Insane Difficulty: BPS and You: A Superior Patching Experience - Insane Difficulty

To mitigate patching issues with different ROM versions or header/headerless ROMs or other issues, I recommend using FloatingIPS instead of LunarIPS because FloatingIPS does things a bit better with regards to how it does patching.

FuSoYa is fantastic and awesome. I love their work.

However, I believe the IPS format has far outlived usefulness and I hope that people can switch to more error-resistant formats to future-proof their rom 'mods'. We've been using IPS since the early days of emulating NES games with NESticle with DOS. It is time to move on, me thinks.

So one of the benefits of FloatingIPS is that it also enables BPS patching. Here is a nice overview of BPS and why it is better than IPS or UPS file formats. BPS is GPLv3 and open-source so it can be improved on by anyone without needing the original author's permission so it is a far more open format than most IPS alternatives.

FloatingIPS is super-easy to use and the settings by default are already optimal unless you want to auto-launch emulators or something. It works similar to LunarIPS but even better in many ways.
Click Apply Patch and it will ask you for the Patch File, the ROM to Patch, and where to save the Patched ROM (preserving your original).
Click on Create Patch and it will ask you for the Original Unmodified ROM, the Modified ROM, and where to save the Patch File.
That's your tutorial in a nutshell.

My own mod for Shining in the Darkness uses the BPS format exclusively.

So I am hoping that authors here consider offering BOTH the IPS and BPS patches or just the BPS patches for their current/future releases. As for releasing prepatched ROMs that is up to them, but I hope that also releasing a BPS patch would be useful/desirable in the event the ROM links go poof or are taken down.

Wouldn't mind some thoughts/feedback on this.

I'll have to look more into this. It seems like it is a good thing, but as a modder myself I haven't had any issues with using LunarIPS. I'm all for moving on to better things but at least for my purposes, I don't need to. Its worth looking at though.

All I'll say is that oftentimes when I see stuff like this, it amounts to little more than a sales pitch.

It could be that BPS is indeed better, but the way I -- and a lot of people, really -- look at this is like so:

Everyone uses IPS. No one has switched. IPS remains (to my knowledge) the most used patching method for mods right now.

If there really is a better alternative, why isn't it used?

Most likely because there isn't a problem with IPS, and until there is, any other "new" or "improved" patching methods are just about pointless.

Denton, on 21 January 2016 - 01:27 PM, said:

No, actually, it's not. We don't host prepatched ROMs because it is illegal to do so in 99% of circumstances.

This is Insane Difficulty's official position on the matter.

From what I've read here and there since a few years it seems the IPS format is somewhat outdated, because of possible errors and patch size limitation. I've also read good things about the open-source XDelta and some of its variances, but byuu's beat seems to be even a better alternative. I think I'll host beat on ff6hacking.com, it's by spreading new utilities and offer new alternatives that people will switch.

Advent, on 12 February 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

It isn't a 'sales pitch' because I'm not selling/shilling anything. I'm promoting an open-source format that is objectively technically-superior to IPS and mitigates potential patching issues for end-users.

Considering you can look at the most recent posts/topics and see a 'patching help needed' post (not the first nor the last) then anything that benefits end-user patching should be seen as beneficial.

NESticle was the most-used NES emulator for the longest time. Everyone used it. Nobody switched despite superior alternatives. But eventually we moved on because the limitations and drawbacks exceeded any benefits of remaining with such a poor emulator (less than ~14% accuracy by the TASVideos testing and ZSNES is among the worst for SNES emulation with around ~72% accuracy).

If there is a better alternative, it often isn't used due to the network effect. Aka if everyone is using something than more people are inclined to remain with it rather than move to something better. This is a well-documented aspect of human psychology.

My tone and the content of my original post was done as a 'suggestion' and an appeal to authors to consider my request/suggestion. It wasn't demanding or flaming those that continue to release in other ways. Please re-read my initial post if you have any doubts as to my intentions.

Also your argument uses the 'BandWagon' and 'Appeal to Tradition' logical fallacies. My counter to that is simple. People/Users do not always agree on what they want. Traditional use of something doesn't always make it better than an objectively superior alternative (that also improves upon and supports IPS formats with larger file sizes/limitations).

There are known documented issues with IPS and ignoring them is a fallacy in and of itself.

This website does host prepatched ROMs such as Lavos Awakening for Chrono Trigger. Might wanna look at that before making such declarations. Has anyone gone through and actually downloaded the mods available from the download section and checked what is in the zip files? Chances are anything over 1 MB is not a patch for an SNES game; very few patches that I know of (outside of translations) hit that size.

