Get ready for a real classic arcade: simple gameplay yet very addictive! Ideal to play with the kids during Christmas. I am happy to announce the public release of Popeye.
Although the core is better than the beta version, particularly in sound, it is still not complete. That's why the OSD colour is yellow. It will become green, and finally grey as the core matures. I am releasing the sou...
2019-12-27 07:06:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Santa's little present for Christmas eve is a gamepad driving game: F-1 Dream!
Controls:
button A: slow
button B: fast
buttons A+B: turbo
no buttons : break
This game runs on the same PCB as Tiger Road but the devices soldered are different. This game has an MC...
2019-12-24 07:50:49 +0000 UTC View Post
(español abajo)
After three weeks of intense work, here it is for your enjoyment: Double Dragon!
The core follows the original schematics, which I eventually found, and there are
no compromises regarding accuracy. The only point I need to check is whether the 6801 CPU core used is really cycle accurate or not. I will use Andrew's board for that.
This is a nice ...
2019-12-21 09:04:12 +0000 UTC View Post
A nice graphical effect is to have the characters go underneath elements in the screen. Like the soldier behind the palm tress in Commando.
One way to create this effect is to have that background drawn directly on the sprite layer, using sprites as though they were tiles. That is the approach followed in Commando. If you boot up Commando in your FPGA and press F10 the sp...
2019-12-15 12:42:43 +0000 UTC View Post
I sent emails a couple of days ago with each person's number for the raffle. I asked Torlus to give me a random number today to pick up the winner. Why Torlus? Torlus is one of the pioneers in FPGA retro cores. He developed the initial versions of many beloved cores such as the Megadrive or the Jaguar ones.
After checking the list, I found that the winner is actually a somewhat public per...
2019-12-03 19:26:25 +0000 UTC View Post
I read this week that on a certain CPS0 game it was possible to select the start level if the test mode DIP switch was set after the game had started. The level was selected by using the price DIP switches.
So far, I had always set these switches to 1 credit 1 coin. I went back to the core files and added control of the coin slots through the OSD. Then I started Bio...
2019-12-01 20:41:41 +0000 UTC View Post
I am releasing the Bionic Commando core only slightly improved over the beta. The scroll related glitches are almost gone but there is still no sound. Actually, I am precisely releasing it because there is no sound. In computer simulations of the core I do get sound. The attached file is the output of a long simulation of the MiSTer core. But for some reason it doesn't work once loaded in...
2019-11-29 07:27:09 +0000 UTC View Post
As you requested on last month's poll, I have worked this month on Black Tiger (beta files here). This is an awesome RPG-ish arcade game from 1987. Manuel Astudillo had sent me this PCB too as he is very fond of...
2019-11-24 21:24:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Español abajo
When Paul Leaman wrote emulators for CAPCOM games he came across a constant writing by the CPU to a misterious address. The CPU didn't seem to be waiting for any data after that writting. It also kept writting the same value. What could that be for? He assumed it was a watchdog. A watchdog is a circuit that counts down and if the count reaches zero, it will reset t...
2019-11-21 11:03:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Tiger Road PCB has an empty socket for an intel microcontroller (MCU). Also some chip footprints are drawn on the board, but the chips are not there. If you fill those gaps you will just get a F1 Dream PCB! Yes, it looks like these two games shared the same design!
It has been rather easy to make F1 Dream work on the Tiger Road core. It does use an MCU for protection, which I had to add. ...
2019-11-18 18:46:28 +0000 UTC View Post
(español abajo)
Today is my son's birthday. To celebrate it with all of you, here is the public release for Tiger Road (also known as Tora e no michi). This includes both western and Japanese versions. The Japanese version has ADPCM voices, but you cannot choose the starting level.
Note that I am going to ...
2019-11-14 17:20:34 +0000 UTC View PostAs I told you about here, I was working on the cores for better sound. I have the update finally ready. Grab it using the update script, or directly from the binary repository here.
Tiger Road beta has also been upd...
Tiger Road uses ADPCM recordings for the Japanese version. I needed a core for the MSM5205 ADPCM decoder and there was not anyone ready to use in the scene. I have written one and made it public here.
This is an important piece of hardware because it is at the core of many arcades. Among them Double Dragon 2019-11-10 10:46:27 +0000 UTC View Post
The old AY-3-8910 3-channel programmable sound generator (PSG), used in the Atari ST and Amstrad CPC computers along many arcades had a second life inside the FM chips YM2203 and YM2610. You may recognize them as the sound synthesizers used in NeoGeo and many arcades from the 80's.
This PSG chip seemed to have an output stage less than ideal. A good amplifier produces an output voltage ra...
