Author Topic: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)  (Read 720856 times)

Offline Lim-Dul

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #165 on: June 06, 2009, 05:34:54 PM »
No lol sorry. There is a somewhat preliminary m92 driver in fba already.  I've modified it to load the roms and init, so I can get Ninja Baseball Bat Man to show the "winners don't do drugs" screen, but it locks up there. Seems the IRQ stuff isn't quite right.

*edit*
Oop! Just saw this on maws...
Yup - even in MAME (if MAME is anything to go by - personally I like FBA (Shuffle) better but use MAME in single player for greater compatibility) the emulation isn't perfect - when you press any buttons during the cutscenes the screen flickers although everything seems to be fine during actual gameplay.

Man, I love Ninja Baseball BatMan - IMHO it's one of the best beat-em-ups ever (albeit not very well known) featuring 100% Japanese craziness but also incredibly smooth gameplay.

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #166 on: June 07, 2009, 05:54:13 PM »
Yup - even in MAME (if MAME is anything to go by - personally I like FBA (Shuffle) better but use MAME in single player for greater compatibility) the emulation isn't perfect - when you press any buttons during the cutscenes the screen flickers although everything seems to be fine during actual gameplay.

Man, I love Ninja Baseball BatMan - IMHO it's one of the best beat-em-ups ever (albeit not very well known) featuring 100% Japanese craziness but also incredibly smooth gameplay.

Lol, I adore Japanese craziness.

On a side note, I wrote and finished up D-Con / SD Gundam Psycho Salamander no Kyoui. :) Again, thanks to Barry's Seibu sound stuff and some very helpful input from JackC. :)


*edit*
Also finished up Blood Bros and Sky Smasher. :)

*edit*
Also resolved a long-standing issue with Toki -- the title screen is now correct with the C (Musashi) 68k core. :)
« Last Edit: June 07, 2009, 10:24:32 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 #167 on: June 09, 2009, 02:05:50 AM »
YM2203 sound can pretty much suck my balls.  I wrote and finished this up (minus the ym2203 sound, which I'm hoping Barry can fix for me. :D) in about an hour and a half (3 hours if you count struggling with the ym2203...).


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #168 on: June 10, 2009, 01:42:40 AM »
lol, thanks jack.

Started working on Oopsware's m92 driver tonight.  Fixed some of the graphics errors and added bmasters.  The games still need some work graphically (and proper line-scroll added, rather than row).
« Last Edit: June 10, 2009, 02:23:36 AM by iq_132 »


Offline Huggybaby

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #169 on: June 10, 2009, 01:57:56 AM »
YES! In the Hunt, one of my favorites, one of the best looking and coolest games of all time, from the guys that brought you Metal Slug. Nice choice iq_132, nice choice indeed!

1) I still haven't tried Kangaroo yet, I will soon, I promise.

2) Can you change the controls for Gyruss? I think they should be joystick left=clockwise rotation, joystick right=counter clockwise rotation. Now it's divided into four quadrants which is clunky. I don't remember it being like that in the arcade. Of course I could be wrong, it's been a long time.

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #170 on: June 10, 2009, 07:00:10 PM »
YES! In the Hunt, one of my favorites, one of the best looking and coolest games of all time, from the guys that brought you Metal Slug. Nice choice iq_132, nice choice indeed!
It was was already working, I've improved it a bit (though not in that shot lol).

Quote
1) I still haven't tried Kangaroo yet, I will soon, I promise.
I don't ask much, but damn it, play Kangaroo! :D

Quote
2) Can you change the controls for Gyruss? I think they should be joystick left=clockwise rotation, joystick right=counter clockwise rotation. Now it's divided into four quadrants which is clunky. I don't remember it being like that in the arcade. Of course I could be wrong, it's been a long time.

According to MAME, that's the correct setup.  There's not much I can do with it without some major hackery.



Anywho, I went ahead and completely rewrote the background drawing routine for m92.  It's fairly fast (still needs optimized) and supports line scrolling. :)  This makes the graphics quite nearly perfect except for some issues that should be resolved when I implement transparency masks.

I also started cleaning up the code, merging inits, moving the driver structs together, merged the exit functions, etc.

