This feels pretty obscure for this site but it's worth a shot.

I'd like to bug fix a game here, quality game but it feels like they didn't bother with a decent beta test due to time constraints.  I know the system fine, I know the 68k fine, I don't know any debugging utility that even approaches the feature set in GB,SNES,Genesis,NES and the other popular home consoles.

The best I can find is the debugger in Kawaks and it is much better than nothing at all (no disrespect to the author) but it does lack alot of simple features that I've already been spoiled with elsewhere.  The breakpoint it provides is too simple (only on execute) and very unstable (it will crash if the breakpoint never hits and will stall the emulator until it happens).  It does have some of the features I'd like out of a debugger like making softpatches and dumping RAM, but mainly the lack of breakpoints and live RAM viewer are really crippling.  This is from Kawaks 1.60 which appears to be the latest from CPS2SHOCK.

I know MAME has features like a tile viewer and a palette viewer, but seemingly not much as far as the processor goes.

I don't know of any other emulators that also include a debugger beyond Kawaks, if anyone has made any of their own for personal use, or if anyone knows of any other utility that might be useful for this please let me know.  Otherwise I CAN do this with Kawaks alone but with quite a bit of grief and a whole lot of extra time.  That, or I can try to hack up MAME to do what I want it to.  I'd imagine I'd go into the neogeo driver source and wedge in some code in the read/write handler bits, though I know nothing about how its scheduler thing works so that'd likely go nowhere at all.  Not even sure how I'd tack on a debugging interface either, but the option is there for sure if I haven't got anything else to try.

At any rate, Kawaks is nice for corrupting bits of code and observing the effect on the game at the very least.

Found that somewhere along disassembling the palette routine just to get used to 68k again.  The original game after 4000+ failed writes will then assume something is wrong with the hardware.  And since I completely forgot about bankswitching until I saw it trying to write to ROM, I have an extra thing to worry about without a decent debugger.  It swaps out banks every time it changes the palette in addition to who knows what.

Don't know if there are any SS3 players here at all, mainly doing this for myself because those bugs are fucking irritating sometimes.  I'd appreciate any info, otherwise I'll go at it alone no problem.  Not sure how long it would take though or if I'll get bored long before I get close to finishing.  It would be nice to bring up an otherwise fantastic title to the level it would be at if they actually bothered giving the testers a chance.

cool, that appears to be all I need actually.  I didn't know it had a full featured debugger already, it's loaded with all the features I'll need.  MESS has a very nice guide to it although it even comes with help you can have it present in the debug console itself.  Messing around with a bit, it seems to be intuitive and a decent setup altogether.  Will be very useful thanks.