A7800x

[Shannon]

Well guys... I could send you another beta if you wish to play around with it. Only outstanding issue that I know of is it WILL lock up if you "search the gamebase DB". I'm not really sure why. It works great in debug mode so it's kinda hard to figure out.

 

So lemme know if you all wanna mess around with the latest. (pun intended).

[mimo]

I would love to MESS

[Shannon]

Well I got the bug fixed. Seems I underdefined a character string and it was overwriting something that was causing the system to hang. Thanks to xport for the assistance. I'll make a version available sometime today. After this one it is really a matter of me just creating gameshark codes and releasing it. I don't think there is much else I can do with it.

 

Still slowly working on Prosystem. But its the type of thing that requires me to be sitting at the computer that has Visual Studio on it since I have to do alot of compiling, checking, re-compiling, etc. When I work on xport emu's I can usually do other things in other places so it gives me more flexibility.

 

Kinda wish I had a laptop.

[Shannon]

Well I had to make some changes to the save/loadstate system AGAIN. This time to correct some issues with rewind which foobar's bigtime in the game "Commando" which seems to be the only game "obviously" affected.

 

To make a long story short. I noticed the rewind code was taking a "short-cut" to save states so I figured if it could do it and get away with it, I could do it as well. But seems MESS doesn't always take to kindly to this "shortcut". So I fixed the rewind code to use the proper mechanism for save/load states (scheduled load/save states).

 

This seemed to fix the issue for the most part, although occasionally commando will kick you back to the title screen on rewind. Unfortunately this means that when the user "saves" a state they will be kicked back into the game immediately. So be prepared!! Luckily when the user "loads" a state I still keep them in the menu.

 

Hopefully this will alleviate the savestates not working properly. There may be the occasional .01% flunky, but I think it's about the best I'll be able to do.

 

Mess can be such a headache. The only reason I'm really sticking with it is cause I have "Other Plans " with MESS. hush hush, shhhhhh...

Edited June 12, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Hmmm. So much for my "fix the savestates" theory. I'm beginning to wonder if the mess drivers for the 7800 properly do savestates. At least in regards to games using "character mapping". Dark Chambers was my friend for the day.

 

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out why the 2nd button doesn't fire off the "bombs" like it is supposed to. Other games (like commando) that use both buttons work just fine. What is really crazy is the game will read the proper addresses ($8-$B) on the title screen. Once you enter the game proper if you pressed "start" it will continue reading these ports/addresses until you or player two press a button once. From then one it just sticks to reading $C-$D which just register whether a button was pressed, but not which.

 

So I'm not really sure what is going on here.

 

Then there are the savestates. Seems restoring a state would cause the screen to look all funky (character mapping issue). It will load properly assuming you are on a level that uses the same character sets. If not the screen will be scrambled. . Look like about every 2 levels share character sets. Of course mess on the PC says that save/load states on the a7800 driver are not properly supported. So I suppose we could be grateful for what little we have.

 

I think I have at least an idea or two. I have to read up a little on direct/indirect mode and character mapping first. Oddly enough the centipede "quirk" happens when the scanline switches from 320x2 character mapping to 160x4? mode.. Plus it doesn't seem to update the pallette properly at that point (then again I could be totally wrong).

 

Uggh. Hopefully I wont get too caught up in this. I'd be surprised if I came up with a fix. 7800 documentation is pretty scarce and I cant help but wonder if some of it is wrong.

Edited June 14, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well looks like I figured out the answer to why 2 button games (aka Desert Falcon & Dark Chambers) cannot read the 2nd button!!

 

Seems that when the RIOT is "initialized" a certain way it tells the 7800 to switch into two button mode. In two button mode INPT4 and INPT5 will always return 0x80 no matter what and the game is expected to read button 1 & 2 from INPT0-INPT3 which return 0x80 when pressed, 0x00 when not. If the RIOT is not "initialized" that way it stays in one button mode. Which means INPT4 and INPT5 return a 0x00 when either button is pressed, otherwise they return 0x80. I'm not sure what values INPT0-INPT3 are supposed to return in this single button mode. My guess would be always 0x00.

