Hi all,
my first post here.
For quite a long time I've had an idea of making a game that would run on an original arcade hardware and I hope someone here would know how to solve at least some of the problems. There are 2 groups of main problems when I am thinking on how to create the code and produce the files.
#1
Assuming I already did produce ROM files for targeted arcade machine (e.g. Donkey Kong hardware or Pac-Man hardware), is there a way to somehow bypass the ROM files hash check against the database of working ROMs so FB Alpha could run my own ROMs? It would be impossible to develop the game if I'd have to recompile FB Alpha everytime I make some changes to the game code - just to update the database with the new checksums.
#2
Since I am better with Z80 than 6502 I searched for dissasembled ROMs of arcade games based on Z80 CPU and I found fully disassembled and commented Donkey Kong and Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man ROMs from which I could easily decipher how to use the additional hardware used in those machines to make my own games. I could then use z88dk or some other crosscompiler to produce the code but the question is - how would I then produce the ROM files? Is there some tool for producing the ROM files targeting Donkey Kong or Pac-Man hardware, using raw .hex files as an input? Or is there some other convenient way of 'putting the code into the ROM files'?
I am BTW very interested in dissasembled source code of any arcade game (especially Scramble) regardless of the main CPU and would appreciate any information or link. I could, of course, run disassembler and produce the code from any ROM file but it would take months (if not years) to decipher all hardware ports and memory maps.