05949: expert11 [hero]: H.E.R.O. - Game does not start anymore

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
05949	Crash/Freeze	Major	Have not tried	Jun 2, 2015, 00:57	Jul 31, 2015, 00:52

Tester	rcoltrane	View Status	Public	Platform	MESS (Official Binary)
Assigned To	wilbert	Resolution	Fixed	OS	Windows Vista/7/8 (64-bit)
Status [?]	Resolved			Driver	msx/msx.cpp
Version	0.154	Fixed in Version	0.164	Build	Normal
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	05949: expert11 [hero]: H.E.R.O. - Game does not start anymore
Description	The game H.E.R.O. (Pony Cannon) (J) was working fine until version 0.153. From version 0.154 forward, it no longer works and when you try to run it, the system freezes at the initial MSX text screen. Other games seems to be working fine, but the driver had some sort of regression that affected this game in a particular way, maybe other games are no longer working too.
Steps To Reproduce	Try to load and run the game H.E.R.O. (cartridge ROM) with version 0.154 or newer versions.
Additional Information
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version	0.153
Affected Sets / Systems	expert11 [hero]

Attached Files

No.11711 hap Developer Jun 4, 2015, 10:53	HERO expects the rom not just at the usual location, but also at $0000-$3FFF
No.11907 rcoltrane Tester Jul 29, 2015, 21:16 edited on: Jul 30, 2015, 00:21	It seems that this bug is not fixed yet. I'm trying to run this game with the latest MAME 0.164 official binary build and it's still not entering the game. Tried with both MAME and MESSUI and none of them works. Please verify.
No.11908 Tafoid Administrator Jul 30, 2015, 02:45	Use the -cart media trigger because there is a cassette image with the same name which it is probably loading when simply type "mame expert11 hero" "mess expert11 -cart1 hero" should work. Make sure your XML files in HASH are also updated completely.
No.11909 rcoltrane Tester Jul 30, 2015, 11:51	Nope, still doesn't work. Neither with newest mame.exe nor with messui164. I tried the commandline you posted but it produced the very same result. The driver shows the Expert11 text screen and nothing else happens. And I'm pretty sure I have only the cartridge image here and it was working fine until mess 0.154 as reported before. Also, when executing this mame commandline, after quitting, it shows 5 memory leak errors. I'm sure it's not fixed yet.
No.11911 Tafoid Administrator Jul 30, 2015, 14:11	I can't guess as to your issues then. Try a fresh install in a new folder - complete with all hash files. Set up rompaths in mame.ini and try again. With 0.164 and up to date hash files/software list romsets I have no problem running hero with the command line I presented above nor do I experience any memory leak errors at all. An up to date softwarelist hash (msx1_cart.xml) is the most important because changes were made to most Activision MSX games to account for mapping issues.
No.11912 Haze Senior Tester Jul 30, 2015, 14:36	yeah, I can confirm it works fine. As Tafoid says make sure you have a proper up to date distribution, too many sites seem to ship only the .exe forgetting the software list hash files (or any of the other support folders for that matter) Always use something from an official source, never somewhere like EmuCr or the sites offering 'no nag' builds which are a joke at this point.
No.11920 rcoltrane Tester Jul 31, 2015, 00:52 edited on: Jul 31, 2015, 01:00	Finally got it working using the msx software list. As a side note, I'm using MessUI that is currently maintained by Robbert and while using it, I've noticed that HERO hangs if I mount the rom file with the SW picker, but when I run it straight from the Software List, it works like a charm. Could it be a bug in the way MessUI mounts the cartridge image file through the software picker? The rompath looks fine in the picker, but the game hangs as before. Another thing: I was looking inside the msx xml hash and I've noticed that the HERO cart is supposed to have 16k in size. But my rom has 32k instead and it's working fine too, it only displays an incorrect checksum warning. And all the places I find with this game have the 32k rom image, I just could not find the 16k image anywhere. Which one is the correct dump? 16 or 32k?