CookiePLMonster posts
Posts: 75
Files: 26
Status Update - February 2024
Hello! It's a month with no new releases, but I've been working practically all month.SilentPatchWork on SilentPatch continued all month, with around a dozen new fixes for San Andreas this month alone. The update for SA is nearing completion, and after that - Vice City and III!Flipper Zero FBT/uFBT: Enable C++20/GNU23 in VSCode IntelliSense - the most recent toolchain update bumped up the C++ standard from C++17 to C++20, but it was omitted in VSCode's IntelliSense configuration - my PR fixed this, as well as one additional nitpick ...
Status Update - January 2024
Hello!In January I took it easy, so for once I have no updates on any contributions and/or new releases. However, I have a few things in progress. Let's get to it.SilentPatchMy original plan of going open source in January has failed, but for a good reason - I've been going back to the codebase and integrating multiple new fixes, those contributed by Wesser in the SP topic over the past few years, as well as new fixes done by me. For example: I re-wrote my changes related to the custom number plates and not only simplified the code but ...
Status Update - December 2023
Hello, and Happy New Year! December was a month of tidying up loose ends, and a month when SilentPatch turned 10 years old!SilentPatch turns 10To celebrate a decade of patching, I have launched a page dedicated to SilentPatch, with an explanation of what it is, its goals, history, and a full list of supported games: SilentPatchFor a full post about the SilentPatch anniversary, see HERE.SilentPatch for EA Sports WRC is deprecatedOn December 14th, Codemasters released an official update v1.4.0 that integrates a fix for decals and liveries - and i...
Status Update - November 2023
Hey! This month's update is rather short, as November was slower - but the one release I published is quite interesting.SilentPatch for EA Sports WRCReleased last week, this is effectively "the newest" SilentPatch - both in terms of how new the game is, and how shortly after the official release it was published. When playing WRC, I ran into a graphical issue exclusive to the GTX 10 series of cards and successfully troubleshooted it. The patch is now out there as a temporary measure before the bug gets patched officially, as I addit...
Status Update - October 2023
Hello! This update is slightly delayed due to my long overdue holidays. In October, I released yet another new SilentPatch together with a game research post and cleaned up my backlog a little.SilentPatch for Juiced DemosEarlier this month I released a comprehensive write-up on the history of Juiced and published a SilentPatch for the demo versions of the game to allow people to experience them without issues. Please refer to the blog post for more details.Other workPCSX2 DInputSource: Limit the number of reported buttons and POV hats to what t...
Status Update - September 2023
Hello! September was quite busy - I released a new SilentPatch, submitted contributions to several more projects, and started research for a future first-of-its-kind SilentPatch for a demo version of a game. Oh, and I also accidentally caused the news of Midnight Club 2 shipping a pirated executable to go viral once again, oh well.SilentPatch for NFS2: Special Edition, NFS3: Hot Pursuit, NFS4: High Stakes and NFS: Porsche UnleashedA new SilentPatch for a series of old Need for Speed games. As linked on Patreon previously, please refer to the re...
Status Update - August 2023
Hello. This month I was mostly busy with archiving my old covermount CDs and trying out random demos, but I also released a widescreen fix for a PS2 game.007: Agent Under Fire (PS2)The current widescreen fix shipped in PCSX2 was underwhelming and didn't cover the driving sections of the game at all, so I made a better one. It's currently shipped with PCSX2, so all users benefit from these improvements.Blog updatesI usually don't announce changes to the blog layout, but this one is worth a mention. Aside from making the embed sizes m...
Status Update - July 2023
Hello! Although no big new releases happened this month, I pushed a compatibility hotfix to one of the patches and had a chance to contribute to emulators again.SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3Recently, I received several reports that CMR3 would consistently crash with DXVK installed, but only if SilentPatch was in use. I identified this to be a small mistake in one of my UI functions and promptly fixed it.PCSX2 FileSystem: Make FILE* unique pointers use a functor deleter and FileSystem: Use _filelengthi64 to get the file size on Windows - t...
Status Update - June 2023
Hello! This month I was busy with professional commitments, so I don't have much to talk about. For this reason, billing for this month has been paused.PCSX2 Minor fixes for Achievements and Patches - minor fixes for Hardcore Mode in PCSX2 where it was possible to play in HC with user-supplied patches loaded.What's next?This month, I was asked to help sort out two old games for SNEG (which partially explains my inactivity) - Star General and Take No Prisoners are now out on Steam and GOG! While I am not getting a cut from purchases, I e...
Status Update - May 2023
Hello! Once again no new-new releases this month, but I pushed a few updates to the existing mods instead.SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3The patch for CMR3 was released with a few smaller issues (one of which was caused not by me, but by a compiler bug!), so it was time to finally update it. I also included two small new features. You can check the full changelog of this release ON GITHUB.PS2 CheatsLast month, I identified the reason behind some of my PS2 cheats working in PCSX2 but crashing on the real hardware, and updated them. If you...
Status Update - April 2023
Hello! Not much has happened this month, but I've been able to contribute to Redump by sorting out my small collection of physical games, and I tied up loose ends with mkpsxiso.mkpsxisoAs mentioned, I was able to wrap up and merge the latest dev changes to mkpsxiso, a PS1 disc image building tool. With these changes merged, there are no more multiple versions of this tool, and we've concentrated all efforts on a single code stream.Other workOther than contributing to Redump (23 submissions and counting), I've been also experimenting...
