Tafoid

MAME 0.257 Well, it’s the end of another month, meaning MAME 0.257 is about due! First of all, you might notice there are some big software list updates this month. There are quite a few ZX Spectrum cassettes and a pile of MSX cartridges. There’s also a boatload of original Apple II floppy disk dumps, including plenty of Infocom, MECC, Stickybear and Timeout titles. More 3.5" disks for 8-bit Apple II computers are being dumped now, so make sure you have your emulated drives set up properly if you want to try them out. Speaking of Apple, Macintosh computers with 68040 CPUs are starting to reach working status in MAME. Get ready to relive the confusing array of Quadra, Centris and LC models from the early 1990s. For many years, Capcom’s Avengers was an enigma. It was obvious that substantial parts of the game’s logic don’t run on the main CPU, but how it was actually implemented was a long-standing mystery. It turns out the cheeky boys at Capcom put an 8751 microcontroller [i]under the sound module on the circuit board[/i], and no-one noticed it hiding there until Phil Bennett spotted it last year! Since then, a microcontroller was sourced, and the internal program was exfiltrated by Caps0ff. Unfortunately, the data was damaged slightly, but it’s now running in MAME with a patch. This allowed the old simulation code to be removed, providing a better representation of the game’s original logic. If you’ve been following updates this year, you might have noticed the activity around the 16-bit Psion handheld computers. Quite a few have been promoted to working this month, including several Series 3 clamshell PDAs and the Workabout data entry terminal. Naturally, there’s a software list for Psion Solid State Disk media for you to try out. From the same corner of the world, MAME gained support for the Bellfruit “Black Box” electromechanical gambling machine platform. Although the games are marked as not working, you can spin the reels without having to worry about losing your shirt. There’s lots more in this release, ranging from an overhaul for Taito’s Change Lanes, to support for building against Qt 6 on Linux. You can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file, and the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

MAME 0.256 Yes, it’s already time for MAME 0.256, our midyear release! Several very rare and exciting things have turned up this month. Remember that rally racing game Top Driving that was added last month? This month, Mortal Race, an earlier, rarer game based on the same codebase has been found and dumped. The rare Gamate cartridge Mighty Boxer has finally been tracked down and dumped, which means all Gamate games known to have been released are accounted for. Taiko no Tatsujin RT: Nippon no Kokoro has been dumped, bringing us closer to completing the Namco System 10 collection. This offshoot of the popular series was designed for venues like hospitals and aged care facilities. It doesn’t accept coins, and it features easier songs. Four more versions of the prototype arcade game Turbo Sub have also been dumped and added. For computers, there are lots of software list additions, particularly for MSX and ZX Spectrum. The Heathkit H89 now has enough functionality emulated to be marked working. You can now add ROM cards to your emulated Apple II computers, and FLEX now works on the TRS Color Computer family. There are also lots of emulation improvements, including fixes for a few more Taito F3 graphical glitches, and better graphics layer mixing on Sharp X68000. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on support for wait states in the MOS 6502 and Hitachi H8 CPU families and there have been some changes to streamline the code. As always, you can read all about everything that’s changed this month in the whatsnew.txt file. The source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

Save states function (machines that are flagged in code to be MACHINE_SUPPORTS_SAVE) is only considered to be stable for the version in which the state was created. While sometimes you can go many versions of MAME and a particular machine's save state can remain valid.. all it takes is a small variation or change in the driver/machine code to render the previous one non-matching and therefore would not load in a newer version. I understand it is annoying but current implementation is the safest way to assure proper state saving and also allowing to attempt to keep the thousands of machines/drivers a reasonable ability to reload that state. To make something more flexible would require a great deal of effort to pull off to attempt to cover all the nuances of the emulation in all instances. Wish I had more positive news.

