MAME specialities for INTV

[Gernot]

I opened this just because i don't like to pollute the highscore thread.

 

as first entry an answer to mr_me.

 

 Soccer (or Soccer2 not NASL Soccer) Super Soccer or World Cup Football (Soccer), behave all the same, yes MAME disregards .cfg therefore it depends on the hash table (except for the intellicart format but this can only be loaded into and not implemented in MAME) which will look like this (excerpt of intv.xml slightly edited):

	<software name="worldcup" cloneof="soccer2" supported="no">
		<description>World Cup Football</description>
		<year>1985</year>
		<publisher>INTV</publisher>
		<info name="serial" value="8100"/>
		<part name="cart" interface="intv_cart">
			<feature name="slot" value="intv_rom" />
			<dataarea name="5000" size="0x4000">
				<rom name="world cup football.50" size="0x4000" crc="ec17636c" sha1="f96ce3b97e2250d5a37710c55f59e29319f2cf28" offset="0x0000"/>
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="D000" size="0x2000">
				<rom name="world cup football.d0" size="0x2000" crc="0d5be7c7" sha1="9a03652e525316ec9e889b0989d22a35fb6a8358" offset="0x0000"/>
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="F000" size="0x2000">
				<rom name="world cup football.f0" size="0x2000" crc="4bb2b777" sha1="82ae81c3eb35e7e7e53c4f81a86bdf5ac3d925ff" offset="0x0000"/>
			</dataarea>
		</part>
	</software>

to implement the game in the cartridges/intv folder the rom needs to be split according to the memory mapping, new games will have to be added which is quite easy.

Size can be entered as hex value or in decimal values, addresses (name) only as "words" (the edit is that i decided that WCSoccer is a clone of Soccer2 and not vice versa, personal choice).

 

However no matter in which way implemented or loaded in the intellicart format they show off the same problems in MAME.

Restrictions are, bankswitching is not supported (i guess) RAM is limited to how it was used (changing things like the size shows no effect), addressing is limited to how it was used by Intellivision (does not recognize i.e. $2100 or $7100 only $4800 is supported because it was used by Imagic (there is a workaround for this you can often patch the missing 512bytes).

Loaded in the Intellicart format MAME recognizes addressing proper.

 

 

Since i have a lot of space here i can shortly explain the hash table.

<software name="worldcup" cloneof="soccer2" supported="no">
		<description>World Cup Football</description>
		<year>1985</year>
		<publisher>INTV</publisher>
		<info name="serial" value="8100"/>

This is quite obvious just some general information about the software, except for the name of the software the entries are not mandatory here.

		<part name="cart" interface="intv_cart">
			<feature name="slot" value="intv_rom" />

Part name, tells MAME what sort of software it is "cart" for cartridge interface type is "intv cartridge"

Feature name tells MAME where the software goes (into cartridge slot) and what type of cartridge it is, two types are recognized "intv_rom" and "inty_ram", latter for those with on board RAM.

			<dataarea name="5000" size="0x4000">
				<rom name="world cup football.50" size="0x4000" crc="ec17636c" sha1="f96ce3b97e2250d5a37710c55f59e29319f2cf28" offset="0x0000"/>
			</dataarea>

The interesting part how to load the segment to the memory bank, "name" means here the address, name and size is specified as hexadecimal number or as decimal number (0x1000 = 4096 bytes, unlike the "words" in the .cfg where $1000 = 8192 bytes).

Naming convention for "rom name" is for the machine "intv" only the suffix which tells MAME which segment is to load to which bank, means it won't matter if i write here xxx.50 or if i name the segment yyy.50 as long as the zip file is named exactly like the software to load in this case "worldcup" (software name = ), but i use to name them the same because i'm a human and like to know who is who.

A segment with i.e. the suffix .c1 can't be loaded to address $C000 while address $C100 is (probably) not recognized, however if you fill the segment in front with 512 bytes (100 words) of zeroes you can load the segment named then xxx.c0 to address $C000, usually this works well.

Obviously the offset is to cut overdumped segments or images.

 

Once you figured out how to edit the hash table it isn't that hard to implement new games or alternative versions of games, it isn't limited to what is present in the hash table, it's only limited what MAME understands for the machine "intv" (intvecs, intvoice).

