Landstalker bug, very late in game.

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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!

Original issue reported on code.google.com by zimma...@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 2:19

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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 ?

Original comment by ekeeke31@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 6:40

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Type-Defect, Priority-Medium, CoreEmulation

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

Original comment by ekeeke31@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 6:49

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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.

Original comment by zimma...@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 10:32

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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.

Original comment by ekeeke31@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 10:56

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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!

Original comment by zimma...@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 7:55

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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... 

Original comment by ekeeke31@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 9:43

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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!

Original comment by zimma...@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 10:16

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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 ;-)

Original comment by ekeeke31@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 10:57

• Changed state: Invalid

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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...

Original comment by zimma...@gmail.com on 27 May 2010 at 11:41