Who wants to try XCade for GP32?

[skeezix]

Sounds interesting, but most of those games don't really tickle my fancy. I guess I'm more interested in games I've played on actual machines, and all those were uncommon in my day (which wasn't 1980, unfortunately). Ones I would personally look forward to are...Ms Pacman, Pengo, Crazy Kong (the clone where you can do the level warp trick!), Galaga...that's all I can think of, before arcades started moving away from that sort of z80 type hardware towards the 6502's, 68000's and whatnot. It's a damn good concept anyway and all I have to ask is, what is it that needs testing anyway? If you just wanna release a pre-release preview or something, the demand seems to be here...

Another question: Does it use the current MAME romsets, or older ones?

The version I posted this morning does Ms. Pacman and Pengo

XCade included Zilog z80, Mos 6502, Motorola 6809, Cinematronics pseudo-CPU, and some auxilliary chips; in addition to the 6 games supported now, it also runs Asteroids, RipOff, TailGunner, Galaxian, Phoenix, Pleiades, and a bunch of others.. lessee, scramble, Mario Brothers.. lots of them.

Btut he GP32 port so far only dfoes the 6 (SI, DK, DKjr, Pac, MsPac, Hanglyman, Puckman). More added to the GP32 version every few days

ROMs are ROMs; XCade uses the samwe ROMs as MAME of course, but we use the traditional filenames from a cuople years ago, not the updated ones.. the MAME guys rename roms pretty frequently, and I've no time to keep up. Most shoudl be the same, but some you may have to massage.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Jeff - I'd love to try it now. As a said somewhere in an earlier thread, I'm one of the regg'ed users with the Palm version and have all roms.

cheers

Iain

You'll really like GPXcade then Due to its Palm OS ties, it sues Palm-ified ROMs still, even for the GP32 version (to make my life easier So you can just install your Palm .pdb ROM files into \GPMM\XCADE and you're good to go.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

That's excellent skeezix!

sure Space Invaders is rubbish,
but Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are definately worth the effort,
and if you could get Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Phoenix, Pengo (and Pleids) working aswell that would be fantastic!

I still dream of the day i can play Star Force on my GP32, and something tells me that won't be too far off now

what do you do about the aspect ratio of the screen? all those games are vertical IIRC

These games are in vertical mounted monitors (most of the games until 1987 were, when JAMMA came out), but the games themselves are rendered mostly square.. 256x256 areas, with a lot of games being 256x240 or the like. The monitor is vertical, meaning the image is stretched a little.

Anyway, I render the 256x256 onto the GP32 320x240 in the normal fashion, so the d-pad is on the left and the buttons on the right. If you rotate the GP32.. imagine lpaying a game with the d-pad on the bottom and the fire on the top.. annoying, except for Pacman

So I could add screen rotation to Pacman (it would actually help, since I have to clip quite a bit of Pac to make it visible playably..). But it doesnt' right now

Phoenix and Pleaides going ni tonight or tomrorow sometime

jeff

 

[skeezix]

What clock speed does xcade use??? I don't want to kill my gp32 if it uses speed higher than 133

XCade runs at 132MHz. Anythnig higher can be unstable on some units I'm told (though I clocked up to about 150MHz without a problem, I'm afraid it might smoke the unit So she runs at 132MHz which is plenty for XCade.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

So, anyone try it out yet?

I'm dieing to hear how well this first alpha is received

jeff

 

[tfc]

Skeezix ive posted the news and a link on GP32emu so it should get alot of people downloadning it

Now its time to test it out

TFC

h34r:

 

[MrT]

I'll download it later, I'm at work at the mo (USA 7 hours behind UK until next week then 6) and will let you know what I think, I can't wait to get home now........

MrT

 

[nerd of nerds]

Thanks for responding to the clock speed thing I was just worried that it might ruin my lcd . THIS SOFTWARE IS AWSOME B) :lol: B)

 

[skeezix]

Skeezix ive posted the news and a link on GP32emu so it should get alot of people downloadning it

Now its time to test it out

TFC

h34r:

Hey, sweet tfc, MR.T, NoN, et al

Damn real life getting in the way of my gp32 work

jeff

 

[MrT]

Okay - Here's my first review, okay I suppose since this is an Alpha release, it's strictly speaking a preview.

