69 replies to this topic

[ploggy]

Looking very promising indeed.  Just need some layout tools and we'll be laughing!

 

Excellent work thus far.

[cardie]

Oh crap.

bj

 

Hehe they will only be classics mind

[richy1976]

ETA was xmas 2013, looking by the progress made since a couple of weeks ago i guess this will be a lot sooner?.

[killcrazy]

ETA was xmas 2013, looking by the progress made since a couple of weeks ago i guess this will be a lot sooner?.

 

We'll see  The problem is it's so hard to give an accurate estimate as I don't know what life will throw at me etc!!  To be honest I thought 6 months to get the core working properly and it's nearly finished in just over 2.  I'm planning to write quite an advanced rendering engine so both this and the tools will take quite a long time (I'd have thought at least 6-8 months).  I doubt there'll be anything before August at least, but we'll see

 

Regarding the tools - I've not put much thought into them yet, but yes they will be similar to existing emulators.

 

Updates on the core:

 

Most Maygay and Impulse machines that don't use a 6 reel driver board are now fully playable.  (Some that don't have sound available can't boot though)

 

Some Globals are fully playable (Hurricane rebuild, Phoenix Knights), but some newer ones (Wildside, Beaver Las Vegas & clones) don't yet boot properly.

 

I've not tested any Extreme machines yet.

 

Coin mech and the stakes/prizes systems are finished so you can insert coins and play in normal mode (not service door open mode).

 

The hopper isn't implemented properly yet so will error when you try to collect wins.

 

Some improvements needed on the sound as some samples are played at different speeds (Hurricane music for example)

Edited by killcrazy, 03 January 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[captainhaddock]

Excellent progress there - one question for you, have you attempted to load a different sound rom with the game rom(s) to enable booting? - not ideal I know - but many proconn games suffered the same problem,and the workaround at least made them boot up and be able to be played.

 

Dave. 

[connor55]

yay, looking @ things it is possible,

 

 

connor55

[prizeguy2005]

sounds excellant how many complete romsets with sound do we have for Maygay machines? Seem to remember they were quite a few full sets for globals and impulse but very few maygay

[mocochoco]

Wow this is coming along really well!

 

Many thanks for the work put in! Really impressed and excited.

[Johnnyafc]

Anymore progress 

[killcrazy]

Yea some more good progress over the last week or so...  I've mainly been doing bug fixes and improvements to the way the interrupts are handled.  I've also started experimenting with the rendering engine.

 

Here's a list of the machines I've tested so far:

 

Fully working and playable with sound:

 

The Simpsons

Homer's Meltdown

Duff Beer Guide

Hurricane (Global version)

Wipeout (6 reel board still not properly implemented though)

Beaver Las Vegas

The Italian Job 2

Spin On It (6 reel board)

Phoenix Knights

Who Wants To Be A Millionhare

Cannonball Run

Pick Yer Pesos

 

 

Fully working and playable, but no sound (need dumps)

 

Dungeons & Dragqueens

Spartacash

Geronimo

High Voltage

Just The Ticket

Carry On Screaming

 

 

Not working:

 

Dambusters (6.0 Gen Meter Err) - not looked at this yet but it should be easy to fix

[andy-1]

Killcrazy could you see if this runs on your emulator

 

It's Special Brew by Maygay not sure if it has the sound files or not though

Attached Files

•  ep_spcbw.zip   1.73MB   6 downloads

[Johnnyafc]

Great stuff thanks for the update

[nails]

nice thread, glad to see progress of any kind.

[Bencrest]

Sounds amazing!

 

If you are having problems with the 6 reel board on Wipeout, I assume the same will apply to other 5 reel games such as Gridrunner, although that's not been mentioned yet. Was quite a common machine in it's day (a couple of versions, one Impulse and one by Global) so I would hope there would be ROMs available for it.

 

Get Gridrunner going and I will personally come around and give you the worlds biggest man-hug!!!

[richy1976]

Grid runner.

Attached Files

•  Grid Runner (Global) Rom.zip   1.04MB   4 downloads
•  Grid Runner Club (Global) c Rom.zip   417.45KB   3 downloads
•  Gridrunner (Maygay - Impulse) Rom.zip   704.67KB   3 downloads

[killcrazy]

Gridrunner works perfectly.  I've only got the sound for the Global version, but there's a chance they could be the same  (edit: Yep the sound works with both versions)

 

Special Brew doesn't boot, it gives a stake key error.  I suspect it's one of the machines that has it's addresses mapped slightly differently (either that or the ROM I tried doesn't support 10p/£5 play).  Either way there shouldn't be any problems getting it to work.

Edited by killcrazy, 15 January 2013 - 10:08 PM.

[Bencrest]

Gridrunner works perfectly. 

 

Mmmmmmmm... Gridrunner

[vectra666]

Now we know all these roms work and the alpha and yellow squares move which is fantastic news. But how long will it be before we see a layout whether it be in classic to start with or dx form. Is there lots involved to make the layout tools for this emu or is it just a case of implementing the existing tools form mfme. Once again great news on the rom working front thanks for all the hard work involved in getting these techs running

[killcrazy]

It's hard to say to be honest Getting the ROMs running was by far the most difficult bit, but it's probably not the most time consuming! One of the tasks is to write a JIT recompiler to reduce CPU usage to minimal levels (the current interpreter consumes 70-80% of a CPU core). This is 2 months work at least. The rendering engine and tools are probably another 6 months work.

The current ball-park plan:

June 2013 - Layout designers who are interested start helping with initial beta testing / feedback
October 2013 - Wider beta testing from normal users
December 2013 - First public release, project open sourced.

Beyond - Possibly the addition of other techs that Guitar isn't planning to incorporate into Amber (MPU5/Scorpion 4)


What I want to do is release something that looks great and runs really well. I'd much rather take my time to get it right than end up rushing it and release something that's half-baked. For this reason the dates might slip

[vectra666]

That's fine just goes to show what actually goes into these emulators whether its mfme jpm bfm Amber and now yours a lots of hard work time and dedication just think this time next year we all could be playing simpsons n gridrunner once again happy days