MAME 0.108u5

One more 'u' update for 0.108. Lots of big changes in this one, including an Atari vector rewrite, ST-V improvements, N64-based games improvements, and some nice improvements to some of the older trivia and poker games. Note that I rewrote the PNG handling code, so if you find any problems with artwork loading or snapshot saving, be sure to report them to MAME Testers. (Note the alternate link, which is temporary until we get the domain issues sorted out.)

0.108u5

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MAMETesters Bugs Fixed

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mf_bdash0108u4gre [Aaron Giles]

 

 

Source Changes

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Fixed priority in galivan and danger (and clones). Added save state support to all games in galivan.c. Fixed portability issue in DAC audio save states. [Vas Crabb]

 

Fixed bug in software renderer that prevented lower-resolution targets from being properly supported. [smf]

 

Rewrote the Atari vector generators, using the schematics and actual state machine PROMs. The state machine is now emulated so timing should be much more realistic. Clipping hardware in bzone and others is emulated instead of hardcoded. Improved accuracy of clocks and various other bits of cleanup. [Mathis Rosenhauer]

 

Some more cleanups to the getrivia, findout, and merit drivers: [wolf676]

- corrected order of buttons and lamps in the games

- removed impulse(2) from buttons -> buttons respond much better now

- added coin 2 to Selection and Trivia

- Poker and Sexual Trivia have no coin 2 -> unique inputs defined

- used PORT_INCLUDE() and PORT_MODIFY() where possible

- connected outputs for use with artwork

 

Major updates to the Nintendo 64 based driver. [Ville Linde]

 

More improvements to the pmpoker driver: [Roberto Fresca]

- Confirmed the GFX banks (a complete dump appeared!).

- Improved technical notes and added a PCB layout based on PCB pics.

- Found and fixed the 3rd bitplane of BigBoy gfx.

- Renamed Big-Boy to Golden Poker Double Up.

- Added 'Joker Poker' (Golden Poker version without 'double-up').

- Added 'Jack Potten's Poker' (same as Joker Poker, but with 'Aces or better' instead of jacks).

- Simulated colors for all sets till color PROMs appear.

- Completed inputs in all sets (except DIP switches).

 

Undid previous (incorrect) 'fix' of shangha3 sound clock. [Canim]

 

Implemented some port conditions for gmgalax, so you only see the relevant DIP switches for the active game. [Canim]

 

Numerous fixes to the cheat engine. [shimaPong]

 

Updated the TN2A03 CPU to match the proper cycle timings and unsupported opcodes revealed by Blargg's NES chip test. [Wilbert Pol]

 

Another big update to the ST-V driver: [Mariusz Wojcieszek]

- scsp: improved interrupt reset. diehard, dnmtdeka, vfkids

- colmns97 have sound now

- vdp1: added mesh effect for the sprites

- vdp1: added polylines

- vdp2: optimized rbg rendering

- stv: added speedups for dnmtdeka and diehard

- stv: corrected some set names/descriptions

 

Fixed crash in Windows code if we are unable to create sound buffers. [Nathan Woods]

 

Fixed bug that caused Turbo sprites to be exceedingly large. [Aaron Giles]

 

Began rewrite of Grand Champion driver. Still work to do on collision detection, radar, and some glitches. [Aaron Giles]

 

Added new output utilities: output_set_led_value(), output_set_digit_value(), output_set_lamp_value(), which are used to set a generic indexed data type. Changed Turbo and Max-a-Flex over to using output_set_digit_value() for their digits. [Aaron Giles]

 

Rewrote the PNG reading/saving code, improving error reporting and simplifying the code significantly. [Aaron Giles]

 

 

New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status

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Pocket Racer [smf, Guru]

PlayMan Poker (Germany) [Roberto Fresca]

Killer Instinct (SNES bootleg) [Tomasz Slanina]

Real Fun (Version 7.01) [brian Troha]

 

 

New clones added

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World Class Bowling (v1.5) [brian Troha]

Gryzor (Set 2) [stefan Lindberg]

Power Drift (World) [stefan Lindberg]

Strikers 1945 (Korea) [stefan Lindberg]

10-Yard Fight (World) [brian Troha]

Final Lap R (Japan Rev. C) [Arzeno Fabrice]

http://www.mamedev.org/

Thursday, September 21st, 2006 - Qbix

 

 

Adventuregamers reports that the Sierra compilations use DOSBox to make the games compatible with XP!

