Rikki & Vikki

[+DrVenkman]

16 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

Never used steam before, but after watching the ZPH stream of Rikki & Vikki, I bought it for $.99 on steam. Awesome game and with my 2600daptor I can use my same 7800 controller to play it. Awesome!

Steam is great. I’ve been using the platform since 2004 (HALF-LIFE 2).  

[MrBeefy]

Yeah at $0.99 it's a steal.

[diablonet]

Saint confirmed that this game is working on his 7800 flash cart, also with audio + music, he is talking to Kitrinx to support this also on mister, here is the tweet about this

 

 

[TailChao]

A reminder, as the above may net more players on real hardware - the first post of this thread contains both an F.A.Q. and Troubleshooting guide. If you have questions or run into an issue which isn't covered in either of these, please consider sending an email to contact@penguinet.net or yelling at me on Twitter.

 

This ensures I can actually see, read, and (hopefully) solve the problem.

Edited February 19, 2022 by TailChao

[QDBuckwheat]

On 2/16/2022 at 2:15 PM, diablonet said:

Saint confirmed that this game is working on his 7800 flash cart, also with audio + music, he is talking to Kitrinx to support this also on mister, here is the tweet about this

 

 

 

Oh very nice! Where can I find more info on this flashcart?

[TailChao]

On 3/3/2022 at 6:50 PM, QDBuckwheat said:

Oh very nice! Where can I find more info on this flashcart?

Follow TheRetroHQ on some weird birb website.

 

Edit : Website does not appear to actually be about birbs.

Edited March 6, 2022 by TailChao

[+DrVenkman]

On 3/3/2022 at 5:50 PM, QDBuckwheat said:

Oh very nice! Where can I find more info on this flashcart?

See the last page or so of this thread:

 

 

Tl;dr:not available yet, hopefully this summer. Supply chain issues still suck.

[ongikong]

On 5/3/2021 at 6:17 PM, Shawn said:

 

What patch program is able to use this bps though? I've tried lunar and flips and both say foxbox.bin is not the intended file to be patched. I'm playing on my original cart happily but I have a friend that uses both the cart and windows versions and would like to be able to have an properly A78 headered version but is unable to do such things on his own.

Hi Shawn,

I have a similar problem... I can't get the foxbox.bin file to be patched.

 

I tried beat

"beat patch application has failed"

and also lunar

"not the intended file"...

 

What am I doing wrong here?

Did you solve the problem?

 

[QDBuckwheat]

On 3/12/2022 at 11:18 AM, ongikong said:

Hi Shawn,

I have a similar problem... I can't get the foxbox.bin file to be patched.

 

I tried beat

"beat patch application has failed"

and also lunar

"not the intended file"...

 

What am I doing wrong here?

Did you solve the problem?

 

Have you tried using xDelta?

[diablonet]

there are different versions of the game, patch for mister worked for me on version R14 (date: 2019.01.28)

[panamajoe]

there is a copy on Ebay right now…

[Hastor]

1 hour ago, panamajoe said:

there is a copy on Ebay right now…

There's quite a few on there from what I see. The announcement that it will work on SainT's upcoming flash cart probably made a few want to shed their real copy while the price is high. However I don't think that typically affects the physical collector's market too much. All these ridiculously priced games lately are easily playable via emulation or flash cart but that doesn't stop them from being worth a lot.

I'm hanging onto mine, I like it and the extras, very cool shelf peice, and I do like the game a lot. If I get that flash cart, I might use it just to save wear and tear on my original.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Hastor

[ongikong]

On 3/13/2022 at 8:27 PM, QDBuckwheat said:

Have you tried using xDelta?

I tried xDelta but it needs a specific file format (not bps)...

 

Nevertheless, I tried the patched file and luckily it starts with MiSTer although beat says "patch failed"...

[DragonFire]

On 4/18/2021 at 4:31 PM, Kitrinx said:

I made a bps patch to add a header to the game. The rom will usually be named FoxBox.bin if you got it from steam.

 

Rikki and Vikki patch.zip 274 B · 344 downloads

Thank you so much for this! It's great to have another way to enjoy the game.

If anyone has trouble running the game on MiSTer, make sure to change the game's file extension to .a78 after you patch it. If you leave it as .bin it won't boot properly.

Edit: I used the online Rom patcher from romhacking.net to patch the game. No errors and it worked as expected.

Edited July 12, 2022 by DragonFire

[+DrVenkman]

I have a physical copy of the game and another Steam copy to play on my PC. I haven't played the PC version much but I tried it this afternoon and I'm getting terrible performance - regular hesitations every couple seconds continuously. It doesn't matter if I'm playing windowed or full-screen, and changing the performance options doesn't make a difference. This is an 8-core i7-11700KF at up to 5.0Ghz on all cores, so definitely not a problem with my PC. Anyone else run into this or know of a solution?

[RevEng]

My understanding is that the steam version of the game is basically bupsystem and a cdf rom of the game, behind the front-end anyway. You might try grabbing the latest bupsystem and opening the cdf file with it, and seeing if there's a difference.

 

Also worthwhile to open up Task Manager and look at the performance tab to see if there's anything wonky going on with the resources, during those delays. (open hardware monitor would be even better, so you could confirm thermals are solid.)

[+DrVenkman]

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

Also worthwhile to open up Task Manager and look at the performance tab to see if there's anything wonky going on with the resources, during those delays. (open hardware monitor would be even better, so you could confirm thermals are solid.)

