Tux! Thank you so much for this new release. As you expect, I was finally able to load the game with the IPS patches enabled in this version. The patches seem to be working properly, except that I receive a message telling about some incompatibility with some ROM files, like this: But the patches seem to work OK regardless of this warning. Except that, some bugs which I reported in my previous posts remain not fixed yet. They are: - the crash when you try to open an empty folder in the IPS selector. You said this crash was right to happen, but isn't it possible to throw a message to the user here, something like "No *.dat files in this folder.", and then return to the folder selection instead of crashing? Maybe this would be a more elegant solution for this limitation, no? - the gui glitch in the IPS file selector reported here. Anyway, I'm very happy that we have this feature working in Windows now. I think Raine is virtually in parity with FBNeo feature-wise, even more if we think about the sound associations. The only thing lacking I guess is the rasters emulation in NG and CPS2 games. Thank you so much again for your work and for not giving up on Windows just yet. 😅

Hello Tux! Thank you so much for your willingness of releasing a new version mostly focused on my bug reports. So I mainly tested what I have reported in my recent posts in the forum, which means I didn't test so much. But here it is my quick feedback: - the Gangan/Agressors of Dark Combat black sprites issue is still present. Actually it is as exactly as in version 0.95. I have to state that I always do a new installation for every Raine release, so I don't have any old settings from 0.95 here, which is strange, since you said this bug had been fixed by removing the speed hacks options from the default settings... Edit: it seems that speed hacks are still enabled by default in a new installation in version 0.95.1. If I manually disable the option the black sprites issue is gone in this game. - the sound sample rate remains at 11khz when I start Raine with the DS4 controller plugged in and switch the sound output device to my PC's internal speakers. - the double kof97 folder in the IPS file selector is gone. I can select my *.dat files again through Raine but they still won't work. I get the same message as before: (PS: I set my *.ini from Raine, no manual editing) - If I have an empty folder in my IPS folder such as "kof98" and try to access it through Raine the program crashes. - the IPS folder is not embedded in the program's zip file, it is only generated the first time you open the application. For standardization, I think it would be better to already pack it there with the other Raine folders, no? This also helps setting up a new installation. - the glitch in the IPS file selector is still unsolved. That's it for now. I'm sorry for not having a lot of good news on the IPS feature yet. Maybe the next version will finally have this resolved. Thank you so much again for your time and continuing support.

Thank you so much for your continuing work in this feature. I forgot to mention that I had already tried to create the *.ini file from Raine without touching anything in the file later, and had the same results sadly. That's why I kept waiting for a further investigation from you on that issue. I did everything you recommended in the past comments but couldn't make the patches to work no matter what I tried. Anyway, now I created a kof98 folder in the IPS folder to see if it would finally load those patches but incredibly it didn't. Actually I can't even see the *.dat files anymore using Raine. This is what's happening here: - Raine is always crashing whenever I click on the empty kof98 folders (in the plural because now there's two of them) - No *.dat files are shown in the kof97 folder A screen capture of the issue (download the file if it renders in low resolution in the Google player): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CXdag2sQMdvI5tC7jq4uJIPLrJE4Yvm5/view?usp=sharing I don't know why it is not showing the dat files anymore in the kof97 folder. Even if try to navigate into the IPS directory, the program crashes, as you see in the video. Hopefully you have already stumbled upon that issue too and fixed in your recent reviewing, but if not, it would be good to try to reproduce it so the next version is indeed free of bugs. But I'm really looking forward to finally seeing this feature working in Raine (in Windows, I mean, because in Linux it seems OK at least). Thank you so much again for your work. PS: could you also reproduce the GUI glitch in the IPS file selector?

Hello Tux! I'm sorry for taking long to reply. I was hoping you would eventually try to investigate this a little further and post anything later about it, but since you didn't I left this feature for another time then. After rereading your reply I noticed that I forgot to mention that I also tried a kof97.ini file with just the *.dat files in the very beginning, and sadly they still won't load in the emulator. This is how I have them here: 2-Stage1.dat 3-hchr2ps.dat 97lx.dat k1-TimePS.dat k4-flash.dat There is something still wrong with Raine detecting and loading the IPS files. I still get the same error message below: Perhaps this error has to do with the two folders it shows in the beginning which you didn't reproduce yet? This is what I have in my IPS folder: Hopefully you'll reproduce this eventually. Yes, I simply have my kof97 folder in the IPS folder and this is what Raine shows me: And finally there is the GUI glitch, which I show in this capture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tJRLyayBAP-FafJCqPPf_5Ue20YI9yH1/ By the way, here Google Drive is rendering the video in low resolution. If it happens with you too, just download it and it should be in the correct resolution. All in all, I guess you will need to try all of these reports in Windows in order to reproduce them since you aren't being able to do that in Linux. Hopefully you'll have time and motivation for that in the near future. Thank you so much again for your attention.