It's also a bit of an instruction guide too, but whatever, I hope it's useful.

Downloaded XCade and set about installing it and playing those excellent retrogames that I piled so much money into a a youth.

First off copied the xcade.fxe file, into the GP32/GPMM using the PC-Link program.

Searched out those retro roms and extracted them in a convenient place on my PC (they were zipped files which apparently the WinRommer.exe Rommer.exe utilities do not like.

Ran WinRommer.exe for all the roms, renaming where appropriate. Discovered that this apparently did not work. Searched my whole PC for *.pdb files, there weren't any, reverted to the DOS version Rommer.exe.

Created all the pdb files as such using a DOS prompt (command)

rommer pacman > pacman.log
rommer mspacman > mspacman.log
rommer spcinv > spcinv.log
rommer hangly > hangly.log
rommer dkong > dkong.log
rommer dkongjr > dkongjr.log
rommer pengo > pengo.log
rommer puckman > puckman.log

Having the log files is a habit from work, these are not really required. Copied the resultant *.pdb files into the GP32/GPMM/XCADE directory - I think this was created after running the XCade program on my GP32 without the roms in situ.

Now to the fun bit....

Tried MS Pacman, Puckman, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. None of my other roms where recognised, i'll have to get older versions later, when I have finished playing these beauties ;-)

very smooth game play, speed looked perfect , same with Graphics etc, all in all superb debut, There were a couple of things, like I could not see the ladders in Donkey Kong which made it a bit hard to climb, (this could be my roms of course) and the pacman games are slightly off screen at the bottom, but not enough to spoil my playing, anyway I am fed up of writing, I want to get back to playing.........can't wait for Galaxians, that little Beauty cost me a fortune, probably more than enough to but another GP32

Thanks a lot Skeezix. PPPPPPPPPLLLLLLease continue to add more roms support and tweak where necessary.

I compliment you on your hard work

MrT :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

 

[skeezix]

Glad you liked it Kudos for first report back

I've added Phoenix, Galaxian and Moon Cresta tonight. Galax and MC have correct colours.

Pacman series is clipped by necessity.. I can stretch/shrink, but thats very slow to do, so IO'll worry about it later. (Renders like hell)

Colour is botched on most games, as the Palm OS version of XCade just refers to exiasting Palm palette; I've added palette setting code for Galax/MC, so I just need to define the colours for the other games (from the DOS Xcade and they'll be correct, too.

Gameplay shoudl be pretty funky.. XCade is pretty fast (its made to be fast on small machines. I was glad when MAME came out, since it can do the beefy games.. but XCade shoudl whip it for speed on the small games

Perhaps WinRommer is screwy... the DOS one should certainly work.

I'll have to write up some manuals; theres a FAQ (for the Palm OS one, but same Rommer tool) on my site which details it.

For Mooin Cresta you'll need to rename the resulting pdb to mooncrst.pdb .. silly GP and 8.3 filenames

So more to come ASAP!

jeff

 

[MrT]

Can't wait!!!

Got the Hanglyman, Pacman, Space Invaders, and pengo sorted out, needed older versions which luckily I still had from an earlier MAME version 27 beta!!

Hanglyman and pacman really cool, these games are just soooo addictive, why I do not know, but they are.

Just cleared three sheets on Space Invaders too, without losing a life, then proceeded to losethem all at once typical ;-)

Pengo really zips, wow was it that fast in the Arcades? That's probaly why it cost me so much money.

If you have a go at any of the sound, then please let that be Galaxians first, that has to be the game for me...

dalla la dada dalla la dada daaaaaaaaaa

Superb

Thanks again Jeff

(To everyone else except Jeff - BTW - If you haven't downloaded it yet - Why NOT!!)

MrT