 

But however you run them if a game fails it fails in this manner or loaded in the intellicart .rom format.

Some fail because of a weird addressing, mostly i could fix such but a few refuse to.

 

----

 

But some simply fail, some classics we already know (at least two), all the Soccer games and Q*Bert.

 

New releases many fail, D1K and Ms. Pac-Man are known and listed under "TODO: Investigate these files" and labelled as "supported="no" "

All Soccer games are neither labelled "supported="no" " or "supported="partial" " but which they are and even Q*Bert isn't (can be done if one likes to).

Further newer releases known by me to fail are:

"Space Patrol" (any release except the old demo "Lunar MP")

"Missile Domination"

 

Partial supported is "Christmas Carol" (prototype and release), the game works but the graphics are messed up similar to D1K, but it would be playable.

 

More i didn't stumbled over yet, it's not as hard but time consuming to set up the hash table and split the binary in its segments.

Nowhere i found a complete set of intv cartridges setup for MAME, thus you would have to do it yourself, standard games with a width up to 16kb loaded to either $5000 or $48000 mustn't be split and simply can be named xxx.50 resp. xxx.48 and zipped into a file named as the software listed in the hash table, this zip file goes to the dir "...\mame\carts\intv" then the game will appear in the list of available games for the machine "Intellivision".

All the rest has to be split according to the memory mapping in the .cfg file for the game.

 

However i don't mind much about the new releases since i understand that this isn't the purpose of the MAME/MESS project.

What annoys me is that some original releases fail and they don't fail because of memory mapping or another specialty (NASL Soccer is in no way special except for the horizontal scrolling which seems to be problematic) which clearly shows that there is a little bug to squeeze somewhere.

 

Overall i like MAME (i preferred MESS but they closed the project and MESS became part of MAME, which i think was the wrong decision vice versa would have been better imho).

Apart from the little better speed and sensitivity it also produces the better sound without stutter as the rest of emulators available for Intellivision.

 

(Nostalgia is an alternative to MAME and jzIntv but it is that old that it even can't handle some new specialties proper and a couple of homebrews fail in Nostalgia)

 

---

 

Finally what would be of interest is maybe a complete list of original '80s releases who fail in MAME, then one could post a list of otherwise working software (no unfinished or prototypes) who fails instead of "hey this single game fails in your project", i assume there will be more but mostly this only gets obvious when you play the game, best of all through and through.

 

To start (and expand):

- Q*Bert

- NASL Soccer

- Soccer2

- Super Soccer

- World Cup Football (World Cup Soccer)

 

Nope these are only two (i count the soccer error as one because it's all the same) until now but really i expect more negative results, especially now that i know Q*Bert also fails.

 

---

Q: "why should i play "xxx" if i can play the emulated coin-op"?

A: "Because it's Intellivised!"

 

Further i didn't think i can compete with the results on the coin-op in the high score thread

 

Post questions, answers, ideas, requests, legal stuff

Latter means i would offer what i have prepped for MAME but i see it as a legal problem, otherwise homebrews i can offer together with a hash table to append to "intv.xml".

Btw, recently i guess if i should try to run "Space Patrol" in the intvecs machine instead of intv it is a different hash table for a slightly different machine even if finally listed all intv, intvecs and intvoice under the machine "Intellivision" no matter for which combination.

 

Sure one still can load the .rom into MAME and play it, it is even possible to create a very short batch proggy to drop files on it to be run by mame, e.g.:

@ECHO OFF
TITLE "do not close this window!"
mame intv -cart %1

Options for MAME (like resolution and such which differ from the settings for the machine "intv") have to be passed right after the call for MAME.

TITLE for the window (which is kept probably minimized) isn't needed at all but it's ok when you see what this task is and that it should not be closed, a title "do not close this window!" is handy.

But of course that didn't looks cool neither it feels cool, personally - you all know little me - i like to run them like a standalone game and the emulator i use which one that is ever should be hidden.

 

 

Finally MAME could look like this.

 

Like i said this i like better:

It also leaves it up to me in which emulator i like to run the game.