Hello Tux! I'm finally back to my bug reports. I suppose you have checked and fixed all of them here in this thread, except this one. At least I didn't notice any related commit to that in the GitHub commits list. I'm sorry if I lost it or if I'm being boring with this chase for good text messages in Raine. It's just that it may help translators if they ever try to update or create new translation files. Thank you again for your time and understanding.

Hello Tux! That's really good news! So now we may still have this issue of picking the "wrong" sound output device, but at least the sound will not be degraded anymore, right? Hopefully no one will come across this issue until the next release. I should give you my feedback when I try that in the next version It was good in the end to always try a new config file to help finding unpredictable bugs. Thank you again for your time and work.

Thank you for the explanation. Interestingly I always do a new installation for every Raine release to avoid bugs and I had this issue with the DS4 audio output recently. Perhaps it was an update with SDL2? Anyway, from what I understood it was supposed to get my normal audio output device in Windows since it had to be the first on the list, no? Or is the DS4 somehow taking priority in this list in Windows? Another issue I've found is that even if you happen to know what the issue is with Raine and change the audio output device in the Sound Options, the sample rate is not adjusted accordingly, so the sound remains degraded, as you see in this capture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1065t11Awn0inl_37mD_QHezB5uhkB61T/view?usp=sharing I understand nothing about audio sample rate, so I had to try the sound options until I found what was wrong and have the sound working correctly. Maybe the sample rate could be adjusted automatically too? We should also consider that for someone new to the program this could be very hard to figure out. Also, it's not common for emulators to have such an option available. I've tested many of them here and couldn't find any that provide this option. In some you can change the audio driver, but never the audio output device. I suppose developers assume the user can change the output device in the OS if he/she wants that in the emulator, which is also I had always assumed. But since you want to keep this option available for some use cases, I'd like to know if it wouldn't be possible to disable it just for the Windows builds then? Windows is a more popular OS and following the standard of other emulators out there may avoid users from accidentally facing this issue, as exactly as happened with me. Do you think this is a good idea? That's it for my comments for now. Thank you so much again for your time.

Hello Tux! I'm sorry for the late reply. I'm not sure if the difference was so little as you suggest, since I'm used to playing the KOF games and was able to notice the difference in the NEOGEO logo sound and clearly in the external audio tracks, which I mostly use to play these games. Also, recently I connected my laptop computer to a TV through HDMI and Raine would not detect the TV's audio output as default, it would select the laptop's internal speakers which was quite strange since Windows' default audio output became the TV speakers. When we connect the laptop to the TV over HDMI the TV's speakers is automatically set as default by Windows, so I don't understand why Raine picked the laptop's internal speakers instead. Anyway, since you want to keep this option because it can be useful in some cases, I would like to know if it would be possible to Raine detect Windows' current default audio output device and automatically select it by default instead of suggesting something else. I guess this would eliminate both the issue with the DS4 controller and the HDMI TV speakers I've experienced here (and possibly others too with other devices maybe). I don't know if this could be doable, but that's my suggestion for now. Thank you so much again for your attention.

I was able to remove the stroke by just copying the text to Notepad (apparently the stroke is a formatting attribute, so when we copy to Notepad it is eliminated). Here you have it: Pay attention that he says it is "done", so he could work around this issue already hopefully. But I was just curious if maybe this was something you could work on (Neo)Raine, if ever possible/doable. Thank you again for your time.

Hello Tux! Thanks for checking that thread. So what Deuce complains there about the pause function in NeoRaine is already fixed in recent Raine versions, right? He also explains in the thread that the script was already 100% translated and he had a beta version which leaked back then and then someone released this version without his permission. That's probably the version you have there. But now he is indeed finishing all the details in his work, especially in relation to the synchronization between some voiced Japanese dialogues and the English translation. I believe it will be worth trying if someone is interested in the Samurai Spirits franchise and/or just curious on how a NGCD RPG game would perform if more companies released games for the system. Thank you so much for your attention.

