FPGA Based Videogame System

[NE146]

It aint rocket science: Regarding expectations, as far as Analogue is concerned, the NT-Mini allows you to play NES & Famicom carts. Period.  

[Toth]

My expectation is a shipping notification for my day 1 preordered Noir before the holiday.  I am not getting my hopes up though.

 

As far as their future plans a cheaper Nt Mini makes so much sense.  Then they just need to get to the point where they can keep all of their products stocked.  I am not sure they even want to do that though for whatever reason. They have to do something to fund all those people. 

 

Edit- I can see a tracking number at FedEx so I am relieved.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Toth

[Razzie.P]

6 hours ago, RetrogamerX said:

Just got a call from fed ex.  They say my custom charge is £201 or $268.  I almost fell to the floor when I heard that.  That's nearly half of the product cost.  WTF!?  

 I'm not familiar with how custom charges work --- that mean that you've paid for the product, plus shipping fees, and now Fed Ex is saying you owe an additional $268 before they'll give it to you?   If so, man that stinks... 

[RetrogamerX]

42 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

 I'm not familiar with how custom charges work --- that mean that you've paid for the product, plus shipping fees, and now Fed Ex is saying you owe an additional $268 before they'll give it to you?   If so, man that stinks... 

 

Tell me about it.  I'm not happy, but if I didn't pay it I wouldn't get my nt mini noir.  This will be the last time I order from the states.  I got nailed last time too, but this one is way worse.  Customs here in the UK is evil.  If I want something from the states I'll have to get it on ebay which tbh is a little cheaper the then this total bullshit extortion.

[bikerspade]

8 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

Realistically speaking, where should Analogue go from here?   

They should focus on fixing bugs in their existing products and adding enhancements to them.

[Kismet]

8 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

Realistically speaking, where should Analogue go from here?   

 

I just got my shipping notification, almost exactly 10 months after it had been paid for. I think Analogue should probably move closer to the original Zimba 3000 proposed earlier on in the thread, a console that can do everything with just a cartridge adapter, any controller can be used with a controller adapter/usb. I've bought three consoles so far, and my only nitpick in the build quality so far has been that the Super NT's loses gripping power to the cartridge, which I kinda solved by sticking cardboard down the side of it to firm it up.

 

 Clearly the cartridge slot is a weak point, and having something that can be replaced would extend the life of the console as well.

 

 

8 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

What we currently know is that they are working on dual projects, the Pocket and Duo.  They also finally shipped their final run of NT Noirs.     

Kevtris has also stated publicly that Analogue has hired more engineers which in turn will take a huge weight off Kevtris and allow him to make even better use of his resources, we can already see the benefits that brings with the ability to develop many projects concurrently.  

However, we are getting closer and closer to hitting the limits of what they can implement given the FPGA chips they can realistically use.  It seems like PS1 is about the most powerful console they could realistically implement in terms of the overall man power required and the chips available at the budget they are willing to consider.  Besides PS1 what other FPGA consoles do you think they should/would consider developing?  Do you think they should start getting into Classic Computers and Arcades?   Do you think all hardware going forward should have third party support option like the Pocket?

 

I kinda hope they just build the Z3K with the pocket as the base point. "Here's a SoC with a FPGA that you can program", like after the recent Nintendo crackdown on emulation with the Super Smash Bros tournament, it seems like the path forward here is figuring out how to make two to four consoles in two to four different locations act like one console. I see two ways for that to happen without resorting to software emulation (and subsequent crackdown on the inevitable pirated games) :

 

a) FPGA consoles that the controller I/O can be redirected over the internet, and the video stream can be compressed by a hardware ASIC and sent.

b) a dedicated hardware device that you can plug your controllers into on one end (leave streaming to twitch/youtube,) and on the other end into the remote console. Think of this as "friends codes" without a server. Plug in the ethernet and the second,third,fourth player cables to the console, and on the player side plug your controller into it. Configure it with the built in web-server.

