Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

[Stifu]

Nice video. This makes me wish either Fonzie swallows his pride and undoes some of the shitty choices he made (like fucking locking saves), or someone ends up hacking the ROM to fix those flaws.

[Joe Redifer]

Had this Twitter convo with Stephane who is listed as Z80 programmer on Paprium. This pretty much confirms that Fonzie purposely locked out the Mega Sg. I like how he first tells me not to blame Fonzie for doing that when, if fact, he did do that. I wonder if Analogue can bypass Fonzie's detection. If not, the game could never be playable on the Mega Sg even if it reproduced it perfectly.

[zborgerd]

Beating the game on Hard should unlock the sound test (Boom Box) feature in the Options menu, though a number of tracks are still locked. It showed up for me after defeating the final(?) boss in any case.

I've started a new save on Very Hard mode, under the assumption that completing all the extra missions on the three main paths will/might trigger the "true" ending. I'm not sure if that is actually how it works, but I'm determined to find out.

No idea how to unlock the Arena mode yet. It hasn't shown up for me so far.

Also on my new Very Hard save, the Sexy Sax Man has appeared several times now. He never appeared for me before in Hard mode. So either it's determined by the difficulty setting, or he only shows up on your second save.

Looks like it says it in the FAQ: https://www.magicalgamefactory.com/e...paprium_2/faq/

16. Addendum
- Unlike mentioned in the MTS map, in "ORIGINAL" game mode, a GAMEOVER at the "KTV" will redirect you to "JUVANIUM" "THE FRIDGE".
- Unlike mentioned in the Combook, in "ORIGINAL game mode" the "Paprium Difficulty" as well as the "Death Skull" trophies will only unlock uppon completion of the game in Hard Very Hard.
- In "ORIGINAL" game mode, the Alternate Clothes are unlocked after 8 hours of playtime.
- In "ORIGINAL" game mode, the Juke Box is unlocked after (hex) 160000 points.
- In "ORIGINAL" game mode, being sent to "JUVANIUM" osts you (hex) 40000 points.
- In "ORIGINAL" game mode, you shall not attempt to play with Spinal or Rondo may they become available in that mode (this is a bug).

Interesting that WM tells you not to play with Spinal or Rondo and that they are a "bug". It does appear to be broken when watching Wizard play as Spinal and you can throne him but never can unthrone him. Like it was never finished but they intended to.

[nihilblack]

Had this Twitter convo with Stephane who is listed as Z80 programmer on Paprium. This pretty much confirms that Fonzie purposely locked out the Mega Sg. I like how he first tells me not to blame Fonzie for doing that when, if fact, he did do that. I wonder if Analogue can bypass Fonzie's detection. If not, the game could never be playable on the Mega Sg even if it reproduced it perfectly.

Man, that's moronic beyond moronic. That guy...

Anyway, for your entertainment, this is what The Man Himself told me about the animations in the game, in a follow up question after the Mega Sg one:

Hello David,

Thanks for the feedback. Surely the game can have more animations but it's usually counter-productive as more animations bring more sluglish effect even if the speed is increased. You can compare with the games with the best impact effects like SOR1 or Ken, they don't have any animation in fact, just 1 frame. But yeah, everything can be improved for sure.

Thanks again and good luck beating the game!

[Ryoandr]

This guy has absolutely no grasp of animation.
Hitstop, keyframes... all martian lingo.

Not to mention, "inspiration" for sprites, Murdock upper - Duke Edwards submarine screw anyone ?

[Joe Redifer]

I'm thinking a Game Genie code might bypass Fonzie's lockout on the MegaSg. It's only a stab in the dark at what the code(s) would be though. The Game Genie does affect it as plopping in random codes got me some minor messed up graphics in the minigame on the MegaSg.

[wedeservedit]

It works on mine (it's a MD1 clone). Note that i'm speaking about a dev version of Paprium which is close to the final version still not 100% the same (sound driver not included).
I didn't tested yet with the final version but i guess it should work the same.
Also interestingly i noted that the game has some weird slowdowns only for some seconds when you start a level, then it goes smoothly afterward.. that is really weird and that seems to occurs on others clones as well.

Thank you. Same on mine. Also if you hit the reset button the resolution becomes really weird...

[zborgerd]

Had this Twitter convo with Stephane who is listed as Z80 programmer on Paprium. This pretty much confirms that Fonzie purposely locked out the Mega Sg. I like how he first tells me not to blame Fonzie for doing that when, if fact, he did do that. I wonder if Analogue can bypass Fonzie's detection. If not, the game could never be playable on the Mega Sg even if it reproduced it perfectly.

Before some people in this forum get really angry (as they tend to), let's think of this from a technical perspective.

If you have a game that relies heavily on perfect CPU timing for a variety of reasons, mostly due to an essential clock between the main 68k and the on-cart "Datenmeister" chips, it might make sense that a console that adjusts the speed in order to account for 60 Hz HDMI output (as Analogue consoles do) would render the game extremely broken, especially if "Datenmeister" does weird stuff to pre-process video for the VDP. Sprite output would potentially be glitched. Zero delay mode is .13% off from a normal Genesis' operation. WE don't normally care about that, but on-cart hardware might.

That is my limited explanation as to why it could have been locked out without them saying it outright. It's just speculation though.

