Author Topic: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)  (Read 720768 times)

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #180 on: June 12, 2009, 09:38:22 PM »
It's just the beginning of the title screen. The first time "insert coin" shows up, the game locks up.

Here's an updated compatibility list

// no games have sound

// These games have very good graphics
Blade Master (World)
Cross Blades! (Japan)
Dream Soccer '94 (Japan)
Gun Hohki (Japan)
Hook (Japan)
Hook (US)
Hook (World)
In The Hunt (US)
In The Hunt (World)
Kaitei Daisensou (Japan)
Lethal Thunder (World)
Mystic Riders (World)
Thunder Blaster (Japan)
Undercover Cops (Alpha Renewal Version)
Undercover Cops (Japan)
Undercover Cops (World)

// These games have graphical issues
Gunforce 2 (US)
Geostorm (Japan)
Major Title 2 (Japan)
Major Title 2 (World)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 1)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 2)
Perfect Soldiers (Japan)
Superior Soldiers (US)

// These games boot somewhat (mostly just showing the rom/ram check)
Ninja Baseball Batman (US)
Yakyuu Kakutou League-Man (Japan)

// These show nothing but a black screen
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (Japan)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (US)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (World)
R-Type Leo (Japan)
R-Type Leo (World)


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #181 on: June 13, 2009, 07:02:51 PM »
Big improvement: SOUND.

I had to fix the Irem cpu decryption (it was only writing the opcodes lol).

Anyway, fixing the sound cpu also fixed some game issues:

Superior Soldier's sprites show up much better (still a bit buggy, but better)
R-Type Leo now shows the rom check
Gunforce now works completely. :)

However, somewhere along the way I managed to break Mystic Riders :(
Three steps forward and one step back is still progress, I guess.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2009, 07:05:57 PM by iq_132 »


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #182 on: June 14, 2009, 01:42:13 AM »
I added a pretty fancy priority system to the driver. :) This increases the speed drastically (from 25% cpu usage down to about 8% atm).
This was required mostly due to the way that the sprite list is handled.  It must be read backwards or it fails to draw the strips correctly as it sets them on the first sprite of the strip.  Each sprite strip can be 1 to 4 sprite tiles wide (tiles are 16x16) and 1 to 4 tiles tall.

The effect is most noticeable in Gunforce 2's title screen and the sprites for S/Psoldier.  The only real remaining graphics issue is that some games' backgrounds are not scrolling 100% correctly (Gunforce 2, Skins Game, S/Psoldier). Other than that, it's just a matter of getting the games up and running properly and having someone smarter than me fix the sample rate issue I'm having with the IremGA20 core.


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #183 on: June 14, 2009, 02:52:12 AM »
Another update:
I fixed the sprite list size (it was still set to be double sized for when the sprites list was being accessed as bytes rather than words [ 2 bytes ]).
Also, I bumped up the interleave to be the size of the sample rate (and it fixed a certain game...).

// These games have very good graphics
Blade Master (World)
Cross Blades! (Japan)
Dream Soccer '94 (Japan)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (Japan)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (US)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (World)
Hook (Japan)
Hook (US)
Hook (World)
In The Hunt (US)
In The Hunt (World)
Kaitei Daisensou (Japan)
Lethal Thunder (World)
Ninja Baseball Batman (US)
Thunder Blaster (Japan)
Undercover Cops (Alpha Renewal Version)
Undercover Cops (Japan)
Undercover Cops (World)
Yakyuu Kakutou League-Man (Japan)

// These games have graphical issues (something is wrong with the X scroll for the backgrounds... scanline irq-related?)
Gunforce 2 (US)
Geostorm (Japan)
Major Title 2 (Japan)
Major Title 2 (World)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 1)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 2)
Perfect Soldiers (Japan)
Superior Soldiers (US)

// These games are not working - black screen / freezes after rom/ram check.
Mystic Riders (World)
Gun Hohki (Japan)
R-Type Leo (Japan)
R-Type Leo (World)
« Last Edit: June 14, 2009, 02:53:15 AM by iq_132 »


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #184 on: June 14, 2009, 04:05:01 AM »
Apparently Gunforc2/Geostorm does some some raster effects to get the graphics to appear correctly.  Lots of work to do still...