 

The interesting thing, is that since the SD resolution consoles (everything from the NES to the N64/PS2) is rather small, a lower-complexity codec with lower latency could be used, or the user could switch it to a lossless codec (eg ZMBV) and record it to the SD card, or stream it remotely.

 

At anyrate, it's one of those questions that will remain unanswered without a change in copyright law, is how to get people in remote locations to be able to play the same copy of the game for multiplayer reasons. The actual laws of physics prevents being able do this in any practical form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Reaperman]

Could somebody help out with some barney-style instructions for my controller options on the NT Mini v2?

 

I just bought the new 8bitdo arcade stick, but that doesn't seem to pair with the new receiver. (both from questions asked on the amazon page, and my trying it).  Also my 2.4g m30 won't pair to it, which I suppose isn't too surprising if the former won't go.

 

My older NT Mini's bluetooth controller died a couple uses, so I don't fully trust my negative result on the new 8bitdo arcade stick using that. (there's a 50% chance the rx half is the dead half)  Anybody had this work? If so what's the magic dance, and is it running analogue nt firmware or the standard one? (IIRC that was 'a thing')

Edited November 26, 2020 by Reaperman

[XtraSmiley]

23 hours ago, RetrogamerX said:

 

Tell me about it.  I'm not happy, but if I didn't pay it I wouldn't get my nt mini noir.  This will be the last time I order from the states.  I got nailed last time too, but this one is way worse.  Customs here in the UK is evil.  If I want something from the states I'll have to get it on ebay which tbh is a little cheaper the then this total bullshit extortion.

WTF is this?!?

 

I don't understand why this happened? Your customs fee is literally 50% of the product?!

 

With shit like that, you can mail future purchases to a friend in the states and they could just forward it to you. I'd be happy to do that for free for anyone who needs help. That's crazy!

[vanfanel]

22 hours ago, bikerspade said:

They should focus on fixing bugs in their existing products and adding enhancements to them.

THIS.

We have been left with major bugs on MegaSG for years now:

 

-Tearing in Master System games

 

-Broken "selective" pixel blending (just let the pixels blend all over the screen as composite really does, no matter how blurry it looks, that is how it is supposed to look and that's how it looks on an actual MegaDrive connected via RCA.)

 

-Broken FM music in Master System games

 

-Incompatible MegaCD games

 

This is why I am passing on any Analogue products until those are fixed.

These are major problems, not small nitty-picky issues.

You can NOT advertise accuracy and leave a product like this: that's just scamming.

Edited November 26, 2020 by vanfanel

[RetrogamerX]

24 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

WTF is this?!?

 

I don't understand why this happened? Your customs fee is literally 50% of the product?!

 

With shit like that, you can mail future purchases to a friend in the states and they could just forward it to you. I'd be happy to do that for free for anyone who needs help. That's crazy!

It's crazy.  This whole year is shit.  I called fed ex and they said some times this happens and there is nothing they could do.  If i didn't pay it I wouldn't get my nt mini so I paid it.  I was in shock how much they wanted at first.  My sister lives in Minnesota, but I don't like to bother her, but after this shit show I might ask her if I ever do buy from the states again.  If this was anything else other then a nt mini I wouldn't have paid and got a refund, but I so want my nt mini noir.  

[Toth]

So is fedex like being a middle man for those fees? Like they pay the government or something?  Is there a fee schedule that you can look at to calculate those kinds of charges before buying something?  That seems really high.

[Atariboy]

For an actual bug that's yet to be fixed (The pixel blending isn't broken), Desert Strike for the Sega Master System is unplayable. Crashes when exiting the map/status screen both via the jailbreak and the original cartridge. Yet they still advertise 100% compatibility for the 8 and 16-bit Sega library.

 

While I love my Mega Sg and realize it's just a single game, I still don't believe that it's unreasonable to actually see the product supported and legitimate bugs be addressed in a reasonably timely manner. But this was reported many months ago and still no action.