Madsiur, on 13 February 2016 - 07:26 AM, said:

You are correct in that IPS has known issues with patching errors (wrong rom, wrong checksum, corrupted patch/rom, bad rom dump, you name it).
XDelta was the new kid on the block for a while, but it has been completely superceded by BPS. BPS actually uses some of the ideas from XDelta but implements them in a thoughtful and logical way.

Beat is ok but it is actually not as good as Alcaro's FloatingIPS because according to byuu themselves the beat utility is still beta and has some issues with large ROM sizes. FloatingIPS is also under GNU GPLv3 and includes the full source code within the download itself along with the GPL license.

I've never had a problem with IPS. So i'm going to continue using it.

It's a sales pitch, make no mistake about it. Just because you're not asking for money does not change that.

Denton, on 13 February 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

No, it doesn't.

At no point did I say yours wasn't better. I simply said there's no real reason to adopt it.

It's almost the same thing as Skype vs other VoIP programs. The overwhelming majority of people use Skype, so why are you gonna use this other one that might be feature-rich, but nobody uses?

Denton, on 13 February 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

A lot of SNES games fall into that 1% category.

99% is not 100%. Might wanna look at that before making such declarations.

Edit: Also, referencing a lot of the "patching issues" threads as support of this claim that IPS is this really flawed thing that needs to die is a joke. The overwhelming majority of those are user error.

This post has been edited by Advent: 13 February 2016 - 02:35 PM

I've used IPS and never had trouble with it. I won't be switching anytime soon.

Begone, peasant.

Advent, on 13 February 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

And that is sad considering the way it is laid out could not make things any easier. I suppose that will always be an issue though.

This is the development discussion, and he is posting a suggestion on how to make our mods easier to patch / use correctly. No need to jump on him.


It's a constructive post with evidence to support all of his claims. I'm all for it.

FFTA, on 13 February 2016 - 05:28 PM, said:

Bunk made a lot of constructive posts, but that doesn't mean he didn't have foot-in-mouth syndrome, or that we liked him.

I still disagree that ZSNES is "objectively worse". If emulation accuracy is literally your only concern, then I'd agree that it's objectively worse. But emulation accuracy is not the only concern for many people. For many people, the benefit from the familiarity and not having to learn a new UI is more important than emulation accuracy will ever be to them. I'm not saying that I'm in that category, but I can understand it if others are.

That being said, I'm going against the grain a little here, but I can see how this tool would be useful. Yes, the majority of patching issues are user error, but a utility to help deal with those user errors can still be helpful, I think. That being said, I still have no beef with IPS.

Lockirby2, on 13 February 2016 - 08:27 PM, said:

I don't think you're going against the grain -- I never said it wouldn't be useful, it's just, think about it. A lot of people already have all the tools to patch with an IPS on their PC -- at least people we have here. How many of those people are really gonna be inclined to download a new utility they've never used before because it adds new features that, really, they probably couldn't care less about?

I see it similar to forcing people to download Mumble to do a raid when Ventrilo and TeamSpeak were in their prime. Most people just aren't going to bother with it.

Advent, on 13 February 2016 - 08:30 PM, said:

Actually, I was going to mention this in my post as well, but I was dragged away, so I amended it to the inadequate last line in the previous post. I was originally also going to mention that this could probably become a bigger issue if fifteen people design fifteen different patching formats with kinda-sorta-arguably better features and suddenly everybody needs to juggle fifteen different patchers to get their ROMs running (probably won't happen, but...).

Personally, I agree that most people here wouldn't want to download a new tool to patch with BPS. But I can imagine that this would be better for newbies who haven't been playing hacks for very long. It's mostly just a trade-off in the long run.

Lockirby2, on 13 February 2016 - 09:06 PM, said:

Lockirby2, on 13 February 2016 - 08:27 PM, said:

Objectively worse means worse in such a way as to be completely emotionless and focused on pure technical aspects.
Both ZSNES and SNES9X are open-sourced. Go look through the code. Do the same for higan. The SNES9X emulator is far from perfect but it has a significant ~20% margin of accuracy over ZSNES AND superior audio quality emulation.

ZSNES is no longer actively/publically developed. Existing bugs/hacks stay the way they are. SNES9X is still being (slowly) developed and importing (some) fixes from higan since byuu has made several specific and useful contributions such as SPC7001 support for certain games (plus all the various work alongside DrDecapitator to explicitly analyze every single custom SNES chip in use to allow for emulation of them without seperate graphic pack files or dirty code hacks).

I know that ZSNES is objectively worse than SNES9X from a coding and technical standpoint because I've been intimately involved in the rom hacking/modding community for a while now. Many modders depend on the emulator-specific bugs in ZSNES to develop their hacks (mostly Super Mario World ones) and are surprised when people complain it doesn't work on their SNES hardware. Their response usually is 'just play it in ZSNES vx.xx' and then the debates start up.