Offline Lim-Dul

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #185 on: June 14, 2009, 09:03:55 PM »
YAAAAY! Ninja Baseball BatMan is working! I will be able to finally dump this stupid old MAME++ for netplay. :-P

I just hope all this Irem driver stuff didn't distract you from doing something more important, like e.g. getting other games working. ^^

P.S. How's the game? You knew it before? :-D

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #186 on: June 14, 2009, 09:34:58 PM »
YAAAAY! Ninja Baseball BatMan is working! I will be able to finally dump this stupid old MAME++ for netplay. :-P
:) Glad to hear that.

Quote
I just hope all this Irem driver stuff didn't distract you from doing something more important, like e.g. getting other games working. ^^
Nah, it's been interesting (as well as massively frustrating).  There are other things I should be finishing up or looking at (I promised Barry I'd look at something and haven't yet. [I feel a bit like a jackass]).

Quote
P.S. How's the game? You knew it before? :-D
It's bizarre Japanese at it's finest. lol And no, I'd never heard of it before.  The few times I stumbled across it on MAWS I assumed it was a baseball game and just moved along.


Offline xingxing

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #187 on: June 15, 2009, 01:48:53 AM »
Excellent Work!

BTW: could you tell me how to debug a game when porting mame drivers to FBA?
MAME has nice debugger for every cpu core and a log system, but I dont know how to do same work in FBA? When I found game frozen(just game frozen at some point not program crash), how can I do? And seems that the area for showing "bprintf" context is not big enough (can NOT scroll?)?
TIA!

Offline Barry Harris

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #188 on: June 15, 2009, 02:46:12 AM »
Excellent Work!

BTW: could you tell me how to debug a game when porting mame drivers to FBA?
MAME has nice debugger for every cpu core and a log system, but I dont know how to do same work in FBA? When I found game frozen(just game frozen at some point not program crash), how can I do? And seems that the area for showing "bprintf" context is not big enough (can NOT scroll?)?
TIA!

FBA has a built-in debugger for 68K only available via the Misc menu in Debug builds. As for bprintf - it scrolls correctly in both VC and GCC builds for me. I would suggest building using official tools in the official source for development. bprintf can also be logged to a html file (and is by default) for mass-logging. :)
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Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #189 on: June 16, 2009, 12:41:05 AM »
I went ahead and added all of the inputs for these games.  Very time consuming and it adds another 50kb to the file. lol

I also managed to get scanlines working with the weird timing Ninja Baseball Batman needs. :) It gives some pretty good results (compare the bottom images).

Before:


After:


Before:


After:
« Last Edit: June 16, 2009, 12:42:29 AM by iq_132 »


Offline JacKc

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #190 on: June 16, 2009, 05:16:34 AM »
Amazing progress :eek:

Sure, FBA Dev Team is on fire !!!


Offline Lim-Dul

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #191 on: June 16, 2009, 10:13:12 AM »
Awesometastic!
I think the FBA team is ahead in terms of major changes to the Emu compared to MAME, even if the latter has more contributors.

Offline kenshiro

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #192 on: June 18, 2009, 05:27:06 PM »
This Ninja Baseball driver is really sexy, nice graphical style. Nice job!

Offline magicfly

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #193 on: June 18, 2009, 05:46:13 PM »
love and respect for your all hard work!!! :)

is there a chance to see the real ghostbusters among the available games?

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #194 on: June 19, 2009, 11:34:26 AM »
Awesometastic!
I think the FBA team is ahead in terms of major changes to the Emu compared to MAME, even if the latter has more contributors.

The thing about that is that FBA's focus is more on gaming, so we've added features that the MAME team wouldn't even consider.  The second part to that is drivers. We re-write MAME's drivers not to just work with FBA, but with a focus on SPEED.  This is difficult, but not nearly (imo), as writing the initial driver.

This Ninja Baseball driver is really sexy, nice graphical style. Nice job!

All of these IREM games have very nice visuals ^^

love and respect for your all hard work!!! :)

is there a chance to see the real ghostbusters among the available games?

http://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=897.msg8824#msg8824


I guess I should give a progress report.  Atm, I've not done much.  I've worked again and again to get proper timing for the scanlines & interrupts, but the drivers never quite like how it comes out. :S

Sound is still off, for some reason the YM2151 will only play music if a sound effect has been triggered recently.  It will crap out after a second or two if a sf hasn't played (most noticeable in gunforce).

Lastly, I haven't put a lot of time into FBA this last week, I've been job hunting (Yay for living in the state with the worst economy in the USA).
And when I haven't been doing that, this has been eating up a lot of my time.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2009, 11:39:14 AM by iq_132 »