Recently the overlay as far as if one is present in a given directory will be shown when the game starts, for this special task i use a rather old picture viewer "imgv" which a) can be called from a batch b) can be told to take the exact size of the image which then displays the overlay in this manner (if the overlays are all sized in the same size, smaller or larger won't be stretched in this mode).

And of course "IF NOT EXIST %pic% THEN set pic="...\default.jpg" the batch will look like this:

@ECHO OFF
TITLE "do not close this window!"
SET pic=%INTY%\overlays\%~1.png
IF NOT EXIST "%pic%" SET pic=%INTY%\overlays\default.jpg
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\imgv"
START /B imgv "%pic%"
C:\WAIT 100
CD %INTY%
jzintv\bin\jzintv -e exec.bin -g grom.bin -E miniecs.bin -s1 -v1 -f0 -r1 -z960x600,8 -a48000 --kbdhackfile=jzIntv\keyhack\default.txt -m0 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

Here i made use of environment variables for "INTY" and especially like advised for "JZINTV_DIR" and "INTY_ROM" (can't be seen here it is only that jzIntv recognizes all subfolders i have to organize my files).

I didn't change dir to "JZINTV_DIR" instead to the set dir "INTY" because i like to have all output in this directory (error messages, captures), in principles one could run jzIntv from a directory named "captures" and all captures and output will go to this directory.

Ask me if you like to know how to set global environment variables, it's a bit a hidden thing now.

A short mention to the local variable "pic" as you see the command is

SET pic=%INTY%\overlays\%~1.png

First always put the equation sign right after the variables name else a space is counted as glyph (set pic = would produce the variable "pic ").

Since this is a sort of concatenated string you need to get rid of the quotation this is done by the tilde in the argument name %1 (the first arg of a called batch is always variable %1, btw if you like to know the name of the batch you run this would be variable %0, but such is not of much interest for windoze) you need to recognize the picture if "rom-name" and "overlay_name" are equal, fortunately jzIntv accepts the name without suffix, this would differ somewhat for MAME if one like to show the pic with the game (else of course it still can be popped up manually if i don't like to manipulate strings - man i feel DOZed).

Yes that is a small window, pardon me my laptop has a broken screen (a frickin' chisel you know) and since i'm no TV consumer i only have a small TV at home thus this small window.

And because i live by a small pension i can't afford me a fix right now, i will have to save up some money for this task.

Anyway, the recent MAME refuses to stretch images like the former MAME releases or MESS did, it is now restricted always to pixel aspect and can only be stretched internally (this is the max. for this window) to the window size, often they are turned by 90° (for coin-ops) and MAME has become a mess - goddammit!

 

However i just posted this shot to show that you can run any emulator in this manner, it works as well for Nostalgia even if that is a windoze program it accepts to be called from a batch and also accepts some options, when called with the rom name from a batch nostalgia won't open the GUI.

 

Another option is to use an older MESSUI release (MESS is cancelled), it does not differ for the machine "intv" (it has still the same flaws, i even checked the latest MAME release) but the GUI allows to easy customize all the settings and offers a nice GUI to select your games from.

Why something good has to be cancelled and replaced with something so clumsy as the new MAME release without a proper GUI and settings done so complicated that it even gives me a headache?

and i'm a DOZe fumbler.

Recently i can't find no proper resolution or stretching and it was sooooo easy done before.

 

What?

Yes!

This is my home, almost, it's the "Tschingelhörner" our UNESCO world heritage not as big as but as important as Colorado, you can almost smell how the earth was formed.

The upper "dark section" which is sectioned by an almost horizontal dark line is about 200mio years old while all what is below and folded almost vertically is only about 50mio years old.

"da blew matt'ns ya 'now" (of Montana )

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Gernot
0x to $ for addressing in words, wrong use of "word" for bytes width, i hope no further mistakes

[Gernot]

Something else, i like to contact an admin because when i signed in i accidentally signed up with a new user name "Gernot66" (happened because i signed in using my google account because this isn't present it created a new one), i won't need this account and i didn't found a way to delete it of course i can leave it simply dry in future.

 

Shit happens...