Emulator-specific rom mods/hacks are bad for the community, bad for posterity, and bad for future-proofing a work of art (for better or worse) for the enjoyment of people both now and in the future.

Remember all those Nesticle-only hacks? Where are they now? Forgotten, buried, and obsolete. Nobody knows or cares about them and digital archeaologists may not even bother archiving however many various versions of Nesticle specifically to play certain hacks.

Higan's UI is subjectively worse with the extremely limited options and the unintuitive and poorly-integrated folder structuring system. I get that objectively it is technically superior to the current setup in other emulators but it subjectively makes for a poor enduser experience.

The only reason I don't use Higan is that my hardware is not powerful enough to run stuff like Chrono Trigger at full speed (even with the 'performance' version). The audio hitches up and it is a poor experience for me. I'm well aware of which games that SNES9X does use 'dirty hacks' in code to work around unemulated aspects of the console. I avoid those games or plan to use higan exclusively for those games only if necessary.

See how that works? Objective vs Subjective is awesome. Just be sure not to confuse the two.

UI is subjective. Some people like it and other people do not. Therefore, whether or not people use an emulator due to the UI/familiarity does NOT affect the 'objectively better' remark. When it comes to features/functionality, other emulators do have an edge in certain respects and the DOS-based style UI is hit or miss; it is subjective and subject to an emotional response/feelings.

Objective analysis focuses on coding and accuracy. That's why I focused on accuracy (since I don't know many here who are programmer-enough to analyze the source code of various emulators the way I do). I actually got a great deal of help on this from Discht of the RHDN forums but the admin/mods there are assholes are meh and silenced him because reasons. What a shame >_<

If you can evaluate an emulator based on both objective and subjective criteria, you can't claim that one is objectively better than the other. If something is objectively better than something else, it must be objectively better in *all* aspects. If you say "objectively better from a technical standpoint", I'll let you have that claim, but "objectively better period" is impossible, exactly because UI is subjective.

Note that I have absolutely zero disagreement with the fact that ZSNES is less accurate than other emulators. There is no need for you to convince me of what I already know.

EDIT: Note that I am not the one who -1'd your post.

EDIT2: Yes, I understand the difference between objective and subjective, and I am not being confused between the two. In fact, my entire point was that UI is subjective, and therefore two emulators cannot be objectively compared, except if you narrow your scope on how you compare them.

Kjata, on 13 February 2016 - 09:14 PM, said:

Floating IPS supercedes Lunar IPS not just in features but in full backwards compatability (while bypassing LunarIPS limitations on file size and other bits).

It is the equivalant of saying that you don't want a PlayStation 2 (PS2) because your PlayStation 1 (PS1) plays all the games just fine and you don't care about PS2 games despite the fact that a PS2 has full backwards compatability (or at least the original models did). Or replace original-model PlayStation 3 (PS3) instead.

And in this case it is 100% compatability rather than the imperfect backwards compatability with specific games on the PS2 and PS3.
And the UI is the same as well and functions the same. Objectively speaking there is no reasonable reason NOT to switch to using FloatingIPS over LunarIPS. The subjective reasons of familiarity and 'I dont feel like it' are valid opinions but they are still subjective.

Encouraging people and modders to start using BPS patches not only maintains that backwards compatability (like the PS2) but lets you play new patches with a superior end-user experience with less 'user error' syndrome.

Release patches as IPS? No problem.
Release patches as BPS? No problem.
Release both? Go right ahead. Eventually the modders and users can decide whether the BPS format is suitable for their needs.

One of the things when it comes to BPS is that you can't 'combine' patches easily. BPS patches won't combine with each other so you can't 'patch over' an already patched ROM (this is done by design).

So if you want to use a 6-letter name patch for Chrono Trigger on top of another ROM mod (translation or difficulty mod) then you can't do that if both patches are BPS-only. You'd need IPS for those specific types of mods designed for simultaneous use with other mods.

Also there's the LSA IPS Patch Compare utility that only works with IPS patches to make sure they don't 'overlap' in an error-prone way.

Denton, on 14 February 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

This sounds like the perfect reason not to use BPS ever; if I - by design - can't add optional patches with the new format, why should I use the new format at all for one of the multiple patches and then have a half-n-half mess?

So if I understand this restriction correctly, BPS sounds like an inferior format for me.

For the sake of argument, in my case the "state" of the ROM to which the hardmode is applied is "undefined" since an optional translation patch should be used first.

Same here. I intend for an optional patch to be in one of my mods, and BPS is not compatible with what I want to do.

BNW afaik also has unofficial addons, installable via IPS.

You say BPS is "superior", when it is your own argument that sends that idea to the graveyard.