FPGA Based Videogame System

[newtmonkey]

The SMS core is fine, it just has the buttons mapped to all three Genesis/MD controller buttons. That means you can use (I think) B and C for the original button layout, or A and B for games where the default layout is 1=JUMP and 2=SHOOT and you'd rather have the buttons reversed. Is the problem only when you use Master System controllers?

Edited April 4, 2019 by newtmonkey

[+eebuckeye]

Ah.. that would be great.. will give it a shot.

[NE146]

Where can you report bugs?

 

https://github.com/SmokeMonsterPacks/Mega-Sg-Jailbreak/issues

[phoenixdownita]

I am not sure if the MegaSg has the same issue as the MegaED V1 (not sure about x3/5/7) wrt some SegaCD games but:

https://assemblergames.com/threads/region-free-bios-for-mega-cd-version-2-00.54254/page-2#post-795065

 

basically the MegaED v1 hijacks (or used to) HINT but some games do use it for their own routines so .... and other games just do a lot of checking, not sure there's a full list but Snatcher and Silpheed are impacted:

https://assemblergames.com/threads/region-free-bios-for-mega-cd-version-2-00.54254/page-3#post-902218

[atmn]

Tried my MegaCD yesterday, worked fine. At least as fine as on a real Mega Drive. Think I need a new laser or make some adjustments.

 

Really hoping for that INTV core to arrive to some Analogue system, Intellivision is the only "big" system that havent any FPGA alternatives. Not ever MiSTer support.

[SegaSnatcher]

Would a cost-reduced NT Mini be redundant in a market with the AVS? How many people have chosen to buy that instead of waiting for Analogue to come out with a hypothetical cheaper NT? I did and I am 100% happy with it. I do understand where RandomRonn is coming from. I never expected additional cores for the Super NT, but I admit I'm disappointed it never happened.

AVS was nobody's first choice, its just what we settled on because of the price point. If NT Mini was a similar price nobody would have bought the AVS.

 

Also, you can be damn sure there will be a lot of AVS consoles on Ebay after a NT Mini cost reduced version were to be announced. 1080p, rom loading, expansion audio built in, no stupid lid, palette loading, it sells itself.

Edited April 4, 2019 by SegaSnatcher

[bikerspade]

SmokeMonster says that all his verified ROMs come from the No Intro set... ateast for other platforms. Not sure why Genesis would be different. I just moved my SD card over from the Mega Everdrive X5 and tweaked the folder arrangement as suggested by the JB notes and it’s played everything from my SD card I’ve tried so far. My Genesis Smokemonster set hasn’t been updated since 2017 so unless something major changed since the. I’d expect his more current sets to work just as well.

I'd say at least half (I checked) of the Colecovision roms in the latest smokemonster packs do not match no-intro. I think it's because much better dumps were provided by the community a couple months ago. The coleco set here currently matches no-intro 100%: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/228832-cv-rom-update-project-commercial-releases-v12/

[derFunkenstein]

Would a cost-reduced NT Mini be redundant in a market with the AVS? How many people have chosen to buy that instead of waiting for Analogue to come out with a hypothetical cheaper NT? I did and I am 100% happy with it. I do understand where RandomRonn is coming from. I never expected additional cores for the Super NT, but I admit I'm disappointed it never happened.

I have an AVS and it's great, but I see things in Analogue's cheaper systems that the AVS could stand to have. The Hybrid Scanline effect is really great on Analogue's systems, for exmample. Analogue's systems output 1080p and can interpolate the image both vertically and horizontally. The AVS can only do horizontal at a fixed 720p resolution without interpolation, which looks a little wonky on my 1080p TV since the scaling from 720p isn't even.

 

720p does look great on my 4K TV with its perfect line tripling, though.

[SegaSnatcher]

I have an AVS and it's great, but I see things in Analogue's cheaper systems that the AVS could stand to have. The Hybrid Scanline effect is really great on Analogue's systems, for exmample. Analogue's systems output 1080p and can interpolate the image both vertically and horizontally. The AVS can only do horizontal at a fixed 720p resolution without interpolation, which looks a little wonky on my 1080p TV since the scaling from 720p isn't even.

 

720p does look great on my 4K TV with its perfect line tripling, though.

AVS has horizontal interpolation though. Also, with 720p you don't need vertical interpolation because 720p is a integer of NES's 240p signal.

 

BTW, your 4K TV most likely doesn't do perfect line tripling of 720p content. The scalers in 99% of 4K TVs don't do NN scaling as they are optimized to make lower resolution video content look good.

[haightc]

Honestly I love the look of the AVS, the only thing I wish it has was 240p or analog out.

[derFunkenstein]

AVS has horizontal interpolation though. Also, with 720p you don't need vertical interpolation because 720p is a integer of NES's 240p signal.

 

BTW, your 4K TV most likely doesn't do perfect line tripling of 720p content. The scalers in 99% of 4K TVs don't do NN scaling as they are optimized to make lower resolution video content look good.

I'm not saying it needs it now, I'm saying it would need vertical interpolation if it supported 1080p. Analogue's consoles support it, and that's where it'd be necessary.