MAME 0.255 As you may have expected, it’s MAME 0.255 release day! Following on from April’s breakthroughs, Namco System 10 MP3 audio is now supported, making Golgo 13: Juusei no Requiem, Seishun Quiz Colorful High School and Nice Tsukkomi fully playable. On top of that, Point Blank 3 and Gunbalina now run, and the later version of Gamshara has been dumped correctly. If you like rhythm games, more than half a dozen Pop'n Music titles are now working. Lots of LCD and LED games were added this month, including two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from Konami, Super Goal Keeper from Tronica, and two sports-themed games from Tomy. Remember the Motorola 88000 CPU architecture? It’s OK if you don’t, it never achieved the same market penetration as its rivals MIPS, SPARC and POWER. But that makes it really cool that two Omron workstations based on 88100 CPUs, the Luna 88K and Luna 88K², are now working. This release also adds support for the Psion HC 100 series of hand-held computers from the early 1990s. These devices found their niche as portable data collection terminals. Support for the ZX Spectrum’s many descendants continues to grow, with the Sprinter Sp2000 arriving this month. Of course, there are lots of other changes, including software list additions, bug fixes and general emulation improvements. You can read all about this month’s development adventures in the whatsnew.txt file. The source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page Read the rest of this entry

Again, I'm not sure what to report. I've seen no changes for it. From what I have read about the Arcade 1Up Simpson's Cabinet is that it has has full working audio for the game as part of it using Duckstation PS1 emulation (modified) apparently.

MAME 0.254 MAME 0.254, the most hotly anticipated emulator release in recent memory, is ready today! Yes, it finally happened: the first batch of Namco System 10 games have been emulated! It’s been a real team effort, with contributors around the world working on emulation, cracking encryption, and properly dumping the Flash memory chips. You’ll be able to enjoy Namco’s Mr. Driller 2 and Mr. Driller G, as well as the spin-off Star Trigon. System 10 was home to Mitchell’s final two arcade games, Gamshara and Kono e Tako. From Metro, there are two GAHAHA Ippatsudou mini-game collections and the two-in-one mahjong tile puzzle game GekiToride-Jong Space. Other working Namco games include Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan, Panikuru Panekuru, and Uchuu Daisakusen: Chocovader Contactee. Quite a few of the System 10 games that are still marked as not working are already playable. Taiko no Tatsujin 2, 4 and 6 are playable, although we aren’t confident enough in the timing accuracy of MAME’s PlayStation emulation to mark rhythm games as working at the moment. You can play the light gun shooter Golgo 13: Juusei no Requiem, but it’s missing sounds and voice acting at the moment. Several coin pushers on the closely related WIDEISM SP-02 platform run; you can trigger various animations, but there’s no gameplay as such. Of course, Namco System 10 emulation isn’t the only thing that’s updated in this release. Almost a dozen Yamaha keyboards based on the GEW7 CPU are now working. Interestingly, their sound synthesis capabilities are closely related to the MultiPCM chip used in various Sega arcade games. Another game from SNK’s early Micon Kit series has been dumped and emulated. There are also two more working Brother word processors and two working Liberty Electronics serial terminals. Cave CV1000 games now have more realistic blitter performance, meaning you don’t need to tweak settings to get close to the arcade experience. Properly emulating the absence of a memory management unit in the R4650 CPU used by Namco’s System 23 solves crashes in Time Crisis 2. Some fixes in SGI workstation emulation have IRIX running again. A few bugs affecting PC Engine and Virtual Boy games have been fixed. Issues with certain sound effects in classic Konami arcade games have been fixed, too. That’s all we’ve got time to talk about here, but you can read about all the work that made it into this month’s release in the whatsnew.txt file. The source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