Hello Tux and sagatwarrior. I was able to find a thread at romhacking.netwhich was created by Deuce recently and he mentions a limitation he found in Raine which wouldn't let him test his translation as exactly as he wanted. I think it's something to do with the pause function in Raine. Maybe Tux could check that and see if it's possible to help him if it's the case. Here's the thread: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=36697.0 PS: Deuce also explains in the thread that he never finished the translation back then because a part of the work was lost in a HDD crash, which made him lose the motivation to continue until recently.

Hello Tux! I have posted some feedback related to the IPS feature and other issues in some other threads in the forum, so here I will just quickly report some new unrelated issues I found in my recent testings. The graphics in Agressors of Dark Combat (NEOGEO game) seems broken. Many parts in the game show completely black. Take a look: Also, if you start the game by hitting Start it will be totally black too. I don't know if it matters, but I'm using Unibios 4.0 in Japan/Console mode. I accidentally stumbled upon this message by trying the numerous old versions I tested to figure out the sound issue I was having: As you see, the message is not very clear and the sentence organization is confusing. If you tell me what you meant I can help you review the text. Finally, the first time I tried to download the new DLL files pack Firefox refused to download it because the file could be dangerous and so I had to confirm the risk in order to download it. I think it's because they are not hosted in a HTTPS protocol, no? Also, you could invert the order of the DLL packs in the page to match the one for the Raine versions: first the 32 bit one and then the 64 bit below. It's a tiny detail but it does help to visually localize which pack is for which version. I guess that's it for this quick report. Thank you so much again for your work.

Hello Tux! It seems that sound output is broken after version 0.92.4. Apparently all versions after this are outputting sound in a lower quality. I've noticed that in version 0.92.6 and later Raine introduced the option to change the sound driver and the default sample rate is not the standard for CD audio, which is 44100 I think, take a look: In version 0.92.4 (the last good one) we had this: How come have I only noticed this issue now after over a year of new releases? I don't know exactly the answer. Recently I tested version 0.95 with my PS4 DS4 controller connected the first time I configured my Raine installation here and the program selected the DS4 sound as the first sound output. I noticed this because I was having no sound at all from the program and everything else in the system was working fine. Then I finally changed the sound driver option again to my default Realtek Audio speakers and realized the sound wasn't as good as before. But why only now the sound became poor? That's something I'm still trying to figure out. The fact is that I didn't see any driver updates from Windows and my Realtek Audio driver is from December 2019. Anyway, perhaps we could fix this by removing the "Sound driver" option in Raine? This would avoid it defaulting to unexpected audio output sources such as the DS4 controller or other modern controllers which also support audio output. We can easily select this audio source in the Windows taskbar if we want it, no? Also, we need to make sure 44100 is the default sample rate otherwise the sound will be degraded. Hopefully you will be able to reproduce this or help me understand what might have happened here. Thank you so much again for your attention. PS: the old versions page was really helpful in this case in which I had to go back and test old versions. I downloaded and tested every version released before the most recent one until I found the one working fine here. I could not only test version 0.93.4 because it complained about some missing files.

So, continuing from my previous post, unfortunately I wasn't able to enable any of the IPS files yet. I copy and paste my kof97.ini from FBNeo to Raine's IPS folder, and all I get when I start the game is this message: And then I have to click "Ok" a few times in order to finally start the game. For information, this is what my FBNeo's kof97.ini file has inside: // FinalBurn Neo v1.0.0.03 --- IPS Config File for kof97 (The King of Fighters '97 (NGM-2320)) 2-Stage1.dat 3-hchr2ps.dat 97lx.dat k1-TimePS.dat k4-flash.dat I can see the "X" mark in those *.dat files when I navigate the list in Raine, but interestingly they don't seem to work. Finally, I need to report a GUI glitch which I found in the IPS menu. If you scroll the list all the way down, click on the final *.dat file to select it and expand Raine's window, the file selection won't resize with the window expansion and will stay small. Here's a quick recording showing the issue happening: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tJRLyayBAP-FafJCqPPf_5Ue20YI9yH1/view?usp=sharing Also, if you pay attention, the "X" mark in the file is lost either maximizing or restoring down the window size. I think these are my comments for now on this new feature. Hopefully you'll be able reproduce and possibly fix some of them. Thank you so much again for your continuing work in the emulator.