 

Ronald and Erik have both created a new frontend for DOSBox.

 

Ronald has created the frontend DOSBox Game Launcher. DBGL is written in java and should therefore run on most platforms.

 

Erik has created D.O.G which is available in english and german.

 

Both frontends support templating and importing of D-Fend profiles.

>> Get them HERE.

Front End

21st September, 2006 - GameEx 6.79

 

Fixes Create Snaps for both emulators and videos

>> Get it HERE.

Macintosh emulator

September 20, 2006 This is not really news, but Mini vMac 2.8.2 is now officially released, with no change from the June beta. It includes localized versions for French, Italian, and German, and has a native Intel Macintosh version. More minor changes include an improved stopped mode, and some better error reporting.

 

The overlong beta period was mainly due to delay in writing up documentation for the new build system. But lately, on getting back to looking at this, I feel the current form isn't appropriate for Mini vMac. It may be powerful and easy to use, but it fails to be simple and maintainable. And I think I have a better idea, which can be based of the current code. But this will need to wait for a future version, and so I'm releasing Mini vMac 2.8.2 now.

 

Pierre Lemieux provided the French translation of the program strings. Pierre Lemieux has also translated much of the Mini vMac documentation, available on his website at http://pages.videotron.com/plemieux/minivmac/.

 

Fabio Concas and Gianluca Abbiati provided the Italian translation. (Fabio Concas has previously ported Mini vMac to Pocket PC, available on his website at http://digilander.libero.it/jpdefault/mvm_index.html.)

 

Detlef Kahner provided the German translation. (He maintains the website Classics For X.)

 

The localizations are a compile time option. Now that the work has been done on Mini vMac to support French, Italian, and German, it wouldn't be too hard to support other languages, that use a similar character set, if anyone wants to volunteer to provide translations. See the Localization Page and the Localization Forum.

 

Mini vMac now has a 'Stopped' mode as an on/off toggle, instead of stopped being one of the set of speeds. So you can stop the emulation and then resume it, without having to remember what speed you were running. The implementation of Stopped mode is improved; the emulation is truly stopped, which fixes a potential issue with spurious sounds. The native cursor of the real machine is now shown while in stopped mode.

 

The ROM not found message now tells the name of the file it is looking for. There were many reports that indicated this was needed. It also gives a web page address for further information.

 

This message, and other error messages and informational messages are now displayed using platform independent code similar to the control mode. This improves the X version, which previously would just write messages to stderr or stdout, which could easily be missed, or be lost entirely depending on how the program was launched. It also means the non ascii characters (such as accented characters used in the French and Italian translations) are displayed more reliably across all versions.

 

If the ROM isn't found the program now doesn't immediately quit, but enters the stopped mode. This allows the error message to be seen using the new display method.

 

A number of other error messages have been added or improved. If the ROM file is too short, Mini vMac gives an error saying so, and a different error if there was a some other problem reading the ROM. In the X and Windows versions, if it doesn't recognize a command line argument, it will give a warning.

 

There are numerous refinements to the user interface strings, many of which were suggested by Pierre Lemieux.

 

The Windows version should now work better when the real computer isn't fast enough to emulate at 1x speed, allowing other programs and the computer as a whole to remain responsive.

 

In the Windows version the function keys F3 through F12 are now passed through to the emulated machine, to match the Mac and Linux versions. (F1 and F2 are used for the option and command keys.)

 

In the X version, the open command has been removed, instead of having a command that just gives a message saying not implemented (because an 'open a file' dialog isn't part of basic X). This is possible because of the more flexible way of displaying the help screen which was needed for the French and Italian localizations.

 

In the X version, switching between normal mode and Magnify mode and Full Screen Mode may now work more reliably on more operating systems, though it may sometimes flicker a bit more.

>> Get it HERE.