Status Update - March 2023
Hello! This month I updated one of the Gran Turismo cheats and submitted some usual contributions, so it's one of those months where I tie up loose ends.One of my professional contracts also has been concluded this month - DeathKeep was released last week on Steam and GOG πGran Turismo cheatsEarlier this month, I updated the Trigger Sensitivity cheats for Gran Turismo games with a new finding from Aero_, allowing for even more input precision.PCSX2 Make Game Properties accessible from the toolbar - a UI change to make Game Properties mor...
Status Update - February 2023
Hello! This month I've been mostly relaxing after the release of SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3, but I managed to get a few nice fixes for OpenRCT2 in.OpenRCT2 Fix a division by zero in TitleScreen::TitleInitialise if there are no installed sequences - a simple fix to avoid a crash if some non-essential game files are missing. Apparently one of the latest OpenRCT2 builds skipped these files, causing crashes for many people. Fix an assertion error in ResearchNextDesign, simplify code - a minor refactor to the research code that fixes a ...
Status Update - January 2023
Hello! This month has been relatively productive - SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3 has finally been released, and I had the chance to submit a few usual other contributions.SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3Earlier this month I finally released a patch for Colin McRae Rally 3 that I've been showcasing for several months by now. It seems to be reasonably successful, and until now no critical bugs were found - so it's all good!We don't know yet if (or when) CMR04 and CMR2005 are going to follow - but if they do, we'll be sure...
Remastering Colin McRae Rally 3 with SilentPatch
The biggest SilentPatch release since GTA San Andreas is now out!
Status Update - December 2022
Hello and Happy New Year! In December I was busy exclusively with World Racing 2 CE and with SilentPatch for CMR3, so this update is going to be very short.SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3The project is ongoing for 3 months now, but at the time of writing this update it's reaching the end - it's undergoing tests, translation strings for new options are being made, and I'm about to start working on a release writeup!Since the last blog post, I added changes like: Fully finalized widescreen, including a few unused screens just in c...
Status Update - November 2022
Hey! In this update, November may look like it wasn't that busy, but in fact, it's the opposite due to work-in-progress projects! Let's get to it.SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3That project is still ongoing and the very same Twitter thread is still growing in size. My progress since the last month includes, but is not limited, to: Finished widescreen implementation. Everything except for the split-screen has already been confirmed to be "perfect" even in ultrawide. Proof-of-concept adjustable FOV, using "real" de...
Status Update - October 2022
Hello! As anticipated last month, October was indeed busy. While I haven't released anything new, I spent quite a bit of effort on Hacktoberfest contributions and researched Colin McRae Rally 3 a lot which resulted in a work-in-progress SilentPatch. More on that later.Gran Turismo 2 Combined DiscNot an update per se, but the Combined Disc has been confirmed to work on real hardware with the help of PSIO! This means that both popular PS1 mods, XStation and PSIO, can run the Combined Disc off an SD card on real hardware.Other work:OpenRCT2 Fi...
Status Update - September 2022
Hello! As you might have noticed, billing has been paused for this month, since I've been mostly busy with work and I haven't had the chance to do much hobby stuff.GInputThis month I dusted off the code for GInput, untouched since 2016. The development version received some improvements over the years but they never made it to a public version, so I decided it was time to tidy all that up and release an update to clear my backlog. While I have no ETA on the update, so far it contains changes like: Removal of DirectX End-User Runtimes de...
Status Update - August 2022
Hello! This month I had a 2-week-long vacation combined with a visit to gamescom 2022, so this status update is going to be relatively short. Once again, to make it a little more interesting I am going to include all notable research from August.Research:Ford RacingAt the time of writing this, I'm yet to try Ford Racing (again) myself, but when looking for some info about the game I found some sources claiming Ford Racing and Ford Racing 2001 are not the same game, but an updated version. All sources (like the clip linked above) I could fin...
Status Update - July 2022
Hello! This month, I didn't publish any new releases, but I did invest plenty of time into research - so I'm going to shuffle the formula a little.I also played Stray πInfo for Box of cookies supportersI have migrated my to-do list to a new version of GitHub Projects, which means the link has changed. You should have received invitations for a new project board that has all the entries migrated to it, but if you didn't, here's a new link: https://github.com/users/CookiePLMonster/projects/3Research:I usually don't list res...
Status Update - June 2022
Hello! First of all, I apologize for the delay in publishing this post, I was on a trip and didn't get to writing the update a week ago.This month I "only" released a single cheat-code-based mod and a tool, but I also did some investigation that I'm going to briefly mention.Main releases:Triggers control scheme for Test Drive Unlimited (PS2)TDU, other than its PC and X360 versions from Eden Games, has also received surprisingly competent PS2 and PSP ports from Melbourne House. Unfortunately, those ports don't give us an opti...
Status Update - May 2022
Hello! In May, I briefly came back to Xbox emulation, and also released a minor update to one of the SilentPatches. Let's get to it.Main releases:SilentPatch for ScarfaceThanks to ermaccer, SilentPatch for Scarface now has an option to customize on-foot FOV and camera rotation speed! To get this update, get the latest version of the patch from my blog.Other work:Cxbx-Reloaded Do not leave KeDelayExecutionThread prematurely - a fix for game's Sleep calls returning prematurely, causing all sorts of timing issues in various games. Known to...
