wich romset is better to have...

[iori]

well......i fear to look a great lamer asking this but...well....who cares....

it's 2 days that i'm putting order to my romsets with romcenter and i came across this doubt....

wich romset is better to have???

 

i've found that i have many different romsets of the same game like kof 98 or kof 99 and many others and i have a lot of definitions like not encrypted, fully decrypted, prototype...and many others.....

 

well...usually for mame games i try to download the parent rom of any gameset unless it's japanese in that case i try with a more language-friendly clone...but i was wondering about what is better to have for neo-geo games.....and wich are the differences for example between a kof 99 not encrypted and a kof 99 prototype

 

sorry for the lame question but i'm a bit confused

thanx for the help...

iori

[iori]

can really nobody help me with this?...i know it's probably a lame question but please i just need an advice!

[Agozer]

I always go with parents...unless it's japanese.

[iori]

this is the same i do for mame, but sometimes parent neogeo roms aren't fully decrypted...doesn't it mean that some features are unable? lile some graphics or modes??

and what is the difference between a fully decrypted rom or a non-encrypted one?

[Agozer]

...and what is the difference between a fully decrypted rom or a non-encrypted one?

I think you mean fully decrypted and encrypted...

 

Encrypted games was the developers' answer to piracy. The data in the roms is therefore compressed or in some other way shielded. Emulators such as Kawaks and Nebula can break the encryption during emulation, while as others, such as NeoRAGEx can not. NeoRAGEx can only play decrypted games.

 

There aren't many differences between encypted and decrypted sets other than the fact that encrypted sets (ZIPs) are larger because copressed data doesn't compress any tighter. Decrypted sets aren't compressed anymore, so they can be compressed again in ZIPs with a high compression ratio.

 

There are some differences, like some corrupted graphics/text in the early decrypted/NeoRAGEx version of KOF2000. Of course this doesn't happen in Nebula/Kawaks since they can break the encryption on the fly.

 

P.S. Of course, Nebula and Kawaks need specific written drivers for each game so that the games work, NeoRAGEx doesn't need those. That's another indication of why NeoRAGEx only plays fully decrypted games.

Edited December 29, 2003 by Agozer

[iori]

wow! that's very exhausive!! thanx a lot!

the only thing i don't understand is that sometimes i find roms labeled non-encrypted

 

for example on www.playagain.com if u look at the kof98 clones u'll find one named kof(98 non encrypted) that caused me a lot of confusion.

 

anyway another doubt cought me after your answer

u told me that sometimes it happen that fully decrypted roms happen to have graphical glitches or similar and thats caused by the decryption so...since kawaks doesn't need to have fully decrypted roms, maybe to be shure of the most fidelity possible i should use encrypted sets...

 

am i wrong???

[iori]

a last question

when a find a set labeled prototype...what does it mean?

[Agozer]

Since I can't use Nebula or kawaks because of an old computer, I have to use NeoRAGEx and decrypted games... Sure you can use encrypted sets all you want, if you don't mind the extra space they take in your hard drive (since encrypted sets are 2x+ larger than the decrypted ones).

 

I think you are referring to the Garou and KOF99 prototypes...

 

Well prototypes are games that weren't ready for the big market, namely they weren't complete. Someone got a hold of the Beta release of these games (the PCB's were handed out to certain people for testing purposes) and dumped them.

 

When the prototypes of Garou and KOF99 started to float in the net, they had some apparent and not-so-apparent bugs in them. Such as Garou would freeze when you performed Kim Dong Whan's Neri Chagi T.O.P. attack, amongst other things...

 

Later these bugs were fixed thanks to rom hackers. When the actual games came to be, new dumps were made. There are still many unreleased prototype games for the Neo-Geo, if you want to read more about them, just search in Google with "Neo-Geo prototypes", or you can check the Master List at www.neo-geo.com

 

--

 

For the record, the only working copy of Garou for NeoRAGEx is the prototype (if my memory doesn't fail me), coupled with the fixes of course. Same goes for KOF99, but some of the roms were redumped (compatible with NeoRAGEx) to make it "official".

 

To still continue, Garou and KOF99 were the first Neo-Geo games to use the new encryption method, thus giving dumpers a few headaches... Now the encryption is basically the same, if not slightly altered to throw the dumpers off the track once more... Since P roms aren't always the ones that are encrypted. They can be the C's or maybe even V's (If I remember correctly, C's in case of Metal Slug 3).

Edited December 29, 2003 by Agozer

[iori]

well i don't really have that prob with emulators and for the moment i can effort the disk space, so i think i'll take encrypted sets,

for the prototypes, the other garou sets (non prototypes) are just fixed prototype dumps or have been dumped by the final boards?

[Agozer]

Those have been dumped from the official PCB's and should be relatively bug-free.

[iori]

ok i think i know quite everything i need

thanx a lot for the help