[cparsley]

Add Atlantis to that list... It's not fully unplayable, but behaves differently than the normal game (aka multi-waves at once) and starting a level lower than normal

[Gernot]

"Shit happens"

This is was happens to Space Patrol (auto destruction)

 

[+DZ-Jay]

11 hours ago, Gernot said:

Partial supported is "Christmas Carol" (prototype and release), the game works but the graphics are messed up similar to D1K, but it would be playable.

 

Can you provide some details and screenshots of the problem with "Christmas Carol"?  Perhaps I can help troubleshoot it.

 

"Christmas Carol" does not use bank-switching, but it does use the expanded 42K memory that modern home-brews use.  It also stores additional game-state within (expectedly) unused bits in the BACKTAB screen data.  Those bits are ignored by the hardware in the standard Intellivision consoles, so an emulator that does not properly replicate that behaviour would not display the game properly.

 

    -dZ.

[Gernot]

For sure my ghostly friend.

In advance the problem for Christmas Carol is a small really not annoying one, the game is well playable (as far as i checked that).

 

Used MAME release: 0.194, it's not the latest (2018) but i don't found any differences for "intv".

 

First a mistake of mine: the prototype (Christmas Carol 1.2) runs well and shows no graphical differences.

 

No matter how i load the released game (Christmas Carol 2.37) the tiny problem appears like this:

and this

 

As you can see it's only the bars left of the stage no. or right of the level indicator, thus it's really unproblematic (compared to the "autodestruction" for "Space Patrol)

 

 

UNRELATED but for completeness.

The main problem for me was to implement the game in MAME that it can be selected from the MAME UI

The hash table looks like this:

	<software name="xmcarol" supported="partial">
		<description>Christmas Carol vs. the Ghost of Christmas Presents</description>
		<year>2012</year>
		<publisher>Left Turn Only</publisher>
		<part name="cart" interface="intv_cart">
			<feature name="slot" value="intv_ram" />
			<dataarea name="2000" size="8192">
				<rom name="xmcarol.20" size="8192" crc="2733EB24" sha1="FD0839EC6FD2AA06ECF879952BB36F39D2C76F4D" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="4800" size="512">
				<rom name="xmcarol.48" size="512" crc="E2D6909D" sha1="CDAD2402FE52196729CE4AAC355078E344F22A71" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="5000" size="16384">
				<rom name="xmcarol.50" size="16384" crc="18DDAC2A" sha1="A17DA1CCA609204A96032B5A2A52432555396216" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="7100" size="7680">
				<rom name="xmcarol.71" size="2560" crc="BF664F25" sha1="21591125CAA087B31FBF7CC975E83CB5CF98FE70" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="A000" size="16384">
				<rom name="xmcarol.a0" size="14848" crc="2EA1C538" sha1="1A06D8E94256CA5AF244D0005E33BCEFD632719A" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="C000" size="32768">
				<rom name="xmcarol.c0" size="32768" crc="E555A16B" sha1="32CD66A376551625ECCF3D2B4F82E481FD9661DE" offset="0x0000" />
			</dataarea>
			<dataarea name="ram" size="0x3E00">
			</dataarea>
		</part>
	</software>

I flagged it "supported=partial" but the game runs well, perhaps a bit too critical of me.

The hash table differs quite to the config file, mostly i had to edit the address $2100 and fill the section up that i could use $2000 because else it refuses to run strange-wisely $7100 can stay.

This is really only for completeness and if one likes to implement it in MAME to run the game from the UI instead to load the ROM in Intellicart format which is internally not supported by MAME, but will be read proper when loaded as ROM or started as argument to the command "MAME -intv cart ", this is a bit stupid i think, before i could implement easy the ROM in MESS and select between "cartridge" (equal to the above) and available software (in intellicart format).

It is besides not my preferred way to run the games from an UI, neither for MAME or jzIntv on the other hand someone else might like this.

[+DZ-Jay]

Hmm ... that's very strange indeed.  Those cards should actually point to a blank card in GRAM.  The one in the maze includes additional bits in the BACKTAB word, but the one in the introduction sequence does not.  The only think I can imagine could cause the problem is that the load of those blank cards failed which are, coincidentally, loaded last during initalization.