MAME 0.253 It’s time for MAME 0.253, but before we start talking about all the exciting updates, there are a couple of things that will affect people compiling or packaging MAME. Firstly, libc++ 6 is no longer supported. You can still compile with clang 6, but you’ll need to use libc++ 7 or later, or GNU libstdc++ 7 or later, for the C++ standard library. Secondly, MAME now requires Lua compiled as C++ to work correctly. This prevents the use of Lua libraries from Linux distribution package repositories, as they are compiled as C. (The technical reason for this change is that MAME requires C++ stack frames to be unwound correctly, including destructor calls, when Lua errors are raised from C++ code. Using Lua compiled as C will cause resource leaks.) We’ve updated to Lua 5.4, which comes with an all-new garbage collector, giving better performance. This should have minimal impact on people writing scripts and plugins. Two of the biggest visible changes are that unpack has been replaced with table.unpack and the deprecated bitlib has been removed. While we’re talking about Lua, we’d like to draw your attention to the new [url=https://github.com/mamedev/mame-goodies]MAME Goodies[/url] repository, where we’ll be adding additional content for use with MAME. So far, there are two plugins. One of them is sure to be useful for fans of Konami’s arcade rhythm games. They also serve as example code for people looking to learn about some of the things you can do with MAME’s Lua scripting capabilities. The long-rumoured microcode-based Motorola 68000 CPU core is finally here! It’s already delivering results, with a number of previously out-of-reach Atari ST demos now running. We’ve done some intensive testing, but there are probably still regressions lurking. Let us know if one of your favourite 68k-based games flakes out on you. One of the more interesting systems to be dumped and emulated this month is Akazukin, a 1983 arcade game where you shoot wolves preying on a defenceless girl. There’s also a game bearing the rather generic title Heroes, an early version of Data East’s Mutant Fighter. We’ve added a few more electronic toys to play with, including Race Time from Bandai, Punch Your Lights Out from Tiger, and a trio of backgammon and chess games from Tryom. If you’re in a more serious mood, the Brother LW-30 and LW-840ic dedicated word processors are now supported. The Sony NWS-3410 UNIX workstation is now working (albeit without its frame buffer, so you’ll need to use a serial terminal), as is the ironically named Vector 4 S-100 bus computer (Vector Graphic never sold a system with vector graphics capabilities). Building on the work in last month’s release, Hyper Neo Geo 64 games are looking better than ever. Numerous texturing and tilemap issues have been resolved. Taito F3 video emulation has had several effects fixed, with Land Maker in particular looking noticeably better. Switching from video to sound, the KC 85 computer family now has working audio output, some issues with looping and retriggered samples on the Apple II[size=70]GS[/size] have been fixed, and fixes for PC Engine CD audio playback issues have made some games go from crashing to playable. More subtly, correcting audio chip clock frequencies has fixed the pitch of sounds for several systems, including Snow Bros. 2 and Noboranka. As always, there’s far more than we have time to talk about here, but you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt The source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page Read the rest of the entry

I think most all of the post processing options are included. I don't use the option myself for I cannot speak to what all is saved. If you are accustomed to using it, you'd be in a much better position to determine if all of your settings are saved. I presume, like other .cfg items, it will only save what has changed from a default state.

It most assuredly would be in the announcement text if there was a fix for such an oft-mentioned fix request.

MAME 0.252 After almost two months, we’re ready to release MAME 0.252, the first MAME release of 2023! As promised, there are some big updates, and some of them may require you to make a few adjustments to your MAME setups. In particular, the modules MAME uses to handle input and output (e.g. video, sound and controllers) have been cleaned up, fixing lots of bugs and resource leaks. First of all, the BGFX video module has had a serious overhaul. Numerous issues affecting artwork rendering have been fixed, and toggling full-screen mode no longer crashes. MAME now saves many BGFX video settings to your CFG files for each emulated system. Game controller handling has also been overhauled. The downside is that you may need to reconfigure inputs for MAME. The upside is that things should work better out-of-the-box, with better default input assignments for more controllers: [*]For Windows users, more XInput controllers are fully supported, including guitars, the DJ Hero turntable, and the Rock Band keyboard. [*]For people using SDL builds, like our lovely macOS and Linux users, there’s a brand new joystick input module using the SDL game controller API. This gives consistent assignments for popular gamepads, and allows you to supply your own button and axis assignment schemes if the defaults don’t suit you. If want the old behaviour, it’s still available: just set the joystickprovider setting to sdljoy in your mame.ini file. [*]For everyone, it should be easier to navigate MAME’s UI using a game controller, and MAME should choose better default game input assignments for more gamepads. Of course, we haven’t stopped working on emulation. Newly supported systems include the NABU PC (a Canadian 8-bit home computer and cable network terminal), the I-Star Chess King (a Taiwanese hand-held chess computer of dubious quality), Computer Othello (one of Nintendo’s earliest video games), YoYo Spell (a prototype of the arcade game Little Robin), the very rare English language version of SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter (dumped from the unit previously operated at Sega World Sydney), and Saturn: Space Fighter 3D (a Space Invaders variant from Data East). The MSX updates haven’t stopped: this release includes support for MSX-DOS2 and RAM expansion cartridges. The Hyper Neo Geo 64 has had some welcome fixes for both 2D and 3D graphics, and there should be more coming in the next release. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple II video has seen a number of improvements, and somewhere in between, S3 ViRGE reached a point where 256-colour mode works in Windows 98. That’s all we have time for here, but you can read about the whole two months’ worth of changes in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

As mentioned, The Scroll Lock key is the default mapping for Windows for MAME/MESS to toggle machines which use a fully emulated keyboard. You need to active what is known as UI_ACTIVE as either a command-line trigger or edit the .ini file and change the 0 to a 1. Doing this will start your emulation in partial emulation mode in which normal UI commands are accepted when pressed as well as the emulated keyboard. Should you want to remap while in emulation, hit TAB -> Input Settings -> Input Assignments (general) -> User Interface and then check the list for UI Toggle and change it from default to your desired key/key combo.

