0.34 BETA 6 Note about the x86 asm 68000 core: several bugs have been fixed (most notably, it now runs under pure DOS) but it is still not complete. For example, the two Metal Slugs hang shortly after game start. They will work if you recompile using the C core. New ROM sets supported (in no particular order): ------------------------------------------------ Qwak (prototye) [Mike Balfour] Superman [Howie Cohen, Brad Oliver] Zero Zone [Brad Oliver] The King od Dragons (2 sets) [Paul Leaman] Street Fighter 2 (2 sets merged) [Paul Leaman] Get Star [Luca Elia] Checkmate [Al Kossow] Ozma Wars [Al Kossow] Space Fever (B&W) [Al Kossow] Scion [Nicola Salmoria] Defense Command [David Winter] Mr. Do! (Yukidaruma) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Armored Car (set 2) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Bagman (Stern set 1) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Super Bagman (Valadon) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Moon War II (set 2) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Jungler (Stern) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Rygar (US set 1) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Jack Rabbit (set 2) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Jack Rabbit (special) (merged) [Nicola Salmoria] Midnight Resistance (Japan) (merged) [Bryan McPhail] Mega Man (merged with Rockman) [Santeri Saarimaa] These drivers have improved GRAPHICS: ------------------------------------- - Accurate colors in Jungler. Also fixed char flipping and sprite alignment. [Nicola Salmoria] - Improved Vastar. [Roberto Ventura] These drivers have new or improved SOUND: ----------------------------------------- - Sound in Super Space Invaders. [Ernesto Corvi] - Added decay to Donkey Kong. [Andrew Scott] Changes to the main program: ---------------------------- - [DOS] Replaced the -fm option with -ym2203opl. Added -noym3812opl to use the digital emulation of the YM3812 instead of the SoundBlaster OPL chip. Note that with -noym3812opl you also need external drum samples. [Nicola Salmoria] - Clone sets are not reported as missing by -verifyroms if only the parent set is present. [John Butler] Source: ------- - [DOS] Now using version 1.05 of the SEAL audio library. This should fix problems with the ENSONIQ AudioPCI and Creative PCI64 cards. - YM2610 emulator. This is used by the NeoGeo games. [Hiromitsu Shioya] - TMS9900 emulator. [Andy Jones, based on original code by Ton Brouwer] NeoGeo Support -------------- This beta contains some major improvements to the neogeo emulation. Work on this driver also uncovered several bad rom dumps, most of which you can correct yourself, existing bad rom dumps should still work but will give checksum and/or rom length errors on startup. How to: You need a zip file called neogeo.zip in your rompath. It should contain at least three files: neo-geo.rom (128k) ng-sfix.rom (128k) ng-sm1.rom (128k) The rom 'ng-sm1.rom' is badly dumped in many archives, you will need one that is 128k, see later for full details on bad roms. Using a 256k rom will still work but will give a length & checksum error on every game. Important! The bios zip file must be called neogeo.zip NOT neo-geo.zip, ie, there should be no dash in the middle. You also need to place the game zip in your rompath. If you do not know what 8 character filename the NeoGeo game you want to play has you can type: mame -listclones neogeo That will list the 8 character zip names of all currently supported games. What's New? ----------- * FULL sound support, FM synth and ADPCM samples, on 90% of games using the YM2610 emulator. The games without working sound should be fixed soon. - Optional rom loading of samples: You may find games that worked before will not work now due to lack of memory as all the sound roms need to be loaded. Some games will require an extra 16 megabytes of memory to load the sound roms. You can force Mame NOT to load these samples if you specify no sound BEFORE rom loading takes place. In Dos this means you must type: mame game -soundcard 0 If you DO NOT specify soundcard 0 then all sound roms will be loaded and you may experience memory problems. * Improved graphics: - Auto-animations are supported, these are used in many games. The Neogeo graphics hardware can cause animation without intervention from the main cpu. You can see this in the backgrounds of games such as Karnov's Revenge, Street Hoops, Samurai Shodown, King Of Fighters, etc. - Very accurate scaling support, including full screen zooms. - No more 'missing tiles' on zoomed graphics. - MAJOR speedup! You should see at least 20-50% increase on all games. The downside is you will see a black screen for a few seconds at the start of every game as the graphics are converted to a custom format. There are many other optimisations in the video code too. - Fixed bug in y-flipped tiles glitched when y<0 (Thrash Rally) * All games for which rom dumps are available are now supported. 