Hello Tux! I'm sorry for the late reply. I had a busy week but I've finally had some time to test the IPS function again. I still couldn't test it unfortunately, but here are all my comments and feedback: Yes, I have already noticed this limitation, so what I do is just quote parts of the message and reply them separately, which is what I'm doing now. Yes, I'm sorry, but as I said, I didn't have much time to thoroughly test the new function and I always try to simulate someone who is configuring the function for the first time, and that is what happened here (the crash). I can confirm however that the program no longer crashes in the new 0.95 version with the work-around you made. Thank you for that. I'm happy that you liked this idea. I may create a pull request later suggesting some minor edition in the new texts you added with this new function. Hopefully it will call the translators' attention in the near future. So now let's return to some things in my previous reports: I copied the contents from the three IPS packs (the "Chinese", GitHub and Emu-France ones) to a folder called "kof97" and placed it in Raine's IPS folder, just as we do with FBNeo, and then if we open this option in Raine we have the two folders here. The first one takes to this: And the second one takes me to the list of *.dat files, which is what is expected: If you need I can upload my folder to Google Drive and share it with you, but the three packs are linked in the other thread in which we started discussing about the IPS feature. I think I wasn't clear enough here. I'm not worried about the blue area, but with the way the list scrolls when you use the mouse. If you scroll down once, the list is just half updated, not entirely. In the video I recorded you see that the "2-aifix.dat" file rests in the end of the displayed list, and if we scroll the list once it is still shown but now in the middle of the list, that is, we still see some files which we had already seen before scrolling down the list once. Another example is with the "2-combo2010.dat" file. You see in the video that it rests in the bottom of the displayed files, but if you scroll down the list once with the mouse it will still be visible in the middle, as well as some other files too. My idea is that with just one mouse scroll either up or down the full list shown be changed/updated for the next pack of strings. This could also be applied to the game selection list. I think that the more ROMs one has, the easier it will be to navigate through them if the list is updated faster with just one mouse scroll either up or down. I don't know if this would be easily doable though, but it would certainly come in handy especially now with this flooded lists of IPS files. Anyway, I'll wait your comments on that. I'll continue my feedback in a following post because this one is already very big. Thank you so much in advance for your time reading it.

Ok, I finally tried placing my FBNeo's kof97 folder into Raine's IPS folder and here are some preliminary comments: - two kof97 folders show in the menu, as you see below: Is this right? - when you scroll up or down one time with the mouse in the IPS menu, the page isn't changed totally, that is, it just scrolls the page partially and then we can only see some more lines instead of all new ones. Perhaps this could be changed in order to display a whole new parcel of lines since there can be a lot of *.dat files in the folder and skipping the page just partially makes it harder to see which files we have already checked and which we haven't. See the example in the video below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k3MuwncqsABwHSCRVQjghROLkmVQ3j9n/view?usp=sharing - when I enabled some *.dat files for KOF97 I received the following message: I don't know why I'm getting this message, but the result is that the patches aren't working for me here. I guess this is my quick feedback for now. Hopefully you'll be able to reproduce some of those issues and possibly fix them. Thank you so much again for your time.

Hello Tux! Thank you so much for working on the final details of this new feature. Now that you have released a new version I can give you a quick feedback since I haven't had the time to test it thorougly: - if you go to "Preload IPS *.dat file" and click on the two dots without anything in the IPS folder (or in a new Raine installation in which no files are there yet, which was my case) Raine will immediately crash. - I was thinking if it wouldn't be a better place to put this new feature inside the game selection screen so we could keep Raine's main menu as unmodified as before. So in game selection we would have something like: Recent games... Most played games... Preload IPS *.dat files... And then there we would find the current options you have already worked on for this new feature. Of course, if there aren't no recent games or no most played games data yet, the IPS option would be the only one to show before the playing data is created in the stats file. I don't know if that would be easily doable or not but I guess it makes sense to put it there since we are mostly talking about normal arcade IPS patches, not NGCD ones. If there are NGCD patches eventually, then we could also place such an option when we click on "Load Neo-Geo CD game". Let me know if you would agree with these changes. I should be placing some IPS files in Raine's folder and test them soon. Thank you so much again for your work. 😊