MAME 0.251 It looks like MAME 0.251 has made it out the door just in time for the end of 2022! December felt like a long month in MAME development, because so much happened! Nebula, an elusive DECO Cassette game, is now emulated. With working steering controls, Magical Pumpkin: Puroland de Daibouken is now playable. Two members of the HP 9825 family from the 1970s have been added, and issues with keyboard input on localised versions of the HP 86B have been fixed. One of the most interesting systems added this month is the so-called Gerät 32620, make by the Institut für Kosmosforschung of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. This device was used to read coded messages to be broadcast via shortwave radio numbers stations for reception by undercover agents. If a human were to read the numbers, they could inadvertently disclose knowledge about the nature of the messages or the coding scheme in their speech patterns. This device gives a small glimpse into the shadowy world of espionage. Konami fans have a lot to be excited about. Firstly, two more hand-held LCD games have been added: Skate or Die, and Bill Elliott's NASCAR Racing. Secondly, Windy Fairy has been making steady progress on the PowerPC-based arcade systems, with gun controls now working in Teraburst. Finally, various refinements and fixes to the CPU core for Konami's custom 6809 processor have fixed a subtle parallax scrolling effect in the classic Padodius DA! Several systems have been fleshed out noticeably this month, including the NEC PC-8801MKII SR family of Japanese computers, the 3com Palm IIIc and Palm m100 PDAs, and the Yamaha DX100 synthesizer. Additionally, the NEC PC-88VA2 can now boot most software, and the work on the Palm systems has allowed the VTech IQ Unlimited to show signs of life. Quite a few systems have had pluggable controller support added this month, and support for some additional controllers has been added, including: [list] [*]Pluggable controller support for consoles and computers from Sega, NEC and Sharp. [*]Sega Mega Drive mouse and 4-player adaptor support. [*]Support for an ATmega-based paddle controller that works with export versions of the Sega Master System. [*]NEC PC Engine mouse support. [*]Support for the Dempa Micom Soft XE-1AP, the first analog gamepad. Can be used with compatible software for the Sega Mega Drive, NEC PC Engine, Sharp X68000 and FM Towns families. [/list] Of course, there are lots of other fixes and emulation improvements. The Apple IIGS has better ADB and real-time clock emulation. Sega's Turbo and Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom have better controls, and the latter has had graphical priority issues fixed. The NES APU frame counter interrupt is now emulated, fixing issues with dozens of games. For developers, debugger command and expression history is now saved between sessions. As always, you can read about all the changes this month in the whatsnew_0251.txt, or download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

MAME 0.250 November has passed us by, and it’s time for MAME 0.250, with a distinct Konami flavour! On the arcade side, the third and fourth player positions are supported in NBA Play By Play, and lots of regional variants have been added for games running on Hornet hardware. We’ve also added support for a Konami hand-held LCD game, a Tiger LCD game based on a popular Konami franchise, and a prototype of an unreleased Game.com title in the same series. In addition to the Castlevania-themed LCD game, we’ve added licensed Tiger LCD games featuring Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Superman and Gargoyles characters, although the latter two are different skins for the same game. MSX computer emulation has had a major overhaul, with more supported systems and peripherals, including lots of cartridge port floppy drives. As a bonus, the Fujitsu FM Towns family gained support for more controllers, including the Marty Pad and the twin-stick Libble Rabble joypad. Hard disk issues affecting the FM Towns family were also tracked down and fixed. Atari 8-bit computer cartridge emulation has been modernised, and a few more unlicensed Game Boy cartridges are supported (you can now play some very famous unauthorised translations in MAME). The Quantel DPB-7000 is looking much better, with lots of progress on video output and peripheral support. Namco’s Alpine Surfer is now playable in MAME, and several graphical glitches that had plagued System 22 emulation have been banished. Support for Italian versions of Quizard has been added, and German versions of Quizard 3 and Quizard 4 Rainbow are now working, as well as a Czech version of Quizard 4 Rainbow. A missing line scroll effect in Seta’s Caliber 50 is now emulated, and some flickering graphics in Atari’s Return of the Jedi have been fixed. Other improvements include lots of fixes for invalid memory accesses, function keys for the Franklin Ace (Apple II clone) computers, proper DIP switch labels for Nintendo Vs. Mahjong, and much, much more. You can read about all the changes this month in the whatsnew.txt, and you can download the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of the entry

