Kabuki Warriors

Okay, before I go any further, I'd like to apologize to everyone who feels that I have been unnecessarily angry as of late. I've just been under a lot of stress lately IRL and it's been driving me crazy! Getting a job in the US these days is really hard (be it IT or even McDonalds), especially when you're still in the entry level stages. I've been without a full time job since September of last year and getting a job at this point (anything) is very important. So if I offended anyone, I'm sorry :(

As you can see, the game Kabuki Warriors (XDK 3911) is reaching menus so far(ingame is not confirmed yet, and I'll explain that shortly). I had a very positive feeling that this game would have some level of compatibility with Cxbx for some reason (lately, my emulation instincts have proven quite accurate). It looks like all my work on XDK 3911 is paying off, big time! Still have lots of work to do on this particular XDK by fixing the ordering of Deferred Render/Texture States, but that will be an easy fix once I get around to it. TBH, so far, I didn't add anything in particular to get this game showing stuff. All the stuff I added for Azurik and Halo must have been enough to get it this far.

"So, what's the problem?" Truth is, I don't really know what's causing problems. Upon trying to go ingame, conflicts with my display adapter on a driver level occur. I'm assuming that a certain Direct3D function is causing this. What sucks is that DirectX 8.1 is greatly depreciated and it's not easy to debug. I'm convinced that if we were using at least Direct3D9 or OpenGL, this would not really be an issue. The best thing I can think of is to find out if any functions are returning a specific error code (D3DERR_DRIVERINTERNALERROR). It would be nice if I had my other machines to test this on, but sadly my laptop is the only available computer capable of running Cxbx in this household. However, I do hear some background music and voices upon trying to get ingame. Right now, I can't actively work on finding this problem, and tomorrow I have another interview. Hopefully I get this job because it will really help me and my sister through these tough times (and maybe a lucky/unsuspecting British lady; and no, she's not my girlfriend ^^).

"Okay Shogun. What's the deal with emulating all these crappy games?? I want to play DOA3, JSRF, Ninja Gaiden and Otogi!" Okay, calm down! Don't you think I work on those games too? Let's look at it this way. It's rather common to have an easier time emulating a crappy game then a top notch game. Not saying Turok, Futurama, Smashing Drive and Robotech: Battlecry are bad games (well, some of you might not like them), it all depends on how the game was programmed. Crappier games tend to use more generic and uniform coding methods than the more popular ones. Not saying the programmers of these games didn't do a good job of programming these games though, but sometimes programmers will try to take shortcuts by using code already contained in the XDK samples. Emulating XDK samples with Cxbx has been the most effective method of improving it, so a game like Petit Copter (which is almost totally based off of the TechCertDemo in the XDK) will naturally be easier to emulate. That's just the way it is. But look on the bright side, getting crappy games like Kabuki Warriors working will increase your chances of playing a better game such as DOA3 (which is still bugging the hell out of me with it's multi-threading issues).

Side note: I own this game, but never actually got around to playing it for myself. I heard that this game got some really bad reviews and some claimed it to be one of the worst Xbox games out there, but I won't make that kind of judgement until I play it. I won't discourage anyone for trying this game themselves, but get a load of this quote below:

"I literally won a match just bashing the controller against my ass. I wish I was joking, but the score is seriously Kabuki Warriors zero, my ass one." - Andy McNamara (Game Informer)

I'd really like to say more, but I need to get ready for tomorrow. So thanks for checking out my blog and wishing me well on this project.

Shogun.