0.25 1997/06/28 [#029 - Mirko Buffoni] -------------------------------------- New games supported: -------------------- (anteater) Anteater [Malcor] (frontlin) Front Line [Nicola Salmoria] (hunchy) Hunchback [James R. Twine, Chris Hardy] (mystston) Mysterious Stones [Nicola Salmoria] (naughtyb) Naughty Boy [Nicola Salmoria, Mirko Buffoni] (rescue) Rescue [Mirko Buffoni] (spacefb) Space Firebird [Chris Hardy] (starforc) Star Force [Mirko Buffoni] (tutankhm) Tutankham (Stern Electronics) [Mirko Buffoni] (wwestern) Wild Western [Nicola Salmoria] New clones supported: -------------------- (ckongjeu) Crazy Kong (Copyright Jeutel) [Mirko Buffoni] (mspacatk) Ms. Pac Man Attacks [Mirko Buffoni] Program changes: -------- - We have added 'Starforce'! Another one that rocks!! Sound is not supported yet [Mirko Buffoni]. - Finally I've added 'Tutankham'. (Hi Moose!! ;) Moose provided me a good bunch of information and I lost much time on a stupid bug in bank selection. Thanks to David Dahl (techt@juno.com) that provided me a driver too, and I found the light!! Also thanks to Rob Jarrett for the exaustive memory map (I've included it in sources, it's better than mine) [Mirko Buffoni]. - I've decrypted the garbled graphics of 'AntEater' and 'Rescue' which are now fully playable. And Fabio Buffoni improved the decode routines with thrilling code. Colors are wrong, unless someone provides me a good set of screenshots to study. Hunchback doesn't work yet [Fabio Buffoni, Mirko Buffoni]. - Nicola added a driver for 'Mysterious Stone' [Nicola Salmoria]. - Provided us technical information about the game Naughty Boy. (Remember that code area is 64k long and not 32k). We have implemented a driver and for this game which is now supported [Sal Bugliarisi, John Bugliarisi]. - I took the time to add some high score saving. So, now 'Junior Pacman', 'Naughty Boy', 'Tutankham', 'Kangaroo', have high score saving support. (So Dave will stop bothering me about that ;) heheh!!! Joking ;) [Mirko Buffoni]. - Nicola fixed Commando driver, so now intermissions have the correct tiles positioned [Nicola Salmoria]. - Added 'JrPacman' speed cheat. It works in the same way of Pacman (thanks to Hugo Pi for let me notice this) [Mirko Buffoni]. - Added support for Space Firebird. Thanks to Chris and to all Sage Staff [Chris Hardy]. - Nicola did some fixes to Taito Games ('Jungle King' and 'Elevator Action') about background placement and coins per credit dipswitch. Plus vertical scroll support in 'Jungle King' (used in ground shake), correct sprite priority, and no more rubbish is present during change of stage. Finally, he also added preliminar support for 'WildWestern' and FrontLine, which are not yet playable. DELETE ELEVATOB\ELEVATOB.DSW, JUNGLEK\JUNGLEK.DSW, JHUNT\JHUNT.DSW, OTHERWISE THE GAME WILL NOT WORK CORRECTLY [Nicola Salmoria]. - Proposed me to implement a different button layout for joysticks. I replyed with a configurable joystick setup (like the keyboard one). So Eric finished the work providing us a useful joystick setup menu. Thanks Eric and Robert! ;) [Eric Anschuetz, Robbbert, Mirko Buffoni]. - Refixed the galaga hiscore bug (it happened when syncing my sources with Nicola's ones) [Mirko Buffoni]. - Provided a better interface between MAME and frontends. And now you can select frameskip rate even while playing, without have to exit. Volume can be controlled with keypad PLUS and MINUS keys [Maurizio Zanello]. - Provided me info about how to enable a shot sample with moonquasar, mooncresta, galaxian and clones [Robert Anschuetz]. - Fixed the Williams driver to support joystick in Blaster, Defender, Joust, Robotron, Splat, Stargate. Also fixed the Space Invaders driver to include high score saving and 100% arcade-perfect colors for Lunar Rescue; since some bootleg machines did not use this colorful overlay, Destination Earth retains the Space Invaders color scheme [Valerio Verrando]. - Bernd has cleaned up VESA command line options: No longer supported: '-vesascan' --> use '-vesa' or (faster, if it works) '-vesa2l' '-vesaskip N' --> use '-640x480 -skiplines N' instead '-rotate' --> use '-rol' or '-ror' instead New: '-ror' '-rol' Rotate the display (anti)clockwise. Since this uses the standard VESA scanline mode, you'll get *vertical* scanlines on rotated games (authentic?). '-nodouble' Prevents pixel doubling, if you like miniaturised arcade emulation. It's also faster than the standard pixel-doubling VESA modes. '-skiplines N' Does what '-vesaskip N' used to do, except it does not select 640x480 VESA mode [Mirko Buffoni]. - Minor modifications to 'Arabian' palette. Ville Laitinen also provided some modifications to Kangaroo driver [Mirko Buffoni]. - Pause key back to 'P'. Sorry, you cannot use it for your redefinitions, but, hey, you have 101 keys left!!! ;) [Mirko Buffoni]. - Found the meaning of SW1 in 'Moon Cresta' [Mirko Buffoni, Mikiya Yadohisa]. - Added 'Crazy Kong' bootleg version by Jeutel and 'Ms Pac Man Attacks' clones [Mirko Buffoni]. Sources changes: ---------------- - Added an alternate 224x288 video mode (on my Matrox this produce correct aspect ratio with this tweaked mode). To select it simply add -224 or -224x288 parameter [Mirko Buffoni]. - Added mouse support. We need some feedback, because each mouse device has its own sensitivity. Enable mouse support with -mouse parameter [Nigel T. Barber]. - Bernd changed the VESA code to provide '-rol' and '-ror' replacing '-rotate'. Rotation modes are now supported in all VESA resolutions. The '-nodouble' option prevents pixel doubling in VESA modes, resulting in more speed and a smaller display. - I'v changed the system configuration of each game. Now a game saves all vital informations (DSW, KEY, and JOY settings) in a unique file with .CFG extension. A backward compatibility is provided, so the first time MAME read previous settings and saves them in the .CFG file at exit/reset [Mirko Buffoni]. - Modifications to add joystick reconfiguration menu [Eric Anschuetz]. - Time to use proper MAME fonts. I draw a good looking complete set of chars to be used for messages and menu system in MAME. Nicola changed the entire set of drivers and implemented a user interface sublevel (file is USRINTRF.C) [Nicola Salmoria].