XCade 003 released :)

[skeezix]

You can get it here:

http://www.codejedi.com/xcade/binaries/gpxcade003.zip

The website itself is not yet updated due to ISP issues continuing into this week :/ But the download is there

Changes:
CHG: Toggle frame-message (FPS) with left shoulder
FIX: Fixed Pengo colours
NEW: Black background around border (instead of letterbox
CHG: Shifted Pacman (and friends) up 8 more pixels; cut off a little of the
maze wall, but make playfield (inside bottom wall) visible
CHG: Moon Cresta will try mooncrst.pdb, but now also mooncres.pdb
NEW: Added support for RipOff! and Star Castle (yum, cinematronics vectors!)
CHG: Palette fixed on return to game selector
NEW: Added more-or-less support for Tail Gunner
CHG: In game selector, A or B will start game (was just A)
NEW: Better handling for Pacman (4 way sticks on an 8-way controller
CHG: In Free Launcher, now show up as "XCade" instead of xcade.gxb

Enjoy!

Website here (not updated):
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html

jeff

 

[Shrike]

someones been busy

 

[hando]

Great work

 

[Shrike]

how many games does it support now? 20+?

 

[skeezix]

The GP32 version of XCade supports probably around 15 (not counting romswaps); lessee.. Space Invaders, Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Puckman, Hanglyman, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Pengo, RipOff!, Star Castle, Pengo, Galaxian, Moon Cresta, Phoenix. The Palm OS version supports another 10 or so, but I'm working on bringing those to the GP32 core of XCade (not too much work for each, especially now that the multi-cpu core is in and the bresenham assembly is in place for line drawing.. means I can bring over Asteroids soon

The XCade core on desktops supports around 100 or more games, but not sure how much time I'll have to bring too many more over. (Especially if theres a MAME port coming, in which case I'll work on Atari ST or Atarti 2600 instead

Aside.. the problem with Atari ST currently.. STonX wants about 17MB of RAM in ideal run, but you can run it small with 9MB of RAM (for a 4MB ST). I need to talk to those guys and figure out how to run it as a 1MB ST.. maybe get it down to the 3-4MB of RAM we can afford on the GP :/ moron has an assembly CPU core, but is a pretty nice work otherwise.. but I don't want to touch somethign so tightly knit to intel assembly.. too much work to port. Theres also AstCE and Cast.. it'd be a pretty easy port.. but I tried the Windows/DOS version and it has a seriously bad compatability.. I tried abut 20 or 30 various compilation disks and maybe 1 or 2 were playable.. so its not a useful emu to work on, unless I have time to fix it.. which I don't :/

So hopefully STonX is workabler, since its one of my favourite ST emulators (I've worked on it before).. but maybe I'll just skip it and go for Atari 2600

jeff

 

[Flack]

I would KILL for an Atari 2600 emulator for the GP32 ... ok, maybe not kill, but squash a bug or two at least.

Jeff, if you do begin working on one, be sure to add a PayPal link on your site so we can donate and support both XCade and the Atari 2600 project. It's the least us end users and non-programmers can do.

Flack

 

[stickofjoy]

So hopefully STonX is workabler, since its one of my favourite ST emulators (I've worked on it before).. but maybe I'll just skip it and go for Atari 2600

I'd be willing to donate cash for XCade and an Atari ST emulator.

also what's the difference between Pac-Man, Puckman and Hanglyman?

 

[Flack]

HanglyMan
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~jerry/arcade/pacma...man/hangly.html

PuckMan
http://mamefans.metropoliglobal.com/gamee....hp?name=puckman

(Both are just clones of Pac-Man)

Flack

 

[stickofjoy]

thanks.

 

[skeezix]

So hopefully STonX is workabler, since its one of my favourite ST emulators (I've worked on it before).. but maybe I'll just skip it and go for Atari 2600

I'd be willing to donate cash for XCade and an Atari ST emulator.

also what's the difference between Pac-Man, Puckman and Hanglyman?