[Steven Pendleton]

I forgot about Master System Desert Strike being broken. I found both a US Genesis and a PAL Master system copy in town recently and I almost bought both of them. Master System version was like triple the price of the Genesis version, but since the Genesis version was only 500 yen, it's not a whole lot of cash, but I didn't have any money on me at the time, unfortunately. Still, I'd like to try the Master System version since I've never played it, but this is disappointing.

[dashv]

13 hours ago, Reaperman said:

Could somebody help out with some barney-style instructions for my controller options on the NT Mini v2?

 

I just bought the new 8bitdo arcade stick, but that doesn't seem to pair with the new receiver. (both from questions asked on the amazon page, and my trying it).  Also my 2.4g m30 won't pair to it, which I suppose isn't too surprising if the former won't go.

 

My older NT Mini's bluetooth controller died a couple uses, so I don't fully trust my negative result on the new 8bitdo arcade stick using that. (there's a 50% chance the rx half is the dead half)  Anybody had this work? If so what's the magic dance, and is it running analogue nt firmware or the standard one? (IIRC that was 'a thing')

I nearly bought that arcade stick until I read two things in the QA section.

 

1) you cannot pair it with their other 2.4g dongles (as you have now discovered for yourself)

2) they only claim it supports PC and Switch

 

This is further verified in the customer questions and 8bitdo’s responses.

 

Sorry friend. ?

 

I also want to follow up on my earlier post about RetroUSB SMB2J being glitchy on the noir.

 

The cartridge locks up after a few minutes of play. But with the jail break firmware I was able to dump it and play the rom for quite a while with no lockup’s and no graphics glitches.

 

Does this mean my cart is bad? It’s not dirty. I guess I will have to try to dig out one of my OG NES consoles to double check the cartridge is not to blame. Was hoping someone here might already know, but that does not seem to be the case.

[Reaperman]

Both amazon and stoneage gamer are having black friday sales on the 8bitdo NES bluetooth RX, so I've picked up a hopefully non-broken one of those.  If it works with the arcade stick, that's great, if not, I'd need one anyway to make my NT Mini V1 complete again.  At some point I'll probably sell it.  No point in me hoarding two NT Minis.  Theoretically, it might even cover the v2 upgrade.

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Reaperman

[schnuth]

Has anyone figured out exactly what files you need to get Intellivision games running on the jailbrake? I’m confused about this INTV2 file format that the Noir needs. Could someone gently nudge me in the right direction?

Besides Intellivision I’ve been able to get mostly everything else running. I haven’t been able to find the exact files it needs for Odyssey 2 speech games tho based on the checksums in the jailbrake documentation.

[CZroe]

Both amazon and stoneage gamer are having black friday sales on the 8bitdo NES bluetooth RX, so I've picked up a hopefully non-broken one of those.  If it works with the arcade stick, that's great, if not, I'd need one anyway to make my NT Mini V1 complete again.  At some point I'll probably sell it.  No point in me hoarding two NT Minis.  Theoretically, it might even cover the v2 upgrade.
 

I got a bunch of them for $5 each when they went on clearance at Fry's a couple years ago.

[Noah98]

4 hours ago, schnuth said:

Has anyone figured out exactly what files you need to get Intellivision games running on the jailbrake? I’m confused about this INTV2 file format that the Noir needs. Could someone gently nudge me in the right direction?

Besides Intellivision I’ve been able to get mostly everything else running. I haven’t been able to find the exact files it needs for Odyssey 2 speech games tho based on the checksums in the jailbrake documentation.

I haven't had any luck with Intellivision, but everything else is working fine.

[Reaperman]

18 hours ago, schnuth said:

Has anyone figured out exactly what files you need to get Intellivision games running on the jailbrake? I’m confused about this INTV2 file format that the Noir needs. Could someone gently nudge me in the right direction?

 

Yeah, I was looking at that very briefly last night.

