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#2 Track03 needs more buffer?

1.0
open
nobody
None
2022-10-25
2022-03-26
syntax_X
No

Ran exclusives thru your neat little program and made some lists for you.
I found most blacklisted titles would work fine if I added some extra buffer to the end of track03.
Resident Evil 2 was my first test and from memory needed around 62k extra padding to get past the movie loop,
but I went and added 1mb padding to offending titles OR used the track03 from a game processed with gdiopt.exe(DC-Swat release).
I think gdiopt.exe handles a few edge cases safer than GDmenu, Im pretty sure it wont allow a track03 under 300k.

I put everything thru shrink, and unless some of the blacklisted games are audio issues or late game issues they are loading fine to the first menu.
I will only list titles that failed to load unless I fixed them.

Used track03.iso from gdiopt.exe or original track03.iso if it was tiny.

GET!! Colonies
Hello Kitty - Magical Block
Hydra Castle Labyrinth (Homebrew)
Super Runabout - San Francisco Edition
Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire

required 30,720 bytes long to the end of track03.iso

4X4 EVO Revival
Defense Commander (Homebrew)
Floigan Bros
Ooga Booga
Puzzle Bobble 4
Resident Evil 2 - Disc 1
Resident Evil 2 - Disc 2
Shinseiki Evangelion Typing E-Keikaku
SnoCross - Championship Racing
Taxi 2 - The Game

HL 007 GOLDENEYE (Homebrew)
HL BLACK OPS (Homebrew)
HL COUNTER-STRIKE (Homebrew)
HL GRUNT (Homebrew)
HL GUNMAN CHRONICLES (Homebrew)
HL OPPOSING FORCES (Homebrew)
HL PARANOIA (Homebrew)
HL THEY HUNGER (Homebrew)
HL USS DARKSTAR (Homebrew)

Data actually removed, something goes wrong here and 2k of data gets wiped from the end of track03.
SILENT SCOPE (2KB)

I learned pretty fast that simply slamming some 0s at the end of track03 breaks alot of stuff.
Even having 1byte difference meant ODE wouldn't see the images as games and GDMENU refused to shrink iso edited this way.

So I took RE2, and replaced a 30,720 byte long block of 0s with 1s, then shrunk it, took the shrunk track03 and replaced the 1s with 0s.

https://imgur.com/Jyd0UfH

This now works fine on emulators and GDemu, saving around 240mb.
Is there an easier way about it? I noticed the GDI didn't change between my 2 builds.
How hard would it be to set GDShrink to leave more padding at the end of track03 in general?
For what its worth something like 30720 to every track03 as a safety net seems like a viable option.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iACpnh7eZ97d-7HQiPBU8Lyx-zBaYYaT/view?usp=sharing

I have been doing some testing on titles and there does not seem to be any issue increasing the trailing 00s

Thanks again for the super handy program.

Discussion

  • syntax_X

    syntax_X - 2022-03-26
     

    Last edit: syntax_X 2022-03-26
  • FamilyGuy

    FamilyGuy - 2022-10-25

    So I just saw that. sorry for the delay... I think I've seen this issue mentionned before, on OG maybe?

    I'll try and check what I can do, but I don't know when I'll have the time.
    At the very least if should be easy to add a "safe_track03_padding" option for GDIShrink, with default to True. If you really wanna save an extra 30k per dump, then you can disable it.

    I should also migrate this project to Python3 eventually ...

     

    Last edit: FamilyGuy 2022-10-25

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