 

Anyways you can now use bombs and special items in Dark Chambers and Desert Falcon!! Oh and Hyperspace can now be activated with the right button now in Asteroids.

 

Seems MESS also had the left/right buttons mapped backwards. I always suspected this by how Commando played. I'll have to consult with the MESS oracle to find out the proper way to do the two button fix. For right now the way I do it is a HACK .

Edited June 15, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well. For all intents and purposes I'm done with this thing so it's time to start a poll.

 

I already have big plans in progress for Z26. So even though I would rather not do it next (because those big plans are gonna take some time) I included it in the poll anyways.

 

I finished creating cheats for most of the games. I'd like to add light gun support but I cannot seem to figure out where the 7800 stores the light gun co-ordinates in memory. So whenever I do manage to dig up that info I'll probaby try to add it.

 

Anyways an official version should be available at the "usual places" soon.

Edited July 10, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well so far we have a three way tie in the votes!

[Xenepp]

Voted Winstonx, the overscan area needs some work

 

Is there a resolution I should be using to get the aspect correct on that btw? None of the standard resolutions work nor multiples of 320x200..

 

While I'm here as it's sort of related, what's you take on this, it'd be interesting to know:

 

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=662368

[Xenepp]

Holy crap, just noticed how old this thread was

[Shannon]

Well if you look in the "New Releases Thread, Updates and notes on emus and skins..." thread I did this.

 

+ Modified screen size to more accurately match the ST screen size (now screenshots look correct).

 

I noticed that the default resolution was higher than what typical ST games used so I changed it. It was set to some crazy hi-res monochrome resolution. That seemed to help quite a bit

 

I did a quick read thru the thread, but unfortunately x-port emu's rely heavily on the SDK and using the open developers kit would be kinda counterproductive. Plus the guy never really answered if those settings would work consistently. From what I understand there are, what? Three different encoders used during the life span of the Xbox. It just happens that the one I have is one of the wacky ones. Lastly, unfortunately that kind of thing is way beyond my skill...

[Xenepp]

Ah ok, looking at the usual sources I'm out of date anyhow, which goes to show when I last checked that one!

 

I guess linux builds would use that ODK then, keeping things free etc. That's a shame. Yeah, not much point in nigh on rewriting these at this stage I guess, those dual view skins would be much nicer anyhow

 

Since you were kinda enough to humor me, maybe you'll do so once more:

 

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=682985

 

It can't hurt to ask?

Edited April 27, 2009 by Xenepp

[108 Stars]

I know this thread is antique, and that the emu is not mentioned, but I´ll say it anyway...

 

DOSbox. I can´t handle DOS at all. I really wish there was a click and play option, where I just click on a games file and the neccessary commands are automatically entered and the game is loaded. Like VICE64.

[Shannon]

Well sadly... out of all the systems DOS has to be the most complicated because there are so many different "versions" of the games and how each one was "installed" plays a big part in how the game is configured. But I do have some good news.

 

1) I updated the dosbox core to 0.72. The dynamic recompiler works. I put in proper support for Gravis Ultrasound, added MT32 emulation. I'm hoping to add in savestate support (assuming it works halfway decent). We also now have "predefined controller setups" which should make mapping keyboard commands alot easier to do and share. I have not quite worked out a decent "auto config" system due to the above mentioned issue. But Guybird came up with a brilliant "alternative" for mapping xbox buttons to the keyboard controls. I just need to implement it.

 

2) Guybird and I have been working on some "Xtras" for dosbox which already includes close to 200 games.

 

The bad news..

 

This project got put on hold due to my current work on ScummVMx 1.2.0.

[108 Stars]

That´s perfectly fine. I appreciate working on Scumm VM too. I may have just been to stupid to configure it right, but I had such a hard time with 0.8 and 1.1 (or something) that I deleted the emu from my harddrive for now (I only have 8 GB atm). It was very picky about which games work and which don´t. I never got any Maniac Mansion-version I tried to work. Lure of the Temptress and Zak McKracken FM Towns worked with 1.1, but I could not get it get any sound for either game, although the audio options from the PC version were there. Lack of specific documentation did not help either, so I am looking forward to your improvements!