2019-11-06 18:34:38 +0000 UTC View PostThank you for your support. This month work has been focused at gaining experience and developing IP. I chose two 16-bit games for this purpose:
- Bionic Commando
It was my birthday today, so here is a present for you :-)
This has been an intense month with a lot of new components. Trying to gain momentum for the CPS1 task I have worked on two cores that share elements with it:
-The M68000 CPU
-The brightness control (already described here 2019-10-27 21:49:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Bionic Commando and CPS1 systems feature brightness control. Let's see how that works.
Most arcade games have four bits for each colour component: red, green and blue. These four bits are each a digital signal which can be either 5 Volt or 0 Volt. Arcade boards connect resistors to these signals to produce an analogue scale. Four bits mean that each new bit has twice the weight in the res...
2019-10-26 17:02:08 +0000 UTC View Post
I have spent a few days bringing my YM2151 core up to some design practices I didn't follow at the time. I have added clock gating, which allows to use a single clock domain for all the FPGA core -this helps synthesis. I have also updated its CPU interface to work better with CPUs that use a different clock enable signal, following the JT12 scheme. I tried not to break the FM synthesis core as ...
2019-10-26 11:43:34 +0000 UTC View PostBionic Commando and Tiger Road cores are fairly advanced now and I will release the beta versions soon. I would like to get a sense of popularity for you guys about remaining CPS0 games.
Please vote (you can pick more than one) If it is not in the list, write it down. Next month will be CPS0 games too, I'm trying to get them out of ...
2019-10-21 13:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The 1943 object (sprite) engine was implemented in a custom chip so it wasn't possible to look inside. However, the pin names are similar to those used in other CAPCOM games so it was pretty much obvious how to hook it up to an already working object engine.
Ghosts'n Goblins is designed for a total of 96 objects (sprites) of which up to 24 may fall in the same horizontal line. With a 6MHz...
2019-10-20 15:41:57 +0000 UTC View Post
(español abajo)
I am looking now at 16-bit CAPCOM games, particularly Bionic Commando and Tiger Road. I have the Tiger Road PCB and I'd like to give it away among patrons supporting that core.
If you are not already a patron and reading it, join in to support the Tiger Road core and get a chance to win the PCB.
Disclaimer: the PCB is a bootleg version. As these are old g...
(español abajo)
GunSmoke and Vulgus cores are ready. These are two boards I bought in Japan thanks to the support you give me. These games have been possible because you were there! Thank you so much :-)
128 MB SDRAM module support for all cores, plus many bug fixes in SFX sound which affects to all cores too. 1943 has got a flip option now -a bit glitchy for now- and GnG is ba...
2019-10-07 17:36:34 +0000 UTC View PostI have spent a few hours today fixing sound problems in the NeoGeo core. Thanks to loloC2C for showing specific examples of broken sounds so I could debug it.
Sorgelig will eventually update the repository and publish the changes but if you want to catch up with the latest RBF; I am posting it in my Discord channel, 2019-10-05 20:20:27 +0000 UTC View Post
This has been an intense month:
1. GunSmoke beta for patrons
2. Vulgus beta for patrons
3. First work on a Motorola 68000 based system
4. First work on a system with an intel 8051 MCU
I am focusing now in closing up the CPS0 games as I think I have a good momentum with them. Upcoming cores will feature M68000 and mid resolution games. Still in the pre-CPS1 era. These wi...
2019-09-29 07:42:00 +0000 UTC View Post(Español abajo)
128MB memory modules have a different arrangement for memory pins which prevents the released JT cores to work.
I am currently waiting for my own 128 memory module to arrive so I can test the updated cores with it.
I will release updated versions of all cores tested on 128MB modules from different vendors once the tests are completed.
Español 2019-09-26 05:03:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Find them here. Please do not distribute, this is beta work only for patreons.
2019-09-21 08:58:20 +0000 UTC View Post
A few months ago, Frédéric Mahé, one of our director patrons, asked me for Vulgus. I hadn't played it before. I soon learnt that it is considered the first CAPCOM arcade game. And when I played it, I found its difficulty curve to be unusually kind and it makes for a very enjoyable gameplay.
If you remember from previous posts, I bought the PCB while st...
2019-09-21 08:56:24 +0000 UTC View PostIn case you didn't receive the private message, here is the link to the GunSmoke beta.
2019-09-14 15:58:17 +0000 UTC View Post14th Sept 2019
* Fixed ogre sound
* Fixed sprite alignment with background (stairs)
* Fixed bug that erased the first pixel of the sprite line buffer
* Added more DIP options through OSD menu
* Better scan doubler in MiSTer, with smoother scroll
* MiSTer co...
As you know, sound is a repetition phenomenon. Each note is a complex waveform repeating at a given frequency. And the music itself advances at a fixed pace.
In all the CAPCOM cores released so far, the sound frequency source was closely related to the rest of the system: a pixel clock was the basis for all clocks in the system. Including the sound synthesizer and the sound CPU. Once the ...
2019-09-13 15:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post