I do think it would have been better for WM to work with Analogue on a solution for something like the Mega SG's buffered modes. Maybe they tried. We have no idea. To add to that, there are a handful of Mega SG issues that remain unfixed, though most are only with jailbreak cores and not the real MD / SG support. Some, however, are pretty critical and include big problems with sprite and background display on retail Sega CD games (see the Jailbreak bug list). I love mine, but it seems like it might not get much love anymore from Analogue for a number of reasons. The last firmware update was over a year ago and new stock seems to be a problem. SNT's last updates are a year and a half old. Even worse than Mega SG. Most of Analogue's resources seem to have gone into Pocket, Noire, and the Duo.

I'm not hating on Analogue even though the Noire release was a bit sketchy. But people got them all in the end. Another WM in some ways. I do own several of their consoles.

But obviously the above comments on compatibility are only speculation, with my limited knowledge of what's going on under the hood on Datenmeister. We can't assume that locking it out of non-original systems was intended to be malicious but an attempt to deliver a finished product that operates as intended. It might not be a "lockout" but simply not kicking in the "Datenmeister" part of the system; running only regular 68k and z80 code, simply because it fails to pass some essential tests.

Edit: Would be interesting to see if Paprium actually works with some pre-DAC firmware like 4.5, or even the first DAC firmware 4.6 (or the Jailbreak equivalents). People are using these for games like Sonic CD and Final Fight CD which do not work on Mega SG with current firmware. I'm not personally going to bother because I am fine with playing Paprium w/ a real console and OSSC for the time being, though I had to dig the OG Genesis out just for it. Also interesting in that Twitter thread that Stephane confirms some of the things that I said WAY back in this thread about compatibility and the home brew process, and that people once again bring up Tanglewood without being capable of looking at the big picture as to why this game is not going to work. Most often these things come from people who have never touched a compiler in their lives; especially not targetting something obscure that isn't running Windows.

[otobo]

Dithering is there as it should be. It was fundamental for giving the illusion of more colors back in the day. Atleast in Japan and North America were RF/Composite were the standard.

Of course, and it's nice with gradients, but when the contrast between two colours is too high as in those darker levels, it just doesn't blend well at all and looks grainy (that's what I actually meant by "heavy"). The examples given by Ryoandr with TFIV are a good illustration of both, although I would argue that yellow pixels on a dark background in that desert are fine, to depict sand clouds. But if this blends absolutely fine with RF/Composite, well ok.

[Zeus]

I read on Atari Age that Kevtris is working on the Paprium issue.

[Gentlegamer]

WTF? It came out?

I pre-ordered like 6 years ago, where's my copy?

[zborgerd]

I read on Atari Age that Kevtris is working on the Paprium issue.

Interesting. Thanks for the heads-up. Discussion in starts here and goes down several posts: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/24...omment=4713762

[Joe Redifer]

Before some people in this forum get really angry (as they tend to), let's think of this from a technical perspective.

If you have a game that relies heavily on perfect CPU timing for a variety of reasons, mostly due to an essential clock between the main 68k and the on-cart "Datenmeister" chips, it might make sense that a console that adjusts the speed in order to account for 60 Hz HDMI output (as Analogue consoles do) would render the game extremely broken, especially if "Datenmeister" does weird stuff to pre-process video for the VDP. Sprite output would potentially be glitched. Zero delay mode is .13% off from a normal Genesis' operation. WE don't normally care about that, but on-cart hardware might.

That is my limited explanation as to why it could have been locked out without them saying it outright. It's just speculation though.

Right... but keep in mind you can also switch the Mega Sg's speed to match that of a real Genesis and it still doesn't work. Anyway I don't think it's the 68000 that's the issue as the game doesn't care if it's being run on a 7.670454Mhz NTSC 68000 or a 7.600489Mhz PAL 68000. Also keep in mind that the 32-bit hardware inside the cart is more than able to keep up with an extremely minor speed increase.

But if this blends absolutely fine with RF/Composite, well ok.

I played my Genesis via composite until maybe 2010 and I never once during that entire time experienced the magical blending of Genesis dithered graphics.

[chilled]

lampost light on SoR II blends fine on my composite hooked 15 inches CRT in 2021. Maybe it's a matter of screen size ?

[zborgerd]

Right... but keep in mind you can also switch the Mega Sg's speed to match that of a real Genesis and it still doesn't work. Anyway I don't think it's the 68000 that's the issue as the game doesn't care if it's being run on a 7.670454Mhz NTSC 68000 or a 7.600489Mhz PAL 68000. Also keep in mind that the 32-bit hardware inside the cart is more than able to keep up with an extremely minor speed increase.

Yeah. That's the "buffered mode" that I talked about. I think I tested it and it didn't work. I tried several options on the Mega SG. But I could have missed one.

As far as it keeping up; Sure, if it were designed to do so. But if you want to go back to looking at how "broken" the game can be, the 2018 "Paprium Release Party" video might shed some light on things. It's like they had most of the 68k stuff worked out but the Datenmeister portion was clearly incomplete or broken outside of a dev environment. At any rate, I'm sure that whatever is going on w/ Datenmeister was not designed to account for the fact that Mega SG is not a real Genesis. But, again, the 60 Hz thing is only speculation on my part and I can't recall if I've tried all 3 modes in my testing. And it might only be one issue of many.

I'm more inclined to believe that the reason that it's broken is related to the fact that Sonic CD is also broken on Mega SG.

Issue described here: https://github.com/SmokeMonsterPacks...reak/issues/63