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2005 Archive

December 21, 2005


Back in Time

I haven't seen these kind of screenshots being posted since 1998 or so... This time around they are running in MAME ;-)


December 8, 2005


Emergency Call Ambulance

Emergency Call Ambulance was dumped and I added it to the Model 3 driver. The game has similar 3D graphics emulation problems as Harley Davidson and it's crashing almost as much.

eca.png eca0000.png


December 7, 2005


I'm slowly starting to understand how the custom Konami 3D chipset works. Now I'm getting some simple polygon stuff showing, the most complex one being the Konami logo in Operation Thunder Hurricane.

gtic0005.png gtic0005.png


November 27, 2005


Operation Thunder Hurricane & GTI Club

These games have been rather difficult to get running. Especially GTI Club is quite picky about the Konami LAN controller emulation, and it's still causing some problems. The 3D graphics in these games is handled by a custom Konami chipset, so it may take a good while to emulate those.

thun0001.png thun0002.png thun0003.png thun0004.png gtic0001.png gtic0002.png gtic0003.png


November 13, 2005


NBA Play by Play

Another Konami Hornet game is now working.

nbap0000.png nbap0002.png nbap0004.png nbap0005.png


November 9, 2005


Fixed a DMA latency issue in the SHARC core. The graphics problems are now fixed.

grad0011.png grad0012.png grad0014.png grad0015.png


November 7, 2005


Getting there

Fixed another bunch of SHARC bugs and added a few more opcodes. Most of the missing graphics are now showing, but they are still rather broken, probably due to some more SHARC bugs.

grad0005.png grad0006.png grad0007.png grad0008.png grad0009.png grad0010.png


November 6, 2005


Silent Scope

Silent Scope was using the alternate RAM layout of the tilemap chip. I decided to implement this feature, and now the test menu is working and the actual game is showing the copyright screen. The game won't go past that screen for now due to some SHARC-related problems.

sscope.png


November 3, 2005


Daytona USA 2 Power Edition

Guru dumped this, and it's working.

dayt0007.png
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October 30, 2005


Let there be polygons

I've continued to add features and fix bugs in the SHARC core. Now the SHARC is sending the first triangle commands to the Voodoo. For now it's limited to some non-textured triangles in the color test screen and the stars in the background of the first level.

grad0003.png grad0004.png


October 24, 2005


Gradius 4 revisited

Fixed some stupid mistakes and added a few more SHARC opcodes and now Gradius 4 gets ingame. Most of the graphics are still missing as they are done with the 3dfx chips.

gradius4.png grad0000.png grad0001.png grad0002.png


October 20, 2005


Konami M2

This driver has been sitting on my harddisk for a long a while now in a completely non-working state. I decided to have a yet another look and I finally got it to boot and to show some graphics.

poly0000.png


October 8, 2005


Area 51: Site 4

I've been working on a Atari MediaGX driver for a while now as a side effect of the recent x86 and PC emulation stuff. Area 51: Site 4 now runs its attract mode just fine. The game isn't playable yet as the controls haven't been hooked up yet.

a51site4.png a51s0000.png a51s0001.png a51s0002.png


September 30, 2005


Linux in MAME

Not really the main purpose of the Wolf Sys driver, but here's Linux booting in MAME :-)

pf200001.png


September 17, 2005


NBA Play By Play

Another new Konami dump, NBA Play By Play on Hornet hardware. This game uses some previously unused features of the tilemap chip, so it's still yet to be seen how far this game will run.

nbapbp.png nbap0000.png


September 15, 2005


New layout

Did some tweaking with the site layout (hopefully to a better direction... ;-) More to come later.


September 15, 2005


Operation Thunder Hurricane

Operation Thunder Hurricane (Konami, 1997) was dumped. The game runs on the same hardware as GTI Club.

thun0000.png


September 11, 2005


More progress with the PC emulation (Taito Wolf System, for those who still don't know ;) Hooked up the keyboard and now the BIOS is accessible. Booting doesn't work as there are no floppy or hard drives yet.

pf2012.png pf200000.png


September 9, 2005


Here's a screenshot from my latest driver...

bios.png


June 24, 2005


I got the recently acquired Le Mans 24 dump working.

lemans24.png
lema0000.png
lema0001.png


June 21, 2005


I dug up Supermodel after over a year and ran some test runs with Sega Rally 2. This helped me to find a small bug in the MPC106 emulation. Fixing that small problem had some very nice results. Now both Sega Rally 2 and Star Wars Trilogy are working in MAME!

swtr0007.png
swtr0008.png
swtr0009.png
swtr0011.png
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swtr0013.png
srally2.png


June 5, 2005


I decided to have a look at what's wrong with Racing Jam: Chapter 2 as it was the last of the Konami PowerPC games not to boot yet. There was a small problem related to ROM loading, and now the game boots just fine. The test mode hangs on network board test (not emulated yet). Without running test mode, the game starts to boot normally (with the fixed backup RAM, see below), but ends just spinning there, without showing anything.