Hello Tux! Thank you so much for your efforts and time put into having this feature working similarly to FBNeo. There are some patches that greatly improve the options available in the original game, in a similar fashion ffman is doing with his cheat files. For example, I have five patches applied to KOF97, which give me a practice mode, an option to turn off the flash effect, an option to select the boss stages in versus matches, no time counter in character select screen and finally a random/roulette icon with all secret characters in character select screen. You can see them all here with screenshots if you would like to test them: https://imgur.com/a/oe6ok4z FBNeo generates an *.ini file in config -> ips with the ROM name and there we have all the patches currently selected for that game. In my very case, it is a kof97.ini file and inside we have: // FinalBurn Neo v1.0.0.03 --- IPS Config File for kof97 (The King of Fighters '97 (NGM-2320)) 2-Stage.dat 8r-hcsjh2n.dat 97lx.dat k1-TimePS.dat k4-flash.dat Perhaps you are already using that, or if not, this could be a good way to remember our selection to possibly share it with others and move it to a new installation if it's the case. These patches are all from the "Chinese pack" which was linked in the video description I posted in my first post. Interestingly there are many patches in this pack that claim to do the same thing but actually don't work here, so we have to set and test many of them to see which ones work or not. I still have to test the other packs to see if they have some good features too (to my taste, I mean). Anyway, apparently this seems all already possible in Raine, right? Thank you so much again for your recent work. 😊👍 Edit: after testing a little longer I found that the roulette patch obliges me to reselect my team before every match, which is not fine to me. So I removed this patch and added the following: 3-hchr2ps.dat This one shows all the secret characters in the character select screen including the final boss portrait in the middle and it won't oblige me to reselect the team before every match. You can see a screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/o3GOu7U

Hello Tux and ffman1985! I saw the discussion in the other thread about the recently added support for IPS patches in Raine and thought it would be better to split the discussion into a separate thread since there the focus is on ffman's cheats distribution, and the IPS discussion may become too long. After ffman shared the IPS file to remove the flash effect in K.O.F '96 and '97 I went and tried to find which other IPS patches people would have created and shared out there in the internet, and there's actually a lot of them. I link below some good IPS collections which I found for different arcade systems. Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JewKnkptZe8 This collection (link in the video description) is focused in Neo Geo games. Many patches are in Chinese with Chinese comments, so I could only understand what they did by copying and pasting the comment into a translator. Perhaps it's good to test this in Raine to see if the program can display the Chinese characters and comments correctly. Emu France's and Taoenwen's collection for FBNeo: https://github.com/taoenwen/FBNeo_IPS http://www.emu-france.com/emulateurs/6-arcades/89-final-burn/3794-ips-collection-v4-3-4-4-test/ Both these packs are targeted to FBNeo but should work with Raine too I suppose. They lack some of the patches present in the "Chinese pack", at least for K.O.F '97 (didn't test other games yet). To test Taoenwen's collection you need to download the complete master code in Git Hub. I tried to insert ffman "no flash effect" in FBNeo's IPS folder for both K.O.F '96 and '97 and the program didn't identify the files to patch the ROMs, so it's possible that some patches work and some don't depending on the emulators' IPS managers. If you check the video linked above you'll see how the patches work in FBNeo. You have to select the patches in the IPS Manager and then tick "Apply Patches" in order that the patches work. The IPS files selected are remembered after closing the program, but you always need to tick "Apply Patches" again every time you load the ROM so the IPS files take effect, which I don't think is very user friendly. For the patches that are applied before the ROM is loaded, I was thinking if Raine could show a message like "The game ROM needs to be reloaded for some patches to take effect. Reload / Cancel", and then the user would confirm or not reloading the game to see if or how the patches work. Finally, what do you think about renaming the option to "Game IPS patches" to keep the parallelism with the previous options? Anyway, I'm so glad you could add this feature to Raine to complement the cheats function already available in the program. I'm looking forward to test it as soon as you are happy with the stage of operation of this new feature. Thank you so much for your work.

Hello ffman1985 and Tux! It's nice that you are improving the cheats code and their way of working. I'd like to know from ffman1985 if he could possibly remove the "flash effect" which is present in the K.O.F games before K.O.F. '98. In K.O.F '98 and later titles SNK introduced an option to disable the flash effect probably due to seizure complaints. I don't suffer from seizure but indeed prefer playing with the effect off especially if in a dark room. You can see the flash effect in K.O.F '97 here, in minute 3:10: As you see in the video, when a character is defeated with a special move the screen will flash white and red and also quickly before and after the letters K.O. show in the screen. I doubt if it could be removed through a cheat, but since ffman is doing miracles with the Capcom titles, perhaps this could be possibly doable looking at what SNK did with the later titles? Anyway, just a request for the future of this thread perhaps. Thank you for your time. PS: by the way, Tux, in case you missed it, I finally replied to your concern about the "command/commands" discussion in the other thread. 👍