Version 2.1 (February 1, 2009) - "Keep 'em coming!"

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OK, so six months have passed yet again - amazing how time flies.

Despite the fact that all major manufaturers are emulated by now, there's still enough to do to iron out all of the bugs and inaccuracies.

 

From time to time a few new games show up unexpectedly, like the new batch coming in from tecnopinball.org in January: three new Juegos Populares games, also Inder Atleta, and another oddball: Videodens "Break".

Some special greetings go to the makers of that invaluable resource site!

 

Despite the fact there is NO manual or schematics drawing to work with yet, we managed to get Break working somehow - Spanish manufacturers were pretty much fixated on the Z80 cpu and the AY-8910 sound chip, so it wasn't all that hard really...

 

Jac van Ham, a rare Dutch manufacturer, joins the club with a game called "Escape", adding a new CPU (TMS9980-A) to our core at the same time.

 

Some people contributed by providing new dumps for known bad roms as well:

David Seidman finally managed to get good reads off Black Sheep Squadron.

Jerry Clause re-read the U6 speech rom on Flash Gordon's vocalizer set, so the hissing and stuttering is gone now.

 

Thanks to all our contributors, especially to Inkochnito for locating some very hard to find roms over and over again all those years! What would we do without you? -- Hmm, a lot more vacation, I guess (just kidding)!

 

On the emulation side of it, sound was improved for Bally games using the old "Sounds Plus" sound board, so it plays a few more sounds now.

Also, Gottlieb System 80B had another issue with melody playing at game start which wasn't supposed to happen at all.

In the same vein, Jokerz, Pool Sharks, and Blackwater 100 had their sound startup issues corrected, meaning that BW100's sound is finally working BTW.

 

Well, that's basically it. So enjoy our latest feat, and "keep 'em coming!"

 

Changes:

 

*** CORE/CPU ***

Fixed a bug for Bally-51 Sounds Plus

Fixed sound issues on Gottlieb System 80B

Fixed Blackwater 100 sound startup

Fixed startup sound for Jokerz / Pool Sharks

Corrected Playmatic Last Lap, game works now

Better working Bally 68701 prototype games

Added TMS9980-A cpu support

 

*** ROM SUPPORT ***

Added Bally Party Zone L-3 [ipdb.org]

Added WMS Banzai Run G-3 (German) [ipdb.org]

Added Juegos Populares: Featon, Petaco, Aqualand [tecnopinball.org]

Added Jac van Ham Escape [inkochnito / Ronald Knor]

Added Videodens Break (NVRAM not working yet) [tecnopinball.org]

Added Inder Atleta [tecnopinball.org]

Added Flash Gordon Prototype rev. 2 (working) [pinballjail]

Corrected checksums for Bally Flash Gordon (vocalizer sound) [Jerry Clause]

Corrected checksums for Astro Black Sheep Squadron [David Seidman]

>> Get it HERE.

GB/GBC emulator for mobile phones

Version 2.2 - 1 Feb 2009 (source, MeBoyBuilder.jar)

 

- Improved speed of writes to graphics memory

- Improved screen redraw syncing, especially for Advanced Graphics mode

- Improved speed of doubled sprites (8x16 pixel) by drawing one large image instead of two small

- Improved speed of decoding images in Advanced Graphics mode

- Tweaked the sprite drawing loop to be slightly faster and better reflect the order sprites should be drawn, especially in Gameboy Color games

- Simple Graphics mode now crops images that have transparent borders

- Simple Graphics detects solid images, and creates Images without alpha channel

- Tweaked decoding of images when scaling the screen to 75%

- Fixed flicker when the LCD screen was turned off

- Fixed bug when decoding Gameboy Color palettes (Pokemon trading card game starts now)

- Fixed HDMA bug when interrupts are disabled (Donkey Kong Country starts now)

- Fixed speed-switch bug where read-only bits could be written to (Conker's Pocket Tales starts now)

- Tweaked handling of cart-RAM (hopefully improving compatibility, but it's hard to tell)

- Emulation is now paused when setting keys

>> Get it HERE.

TG16 / PCE emulator

2009/01/31 2.00 released

+ This time, the development environment became "Visual C++". An attached source file is for "Visual C++". (The compilation method etc. was described at this file (Readme.txt) ahead. I described the input delay problem, too.)

+ Please let me do a talk important here. The source code in the part that I wrote might be not beautiful. It is a little shameful in reality. However, I think that "The source of the emulator has been opened to the public" is important. Because the transplant(Windows 7 and more, Mac and Linux, .etc) and development can be continued for a long time from now on. Even if I cannot develop Ootake, development might continue even for hundreds of years in the platform of the age. If the game of the masterpiece of "PC Engine(TG16)" has been played in those days, I am glad. It is energy that I develop Ootake.

+ There is a meaning of "Emulator that has opened the source to the public" there. Personally, I want to support "Emulator that has opened the source to the public" in emulators other than "PC Engine", too.