 

My 4K TV is doing much better than my 1080p display with 720p modes with scanlines. You can see very clearly on the 1080p display with solid colors that every other scanline is twice as thick as its neighbors. It's the TV's fault, or the fact that pixel scale isn't an integer factor. The 4K display's scanlines are evenly thick. The 1080p display in 720p mode looks weird with hybrid or regular scanlines. The thing about 1080p is that hybrid scanlines appear to be broken. In 720p, the lines blend together in white backgrounds. In 1080p there's lines even in the white. I like the 720p effect better, but the 1080p display ruins it. The 4k display doesn't.

 

Maybe I make too big a deal since the AVS looks good as it is, but if Analogue released an Nt Mini without analog outputs and a plastic shell at the same price point, the AVS loses out at every turn, up to and including the fact that cart-less players would need an Everdrive or PowerPak when jailbreaks exist on Analogue's systems.

 

All of that is to say I "settled" on an AVS when I bought it because an Nt Mini as it is right now is unobtainable. If Analogue cuts it down and sells it at the same $190 price point, you're correct that AVSes will be all over eBay.

Edited April 4, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[SegaSnatcher]

Maybe I make too big a deal since the AVS looks good as it is, but if Analogue released an Nt Mini without analog outputs and a plastic shell at the same price point, the AVS loses out at every turn, up to and including the fact that cart-less players would need an Everdrive or PowerPak when jailbreaks exist on Analogue's systems.

 

All of that is to say I "settled" on an AVS when I bought it because an Nt Mini as it is right now is unobtainable. If Analogue cuts it down and sells it at the same $190 price point, you're correct that AVSes will be all over eBay.

RetroUSB would be forced to drop price or just straight up discontinue the AVS if $200 NT Mini were released. It just couldn't compete at all at the same price point.

[Guspaz]

Presumably one of the major manufacturing costs for the AVS was the injection molding tooling. Hopefully, sales were good enough in the first two and a half years of the products life to have already paid off those expenses (as well as the amortized R&D costs), which would make lowering the price to compete with a hypothetical Analogue Plastic Nt viable.

 

On the other hand, the AVS never seemed to be a particularly cost-optimized product to me with its enormous mostly blank PCB and its horizontally mounted cartridge slot (care of a second PCB attached to the first one at a 90-degree angle via a PCIe 4x slot). Those two things make the whole product twice as large as it reasonably needs to be, increasing both the BOM and manufacturing costs.

[+grips03]

 

The MiSTer has an Astrocade core that is a lot of fun to play.

MISTer has been ordered. Do all USB sticks work good with MISTer?

[killersquirel]

MISTer has been ordered. Do all USB sticks work good with MISTer?

 

I'm using an 8bitdo brick receiver and a Dual Shock 4 controller. I also have an 8bitdo m30 controller along with another 8 bit do brick. They just released a new update to the MiSTer that for one blue tooth receiver to handle multiple controllers. It's specific receivers at this time, and I don't think the 8bitdo receiver is one of them. There is a good MiSTer facebook page that talks about all the new updates and other questions. There is also a MiSTer forum on atari-forum.com. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Enjoy your MiSTer as it's really pretty great.

[+grips03]

It would be neat if Analogue made a USB game controller sort of like the Nintendo NTT Data controller. This way cores like Intellivision and Colecovision could use the keypad. This assumes they could add a USB port to the consoles they make.

 

On 2nd thought it would just be easier to add Colecovision and Intellivision cores to the Super NT and use the NTT Data

[killersquirel]

I found something interesting regarding Genesis. I recently upgraded and purchased a Mega Everdrive X7 and downloaded the smoke monster pack to put on it. In the section "4 Color Enhancements and Restoration" I found a hacked Altered Beast rom with the name "Altered Beast Arcade Voice+Alternate Style (Hack) Linkuei v1, Pyron v2" and tried playing it on the Mega Everdrive X7 and all I got was a blue screen. When I tried it on my MiSTer set up the rom works great with zero problems. I tried the rom out on the Mega SG when they released the jailbreak and I also get a blue screen on that as well.

This might be a question for Kevtris. Why is it that the rom works on the MiSTer, but not in either the Mega Everdrive or the Mega SG jailbroken FW?

[NE146]

It would be neat if Analogue made a USB game controller sort of like the Nintendo NTT Data controller. This way cores like Intellivision and Colecovision could use the keypad. This assumes they could add a USB port to the consoles they make.

 

On 2nd thought it would just be easier to add Colecovision and Intellivision cores to the Super NT and use the NTT Data

 

Raphnet makes a SNES -> Genesis controller adapter which could theoretically make the NTT Data pad work on the Mega SG, but whether the keypad would function as expected is anyone's guess. I don't have one to test.

 

FWIW, I got the SNES -> NES adapter for the NT Mini and the keypad does work on the Colecovision core.. I haven't tested much beyond that though.