Can you give an example? Was it a text output from the -listinfo command (now -listxml since MAME 0.84)? Was it on screen when you started the game? In any case, the only way I know to pull up palette information is while running the machine and using the F4 to view Palette, GFXDecode and Tilemaps (if done through MAME's system). Of course, the source itself should also have all palette information as well listed in machine setup/startup.

MAME 0.249 After a whirlwind four weeks of development, MAME 0.249 is ready for release! Highlights this month include improved Atari 8-bit family emulation, a newer version of Kyukyoku Tiger with a two-player cooperative mode, another version of The Crystal Maze promoted to working, and lots of prototype cartridge dumps for consoles including the Atari Lynx, Nintendo Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. There are also eight e-kara cartridges, including a rare e-kara Web cartridge containing twelve youth-oriented songs. The modernisation of Apple II and Macintosh emulation is progressing steadily. This month, the last of the legacy floppy devices were phased out; various ADB emulation issues were resolved, making mouse/keyboard input more reliable; and the Apple IIe standard 80-column card now works properly. Brian Johnson has added some hard disk and sound cards for the Epson QX-10 and improved the keyboard support. Thanks to holub, MAME now emulates the ZX Evolution: BASECONF, another successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. As an added bonus, there’s also better I/O emulation for the ATM-Turbo family. All the little fixes and newly supported features this month add up to make this a must-have release. There’s better display emulation for the Victor 9000, data cassette support for the Casio RZ-1, proper emulation for the K051316 tile flip configuration flags (allowing an old hack to be removed), better video emulation in Jaleco’s Field Combat, fixes for sample playback on the Yamaha MU-5, and the German UI translation has been brought up to date. Of course, there’s far more than we have time to mention here, but you can read all about it in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, you can download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page, Read the rest of this entry

MAME 0.248 It must be that time of month again – time for MAME 0.248! The Hartung Game Master was one of several hand-held game consoles positioned as low-cost alternatives to the Nintendo Game Boy. It was notable for its somewhat unconventional choice of an NEC µPD78C11 CPU, its low screen resolution, and the poor quality of its software library. And now, for the first time, you can relive the disappointment of all eighteen games released for the system in emulation! Speaking of hand-held consoles, MAME now supports more Game Boy cartridges, including the Pocket Camera, the EEPROM and two-axis accelerometer used by Kirby Tilt ’n’ Tumble and Command Master, and several memory controllers used for unlicensed games and compilations. Still on the topic of Nintendo, MAME now emulates the earliest version of the RP2A03 audio processing unit, used on arcade boards as well as early production runs of the Famicom console. Several games play sounds incorrectly with the later RP2A03G used in the NES and the majority of Famicom consoles. Several issues with Famicom peripherals have been fixed, too. MAME’s Win32 debugger can now save your window arrangement, and there’s an option to use light text on a dark background. On recent versions of macOS, MAME’s Cocoa debugger now follows the system colour scheme. You can read about all the exciting development this month in the whatsnew_0248.txt, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry

https://www.mamedev.org/?p=516 MAME 0.247 With a change of season just around the corner, it’s time to unveil MAME 0.247! This is a huge release, and should have something for everyone! Newly added systems, and systems promoted to working, include: [*]The M&D Monon Color – a low-cost Chinese hand-held console. This required finding an exploit to extract the CPU’s internal ROM as audio. Said CPU is a high-performance derivative of Intel’s MCS-51 architecture. [*]A prototype version of Tecmo’s Super Pinball Action that used separate screens for the simulated backglass and playfield. This version was presumably poorly received due to the need for an expensive dedicated cabinet. [*]An initial driver for second-generation Sony NEWS workstations based on MIPS processors. This one has been a long time coming, with a lot of preparatory work, but it’s finally here! [*]The Dracula and Game Pachinko – two Tsukuda hand-held games with vacuum fluorescent displays. [*]Micom Mahjong – an example of an early CPU-based TV game, and possibly the first dedicated electronic mahjong system. [*]Three new Casio synthesisers. [*]Several Impera Magic Card games. This one’s also been a while coming, requiring several new devices to be emulated. [*]A few Astro Corp. gambling games, including Dino Dino, Magic Bomb, Stone Age, and Zoo. [*]Some previously missing NO CD versions of Capcom’s Red Earth. You’ll also find numerous bug fixes and emulation improvements across the board. There’s better support for low-cost Macintosh models based on the V8 chipset (including the LC, LC II, and Classic II). There are quite a few fixes for issues with Nintendo’s NES/Famicom-derived arcade systems, the VS. System and PlayChoice-10. Several ZX Spectrum derivatives from the Eastern Bloc are in better shape. The Atari POKEY sounds better. The PC Engine pachinko controller from Coconuts Japan is now supported. There’s also an important fix for extracting CHD CD-ROM images. The stream of prototype cartridges is still flowing, with a number of Atari 2600, Game Boy Color, NES, and Super NES additions landing this month. You’ll also find the Scholastic Microzine disks for Apple II, and several PC magazine cover disks. The new VGMPlay music rips include music from the recently-emulated Poly-Net Warriors arcade game. As always, you can read about everything that’s happened this month in the whatsnew_0247.txt file, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from https://www.mamedev.org/release.html

Video Modes: GDI -> No shaders D3D -> HLSL only OPENGL -> GLSL only BGFX -> HLSL (separate implementation from the D3D) and I think *MAY* also handle GLSL (not 100% sure) For all video modes as I recall we still have the lower overhead "effect.png" type of screen modification which is what MAME used to have before any shaders. Example: > MAME pacman -effect scanlines You can dive for more info at the official wiki: https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/index.html

As this time, no. You need to note the settings down on paper or elsewhere and edit your mame.ini (game.ini/driver.ini) for the time being. If it were a trivial addition, it would be done already I reckon.