I think that it will be connected with the best result (The one to which the reproduction level is high and easy-to-use is completed, and development continues) in the future.

+ Though it is not certain whether to have considered this, many people support Ootake. This version v2.00 was able to be released thanks to them. Thank you really.

Hereafter, it is a change point of v2.00.

- It corresponded to Windows "DirectX 9.0c", and drawing by "Direct3D" became possible. In a lot of PC environments, I think that "Display Image Quality", "Display Speed (load reduction to the personal computer)", "Tone Quality of a built-in sound (stability of the tempo and the tone reproduction)", and "Input Reaction Speed of the JoyPad" improved.

Improvement of "Display Image Quality"...

The quality of bi-liner filtering (jaggy is made unremarkable) processing has improved by using Direct3D. Moreover, in "Windows Vista", the filter processing became possible, and it corresponded to "Aero", too.

Improvement of "Display Speed"...

A personal computer not fast might have come to work in some measure comfortably. Especially, the effect might be large in the personal computer equipped with the video chips other than made by NVIDIA(2D is originally high-speed).

Improvement of "Tone Quality"...

Accuracy by which the timing of 1/60 seconds is measured has improved by using Direct3D. As a result, processing of a built-in sound approaches the axis of the time of a real machine, and, it became a tone near real machine more.

Improvement of "Input Reaction Speed"...

A detailed setting was done, and it stuck to the limit of one frame more.

 

- On the option screen of the start ("Option" button under the left after Ootake starts), some set items were added. Moreover, "Light(Fast)" button and "Default" button were set up.

* If your personal computer is not fast, push "Light(Fast)" button. Afterwards, push "SET" button. Then, operation becomes light(fast) set. However, the screen might flicker when scrolling because it is not V-Sync(vertical synchronization). Therefore, set only the item of "V-Sync" (the 3rd from top) to "V-Sync 60Hz (Beauty,Default)" after pushing "Light(Fast)" button if it is possible.

- "Direct3D" and "DirectDraw" menu were added to "Setting->Screen" menu. When "DirectDraw" is selected, it becomes the same drawing as the old version (v1.69 former). Moreover, the detail of each drawing method can be set. Please see the manual (Open it from "Info" menu) for details of a set item.

- "PC Power Saving" setting of "Setting" menu was abolished. Because it entered the best CPU use state in default.

- The speed and timing were brought close to a real machine more. In "World Stadium" and "World Stadium '91", when the ball hits the bat, the problem that one frame screen has fallen into disorder (generated by a recent version) was solved. I think that it approached a real machine by the timing of operation in a lot of other games.

- The stability of the CD-ROM access processing has been improved.

- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.

 

2009/02/01 2.01 released

- In the personal computer environment without the runtime component of "Visual C++ 2008", it operated. (Other content doesn't have the change from v2.00.)

>> Get it HERE.

Here's the what's new;

 

* Added a driver for games on Galaxian hardware, 177 new sets [barry]

* Added support for insane sample Galaxian sound sample hardware and the various AY8910 interfaces in the Galaxian driver [barry]

* Moved PPI8255 module to the burn folder so it can be accessed by all drivers [barry]

* Added support for a third PPI8255 [barry]

* Added driver for Aquarium [iq_132]

* Added driver for Dark Seal [iq_132]

* Added driver for games on Deniam hardware [iq_132]

* Added driver for games on Midas hardware [iq_132]

* Changed the left and right sound channels in the CPS-3 driver [barry]

* Fixed the speed-up hacks for Jojo's Venture [barry]

* Improved analog controls in the Sega drivers when used with analog devices [Captain CPS-X]

* Added some clones to the Toaplan2 driver [barry]

* Added some new Phoenix sets to the CPS-2 driver (provided by bonky0013) [barry]

* Some renames of roms in Neo-Geo decrypted sets as reported by pmc2 [barry]

* Fixed the aspect ratio in the Arkanoid driver [Captain CPS-X]

* Added support to the Game Information dialog for Select, Versus, How To, Scores, Bosses and Game over previews [barry]

* Added configurable path support for the above new previews [barry]

* Fixed issue with selection dialog when clicking filters too fast [Captain CPS-X]

* Added buttons to the selection dialog for tasks in the context-sensitive menu [Captain CPS-X]

* Moved the options in the selection dialog to their own tab [Captain CPS-X]

* Tidied the selection dialog [Captain CPS-X]

* Tidied the rom and support path dialogs and made them less cumbersome [Captain CPS-X]

* Changed the PNG load functions to use PNGlib [Captain CPS-X]

* Added support for loading support files from zips [Captain CPS-X]

* Added filter for Galaxian hardware to the selection dialog [barry]

* Matched all set to MAME 0.129u3 [barry]

* nb, the source is now doule-zipped similar to MAME for better compression

http://www.barryharris.me.uk/article_view.php?id=135

Thanks to JacKc for the news.