Surprise External Submissions…

It’s always nice when something from outside the development team is submitted when you’re least expecting it, especially when the submission is of a good quality and is something we’ve considered to be very difficult to work on.

 

Tonight that’s exactly what happened, ElSemi passed along some code to me from a contributor in China (Sorry, I don’t have any more details than this, If he wishes to be credited I’ll edit the post)

 

The code was to simulate the protection in the PGM game “Puzzle Star”, another one of the Mysterious PGM games which never appeared on the IGS site when most of the other titles were up. It’s a puzzle game, very similar to Mang-Chi which was emulated a few days ago but with some extra twists (involving the stars, combos, and ‘promotions’). There may be one or two problems with the simulation, but for the most part it seems to work correctly.

 

I’ve uploaded some resized screenshots you can see below so people can get a good idea of what this PGM cart looks like should they wish to buy it.

 

Please note, once again this is _not_ my WIP, I’m just commenting on a very impressive external submission. Its easy to be critical of low quality external submissions, or people not being willing to fix things, but always very pleasing to see quality external submissions like this one.

>> Click HERE for pictures.

This has been translated from Japanese by Google

* Clipping check processing of the VDP1 was corrected.

* Windowing of the VDP2 was corrected.

* Color RAM address formation processing at the time of the bit map of the VDP2 was corrected.

* Sprite priority number formation processing of the VDP2 was corrected.

* Computing in rotary parameter coordinate of the VDP2 was corrected.

* Hook processing of the system program was corrected.

* The Warring States blade and the like moves there is no BIOS with.  * It tried to replace the ABC button and the XYZ button with 9 keys of keyboard side.

* It modified ahead job backup file retaining of the STV below  the Backup folder.

* It tried to retain the contents of the EEPROM in each every game.

* The bug where speed deviates the dual core CPU use time was corrected.

* Because environment of the Windows98 was gone,  the Windows98 is deleted from the corresponding OS.

>> Get it HERE.

Simple Bugs..

It amazes me sometimes how much users of MAME moan and complain about certain bugs, when if they simply put a fraction of the effort they do complaining into trying to fix the bug then they’d almost certainly be able to fix it.

 

Mysterious Stones has been broken since around MAME 0.77u2. There are a few bad tiles near the start of the first levels, and by the 2nd level it’s apparently unplayable.

 

I took a quick glance at the vidhrdw/mystston.c file in MAME and saw the following code.

 

 

WRITE8_HANDLER( mystston_videoram_w )

{

    if (videoram[offset] != data)

    {

        videoram[offset] = data;

        tilemap_mark_tile_dirty(fg_tilemap, offset & 0×3ff);

    }

}

 

WRITE8_HANDLER( mystston_videoram2_w )

{

    if (videoram[offset] != data)

    {

        mystston_videoram2[offset] = data;

        tilemap_mark_tile_dirty(bg_tilemap, offset & 0×1ff);

    }

}

 

 

the error stands out a mile, even if you’re not a programmer an error like that shouldn’t be too hard to fix. The mystston_videoram2_w handler is broken. As an optimization the code is meant to check if the contents of videoram is the same as the value being written to it, and then only write it if it isn’t the same. The mystston_videoram2_w handler is checking the wrong video ram. The bug was obviously introduced as the result of a simple copy & paste error.

 

fixing the bug simply involved changing

 

if (videoram[offset] != data)

 

 

to

 

if (mystston_videoram2[offset] != data)

 

 

in WRITE8_HANDLER( mystston_videoram2_w )

 

A _very_ simple one line fix. The source is available so people can make fixes like this.

>> Before and After pictures HERE.

22nd April, 2006 - GameEx 5.96

 

* News module now includes new GameEx RSS feed.

* Applications set to launch at startup are now run before initialising DirectX again.

>> Get it HERE.