MAME 0.246 Just in time for the end of July, MAME 0.246 makes its grand entrance. The biggest upheaval this month was the reorganisation of the source code to match the project structure. If you’re paying attention, you’ll see the change on the system information screens. Apart from that, it should be transparent to users, while simplifying life for developers. Several audio issues have been fixed this month, including a big overhaul for Fairlight CMI IIx synthesiser channel card emulation, and DAC sound for JPM Lucky Casino fruit machines. The latest enhancements for the crt-geom and crt-geom-deluxe shaders have been belatedly integrated, and the Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese user interface translations are once again up-to-date and complete. Software list updates this month include more prototype console cartridges, half a dozen newly dumped e-kara cartridges, and quite a few metadata cleanups and corrections, as well as the usual batches of Apple II floppies, Commodore 64 tapes and vgmplay music rips. You can read all the details about development activity this month in the whatsnew.txt file, or download the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Until next time, happy MAMEing! Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.245 The highly-anticipated release of MAME 0.245 has finally arrived! As I’m sure many of you are already aware, we’ve added support for two elusive arcade games that didn’t see widespread release: Megumi Rescue and Marble Madness II, and the Konami Polygonet system has finally come to life. But before we get to that, there are some changes to MAME’s user interface that you should be aware of. Input options have been moved off the main menu to a submenu of their own. Depending on the system, there can be quite a few of them, and they weren’t all grouped. There’s also a new option to see the input devices recognised by MAME, which should help with diagnosing issues. Megumi Rescue was exhibited at a trade show, but apparently never sold as an arcade game. A home system port was released, but only in Japan. The original arcade game uses a vertically-oriented monitor, and lacks the life bar system and vertical scrolling found in the home version. Despite the arcade version remaining unreleased, and the home version never being widespread, the game was widely copied for TV game systems. It’s nice to see the original preserved all these years later. Marble Madness II was considered a failure on location test. It demonstrates Atari’s complete failure to understand what Mark Cerny got right when he made the mid ’80s classic. A few examples survived in the hands of collectors, but the game was never seen widely. The Polygonet system was Konami’s first foray into 3D arcade games. It was quite apparent that their in-house system wasn’t able to compete toe-to-toe with offerings from Sega and Namco. Polygonet Commanders was added to MAME almost twenty years ago, and saw sporadic progress for a few years after that. Regular contributor Ryan Holtz has written an engaging blog post about his adventures bringing it up to a playable state this month. The two games haven’t been promoted to working yet as they haven’t been extensively tested, but we’d love it if you try them out and post your experiences, good or bad. We’ve got more complete emulation for three Mac NuBus video cards this month: the Apple Macintosh Display Card, the SuperMac Spectrum/8 Series III, and the SuperMac Spectrum PDQ. The Macintosh Display card, which MAME uses by default for the Mac II, now supports configuring the amount of video RAM installed, as well as a selection of monitors with correct resolutions, refresh rates and colour profiles. The SuperMac Spectrum/8 Series III supports on-screen resolutions up to 1024×768, and virtual desktop resolutions up to a massive 4096×1536 in Black & White mode. Virtual desktop panning and desktop zoom are hardware-accelerated. The Spectrum PDQ supports resolutions up to 1152×870, with hardware acceleration for things like moving windows in 256-colour modes. Please be aware that MAME currently has trouble with some combinations of Mac video cards – if you want to use multiple monitors on your emulated Mac, it’s best to stick with the Macintosh Display Card or Radius ColorBoard. If you’re you’re just looking to jump into Mac emulation, there’s some helpful information to get you started on our wiki. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Ignacio Prini and Manuel Gomez Amate, the ZX Spectrum cassette software list now includes the Spanish MicroHobby magazine cover tape and type-in program collection. A number of prototypes cartridges have been added for the Game Boy, Super NES and other consoles. Commodore 64 tapes, Apple II floppies, and game music rips in VGM format have each seen a batch of additions. Other highlights include: Support for Space Duel’s cocktail mode from Ian Eure. Proper inputs for Sidam’s Space Invaders hack Invasion from Janniz. Playable Classic Adders & Ladders gamblers from David “Haze” Haywood. A team effort to fix some performance bottlenecks, particularly affecting the IGS PolyGame Master. SD Card reader support for Acorn computers from Ramtop and our very own Nigel Barnes. Working light gun inputs for Rapid Fire (not that anyone wants to play it). Fixes for more glitches in the ZX Spectrum family from holub. Major improvements to several IGS games from Luca Elia. Hitting GitHub pull request number #10000 – congratulations, holub. As always, there’s far more in this release than we can fit on the front page, so go and read about it in the whatsnew.txt file, or grab a source or 64-bit Windows binary package from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.244 Given how many exciting updates have gone into MAME 0.244, it’s hard to believe it’s only been a month since the last release! Only one disk has been added to the Apple II software lists, but it comes with a very engaging story involving physically damaged media and manual data repairs. The Zilog Z80 CPU has had a bit of an overhaul this month, allowing more accurate memory access timings for the ZX Spectrum family. This fixes a lot of broken visual effects and other glitches. The HP 9000/300 series computers have had the necessary floppy disk image formats hooked up, allowing them to mount floppy disks from their software list. MAME’s driver for JPM’s first CPU-based fruit machine platform, dating all the way back to the late 1970s, has been almost completely rewritten this month. Four games are now playable, albeit with minimal internal artwork. Colour video output has been implemented for Zilec’s Vortex. Don’t get too excited, though – while the approach they used to produce colourful graphics without adding any video memory is technically interesting, the results are very ugly and don’t make a bad game any better. Other improvements in arcade emulation include: Score display and diorama control outputs have been hooked up for Bubble Trouble (this means you’ll need updated artwork for Golly! Ghost! as well). Layer offsets in Slap