ToToTEK.COM

[eggba]

Hi, first of all id'e like to say that I'm very happy with my SuperFlash Cart that I bought from Tototek. I can now play all old awsome RPG's (even those released only in Japan, thanks to fan-translations) like, Seiken Densetsu 3, Tales of Phantasia etc, on the original SNES hardware.

But, and there is a but, I cant play Star Ocean, and the more I read about it, the more I want to play it. Its even been translated from Jap. to Eng. by DeJap, but since SuperFlash does not support S-DD1 Chip games we cant play it. For those of you that have not played it using an Emulator here is some info and screenshots from the game:

"This amazing game was one of the last and largest to be released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the spiritual sequel to Tales of Phantasia, and spawned its own sequels, Star Ocean: Second Story for PlayStation, Star Ocean: Bluesphere for Game Boy Color, and Star Ocean: Till The End of Time for PS2."



...and here are some more, maby better, screens: http://www.cherryroms.com/snes/3915.php



About the Star Ocean ROM (S-DD1 Chip):

"Star Ocean's graphics are hardware compressed within the rom and decompressed via a custom addon hardware chip. zsKnight, The Dumper and Dark Force have worked hard to get the graphics extracted from the real rom so that the game could be playable on SNES emulators."

Thats all good but how about all of us that want to play this game on the ORIGINAL HARDWARE ifront of our TV's and not on a PC using an Emulator. Well there is hope:

"Recently, the S-DD1 decompression algorithm was completely reverse engineered by some really clever people: Andreas Naive and The Dumper. Pretty soon these "troublesome" graphics pack files will no longer be needed to play Star Ocean."

Does this meen the ROM can be patched to play on f.ex. the SuperFlash Cart? Does anyone have any information on this issue. I've searched the web but have not found any information. The ROM will play on copiers supporting the S-DD1 Chip, which unfortunatly the TigerSoft's SuperFlash Cart does NOT.

Does anyone know of any possible solution to this problem of apocalyptic proportions ?

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sources: www.dejap.com , www.rpgclassics.com

[neviksti]

You can already play StarOcean (translated) on the SNES with hardware from tototek.

I hacked the game to no longer require the features of the S-DD1 chip, but to include the graphics the ROM was expanded to 96Mbits. Therefore, you currently need a 96Mbit (or greater) SF7.

Yes, it appears technically possible to get this to work for a 64Mbit cartridge / copier. However I am no longer working towards that goal. If someone who has a good knowledge of the SNES hardware (and programming for it), wants to continue my work, I'll be glad to share it.

Honestly, unless problems arise (which often happens), it would only take one hard weekend, or a decent week's worth to complete it for 64Mbits.

- slightly modifying Overload's snes coded SDD1 decompressor
- changing SRAM size to give you "scratch space" for decompressor
- carefully mixing the "use data packs" and "use decompressor (which is slow)" so that the game runs smoothly (probably all decompressions > a certain size are not "time sensitive" ... hopefully this won't take much tweeking beyond that).

I really am not interested in talking someone through this (sorry). So only ask me for the code if you actually can do this on your own.