Landstalker bug, very late in game.

[Former user]

Original [issue 92](https://code.google.com/p/genplus-gx/issues/detail?id=92) created by zimmatic on 2010-05-27T02:19:55.000Z:

What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. Play Landstalker until almost the end 2. In the last dungeon, talk to a kid before you talk to his dad After talking with his dad, you can talk to the kid and he will move. 3. On the emulator, if you had talked to the kid first, it seems the game will think that he's already moved, but he will permanently block your path.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9LLLpC5o2E Is a video at the part that does this. It doesn't happen on a real console, but only on emulators.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead? The boy character should move, but instead, he just stays put, it's as if the game thinks he's already moved, and stores this with your savegame.

What version of the emulator are you using? r443

Please provide any additional information below (video settings, console region,...) I'm not really too familiar with this bug, but as the comments point out (and as I've found out) it only happens on "certain" emulators, so I'm assuming it's not a problem with the rom itself. I have the cart, and am sure it doesn't do this. If it's not something that is fixable, but if anyone knows a workaround, that would be sufficient for me as well. Thanks!

[Former user]

Comment # 1 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2010-05-27T06:40:01.000Z:

I will need a savestate (or sram file) to investigate, please.

Not sure that it's not a game bug though, that only happen under very specific conditions. I finished this game on this emu without encountering any problems but maybe I did not talk to the kid first.

What do you mean by "certain" emulators ?

[Former user]

Comment # 2 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2010-05-27T06:49:11.000Z:

Please give me the ROM file CRC as well (load ROM file then, in main menu, display ROM infos -> Checksum)

[Former user]

Comment # 3 originally posted by zimmatic on 2010-05-27T10:32:22.000Z:

I'm not sure what it's meant by "certain" emulators either actually, but I'll get the crc and savestate, as well I'm going to try my save on the uk/japanese rom, to see what the result is.

[Former user]

Comment # 4 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2010-05-27T10:56:04.000Z:

Actually, if you had a State or SRAM (native save) of the game BEFORE you actually talked to any of the dwarves, it would be better.

[Former user]

Comment # 5 originally posted by zimmatic on 2010-05-27T19:55:41.000Z:

Actually, I think I panicked a bit after reading it was a bug, and maybe should have tested this a bit more on my own before submitting it. It really seems more likely that it would be a bad rom related problem, and not an emulator bug. I downgraded the version of genplusgx and got a good ([!]) version of the rom, here are the checksums:

Checksum of good rom: f37c (f37c) (Good) Checksum of rom I was playing: fbd3 (fbd3) (Good)

Seeing as though the one I was playing has a different checksum, I'm going to assume it was a bad rom, and retest this. Lucky for me, I had been messing with putting my files onto a usb harddrive, and have a back-up of my save a bit before the bug (so happy!) so I'm going to get back to that point, and then test on both versions of the rom.

I'll report back with some save states if nothing changes. Thanks!

[Former user]

Comment # 6 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2010-05-27T21:43:05.000Z:

The second one (fdb3) is indeed the beta version of the US rom (f37c), it's very likely a bug that has been fixed in the final (retail) version.

Still interesting to know though...

[Former user]

Comment # 7 originally posted by zimmatic on 2010-05-27T22:16:20.000Z:

I'm having the hardest time nailing this down as a bug in the rom, but from what I can see, it has to be the case. I was able to get back to where I was on my backed up save playing the f37c rom, and intentionally tried talking to the kid first, and then talking to his dad, and it all worked out fine. But a bit later, you fight Miro (your clone?) and after you beat him an open chest appears, which is supposed to contain Gola's Horn, a necessary story item. So I took my save from before talking to the kid and his dad, got passed that part, saved, and then transfered it to the beta rom again, but in that case, there's a chest with a key in it that you use to get into the room to fight Miro, and it's empty when you get to it.

So now I'm thinking the beta rom, probably has this bug, with the kid and his dad, but in order to fix the bug, changes were made to the structure of flags in the sram, so as one thing is accomplished, transfering to the other version causes different effects.

In the end, I'd have to say that this problem is unrelated to the emulator in any way. It's just not logical. Thanks for you help though!

[Former user]

Comment # 8 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2010-05-27T22:57:31.000Z:

Well, it's logical in a way: a beta ROM is by definition an incomplete version of the final game, it has big chances to get bugged or incomplete stuff since it was not mean to be released ;-)

[Former user]

Comment # 9 originally posted by zimmatic on 2010-05-27T23:41:09.000Z:

I guess I meant it wasn't logical for it to be an emulator bug. There's really no way that it could be that specific to only affect one game in this one way...