4 replies to this topic

[Guitar]

* This is copy-pasted from the Mecca any references to being in chat tonight would be the mecca chat room *


I've been doing a fair bit of tweaking to FMEF lately but I need some help from layout designers. If there are any designers about tonight and are up for a chat it would be nice to get some input from you.

I can edit and tweak the editor as much as is needed but my artistic skills are, well, I wouldn't describe them as skills.

Hopefully the extender boards will go in tonight when I get home. All the infrastructure is in there already, I just need the logic for it, which Magik is kindly sorting for me. As soon as I get that all the empire and MDM games should be playable.

The half carry flag is not emulated in the core which means that any games calling the BCD conversion will not run. Tonight I am hoping that will go in too.

The mechanical machine sounds will be recorded when I get home and so that part of FMEF will be completed.

Emulated sound is well on the way but something is going wrong somewhere in there and I haven't had much time to look at it. When I get in from work I normally dont feel like spending ages looking for bugs.

Characteriser has been looked at already and is progressing but nowhere near complete.

I did have a nice break from coding but have got back into it lately. There is also a bug in VB which I think is the reason for those unwanted crashes people were getting, this has now been accounted for.

Anyway I'll be in the chat room tonight and on MSM so please come on for a chat and some emulation fun.

Once the layouts bugs are ironed out I'll be doing another public release which should be another step towards getting MPU4 completed. Once that is completed I do have a few things waiting in the wings emu wise.

So, I'll be in chat tonight and would really like to see a few layouts for FMEF. I understand that in many ways MFME is more complete, but from here on in all future layouts should be compatible with future versions. There will be a few extra tools built in to FMEF on next release to aid layout creation / editing.

See you all tonight.

[Guitar]

My computer is being a complete pig at the minute. Have had to reinstall again .

However I now have a new IDE expansion slot so I have 3 extra hard drives, 2 of which are being used as dedicated backup drives for stuff like FMEF so I constantly have 2 backups alongside the working version.

Been meaning to get proper backup in place for a while and its now done.

I have had several mini projects on the go in terms of advancing FMEF.

The CHR is there, but doesn't work, yet. Bug hunting is required.

Extender boards code is in, just need the logic for it, but everything else is done.

Sound is almost done. At the minute it will play wav files exported from MFME, so the code to play sound at the right time is in. I just have to work on decoding the roms into wav files for myself. That bit is kind of in, but doesnt work right. That link I was sent is very helpfull but Im still going wrong somewhere. I think its the propriatry wav format I have wrong.

The reason for decoding them to wav files first is simple, speed. Its much quicker to pre-prepare the sounds, shove them into a buffer and play as and when than emulating them 'on the fly'. Ok its not strictly doing it the same as the real thing, but that doesn't matter. The end result is the same. Unfortunately there is only one way to do the synthesized sounds.

Mechanical sounds have been recorded and will be coded in as soon as my PC is stable for long enough to do it. Each sound will be able to be disabled and enabled. And individual volumes can be set from within the game for both mechanical and emulated sounds.

Fun Stuff such as poor maintainence is going in shortly. A short chat with Magik the other day brought up a few neat idea's just for a laugh. I cant remember them all right now, but you should be suitably amused with the efforts eventually.

The Half Carry flag for the cpu core will be going in before release. This is required for opcode DAA. This is used by a few of the union games and is undoubtably used on barcrest games too. The CWAI opcode also needs to be added. That should complete the cpu core.

Those opcodes are also needed for M1A and Scorp I and II.

A few reductions are due to the indexed addressing modes and the PIA code. I'm hoping for a decent speed increase there.
Ok don't expect miracles, but it should be better than before.

There are plans to emulate Scorp I, II, and M1A, hopefully by xmas, but I don't know if they will make it into the 1.1.0 release.

A few surprises will be going in too. Not neccessarilly for 1.1.0 but if I can,, I will. Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink.

Also I have been trawling the code to try and prevent as many crashes, and I have got it working much better than before. Unfortunately its still not perfect in that regard, but its getting better.

A few other minor bug fixes have been made, as well as a few improvements to the graphics core.

I'm also adding a loading meter at the start so you should be able to tell whether its locked up or just taking a long while to load. Because of the preloading done for speed, the load times can be significant.

So thats what you can expect from 1.1.0 and beyond.

The way I am heading is to start doing the cpu cores as a precompiled dll file in C++. Then using VB as a nice easy way to set up graphics and the other bits and bobs. If anyone out there can code in C++ and would like to give me a hand with that, you'd be very welcome.

Also anyone who can code in Vb would also be very welcome to come aboard and help. Its very slow progress with just me doing it and I'm happy to bring whoever up to speed regards the emulation. It does take a bit of dedication and time though. But if you fancy learning how emulators work, and can use VB please make yourself known.

Now please comment away, and feel free to suggest stuff you'd like to see.

[TheMachine]

I can code in VB.

I not got much spear time at the moment tho due to a few other projects I'm doing.

However if i can help in any way i would be more than happy to.


All ways been intrested in how emultors work so should be fun.


Now for a Noob question were can i find this Mecca chat room?

[Guitar]

The Mecca is another emulation forum. Its a bit of a gentlemans club atmosphere, and they don't mention the leaked emulators (mfme 9.4 or greater).

If you need to know anything about fruit machines, its probably the best place on the net.

The MPU Mecca

[TheMachine]

Think i just found it mate cheers for that.


Looks like a good site will check it out l8er when i get some time