Turns out that Konami Hornet and NWK-TR games require some preformatted data in their backup RAMs (probably as a protective measure). So far I've managed to find the correct values for Gradius 4, Silent Scope, Racing Jam and Racing Jam 2, leaving Silent Scope 2 and Thrill Drive to be done. Gradius 4 gets further, but ends up stuck on the next screen without working controls. Silent Scope and Racing Jam start to boot but end up spinning much like Racing Jam 2.


May 25, 2005


I've continued my progress on my Analog Devices ADSP-2106x SHARC core. The results are finally starting to show. Gradius IV already passes all of its bootup tests. The 3Dfx chips have also been hooked up already. Unfortunately the game is protected, like all the other Hornet games. Silent Scope currently passes all the tests on the first graphics board. The second board isn't emulated yet.
Midnight Run and GTI Club pass all the tests, except one FIFO test, which fails on both boards.


April 25, 2005


I've been working on a Konami FireBeat driver for a while now. The hardware is a relatively simple set of stuff. There's currently only one game, Para Para Paradise, dumped. Currently it passes most of its bootup tests (except the RTC/backup RAM test). The test menu is also accessible, but cannot be operated since I haven't found the input ports yet.


April 3, 2005


The good news is I figured out why the textures are not working in Daytona 2. The bad news is that there's not really a way to fix it. Turns out that the security board is used to decrypt a piece of code that sets up a table. This table contains all the information needed by the game to upload the textures to the 3D hardware.

Edit: Daytona 2 has 8 badly dumped roms, so I'm not gonna trust in any of the stuff it's doing right now. I won't look at it again until the roms are properly redumped.


March 19, 2005


Finally got Daytona USA 2: Battle on the Edge running in MAME!!! Supposedly some of the roms are bad, which might explain why it's not working good enough yet. The 3D is working, but is in wireframe at the moment because the game doesn't send any textures to the 3D hardware.


March 12, 2005


I decided to take a little break from figuring out the illogicalities of the Seibu hardware. And what's a better way to take a break than to tackle some 3D vector maths? ;-)

I finally implemented proper 3D clipping in Model3 using a simple Sutherland-Hodgman type algorithm. I also added perspective correction to the texture-mapping.


January 20, 2005


Many people have been asking about the status of my earlier projects/drivers, especially the Seibu SPI driver. To answer this question and many more, I have added a Project Status/TODO page to this site.

In the other news, many more Model 3 Step 2.x games have been starting to work. Virtua Striker 2 (Step 2.0), '98 (Step 2.0), '99 and '99.1 all seem to work properly. Dirt Devils shows the attract mode, but like Virtual On 2, doesn't have working controls.


January 19, 2005


Fixed a bug in the Real3D DMA emulation. This fixes the 3D graphics in Virtual On 2 and Harley Davidson & L.A. Riders. Virtual On 2 still doesn't have working controls and Harley Davidson has lots of glitches and crashes before getting ingame.


January 13, 2005


As many of you probably know, 0.90u2 is now out with the updated Model 3 driver.
Here are some hints how to get some of the games working and how to remove some artefacts:

  • Scud Race: The game has an unemulated network board. When the game says "Cancelled. Network Board not present", go to the test menu (F2). In the game assignments menu, set link id to single.
  • Lost World: The ingame part of the game has an annoying raster pattern on top of everything. Keys Y to O are assigned as 2D layer toggle keys. Press U to disable layer 2 in Lost World. Also remember to calibrate the light gun in the test menu.
  • Virtua Fighter 3: During matches, the character portrait stays in the background, obscuring the actual background layer. Press I to disable that layer.


January 9, 2005


Added bilinear filtering and ARGB4444 textures. Bilinear filtering makes the games look much less like crappy PSX games :)

Virtual On 2 is the first Step 2.x game to start working. The controls and the 3D graphics are not working though. Also the game passes some of its 2D graphics through the security board (hence the broken title screen.)


January 3, 2005


Fixed some bugs in the SCSI emulation, and now 3D graphics is also working in Virtua Fighter 3, Sega Bass Fishing, Scud Race and the Step 1.5 versions of Virtua Striker 2 and VS2 '98. There are still a lot of glitches and crashing though.


January 1, 2005


Update: Added Z-buffering and texturing (no perspective correction or bilinear filtering yet).

Happy New Year!
Let's start this year with something special... Eek! It's a wireframe T-Rex!