06536: metafox: This game's entire DIP set seems weird.

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
06536	DIP/Input	Minor	Always	Apr 15, 2017, 05:43	Apr 21, 2017, 20:06

Tester	ketburai	View Status	Public	Platform	MAME (Official Binary)
Assigned To		Resolution	Open	OS
Status [?]	Acknowledged			Driver	seta/seta.cpp
Version	0.184	Fixed in Version		Build
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	06536: metafox: This game's entire DIP set seems weird.
Description	This website is the best resource ever: http://otokaru.net/contents/dipsw/ma-mo/metafox.html This seems to indicate that factory defaults for a Japanese release of the game is all off. I'm assuming the settings MAME uses correspond to some American or world release of the game. However, further research outlines a few potential oddities in MAME's labels. Difficulty: off/off is supposed to be Hard/C while off/on is supposed to be Normal/B. In MAME this is currently the opposite. The difference between all the difficulties isn't noticeable at all to start so I'm guessing it affects increasing rank. Regions: very confused about these DIPs. On the page they are listed as having no effect. This doesn't make sense, because both off should give the "licensed for US through Romstar" label... for a Japanese release? Perhaps these should be jumpers instead? Is there a separate Japanese version of the game? That would make the most sense. Then it gets worse. This is a manual from an American distributor: http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/MetaFox.man.pdf ...all off, again. The region DIPs are once again unused. TamDB has an unlabeled (likely the IVICS manual above) and a "Japan" flyer, but the site is broken right now and I can't reach the manuals. KLOV has a Japan flyer, and it does indeed use all off. Tafoid even posted it in another bug report for this game: http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/M/Meta%20Fox.pdf I've also been unable to find the actual settings MAME uses anywhere... where are these coming from? Is what we currently have some weird world/US version, and there is an undumped US or Japan or even US/Japan version somewhere? Have any other flyers or manuals been found? Does anyone else have more information about this silly old game? This aside, maybe the order of DIP settings could be switched around to match the manuals. I haven't really looked into other games on this hardware yet, but Arbalester (a similar game on the same hardware in the same year by the same developer, Jordan) also has all DIPs off in factory settings, and in MAME. I don't know if some Romstar manual exists with different DIPs for this game. Its difficulty DIPs are also ordered bit more sanely in the first place: http://otokaru.net/contents/dipsw/a-o/arbalester.html
Steps To Reproduce
Additional Information	Considering how thorough this is, I guess it's Minor? The severity system seems weird, looking at other reports etc.
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version
Affected Sets / Systems	metafox

Attached Files

No.13784 Haze Senior Tester Apr 15, 2017, 18:40	Region dips being listed as "unused" or "don't touch" is perfectly normal as operators weren't meant to change them. documentation should never be trusted 100%
No.13785 ketburai Tester Apr 16, 2017, 13:46	I feel that those are two very different things? There's also a big difference between hiding a DIP and a DIP actually being unused. I mean, if you're positive this is the only version of the game, I'm not really questioning that. What I'm concerned about are the DIP settings MAME currently has. Where are those coming from? If it's from a US manual, should we really be using those over "world" DIPs? Does Arbalester have a similar set of alternate DIPs? I've only ever found the all off ones for either game.
No.13786 Haze Senior Tester Apr 17, 2017, 20:06	in theory they're different things, in practice hidden features were listed as 'unused' dips all the time. a lot of the dips in MAME come from testing or code anaylsis, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. sometimes they come from manuals then the manuals are found to be wrong. sometimes they come from test mode, and test mode is found to be wrong (for at least half the Semicom games this is the case, it's like they programmed one test mode, then wrote a bunch of games without ever changing it)