Author Topic: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)  (Read 192754 times)

Offline Svipur

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #135 on: September 29, 2020, 06:32:19 AM »
Awww, thanks, Dink. Just seeing the LOAD "" brings a tear to my eye.

Got my list of multi-loaders handy, will give those a chance once TAPs are in.

Curiously, Z80 might remain the preferred format for multi-parters, so that there's no need for a tape browser and the player doesn't have to fiddle with rewinding the tape to a proper position before loading.

Offline dink

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #136 on: September 29, 2020, 07:45:20 AM »
Svipur,
Of course - we'll just add the taps like we add regular romfiles for the games that need them.
Try msx_xenon, and watch how it loads - I'll most likely add that for spectrum.  That's my tape robot, he's quite handy.

best regards,
- dink

Offline Svipur

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #137 on: September 29, 2020, 08:30:27 AM »
Try msx_xenon, and watch how it loads - I'll most likely add that for spectrum.  That's my tape robot, he's quite handy.

Heh, looks pretty neat. Almost makes the startup of 48k games look quite a bit more nostalgia-inducing than 128k ones. Seeing that LOAD "" typed in and all, instead of the robot selecting the Tape Loader.

Offline Neville

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #138 on: September 29, 2020, 10:08:26 AM »
Svipur, Neville, Gab75,
Here's a video for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9C0B9Iwftc

I just need to add typing-robot[like fbneo msx] and it's done :)  (tomorrow)

good night,
- dink

So f***ing cool!

And I wonder, rather than having a closed set, once this feature is finished, could we have a blank setup that lets you run anything from your collection? Or is it too much work to add a file selector to the dip switches? I know, I know, I keep asking for things. But this would put an end to the Spectrum requests. According to MobyGames, the system has 3305 known games, not to mention future HBs.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2020, 10:34:49 AM by Neville »

Offline dink

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #139 on: September 29, 2020, 11:19:21 AM »
Neville, fb wasn't really designed to do that.  we try to add the stuff people are going to play, if you want to just fumble through thousands of roms, one can use speccy or something.  then let us know about the games that have replay value.

best regards,
- dink

Offline Neville

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #140 on: September 29, 2020, 11:57:09 AM »
Neville, fb wasn't really designed to do that.  we try to add the stuff people are going to play, if you want to just fumble through thousands of roms, one can use speccy or something.  then let us know about the games that have replay value.

best regards,
- dink

Alright. And what about a smaller black border for Spectrum games?
« Last Edit: September 29, 2020, 12:00:50 PM by Neville »

Offline Gab75

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #141 on: September 29, 2020, 03:14:49 PM »
Svipur, Neville, Gab75,
Here's a video for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9C0B9Iwftc

I just need to add typing-robot[like fbneo msx] and it's done :)  (tomorrow)

Excellent! Among other things, there're a lot of homebrew games in tap format! ;)

Offline dink

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #142 on: September 30, 2020, 02:05:33 AM »
I just tossed up the WIP code w/tap support, some notes:
I set all the tap's to 128k, because some of them have better audio with it.  or with myth, its the only way to get audio at all.

narco police: when trying to set kempston, it reads from port xxDF, this is a kempston mouse port - which the game wants.  you'll need to use the (s)inclair joy interface (Intf2 in inputs editor) instead for this game.

tnzs: is there any way to select inputs for this game instead of keys?  (can someone find out for me?)

Addendum: Also fixed the borders, thanks for the idea Neville :)  Tomorrow I will try to clean up the code a bit and get rid of those ugly lines on the top and left side.

best regards,
- dink

Offline Kev

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #143 on: September 30, 2020, 07:17:36 AM »
Nice work dink :) And good work on the additions Svipur.

Offline Svipur

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #144 on: September 30, 2020, 07:48:14 AM »
Just tried out the new TAP entries, everything seems to be working absolutely flawlessly. Thanks for the superb work, Dink!

With TAP support in place, my take is that we stick with Original Release TAPs from WoS, Spectrum Computing, etc. for new additions wherever possible, so as to make it easier for people to make the compatible ROMs themselves. Z80 will be the preferred format for those cases where each part is loaded from different positions on the same tape from Basic and not the game itself (that is, requiring you to rewind the tape BEFORE booting the game, e.g. Savage).

Will get on with adding the games from Neville's last request and the multi-loaders shortly.