Fight and Alcon should be fixed, and cocktail mode now works for the original sets. The communication board for Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle is now supported, allowing it to actually run in eight-player tournament mode. SDL builds (the default for Linux and macOS) now detect game controller reconnection. Note that due to limitations of SDL itself, MAME may confuse similar controllers, potentially causing issues if multiple controllers are disconnected at the same time. Issues using MIDI input or output with 64-bit Windows builds should be fixed. You can read about everything else that’s happened in the whatsnew.txt file. As always, the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages are available from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.243 Another month has passed, and it's time for another MAME release! MAME 0.243 has a few fairly big internal changes, and while we're working towards making MAME more future-proof, there will likely be some regressions in the short term. The most noticeable regression that we're aware of is that rhythm games using DVD media on Konami's Firebeat platform are now very unhappy with our lack of proper DVD drive emulation. If you find any other regressions, please report them – it's a lot easier to fix things when we know they're broken. Remember the unreleased arcade version of Rise of the Robots, running on the RasterSpeed platform? This month sees support added for another game on the same hardware: Football Crazy. In a clear demonstration of the benefits of MAME's modular architecture, this provides test cases yielding fixes for the CPU, serial controller and SCSI controller used in the system. Numerous games and computer systems using the same devices stand to benefit. MAME's floppy drive emulation system has had an overhaul this month. We think we've finally nailed down and fixed the issues that were causing bad data to be written by the Apple IIGS. Of course, it's still a good idea to back up your precious disk images. There are lots of nice fixes for NES/Famicom cartridge support, making a whole lot of Chinese-language games playable. The driver for the NEC PC-8801 family has had an overhaul this month, giving more expansion options and better software compatibility. Also, several more early Rockwell electronic calculators are now emulated. As always, there were plenty of bugs squashed this month, including Midway Seattle and Vegas stability issues, graphical glitches in The Karate Tournament, erratic joystick movement on the Apple IIGS, missing sounds in Looping, and quite a few incorrectly labelled DIP switches. You can read about all the exciting development activity in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.242 Today is a bittersweet day. After a quarter of a century, we’ve decided that it’s no longer in our best interests to distribute MAME as Open Source/Free Software. Wait, that’s not the right announcement… After many fruitful years, we’ve come to realise MAME has achieved everything it can. The project is now in maintenance mode, and there will be no new functionality or regular releases. Hang on, that can’t be right, either! Happy April Fools’ day! We have an interesting release today in several ways. Yes, the rumours are true, after many years, we’ve added support for another LaserDisc-based arcade system. It’s a system that only ran a single game: Time Traveler, created by Rick Dyer at Virtual Image Productions, starring Stephen Wilber, and published by Sega. This full-motion video game consists of a near-constant stream of quick time events, utilising a mixture of live action video and computer-generated imagery. Although re-living the early ’90s corniness is pretty awesome, this is a milestone because it’s the first LaserDisc arcade game preserved using the Domesday86 Project toolchain. In short, this involves the use of custom hardware to record the raw radio frequency signal from a LaserDisc player’s laser pickup, and then decoding it in software. This frees you from the limitations of LaserDisc player demodulators and video capture devices. As well as better, more consistent video quality, this opens up possibilities like combining multiple captures to overcome disc degradation and laser pickup dropout. In another first for emulation, MAME 0.242 adds support for systems based on Rockwell B5000 family microcontrollers. This includes several electronic toys from Mattel, and calculators from Rockwell themselves. You’ll also find the first working game based on a Sharp SM530 microcontroller: the Star Fox game watch from Nelsonic. There are plenty of software list updates this month, including recently-released prototype dumps for Mega Drive, NES and Super NES, all the latest Apple II dumps, and some more of the steady stream of Commodore 64 cassettes. You’ll also see that a big batch of Amiga software has been promoted to working – that’s because the Amiga family has had an overhaul this month, and it’s paid off with substantial improvements in compatibility. There’s lots more going on, in fact this was a record month for pull requests, with over a hundred and thirty merged, including quite a few from first-time contributors, as well as some regulars. It’s great to have you all with us! There are dozens of reported bugs fixed, too, with a particular emphasis on fixing up DIP switch labelling. As always, you can read about all the bug fixes, newly supported systems and software, and other development in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »

MAME 0.241 Is it already the last Wednesday of the month again? That felt quick! Of course, that means it must be MAME 0.241 release day. This month you’ll get to play The Tower, a rather poor quality imitation of Crazy Climber running on the DECO Cassette system. There’s a brand new software list for the Tandy/Memorex VIS multimedia player. Keep in mind that this was effectively a ’286-based Windows PC with no disk cache running software from a CD-ROM drive. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it wasn’t popular, earning the backronym “Virtually Impossible to Sell”. A three-player version of Wally wo Sagase! (based on the popular Where’s Wally? books) has also been found, dumped and emulated. As well as an assortment of newly supported NES/Famicom cartridges, you’ll have a better experience with the Zapper lightgun, improved PPU (graphics) and APU (sound) emulation, and several fixes for the related coin-operated VS. System and PlayChoice-10 systems. Newly supported systems include some electronic toys from Entex and Mattel, and a couple more Fidelity chess computers. If you’re interested in scripting MAME, the Lua interface now exposes address space taps for intercepting emulated memory accesses, as well as debugger expressions, and a simpler way to discover general input types. Of course, there’s lots more to explore. You can read all about newly dumped arcade bootlegs, prototype console games, bug fixes, and everything else in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page. Read the rest of this entry »