We'll hopefully be able to sucker the Intellivision forum into letting us know how to figure out what to pad the bios/roms with.

 

I was kind of surprised it wasn't in the Nov 2020 everdrive/mister/nt-mini packs.  I guess it will be once we figure it out.  An emulator with access to memory and compare to burgertime for the games? Bios might be documented somewhere.

 

It looks like I also have to re-extension some of my Cougar Boy roms. I refuse to call them 'MegaDuck,' because 'Cougar Boy' sounds so much cooler .  Anyway the arctic one's pretty fun--a puzzle trying to build rectangles.  I'm glad I can finally try that system out. Standalone Analogue Cougar Boy in 2021?  Maybe call it the Analogue CB? lol

Edited November 28, 2020 by Reaperman

[aspiring_gh0st]

On 11/25/2020 at 8:45 AM, hyrulebr said:

I think they can back to the roots and make a Neo Geo FPGA (I think it's doable with current FPGA chip Analogue use or a double fpga setup as Pocket). This in 2022. Until there maybe the prices comes down and can be viable to use the same chip as Mister (115k LE if I'm not wrong) and enable Nintendo 64, PS1, etc.

 

At least an Arcade FPGA defeat their "legal" vision:

 

Analogue Duo does not play copyrighted ROM files, it plays legacy game cartridges and CDs.

 

They can put a floppy drive to make a classic computer fpga compatible with originals games but I don't think they will do it. 

 

But I hope that increasing the engineer dept no only allows they will able to run 2 projects at same time but could also update previous works. Also have stock of their products would be nice. I miss the time when we complaim about the higher shipping costs but there was something to ship to us...

 

About third party support nothing was said about Duo. My guess it's a Pocket only thing because the pocket is like the Zimba 3000 portable edition. I dont see an updated pocket until Nintendo DS or psp are doable in FPGA.  

 

 

 

 

I really hope a Neo Geo fpga is next, with the ability to play both mvs and aes games. Such great systems and library of games.  Have been considering buying a Mister but have been holding out in hopes that Analogue announces something. 

[CZroe]

I really hope a Neo Geo fpga is next, with the ability to play both mvs and aes games. Such great systems and library of games.  Have been considering buying a Mister but have been holding out in hopes that Analogue announces something. 

Same. The issue I see is that such large slots will probably be expensive and awkward to build in all four if a user isn't expected to use both so they might want to make them modular. You know: Pick AES or MVS when making your order and get the appropriate module bundled with the main unit. You could optionally add the other for additional cost.

[vanfanel]

On 11/27/2020 at 8:48 AM, Atariboy said:

For an actual bug that's yet to be fixed (The pixel blending isn't broken), Desert Strike for the Sega Master System is unplayable. Crashes when exiting the map/status screen both via the jailbreak and the original cartridge. Yet they still advertise 100% compatibility for the 8 and 16-bit Sega library.

 

While I love my Mega Sg and realize it's just a single game, I still don't believe that it's unreasonable to actually see the product supported and legitimate bugs be addressed in a reasonably timely manner. But this was reported many months ago and still no action.

Pixel blending *is* broken.

 

Did you even play a MegaDrive via RF or RCA back in the day? Did you? Really? I suspect you know MegaDrive from software emulation and just got a MegaSG.

 

Do you remember having "Sonic 1" or "SOR 2" or "Story Of Thor" having working transparency but horribly deformed fonts? Do you remember that? No you don't.

And do you know why you don't remember that?

Because it did not happen in original hardware.

 

And before you come out with some stupid reasoning like "it's HDMI, not RCA anymore", take a look at MiSTer's MegaDrive core, enable "pixel blending" and see how it looks: That's how it looked back in the day. And that's how it's supposed to look.

I am tired of Genecyst-level emulation kids by now.

Play the real thing on a real RCA/RF setup (as most games used dithering heavily on the MegaDrive) before expressing an opinion about pixel blending.