My current list of multi-loaders is this (includes both those we couldn't add and those that need replacing in the current romset):
Back to the Future 3
Darius
Impossamole
Night Breed 128k
Rick Dangerous 2
Run the Gauntlet
St. Dragon
Stormlord 2
Strider 2
Super Hang-On
Vindicators
Desperado 1 and 2
Mad Mix 2
North & South
Paris-Dakar
Perico Delgado
Rescate en el Golfo
Soviet
Silent Shadow
SWIV
Tour '91
Viaje al Centro de la Tierra
WWF Wrestlemania
Zona 0
Double Dragon 1 and 2
Mortadelo y Filemon II

Oh, and regarding The New Zealand Story. The game's instructions say the game supports both Kempston and Sinclair joysticks (that is, it should recognise them when you press Fire in the main menu), but my gamepad is mapped to Kempston in all Speccy emulators, and I never could get TNZS to pick it up. Works just fine for Sinclair's Interface 2, though.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2020, 07:59:56 AM by Svipur »

Offline Neville

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #145 on: September 30, 2020, 08:56:26 AM »

Addendum: Also fixed the borders, thanks for the idea Neville :)  Tomorrow I will try to clean up the code a bit and get rid of those ugly lines on the top and left side.

best regards,
- dink

Glad you find my ideas useful. It didn't struck me how large the margin was until I tested the last batch of Spanish games. It seems they favored bigger sprites at the expense of screen size.

UPDATE: It's taken a while, but we can finally play many ZX games the way they were intended. "Outrun" was one of those I was more anxious to try, because the ZX Spectrum must be the only decent port until the Sega consoles came up.



More things... I see the new preferred ZX format is TAP. It's certainly much better than Z80, but I still think TZX should be considered or discarted in the near future. TZX is certainly the most faithful format I can think of, but adopting TZX also means (probably, I have zero programming skills) that a series of tape copy protection schemes will have to be implemented. So I'll understand if you stick to TAP for now. After all, ZX support should not be your main focus.

Also, Svipur asked yesterday about new games we may add now that TAP is supported. Double Dragon I-II, Golden Axe and WWF are the ones that come to my mind right now, but I'm sure we'll come up with more in the next days.

Terrific job, you all.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2020, 12:21:03 PM by Neville »

Offline dink

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #146 on: September 30, 2020, 03:34:12 PM »
Thanks guys, it's nice to hear it works so good :)

Neville, TAP is good enough for what we are trying to do here. 

Offline Svipur

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #147 on: September 30, 2020, 05:30:04 PM »
Finished going through multiloaders and new requests (as well as a few more additions).

I've replaced the following existing entries:
Back to the Future 3
Castlevania (has a secret ending that loads if you beat the game 100%)
Darius
Night Breed
R-Type
Run the Gauntlet
Strider 2
SWIV
Vindicators

Apart from Neville's requests, I've also added the following gems:
Back to the Future 2 (well, this one's less of a gem and more of a 'we have BTTF 1 and 3 already, why not 2?')
Crosswize
Impossamole
Plot
Rick Dangerous 2
Robin of the Wood
Sidewize
Silent Shadow
St. Dragon
Stormlord 2

The three games I couldn't find a way to include are:
1. Super Hang-On - has speedlock.
2. Desperado 1 - conversion from TZX to TAP causes emulators to jump past the 8-byte header for the first level after loading the main menu. As a result, after starting the game, the game can't find the first level block. In other emus, this can be circumvented by rewinding back to the previous 8-byte block.
3. North & South - has speedlock.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2020, 06:01:32 PM by Svipur »

Offline Neville

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #148 on: September 30, 2020, 06:27:25 PM »
Thanks guys, it's nice to hear it works so good :)

Neville, TAP is good enough for what we are trying to do here.

So be it  :wink:

EDIT: A few more requests:

TMNT and TMNT: The Coin Op --> I know, we have plenty of TMNT games already. But I still think they're worthy and different enough from their console counterparts.

Super Trux --> A pretty cool truck racing game in the vein of "Out Run".
« Last Edit: October 01, 2020, 09:19:25 AM by Neville »

Offline Svipur

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Re: Game Consoles (Gab75 adds and more...)
« Reply #149 on: October 01, 2020, 10:07:53 AM »
@Neville

Added in Super Trux and Topo's Desperado. Regarding TMNT, as I mentioned previously, we already have support for both TMNT games, but they're listed as TMHT (Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles), following WoS listings:

https://worldofspectrum.net/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005168

https://worldofspectrum.net/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005170