Następne MAME na horyzoncie. Ahoj.
[9] faust @
środa, 28 Kwietnia 2021 23:08CETNastępne MAME na horyzoncie. Ahoj.
MAME 0.231, our April release, is out now! The Yamaha FM synthesis rewrite is progressing, with the OPL family (including YM2413, YM3526, YM3812, YMF262 and Y8950) done this month. A number of regressions reported against the previous release have also been fixed. Most things should be improved, but if you notice something wrong with a system using one of these chips, be sure to let us know. Warp-1, a very rare Sun Electronics game from the late ’70s, has been added this month. This is an early example of an “into the screen” space shooter.
For as long as it has been emulated, the “3D” stages in Contra have been too easy. This comes down to the functionality of the Konami 007452 chip, which Konami calls a VRC&DMP. Now we know that VRC stands for Virtual ROM Controller, and controls ROM banking. However, the DMP part has been more of a mystery, assumed to be some kind of protection. This month, furrtek worked out that it’s apparently some kind of Divide/Multiply Processor, for 16-bit maths operations that would be unacceptably slow on the games’s pair of 6809-family CPUs. The great news is the game now runs correctly, the bad news is you’ll probably die a lot more.
David “Haze” Haywood is back this month with fixes for several arcade games that have never been quite right. He’s fixed graphical priority issues in SNK’s Beast Busters and Mechanized Attack, improved timing in Seibu Kaihatsu’s Shot Rider, and corrected layer offsets in Mitchell’s Funky Jet. He also added support for a couple of protected Mega Drive bootleg games from Argentina. Recently, David has been streaming MAME gaming sessions, often highlighting under-appreciated games. You can watch the recorded streams on his YouTube channel. Still on the topic of things that have never been right, sasuke has been busy this month. He’s improved the Nichibutsu 1412M2 DAC playback rate and timer period calculation, most noticeable on the Mighty Guy soundtrack, and made Taito’s unicycling game Cycle Maabou playable.
Clones promoted to working
new NOT WORKING machines (#7898)
new NOT_WORKING clone
Games promoted to working
Clones promoted to working
new WORKING software list entries
new NOT WORKING software list entries
Games promoted to working
new NOT_WORKING machine
Games promoted to working
Clones promoted to working
Machines promoted to working
New working software list additions (apple2_flop_orig.xml)
Machines promoted to working
New Games
New Games
MAME 0.266 is ready just in time for the end of May. The first thing you’ll notice is that Taito F3 video emulation has been reimplemented, fixing numerous long-standing graphical issues. The dynamic range compression used by several Yamaha synthesisers seems to finally be understood, fixing audible distortion. Speaking of sound, a previously missing Game Boy Advance sound channel is now emulated.
Several additional members of Nokia’s MikroMikko 1 line of 8-bit business computers from the 1980s are now supported. In PC emulation, S3 ViRGE video accelerator emulation has been simplified and improved. A couple more cartridge types have been added for MSX home computers.
This release also adds plenty of software list items and arcade bootlegs. Lots of code has been cleaned up and modernised, with various bugs fixed along the way. We’ve also added a workaround for the regression in clang 18 that was causing build failures.
As always, you can read about all the changes in this release in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.
New working systems
New working clones
Systems promoted to working
Clones promoted to working
New systems marked not working
New clones marked not working
New working software list items
Software list items promoted to working
New software list items marked not working
Merged pull requests
In case you're unaware, many of UI controls on the function keys have been reassigned. For example, instead of P for Pause, now it's F5.
We got annoyed one time too many at the interactions of the P key with drivers that would need it (keyboards, virtual piano keyboards, lots of stuff). So we decided an overhaul was in order. Of course, all that is still customizable, so one can trivially change things back in the UI if needed.
Plus a number of unchanged controls:
Hopefully, that will help. Also, the easier-to-access save/load keys could be nice.
It’s time for our very special MAME 0.265 release! April has seen development across numerous areas. MAME now has support for touch screens on Linux and Windows 8 or later, opening up new possibilities for interactive artwork. If you have a suitable multi-touch screen, you can now play chords on systems with on-screen piano keyboards. Check the documentation for specifics on how touch differs from mouse control in menus. You’ll need to turn on the enable_touch option to use touch screen support on Linux.
A pair of 1970s portable computers from IBM are now emulated in MAME: the IBM 5100 and IBM 5110. Based on a heavily microcoded 16-bit architecture, these systems ran APL software by emulating a System/360 mainframe and BASIC software by emulating a System/3 business system (ancestors of IBM Z and IBM i, respectively). Prior to the introduction of the IBM 5100, APL was exclusive to large mainframe computers. A self-contained 25 kg system running APL as well as BASIC was revolutionary.
You can now plug a virtual Super Game Module into your emulated ColecoVision, adding more RAM and better sound output. Many titles from the vibrant ColecoVision homebrew development community require or make use of the Super Game Module. There’s also a big update to the ColecoVision software lists, including lots of homebrew software to try out. Other software list additions this month include one of the remaining Bandai RX-78 game cartridges, two more GameKing III games, a batch of MSX2 floppy disks, and the latest Apple II floppy disk dumps.