[Toth]

Is there a way to use Master System controllers? I have a Mega Everdrive x7 and would like to play a master system game using a master system controller but the 1 and 2 buttons don't work in the mega sg menu so I can't do anything. Is there a setting I am missing or are they just not compatible? I am using the stock firmware 4.3. I tried turning on passthrough mode with my 3 button genesis controller but it just froze the Mega SG and had to restart the system..

 

I see Analogue's website says this: "We will be bringing original controller support to as many other systems as possible. Just like Super Nt, we'll be taking feedback from users and continuing to develop for added compatibility and features after release. " so maybe they just aren't working yet? It doesn't really answer the question.

 

Edit - I found the controller test and the controllers work fine but the buttons act like B and C. Any way to get one of them acting like button A so you can make menu choices?

Edited April 5, 2019 by Toth

[SegaSnatcher]

Is there a way to use Master System controllers? I have a Mega Everdrive x7 and would like to play a master system game using a master system controller but the 1 and 2 buttons don't work in the mega sg menu so I can't do anything. Is there a setting I am missing or are they just not compatible? I am using the stock firmware 4.3. I tried turning on passthrough mode with my 3 button genesis controller but it just froze the Mega SG and had to restart the system..

 

I see Analogue's website says this: "We will be bringing original controller support to as many other systems as possible. Just like Super Nt, we'll be taking feedback from users and continuing to develop for added compatibility and features after release. " so maybe they just aren't working yet? It doesn't really answer the question.

 

Edit - I found the controller test and the controllers work fine but the buttons act like B and C. Any way to get one of them acting like button A so you can make menu choices?

 

 

Turn on Passthrough mode.

 

Edit: Perhaps 4.3 introduced a bug for SMS controllers.

Edited April 5, 2019 by SegaSnatcher

[CZroe]

Is there a way to use Master System controllers? I have a Mega Everdrive x7 and would like to play a master system game using a master system controller but the 1 and 2 buttons don't work in the mega sg menu so I can't do anything. Is there a setting I am missing or are they just not compatible? I am using the stock firmware 4.3. I tried turning on passthrough mode with my 3 button genesis controller but it just froze the Mega SG and had to restart the system..

 

I see Analogue's website says this: "We will be bringing original controller support to as many other systems as possible. Just like Super Nt, we'll be taking feedback from users and continuing to develop for added compatibility and features after release. " so maybe they just aren't working yet? It doesn't really answer the question.

 

Edit - I found the controller test and the controllers work fine but the buttons act like B and C. Any way to get one of them acting like button A so you can make menu choices?

Can’t you just start your Master System game with a Genesis controller and then hot-swap?

[Reaperman]

BTW, your 4K TV most likely doesn't do perfect line tripling of 720p content. The scalers in 99% of 4K TVs don't do NN scaling as they are optimized to make lower resolution video content look good.

 

That's kind of a bummer. By the numbers, I figured 4k was an integer multiplier of 720p and 1080p, so I could finally go back to 720p on my scalers.

 

I hadn't really looked into it too hard, since I have to burn through 2 more lamps, and give pc video cards at least another generation to catch up, but 4k projectors have dropped into my price range. I still can't figure out what the average joe does with a 4k TV--my gtx 1080 doesn't even fully drive 1080p to my liking, and I doubt the average walmart shopper has more than that--but it's all they sell there.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Reaperman

[Toth]

Can’t you just start your Master System game with a Genesis controller and then hot-swap?

Yeah that worked. Thanks. would be nice not to have to swap controllers but oh well.

[SegaSnatcher]

 

That's kind of a bummer. By the numbers, I figured 4k was an integer multiplier of 720p and 1080p, so I could finally go back to 720p on my scalers.

 

I hadn't really looked into it too hard, since I have to burn through 2 more lamps, and give pc video cards at least another generation to catch up, but 4k projectors have dropped into my price range. I still can't figure out what the average joe does with a 4k TV--my gtx 1080 doesn't even fully drive 1080p to my liking, and I doubt the average walmart shopper has more than that--but it's all they sell there.

It is, but unfortunately if you did NN scaling for lower res video content it wouldn't look so nice. Majority of 4K TVs these days do a good enough job scaling 720p/1080p without adding too much extra blur, so its not a huge issue.

[CZroe]

 

That's kind of a bummer. By the numbers, I figured 4k was an integer multiplier of 720p and 1080p, so I could finally go back to 720p on my scalers.

 

I hadn't really looked into it too hard, since I have to burn through 2 more lamps, and give pc video cards at least another generation to catch up, but 4k projectors have dropped into my price range. I still can't figure out what the average joe does with a 4k TV--my gtx 1080 doesn't even fully drive 1080p to my liking, and I doubt the average walmart shopper has more than that--but it's all they sell there.

Yeah, but integer scales are hard to achieve on 720p and 1080p displays too, since most default to scaling the image slightly and many hide or don’t have the settings to bypass that.

 

True 720p displays almost don’t even exist (most are 768p)!

 

Yeah that worked. Thanks. would be nice not to have to swap controllers but oh well.

Agreed but at least it works in the mean time. I also hot-swapped my CX-78 to play some Sonic & Knuckles.