 

However, in both cases, it seems it failed in the same way:  skipping every other line.  It's as if instead of all zeros, the card in GRAM is loaded with alternating $0000 and $FFFF bytes.  That is very strange.

 

    -dZ.

[Gernot]

The same problem appears with "Carl Mueller's Music and Sound Demo", identical lines around the glyph and also the running man in the animation is "striped".

 

 

And if i'm right these aren't the only ones just the ones i remembered.

 

Somehow the behave is a bit sad like mr_me stated MAME has a better sensitivity for joystick inputs, today i played a bit Frogger in MAME and was surprised how much better i play even when it was just a test run (i hacked the life's) an that i played using the keyboard and the clumsy "J,L,I,K" for the left controller. Apart from that i like the sound even if it's too good compared to the consoles output via VHF modulation, the sound in MAME is very clear.

Imho it wasn't clever to merge the projects, the goal of MAME differed a bit from MESS, one was to emulate standalone coin-ops and the other for old computers and consoles, sure the error is the same but i assume that it costs the MAME team to much effort to work on the old computers and console emulation (how man hundred?) it's was not the goal of MAME and probably still isn't.

I assume by the leaking in progress for all consoles that there is zero interest in this section of MAME, what i noticed by peeping into the changelog is mostly arcade machine related, in fact some computer emulations doesn't work anymore now which still worked for the shown release and not a single progress for consoles or computers this let's me assume that the weight is on arcade machines.

 

Personally DZ i think there is no need to change a single bit in "Christmas Carol" but well it's otherwise good to collect and show off the problems, let's hope this will force someone to work on it.

 

Most of all it runs well and it's playable without any restrictions. As far as i know i'm not a good player - overall not - erm yes it depends on competition i would have said the same about Pac-Man but i played it wit a 20 year old comrade a month ago and nailed him, a direct competition forces me much more to play better as a play for high score. He got so addicted to Pac-Man that he liked to buy my gem from me - because of a single game, ts.

 

---

 

Finally (for now) a second "why should i play game xxx on an emulated (or not) Inty if i can play the coin-op?"

Because your young comrade don't likes to play the original - "no i don't want to let me play on your console".

No, his name isn't Todd

 

AND one should simply play Christmas Carol on an Intellivision because there is no other.

[+DZ-Jay]

I wonder if it is a timing issue with the way that the vertical blanking interrupt is implemented in the emulator.

 

Or perhaps something more prosaic:  it seems that in those example cases of striped cards, the actual card is blank -- but is not in GROM.  It is 8 bytes with zero data loaded into GRAM.  Perhaps there is some issue with the way that GRAM writes are implemented.

 

Quote

AND one should simply play Christmas Carol on an Intellivision because there is no other.

?  

Edited May 14, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[Pernod]

1 hour ago, Gernot said:

Imho it wasn't clever to merge the projects, the goal of MAME differed a bit from MESS, one was to emulate standalone coin-ops and the other for old computers and consoles, sure the error is the same but i assume that it costs the MAME team to much effort to work on the old computers and console emulation (how man hundred?) it's was not the goal of MAME and probably still isn't.

I assume by the leaking in progress for all consoles that there is zero interest in this section of MAME, what i noticed by peeping into the changelog is mostly arcade machine related, in fact some computer emulations doesn't work anymore now which still worked for the shown release and not a single progress for consoles or computers this let's me assume that the weight is on arcade machines.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Before the merge there was lots of work being duplicated to different standards. Arcade games, home computers, consoles, etc. share alot of components which were being emulated separately in each project. Bringing the projects together improves the emulation as there are more test cases for the emulated components. Software for home computers in particular pushed the hardware in ways that arcade machines never did and so improves emulation accuracy.

 

As for contributors, you'll find that there's those that specialise in arcade machines and those that prefer emulating computers, etc. They work on emulating what interests them, and what they have knowledge of. The number of contributors has increased immensely since the merging of projects, and has improved both sides of the project.

 

Personally, I work on emulating 8 bit computers, mainly Acorn Computers but also anything else that interests me. With the help of the community here I recently improved the Aquarius emulation, and added support for the Aquaricart. I have zero interest in working on any arcade machines.