Flack and stick .. you can donate if you would like; head to http://www.codejedi.com, and hit "Buy/Register" under XCade, and then Buy Now beside XCade for Palm OS. If you use my own webstore, the cash comes ot me minus 15% for running the store. Its $9.99USD. I can perhaps set up a donation item for $1 that you could then buy in quantities of whatever you like, if you'd like to give less.

But you needn't worry; I won't ask for cash for my GP32 stuff.. need to do my small part to stand up and say "I like choice and freedom; the big N and Microsoft need alternatives" A donation would be cool, but I'll never ask for it

XCade will grow slowly.. since we're expecting a MAME mini release.. between MAME and XCade there should be some pretty good arcade gaming action.

My next one will likely be Atari ST (depends on a few factors, may not be easily doable), or Atari 2600. But we'll see

jeff

 

[Flack]

Those who can, do. Those who cannot, pay.

$10, sent your way (under my name, Rob O'Hara).

Flack
Consider this a vote for the 2600.

 

[Demonix]

Excellent work! I've got XCade up and running - I've love to play Asteroids sometime, I own a few different versions of it, perhaps it was the most played game I had at one point (many years ago!).

The Atari 2600 Emu would be ace ... I'd love to play Adventure/Combat/Space Invaders etc... I guess the Emu would not be too complex either?

 

[Flack]

I'm hoping so ... I remember a file floating around a few years ago that claimed to have ALL the Atari 2600 roms in it. Zipped up, I think it was around 3 meg. I don't know exactly how many or how big they all were, but doesn't it boggle the mind to imagine every single known Atari 2600 cart on one tiny Smart Media card?

Flack

 

[MrT]

Hi Skeezix.

Once again a superb release, hopefully Asteroids will not be far away now.

BTW - what is the internal name for tailgunner - I looked in the rommer.exe (and winrommer.exe) executables and spotted the name as tailgunr but this was not recognised upon execution -

C:\gp32>dos\rommer tailgunr tgunner
Can't find that game name in list of supported games!
Perhaps you mistyped it or it is not yet supported?

Thanks for brilliant emu, and for what ever you have planned for the future -

is there any chance of seeing the following in xcade -

Arkanoid - asteroids + asteroids deluxe - centipede - space invaders deluxe - lunar rescue - pleiades - space duel - tempest (Other games mentioned in the rommer tool

Thanks MrT

 

[skeezix]

Hi Skeezix.

Once again a superb release, hopefully Asteroids will not be far away now.

BTW - what is the internal name for tailgunner - I looked in the rommer.exe (and winrommer.exe) executables and spotted the name as tailgunr but this was not recognised upon execution -

C:\gp32>dos\rommer tailgunr tgunner
Can't find that game name in list of supported games!
Perhaps you mistyped it or it is not yet supported?

Thanks for brilliant emu, and for what ever you have planned for the future -

is there any chance of seeing the following in xcade -

Arkanoid - asteroids + asteroids deluxe - centipede - space invaders deluxe - lunar rescue - pleiades - space duel - tempest (Other games mentioned in the rommer tool

Thanks MrT

Hmm, I forget.. perhaps Rommer can't do tailgunr; Tail Gunner *almost* works (it works perfectly, except you can't move the target around.. so you can't play :/). Since it had issues (on Palm OS too) I never included it in the original Rommer tools.. perhaps I left it out still. You could probably rename the Tail Gunner roms to the same as ripoff, and then use it in place of ripoff or something after renaming it to tailgunr.pdb .. but its not really worth the work unless you want to see it

I have planned to do arkanoid; just a funciton of free time. Asteroids is fully doable (already supported in Palm OS version, which this is descended from). Ast-Deluxe maybe.. it needs a POKEY chip emulation to work (for sound, because it uses some sound signal stuff for random number generator.. drag :/) Centipede maybe. SIDeluxe not likely, as I recall it is 68k based so would be a lot of work to pull off Lunar Rescue I could do now, since its just a varient of Space Invaders (its supported by PAlm OS version, and 99% by GP version, I just figured no one cared). I coudl add that in 5 minutes if wanted. Pleiades is essentially the same as Phoenix.. it runs, but I Think it has a few screwies but I can add it into the supported list fast. Space Duel and Tempest are having issues due to lack of PKEY code in there as well. Maybe someday