 

And solution is very easy: un-selective pixel blending. There's already a lever for setting the blending depth, but that level doesn't work as expected, because it should adjust to un-selective blending at some position.

MiSTer people got it right because it's easy.

 

This has been reported years ago, along with some other major bugs. None of these problems or bugs are present in community-driven implementations. As they say: the writing is on the wall...

Edited November 28, 2020 by vanfanel

[aspiring_gh0st]

2 hours ago, CZroe said:

2 hours ago, aspiring_gh0st said:

I really hope a Neo Geo fpga is next, with the ability to play both mvs and aes games. Such great systems and library of games.  Have been considering buying a Mister but have been holding out in hopes that Analogue announces something. 

Same. The issue I see is that such large slots will probably be expensive and awkward to build in all four if a user isn't expected to use both so they might want to make them modular. You know: Pick AES or MVS when making your order and get the appropriate module bundled with the main unit. You could optionally add the other for additional cost.

All fair points. I’d be good with something like that, I just want my Analogue fpga Neo Geo fix, lol. I’d also like for there to be options in the future that allowed for updates such as running the software without slowdown and other fixes that essentially allow the games to be played as perfectly as possible but I’m not sure that’s feasible with just fpga implementation. 

[zetastrike]

4 hours ago, vanfanel said:

Pixel blending *is* broken.

 

Did you even play a MegaDrive via RF or RCA back in the day? Did you? Really? I suspect you know MegaDrive from software emulation and just got a MegaSG.

 

Do you remember having "Sonic 1" or "SOR 2" or "Story Of Thor" having working transparency but horribly deformed fonts? Do you remember that? No you don't.

And do you know why you don't remember that?

Because it did not happen in original hardware.

 

And before you come out with some stupid reasoning like "it's HDMI, not RCA anymore", take a look at MiSTer's MegaDrive core, enable "pixel blending" and see how it looks: That's how it looked back in the day. And that's how it's supposed to look.

I am tired of Genecyst-level emulation kids by now.

Play the real thing on a real RCA/RF setup (as most games used dithering heavily on the MegaDrive) before expressing an opinion about pixel blending.

 

And solution is very easy: un-selective pixel blending. There's already a lever for setting the blending depth, but that level doesn't work as expected, because it should adjust to un-selective blending at some position.

MiSTer people got it right because it's easy.

 

This has been reported years ago, along with some other major bugs. None of these problems or bugs are present in community-driven implementations. As they say: the writing is on the wall...

 

The games can look however you want them to.  They're not supposed to look one way or the other.  Please stop projecting your preference on everyone as if it's the only way.  It's not incorrect to want everything sharp and clear any more than it's incorrect to want it blurry.  I never use fake blur on any emulator.  I don't understand why dithering triggers some people so much.  I like sharp clear pixels, seeing a checkerboard doesn't bother me.  RGB cables have been a thing for the Megadrive as long as it has existed, so the capability and option was always there.  Please stop talking to us like we're idiots because we aren't fretting about this.

Edited November 29, 2020 by zetastrike

[ErebusMaligan]

30 minutes ago, zetastrike said:

 

The games can look however you want them to.  They're not supposed to look one way or the other.  Please stop projecting your preference on everyone as if it's the only way.  It's not incorrect to want everything sharp and clear any more than it's incorrect to want it blurry.  I never use fake blur on any emulator.  I don't understand why dithering triggers some people so much.  I like sharp clear pixels, seeing a checkerboard doesn't bother me.  RGB cables have been a thing for the Megadrive as long as it has existed, so the capability and option was always there.  Please stop talking to us like we're idiots because we aren't fretting about this.

He's been told this by multiple people many times.  At this point it's moved from being passionate about it, to just trolling.  Not because of the insistence that it should be an option that works a certain way... but for constantly berating anyone that doesn't prefer the look.

 

I grew up playing genesis over rf... it's ugly (just like anything else over rf), I don't prefer the smeared vaseline look, regardless of what the intent of the developers was.