 

To improve Intellivision emulation needs someone to contribute that knows the hardware, and understands what certain software is doing to cause emulation issues, and then submit a fix. I could be tempted to add support for more cartridge types if the community makes ROMs available and can provide documentation explaining how they're mapped. Anyone can add newly dumped software to the software list XML and make a Pull Request to the project, ROMs would need to be submitted too to verify the additions.

[cparsley]

As for Carol it looks also like the candies are in different spots on the MAME emulated version.

[+DZ-Jay]

7 hours ago, cparsley said:

As for Carol it looks also like the candies are in different spots on the MAME emulated version.

I wouldn't worry about that.  The candies are in different spots on most versions of the ROM.

 

That's because the script I created to build the maze data, placed the candies randomly, and it did not occurred to me that every time I ran it, it would be different (silly, I know, but I had bigger fish to fry then).  After a few ROM releases, I fixed the script to seed the randomizer with a static value, so the random sequence is the same every time.

 

I mostly noticed when I tried to build a table of maximum scores for each stage to manage the high-score competitions, and realized that it was futile with all these different versions out there having different amounts of candy in each screen.  Whoops!

 

The earlier builds, especially three different cartridge releases -- the original, and the two with bug fixes -- have different candy placements.  The first screenshot that @Gernot posted is from the early prototype, which is also different.

 

   dZ.

Edited May 15, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[Gernot]

12 hours ago, Pernod said:

This couldn't be further from the truth...

Pardon me, i said i only peeped into the changelog.

And it is a personal opinion.

 

At least my experiences with too many cooks in a project aren't good.

But no criticism of mine, i'm not involved in it.

 

However, that's how i lured someone out of the bush

[Gernot]

57 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

That's because the script I created to build the maze data, placed the candies randomly

Which is on the other hand if it wouldn't affect the score a good thing to have.

I mean some create whole games on this, draw a number and generate something out of it.

[+DZ-Jay]

2 minutes ago, Gernot said:

Which is on the other hand if it wouldn't affect the score a good thing to have.

I mean some create whole games on this, draw a number and generate something out of it.

True.  To be honest, it was a rush job at the time:  I thought it was clever to have the script place the candies randomly, so that I didn't have to come up with some hand-designed scheme.

 

Of course, I also thought that I would ever only have to run that script once to build the final production ROM.  The best laid schemes of mice and men, as they say ...

[cparsley]

16 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

I wouldn't worry about that.  The candies are in different spots on most versions of the ROM.

 

That's because the script I created to build the maze data, placed the candies randomly, and it did not occurred to me that every time I ran it, it would be different (silly, I know, but I had bigger fish to fry then).  After a few ROM releases, I fixed the script to seed the randomizer with a static value, so the random sequence is the same every time.

 

I mostly noticed when I tried to build a table of maximum scores for each stage to manage the high-score competitions, and realized that it was futile with all these different versions out there having different amounts of candy in each screen.  Whoops!

 

The earlier builds, especially three different cartridge releases -- the original, and the two with bug fixes -- have different candy placements.  The first screenshot that @Gernot posted is from the early prototype, which is also different.

 

   dZ.

One more thing that master Carol'er didn't know/or realize while triggering the super most ultra most secret of secrets in the game

[mr_me]

I mentioned this elsewhere, that I use Mame but don't bother with Mame's software list and their special intellivision rom file format.  I start the Mame Intellivision emulator, then press tab for the Mame menu.  In the Mame menu, select "File Mananager", then "Cartridge", then navigate the file system and select any file in any directory to attach as an Intellivision cartridge.  Regular binary and Intellicart .rom are both supported.  Mame ignores cfg files but does have a database file called intv.hsi that has a database of intellivision cartridge roms and their crc32 values as single binary files.  It has an <extarinfo> section which might be the memory map; not sure.

[Gernot]

On 5/17/2021 at 7:14 PM, mr_me said:

I mentioned this elsewhere, that I use Mame but don't bother with Mame's software list and their special intellivision rom file format.  I start the Mame Intellivision emulator, then press tab for the Mame menu.  In the Mame menu, select "File Mananager", then "Cartridge", then navigate the file system and select any file in any directory to attach as an Intellivision cartridge.  Regular binary and Intellicart .rom are both supported.  Mame ignores cfg files but does have a database file called intv.hsi that has a database of intellivision cartridge roms and their crc32 values as single binary files.  It has an <extarinfo> section which might be the memory map; not sure.