And last, but not least I added all of the games in and have been testing. :)

// These work quite well (minus that sound doesn't work).
Blade Master (World)
Cross Blades! (Japan)
Gun Hohki (Japan)
Hook (Japan)
Hook (US)
Hook (World)
In The Hunt (US)
In The Hunt (World)
Kaitei Daisensou (Japan)
Major Title 2 (Japan)
Major Title 2 (World)
Mystic Riders (World)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 1)
The Irem Skins Game (US set 2)
Undercover Cops (Alpha Renewal Version)
Undercover Cops (Japan)
Undercover Cops (World)

// These are broken (mostly showing nothing more than the self-test screen and then nothing. Proper IRQ handling should fix most of these, I think.
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (Japan)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (US)
Gunforce - Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (World)
Gunforce 2 (US)
Geostorm (Japan)
Lethal Thunder (World)
Ninja Baseball Batman (US)
Perfect Soldiers (Japan)
R-Type Leo (Japan)
R-Type Leo (World)
Superior Soldiers (US)
Thunder Blaster (Japan)
Yakyuu Kakutou League-Man (Japan)

// I have yet to add this one.
Dream Soccer '94 (Japan)


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #171 on: June 10, 2009, 07:02:18 PM »
Some more shots


Offline Huggybaby

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #172 on: June 10, 2009, 10:40:28 PM »
Some more good looking stuff there.

I guess Gyruss always had an 8 way joystick and my memory is faulty. Although it does appear that with the NES you could select a Left/Right control scheme. Too bad it's so hard to hack.

And Kangaroo is pretty addictive too. I almost gave up at first, figuring I was never good at Donkey Kong and this was similar. Anyway, I've made it to level three and want to see what's next. The levels have quite a bit of variety so far. :) I have to figure out how to anticipate whether the monkey is going to throw high or low.  :eek:

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #173 on: June 11, 2009, 02:23:04 AM »
Added Dream Soccer '94 (Japan). :)
Also, I improved the irq handling on the inthunt frame function.  This doesn't really fix anything, but it does simplify the code quite a bit. :)


Offline Lim-Dul

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #174 on: June 11, 2009, 08:49:21 AM »
It's interesting to see such a detailed "dev blog" - especially since most of the time the results are immediately visible (more working games). ^^

Good job!

Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #175 on: June 11, 2009, 01:44:33 PM »
It's interesting to see such a detailed "dev blog" - especially since most of the time the results are immediately visible (more working games). ^^

Good job!
:)  I've always liked Dev blogs.  My particular favorite was Haze's. The way he presented his information and screenshots was very good and understandable even by the less, um, technical of us.  I've tried to model my little thread here after that and have skipped the overly technical stuff that few would understand and always tried to add pretty pictures. lol
« Last Edit: June 11, 2009, 02:43:13 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 #176 on: June 12, 2009, 03:48:28 AM »
I implemented the transmask feature used by MAME and got some very good results.  :)  I also had to speed up my drawing routine a bit since it now draws the background/foreground/text layers 3 times each.

Graphically, the only real issue left are some very small priority issues with sprites, but I'll look at that later.

Here are from shots from undercover cop (the game that uses the priority/transmask system the most out of the games that run...).

In the first shot, Pay close attention to the pillar that the character is behind.  That pillar is in the same layer as all the stuff that is disabled in the second shot.


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #177 on: June 12, 2009, 03:01:32 PM »
Started mucking around a bit with the IRQs and fully ported the IremGA20 sound core from MAME.  I think a most of the non-working games are actually being held back by the sound cpu not being properly hooked up (though I have been known to be wrong [usually:(]).

Anyway, I noticed that this likes a response from the sound cpu or it doesn't boot.


Offline iq_132

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #178 on: June 12, 2009, 07:06:11 PM »
Improved the interrupt handling for the sound cpu as well as the main cpu just a little.  Psoldiers/Ssoldiers now boots up (but shows garbage sprites, bad scrolls like Gunforce 2).

*edit*
It does fix Lethal Thunder. :)
« Last Edit: June 12, 2009, 07:44:35 PM by iq_132 »


Offline Lim-Dul

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Re: What I've been working on (iq_132's work in progress)
« Reply #179 on: June 12, 2009, 08:47:23 PM »
Oooh - getting closer and closer on NBBBM - is the second screen showing the game booting properly or just being stuck in the title screen?