0.36rc1 2000/02/26 [#091 - Nicola Salmoria] ------------------------------------------- A few drivers which didn't strictly fit MAME's purpose have been removed. First of all there were a few drivers which, just like consoles or computers, don't fall into the category of "arcade video games" that MAME attempts to emulate. They should have never been added in the first place, and that mistake is now being rectified. One of the removed drivers is Street Fighter Zero for the CPS Changer, which is not an arcade game even if it runs on arcade hardware. The source is left in, commented out, because it could be useful as a reference for people attempting to emulate CPS-2 (which, before you ask, won't happen anytime soon). The so-called "home" versions of NeoGeo games have not ben removed because there isn't anything in them suggesting that they are home-only games: they accept coins just like all the others, and might just be different revisions of the code. Other removed drivers are four gambling machines. Note that a "gambling machine" is different from a "video game with a gambling theme". The discrimination is strictly a technical one, not a moral one (a gambling machine gives back money/tokens/tickets, a video game does not). The "Sente diagnostic cartridge" has not been removed because, even if it is not a game, it is equivalent to the diagnostic tools that are built-in in many other games - it's just that instead of pressing a service switch you had to insert this special cartridge to test the board. The last driver removed is Pong, which at this point was too much of a simulation and too little of an emulation. It didn't really fit into MAME's architecture which is CPU-based and targeted at accurately reproducing the gameplay of the original. That was a difficult decision to make, but thankfully I won't have to bother about these things anymore in the future. Gotta go now! *waves*. New games supported: -------------------- Dream Shopper [Zsolt Vasvari] Face Off [Vernon C. Brooks] Fire Shark [Quench] Knuckle Bash [Quench] Labyrinth Runner [Nicola Salmoria] Mole Attack [Jason Nelson, Phil Stroffolino] Pipi & Bibis [Quench] Quester [Vernon C. Brooks] Snow Bros. 2 [Quench] Takeda Shingen [Luca Elia] Teki Paki [Quench] Ultraman [Manuel Abadia] New clones supported: --------------------- Berlin Wall (set 2) Bubble Bobble (US set 2) Champion Wrestler (US) Defender (White label) Ghouls 'n Ghosts (US) Pole Position 2 (two original sets) Rampart (Japan) Super Punch Out!! (Japan) Tumble Pop (Japan) Van Van Car (Sanritsu) Varth (US) Yokai Douchuuki (Japan old version) These drivers have improved GRAPHICS: ------------------------------------- - Fixed shadows in 'Gauntlet' and other Atari games [Aaron Giles]. - Fixed sprites colors in 'Contra" (I hope) and other improvements to Konami 007121-based games [Nicola Salmoria]. These drivers have new or improved SOUND: ----------------------------------------- - New samples in 'Asteroids'/'Asteroids Deluxe' [Jarek Parchanski]. - Preliminary sound in 'Bandido' [Zsolt Vasvari, Juergen Buchmueller]. - Samples are no longer needed in 'Stratovox', 'Battle Zone', 'Red Baron', 'Asteroids' [Juergen Buchmueller]. Source changes: ---------------- - Fixed controls in atarifb4 and atari soccer [Nicola Salmoria]. - Fixed protection in 'Super World Stadium '92' [Vernon C. Brooks]. - [DOS] -hotrod selects a more appropriate button configuration when NeoGeo games are played [Paolo Fiorani]. - The coin/start buttons are slightly changed. NOw they are layed out this way: 1,2,3,4 -> start 1,2,3,4 5,6,7,8 -> coin 1,2,3,4 9,0,-,= -> service coin 1,2,3,4 - Preliminary support for HISCORE.DAT [Phil Stroffolino]. - [DOS] Compiled with Allegro WIP 3.9.31. - 65sc02 and 65ce02 cpu cores [Peter Trauner]. - Fixed a rounding error in IPF_CENTER handling which caused problems with Centipede. Note, however, that it would be advisable to not use IPF_CENTER at all for trackball/dial inputs, since this is probably not how the hardware works in reality. For the same reason, also removed the "clip" parameter from the PORT_ANALOG() macro. Incidentally, this fixed Peek-a-Boo [Nicola Salmoria]. - Fixes and improvements to the 6800 family emulator [Tatsuyuki Satoh]. - Improvements to the YM2151 emulator [Jarek Burczynski]. - Lots of CPU fixes and cleanup [Juergen Buchmueller]. - Only one of the two YM2151 emulators is linked, this is determined at compile time. The default is Jarek's, which is more accurate though a little slower. It can be replaced with Tatsuyuki's changing the makefile [Nicola Salmoria]. - Preliminary SN76477 emulation [Juergen Buchmueller]. - Rewritten the Pokey emulator for greater accuracy [Juergen Buchmueller]. - Struct GfxLayout can now be parametric on the size of the memory region it refers to. This way the same gfx definition can be used for games with the same layout but different number of tiles. See drivers/m72.c, drivers/dec0.c for usage examples [Nicola Salmoria].