Yeah, already checked that kind of stuff. Nothing on my end - this rig is optimized for MSFS and can run it at 40 - 70 fps at 1440p and pretty much Ultra settings across the board, and has no issue running ELDEN RING at 60 fps stutter-free for hours on end. I have a Corsair iCue H100i Elite Capellix 240mm cooler in here and during a 5-1/2 hour MSFS run yesterday (KOAK to PHNL), I averaged a CPU temp of 49℃ (peaks of 53); and GPU temps of about 69℃. Last week after installing this particular cooler, I ran the Cinebench 100% test (all 8 cores maxed to 100% full-time) for 10 minutes. I reached a peak CPU temp of 73℃ and coolant loop temps peaked at 39.5℃. So cooling is good.

 

There's something specific to this binary/exe that isn't playing nice and I don't yet know what it is. I'll try it directly in BupSystem and see if there's something funky going on with Steam.

 

EDIT: Okay, so this is interesting. When I run the monolithic executable from Steam, I get the WMI Provider Service spiking up in time with the slowdowns I'm experiencing with the game. This is the case even when I shut down Steam and just navigate to the binary directory and launch the executable by double-clicking it.

 

HOWEVER, when I run BupSystem and then load the .cdf file, the game plays PERFECTLY. So something about the way the .exe is packaged is not Win11-friendly.

 

[Trebor]

Considering the bare min requirements is Windows 95 & DirectX 7.0, having a newer/newest version of DirectX doesn't necessarily entail having all the previous support files.  This issue occurs with other emulators too.  Historically, there have been similar issues with MAME respecting HLSL either not working or poor performance under systems that are running DirectX 10 or newer already on their system as the 'oldest' installed version.

 

The fix is to download and install DirectX 9.0c standalone distro (A.K.A. DirectX June 2010 redistribution), which ensures legacy support for the older DirectX required files, while still maintaining the current version on the system.  Denoted in the detailed comments:

 

Quote

This DirectX End-User Runtime does not change the version of DirectX, but does install a number of optional side-by-side technologies from the legacy DirectX SDK that are used by some older games. For a detailed explanation see https://aka.ms/dxsetup.

 

While not a guaranteed fix, it does not appear to have a negative impact, outside the loss of time and some relatively very slight HD space usage.

[+DrVenkman]

I don't think this is a DirectX issue - see my edit above. The binary provided in Steam is triggering a Windows service process that the stand-alone BupSystem is not.

[Trebor]

4 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

I don't think this is a DirectX issue - see my edit above. The binary provided in Steam is triggering a Windows service process that the stand-alone BupSystem is not.

Yikes... good ol' Steam DRM.  More the reason I am glad that I refused to purchase mine via Steam and went the Humble Bundle purchase route instead.

[+DrVenkman]

6 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Yikes... More the reason I refused to purchase mine via Steam and went the Humble Bundle purchase route instead.

But again, this doesn't appear to be Steam-specific. The executable should be the same in either case, and no Steam processes were running when I tested again. I may delete the file and reinstall. 

 

EDIT: Delete and reinstall didn't make a difference. BupSystem works great - the monolithic binary does not. Might be a problem for @TailChao to look into.

[Trebor]

7 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

But again, this doesn't appear to be Steam-specific.

Are you sure?

 

Steam is not specifically listed with the above, but it does state: "Other providers and their classes may exist on your computer that are installed by Microsoft products or third-party company software."

 

Regardless, glad it is running fine under standalone BupSystem without issue.

[+DrVenkman]

Just now, Trebor said:

Are you sure?

 

Steam is not specifically listed with the above, but it does state: "Other providers and their classes may exist on your computer that are installed by Microsoft products or third-party company software."

Is any one person really sure about anything PC OS-specific these days? 

 

Look, I've been using Steam for literally most of 2 decades (starting in 2004 with HALF-LIFE 2). I've got many dozens of games in my Steam library ranging from emulated Atari classics to the aforementioned ELDEN RING. Running the games directly without Steam running or any Steam processes is and has been normal, especially for the emulated stuff that isn't relying on modern DRM processes. In fact, nearly all modern games merely use Steam as a library manager/store front end and use their own DRM or verification systems independent of Steam entirely. This game is the only one that is triggering that Windows process I mentioned above.

 

I strongly suspect there's a recent Windows update/security fix that the R&V binary on Steam is not compliant with in some obscure way and probably requires repackaging or something simple and dumb. 

[Trebor]

18 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

I strongly suspect there's a recent Windows update/security fix that the R&V binary on Steam is not compliant with in some obscure way and probably requires repackaging or something simple and dumb. 

Definitely a possibility.  I am also running Core i7-11700.  The system has 16GB and a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.  Both executables I acquired from Humble Bundle, v1.0.0.3 and v1.0.1.0, don't exhibit any performance problems.   

 

Running Windows 10 Home v21H2 | OS Build 19044.1826 | Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4180.0.  All up to date.

[+DrVenkman]

6 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Definitely a possibility.  I am also running Core i7-11700.  The system has 16GB and a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.  Both executables I acquired from Humble Bundle, v1.0.0.3 and v1.0.1.0, don't exhibit any performance problems.

The most-recent Steam version is 1.0.1.0. I could have sworn in my few quick minutes after I bought it on Steam last year that it was running fine, but that was on Win10 before I got my current PC. I am not sure I've tried to run on Win11 at all. In any case, I'd be curious is anyone else with the Steam version is having the same issue, and if so, what they were able to do to solve it.