Of course, we haven’t stopped working on arcade game emulation. For the first time, you can play Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial Oshiete Your Heart games. These spin-offs of the popular dating simulation series used heart rate and galvanic skin resistance sensors and printed the results from your game. What appears to be an early version of Visco’s Kokontouzai Eto Monogatari drop puzzle game has been found and dumped. This version has much less content in the data ROM and a smaller program. Another rare find dumped this month is a production version of the CES Galaxy Games StarPak 4 multi-game cartridge.
Other improvements this month include serial console support for the KIM-1 hobbyist computer and an option to use one binary file per track when extracting CHD CD-ROM images.
MAME Testers bugs fixed
New working systems
New working clones
Systems promoted to working
New systems marked not working
New clones marked not working
New working software list items
Software list items promoted to working
New software list items marked not working
Merged pull requests
MAME 0.264 is ready right on time! Before we get to emulation improvements, there are some changes to the debugger that may affect you. The debugger’s printf and logerror commands now support more formatting conversions and options, including NUL-terminated strings from emulated memory, hexadecimal numbers with lowercase digits, and left-aligned fields. This may change the behaviour of some debugger scripts. In other general changes, MAME now supports saving compact cassette images in compressed FLAC format, so you can save some disk space.
Thanks to new contributor Enzo Lombardi, Dribbling now has emulated sound! This classic twin-stick top-down football game was once a common sight in Italy’s numerous arcades. Sound effects make for a much more authentic experience. Robin Sergeant, another relative newcomer to MAME development, has been putting in a lot of work to improve the state of the Research Machines RM-380Z family, and it’s really coming together. This release adds sound, graphics, 8" disk drives, and more.
The very rare arcade game Vampire from Entertainment Enterprises has finally been dumped and emulated. A rare sight in ’80s arcades, it wasn’t known for being a great game. In a way, this makes it more interesting, as we’re more often reminded of successful games and more likely to forget the failures.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can use the newly emulated Visual Technology XDS-19P as a graphical terminal for a modern Linux system running X11 applications. It requires setting up BootP and TFTP servers, as well as configuring the host system so it can connect, so be prepared for a challenge if you decide to try it out.
Of course, there’s much more, including working controls for Tomy Plarail and Tomica TV games, fixes for audio CD playback, and dumps of the few remaining EC series Japanese e-kara cartridges.
MAME Testers bugs fixed
New working systems
New working clones
Systems promoted to working
New systems marked not working
New clones marked not working
New working software list items
New software list items marked not working
Merged pull requests
After two long months, we’re back with MAME 0.262! Of course, it’s full of exciting work on multiple fronts. In core media support, MAME now supports FLAC compression for compact cassette images, and Zstandard compression in zip archives and CHD disk images. For maximum compatibility, chdman won’t use Zstandard compression by default, so you’ll need to enable it if you want to use it when creating or converting disk images. For your convenience, unidasm now allows you to specify offsets in hexadecimal or octal.
Three LaserDisc games designed by Rick Dyer are now working: the Japanese version of Time Traveler, the console-to-arcade conversion Thayer’s Quest, and Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair. It’s very exciting to see multiple LaserDisc captures combined to eliminate all dropouts from disc degradation and pressing faults for Dragon’s Lair and Thayer’s Quest.
Following up on work in the previous release, MAME now supports Sega’s TV Ocha-Ken system, based on the same technology as the Advanced Pico BEENA. It’s a far simpler system designed for young children, using barcode cards to trigger mini-games. Also from Sega, initial support for the AI computer has been added. No, this isn’t related to the current artificial intelligence craze; it’s a rather obscure system from 1986 featuring a pen tablet and using cartridge and compact cassette media.
Two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have been added: the CZ-230S keyboard and the rare SZ-1 sequencer. The CZ-2230S lacked sound editing features but added a programmable drum machine (using PCM samples) and sequencer. Also in synthesiser emulation, MAME’s Wave Blaster host driver now supports multiple synthesiser modules from Casio, Samsung, and Yamaha. In other musical news, the original version of the very obscure Shamisen Brothers rhythm game from Kato’s has now been fully dumped and emulated.
The microcontroller program for Taito’s KiKi KaiKai was recently extracted. This contains a substantial amount of game logic, allowing the simulation code previously used by MAME to be retired and giving more confidence that the emulation is accurate. Improvements to our Fujitsu MB8841 emulation have fixed persistent issues in Arabian from Sun Electronics. HT1130 microcontrollers are now supported, allowing cheap hand-held “brick games” to be emulated, albeit without sound for now.
This is a big release for chess computer emulation. There are lots of newly supported chess computers from the brands you love, like Hegener + Glaser, Novag, and Saitek, as well as more versions of systems that were already supported. There were also a couple of backgammon computers added, from Saitek and Tryom.
There’s inevitably far more than we have time to talk about here, including an Arabic version of the Mattel Aquarius, an 8" floppy drive controller for the Apple II family, numerous Aristocrat Leisure gambling systems promoted to working, some big software list updates, and lots of code modernised.
MAME Testers bugs fixed
Interim release because there's nothing official this month.
© Try2emu 1999 - 2024 | Krzysztof 'Faust' Karkosza Kontakt Polityka Prywatności OWU