For sure mr_me, it's just a bit let's say "optically not very pleasing manner to start the games", that's all. I just like to have them neat installed in MAME even if i rarely run them in this manner since i use my "Intellivision Desktop" from which i start the games from an icon no matter which emulator i use. Especially Intellivison has all the nice boxes and overlays which simply would be sad not to display them even if "everyone" knows which buttons to press for their most played games. For this as you pointed out proper you won't need to edit anything just run it.

 

Different if you like to use a handheld and install MAME on it, it would give you access to many emulated consoles/coin-op's but for this they would be best installed, someone has to track this i guess.

 

Aha, i see now the .hsi still exist (respectively was used now it's present more detailed as .xml script), that makes me curious since the breaking up into the mapping is a bit tedious.

On the other hand the "extra info" section is undocumented and i really do not understand proper who is who in it, obvious it's the mapping (plus use of ivoice or ecm) but it looks "weird" and offers only limited addresses similar to old "intvwin" but the differing values make not yet sense to me and the limitation to standard mappings (as it looks) $2000 (probably, it's never used though), $5000 (changes between 84 and 86 whysoever i assume either $4800 and $5000), $9000, $D000, $F000 makes it quite outdated. The .xml script lets you map a section wherever even if that is non standard. the value looks like a length but it's neither bytes nor words (something else when i searched for the .hsi i stumbled over the nes .hsi a 10'000'000 in one cartridge? wow! i had to read it triple is that really 10'000'000? this will take more as one lifetime to play through if that is no joke)

 

a super simple way is imho a batch like this (meant to be in the mame directory else a "CD" to it is needed but a shortcut to this batch you can put anywhere - flush down the drain i.e.):

@ECHO OFF
mame %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 intvoice -cart %1
EXIT

@echo off - just because it's old school batch programming

 

MAME %2 - %9 puts optional flags before the file name for a drop-on use not needed but i use the same batch for both drop-on and start from batch including options for this MAME expects the options before "-cart" unlike jzIntv which allows to negotiate set options and it won't matter if in front or after the filename, machine is "intvoice" for all games it won't matter but you will have intvoice if needed -cart %1 is the dir\filename you dropped on the icon.

 

exit, just like echo off it's not needed nowadays the batch will close anyway respectively the starting task will stay even when you invoke it with START /B as background task.

 

A second such batch for the ecs machine and you can really just drop the file on the batch, create a shortcut and place the turd where you like, optically neither pleasing but stinking simple.

With such a batch you neither have to run MAME, press tab and select the software in the picker, just drop the file on.

I use it quite often especially to check my hacked softs.

But it's not how i run them for a play, even if that makes only a difference in appearance but the look enhances the appetite.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Gernot

[Gernot]

about 250 seconds for each game if you can play without sleep and any interruption for 80 years... erm.

sleep and eat and do the "notdurft" you will have 2-3 minutes for each and have done nothing except gaming for 80 years.

But i doubt that really 10'000'000 games exist for the NES, probably the counted each setting for the games as an own one, it's still far to much to be played.

 

Argh if only the beans counters would measure in dimensions as i do they would understand that they are hopeless sick in mind.

Do this for billions of $ and you will see what i mean...

It's just another zero in front of the floating point without any sense or use.

 

While a "Grabenstampfer" (helper) can't buy himself an ice cream on a sunny day even when he generates the value of the credits who is wasted by the beans counters.

We have to stop this it's our doom!

 

Could we have something like "ecolopoly" for the Intellivision?

A cybernetic simulation of the energy flow in economy?

This makes a lot obvious what is wrong.

 

But i know "you can't apply cybernetics to economy" yeah it's very obvious why because it will show immediately who needs to be sent on the moon - or to hell if you like.

Killing more lives as any disease or plague ever did - really.

But exactly the same fear a chance lower as 0.003 per thousand...

Heck where is my double blade axe i need to cut some heads off.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Gernot

[Gernot]

Chemistry

Put everything in an equation, on both sides the value must be the same else the equation is wrong...