0.33b6 1998/06/16 [#042 - Nicola Salmoria] ------------------------------------------ New games supported: -------------------- 1941 (Japanese) [Marco Cassili] 1942 (alternate) [Nicola Salmoria] Avalanche [Mike Balfour] Birdie King 2 (preliminary) [Ed Mueller, Mike Balfour] Dead Eye [Juergen Buchmueller] Fax [Mike Balfour] Fighting Fantasy [Marco Cassili] Ghouls'n Ghosts (Japanese) [Marco Cassili] Gladiator [Victor Trucco, Steve Ellenoff, Phil Stroffolino] Gypsy Juggler (preliminary) [Juergen Buchmueller] Heli Fire [Al Kossow] Lazer Command [Juergen Buchmueller] Lizard Wizard [Mike Balfour] Magic Sword (Japanese) [Marco Cassili] Nemo (Japanese) [Sawat Pontree] Nova 2001 [Howie Cohen, Frank Palazzolo, Alex Pasadyn] Space Fever [Al Kossow] Super Bond [Chris Hardy] TMNT (Japanese, 2 Players USA, 2 Players Japanese) [Alex Simmons] New games supported: -------------------- xxx These drivers have improved GRAPHICS: ------------------------------------- - Accurate colors, and many other fixes, in 'TNZS' [Richard Mitton]. - 'Double Dragon' and 'Xain'd Sleena' use the dynamic palette [Nicola Salmoria]. - Fixed some wrong graphics in 'Lode Runner' [Nicola Salmoria]. - 'Roadblaster' uses the dynamic palette system [Aaron Giles]. These drivers have improved SOUND: ---------------------------------- - Fixed bug in VLM5030 emulator which caused samples not to work [Tatuyuki Satoh]. These drivers have HIGH SCORE support: -------------------------------------- - 'TNZS' [Santeri Saarimaa]. Other drivers changes: ---------------------- - Fixed bug in the I8086 emulator which caused 'MACH3' not to work. 'MACH3' now does the attract mode, but it will never be playable without the laser disc [Nicola Salmoria]. - Fixed 'Snow Bros' hanging after level 30 [Nicola Salmoria]. - Removed the partially working protection emulation in 'Elevator Action', so people will hopefully understand that it doesn't work and use the bootleg instead [Nicola Salmoria]. Changes to the main program: ---------------------------- - [DOS] New -listgames command, which lists all games along with production year and manufacturer (data has not been entered yet so most of the fields are ????). Also -noclones option which removes clones from -list, -listfull etc. (clones data has not been entered yet so this is not complete) [Nicola Salmoria]. - Greater flexibility for ROM placement: ROMs are looked for both in the directory named after the clone, and in the one of the original game. Note that due to how zip support works, if the ROMs are zipped they can be in subdirectories as well (clones data has not been entered yet so this is not complete). IMPORTANT: due to this change, some ROM sets might require renaming to work again [Nicola Salmoria]. - [DOS] Fixed the NTSC mode. For feedback on this mode, please contact sta@carinthia.com [Zerza]. - [DOS] Allegro (3.0+diffmay) now supports SideWinders and Gravis Gamepad Pro's and so does Mame [Bud Crittenden]. - Emulating analog devices via joystick no longer deactivates the mouse. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PORTERS: osd_analog_read() had to be changed. The mame.cfg setting for joysticks was renamed to "joystick" instead of "joytype". The numbering of joystick types has changed, look into readme.txt [Bernd Wiebelt]. Source changes: ---------------- - [DOS] We are now using Allegro 3.0 + WIP (30th May) [Nicola Salmoria]. - [DOS] To improve portability, the makefile is more conservative, using the -pedantic and -Wshadow switches. Note that to compile with these switches, several changes had to be made to allegro.h, which is included [Nicola Salmoria]. - Sygnetis 2650 emulator [Juergen Buchmueller]. - Improved cycle counting in the 6809 emulator [Mathis Rosenhauer]. - Added new fields to the GameDriver structure [Nicola Salmoria]: * "source_file" (set it to __FILE__, this is used to automatically generate reference lists); * "clone_of", used to link clones to the main version of the game; * "year" and "manufacturer", for production year and company; * "flags", for future use. - Drivers using the VIDEO_SUPPORTS_16BIT mode can use the same API as VIDEO_MODIFIES_PALETTE ones (palette_change_color(), palette_recalc()). The old setgfxcolorentry() method is still supported but discontinued, and will be removed when all the existing drivers are converted to the new system. To use the new API, you must set BOTH the VIDEO_SUPPORTS_16BIT and the VIDEO_MODIFIES_PALETTE flags. Removing the _16BIT flag is all it takes to switch from 16-bit to dynamic mode, so you can quickly test if the palette can be compressed (_16BIT is much slower, so don't use it unless absolutely necessary) [Nicola Salmoria]. - To help drivers in better optimizing video refreshes, palette_recalc() now returns a pointer to an array indicating which colors have been remapped and need a refresh. If you don't need it, you can still consider it a boolean value (0 = no need to redraw) [Nicola Salmoria]. - On the Mac, the dynamic palette uses 254 colors instead of 256. Due to this, now ALL drivers using VIDEO_MODIFIES_COLOR and 256 colors must call palette_recalc() like the others [Aaron Giles]. - [DOS] The average FPS is printed on exit [Nicola Salmoria].