My time is shot right now, but I can squeeze in those quickies poerhaps. I'm still balanced between ST, DOS, and Atari 2600 Whicch to do... (But I know what you want already so don't say

jeff

 

[{{909}}]

is it poss to rotate the screen in a future version? i just tried that breakout clone arcano and it looks great full screen with the GP32 horizontal.

most of the games supported are originally on a vertical monitor so it would be sweeet!

 

[stickofjoy]

is it poss to rotate the screen in a future version? i just tried that breakout clone arcano and it looks great full screen with the GP32 horizontal.

most of the games supported are originally on a vertical monitor so it would be sweeet!

good idea!

 

[skeezix]

is it poss to rotate the screen in a future version? i just tried that breakout clone arcano and it looks great full screen with the GP32 horizontal.

most of the games supported are originally on a vertical monitor so it would be sweeet!

Rotation could be done; the actual rotation is a "zero cost" operation, though scaling is a very high cost thing; I coudl add rotation, but it doesn't add much.. ie: Most games aren't clipped, though Pacman and Ms. Pacman are clipped so you can't see the scores. Would it really enhance the experience to have them vertical? (ie: To me, its awkward to hold the unit sideways).

I could add an option to just flip it (hit left-shoulder plus "A" or something to rotate , but it just didn't appeal to me

jeff

 

[stickofjoy]

Would it really enhance the experience to have them vertical? (ie: To me, its awkward to hold the unit sideways).

I could add an option to just flip it (hit left-shoulder plus "A" or something to rotate , but it just didn't appeal to me

You can't see the final row of the Pengo screen, which nulls gameplay a little so i'd like the option to rotate at least.

how intensive is scaling? GPVGB 1.1 does it well, and I haven't noticed a speed decrease.

also somebody else is porting a 2600 emu, so does that mean we get an ST emu form you jeff?

 

[skeezix]

Would it really enhance the experience to have them vertical? (ie: To me, its awkward to hold the unit sideways).

I could add an option to just flip it (hit left-shoulder plus "A" or something to rotate , but it just didn't appeal to me

You can't see the final row of the Pengo screen, which nulls gameplay a little so i'd like the option to rotate at least.

how intensive is scaling? GPVGB 1.1 does it well, and I haven't noticed a speed decrease.

also somebody else is porting a 2600 emu, so does that mean we get an ST emu form you jeff?

Scaling is very nasty on CPU; ie: Consider.. when rendering 1:1 like XCade, we render 1 pixel for every 1 pixel. If you're doing two-times scaling, then you're rendering 4 for every 1.. so suddenly, 4 times the work. You can do some funky things to speed it up a bit, but its at least twice the work or more. If your'e doing 1.5-times scaling, then you're doing twice the work still.. since checking if you have to scale on every other pixel still slows you down a tyouch. (Remember that 320x320 is a lot of operations; adding one extra if-statement in there for every pixle will slow you down a little). Its not *huge*, but remeember.. we're doign 320x320*60fps or more, so any slowdown hits. (XCade uses 0 frameskip; we show every frame)

I want that 2600 emu *now*

As to an ST emulator.. I'v eno time to write a new one, or extend my own one to do graphics (my personal emnu is just to run my ST BBS in, so it doesn't do graphics.. just modem->TCP emulation, etc). So I would be depending on one of the other existing ST emulators; they all have problems. It woudl be easy topost Castaway to GP32.. but Castaway is onyl good for like 1 in 10 ST games.. its very bad compatability. The good ST emulators are work to port.

We'll see. I'd really like an ST emu, so its probably my next project, time permitting

jeff