99% of them are working. * Several games have experimental 68000 idle cycle skipping, for these games you should see increases of between 5% and 20%. Games currently using this method are: Puzzle De Pon Karnov's Revenge Wind Jammers Street Hoops Neo Bomberman * SRAM save size has been reduced to 0x2000 bytes from 0x10000. The NeoGeo has 8 memory frames and will store sram data for upto 8 games regardless of how many physical cartridges the machine can take. The Mame emulation emulates a fixed 1 cartridge neogeo, therefore only the first 0x2000 bytes of the SRAM should ever be used. Due to bullet-proofed(!) memory handling there should be no more corrupt sram saves either. Remember you can delete a game settings by deleting it's file in the 'hi' directory. Bug where SRAM states were reloaded upon every reset is fixed. Known Problems/To Do: --------------------- Some games will give a piracy warning. You can still play the games if you set them to run in Console (Home) mode. For some games you can set the game back to arcade mode after the protection check is done and leave it that way (because some games leave a flag in SRAM as to whether the game has passed it's security check). Line (row) scrolling is not implemented. This is used for the floor in Karnov's Revenge, special effects in Spinmasters, etc, and many others. The calendar chip is not yet implemented. This release should give a substantial speed boost over previous betas, and there are some more optimisation ideas to be tried. Bad Roms -------- Several bad rom dumps have been found, this is where a rom has corrupt data and may also be the wrong size. 'Fixed' rom dumps will become available from the usual places in time. The most common error is that a rom is twice the size it should be, and that the second half is either the same as the first or just has junk in it. To be fix these roms you simply split them in half, and throw away the second half. You should do a binary split, meaning your split program should not save any formatting information to the file. As mentioned above bad rom dumps will continue to work but will give checkums and length errors. The Neorage team will support all fixes to the bad roms and make sure their emulator is compatible. Most fixed romsets will work on Neorage already. If you wish to fix your romsets here is the last of bad roms: ALPHAM2.ZIP N082001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL AOF2.ZIP AOF2_P1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL AOF2_V3.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL BLAZSTAR.ZIP BSTAR_P2.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF BSTARS.ZIP N042001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL N138001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL BSTARS2.ZIP STAR2_M1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL CYBERLIP.ZIP N062001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL CYBRLIPA.ZIP CYBL_M1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL FATFURY3.ZIP FURY3_P2.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF GALAXYFG.ZIP GALFI_C7.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL GALFI_C8.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL GALFI_V3.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL GOALX3.ZIP GOAL!_C3.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF GOAL!_C4.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF GPILOTS.ZIP N058001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL JOYJOY.ZIP N022001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL KABUKIKL.ZIP KLASH_V4.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL KOF95.ZIP KOF95_C5.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF KOF95_C6.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF KOF96M.ZIP KOF96_P1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL LBOWLING.ZIP N050001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL MAGLORD.ZIP MAGL_M1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL NCOMBAT.ZIP N046001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL PULSTAR.ZIP PSTAR_C7.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF PSTAR_C8.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF PSTAR_P1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL PSTAR_P2.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF RIDHERO.ZIP N046001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL SAMSHO4.ZIP SAMS4_V3.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SHOCKTRO.ZIP SHOCK_P1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL SONICWI2.ZIP AFIG2_V2.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL STRHOOPS.ZIP SHOOP_C1.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SHOOP_C2.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SHOOP_C3.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SHOOP_C4.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SHOOP_V1.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SUPERSPY.ZIP N138001A.478 FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL TPGOLF.ZIP TOPG_M1.ROM FIRST AND SECOND HALF IDENTICAL TWINSPRI.ZIP SPRIT_P1.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF SPRIT_V2.ROM BAD NEOGEO DUMP - CUT 2ND HALF