I posted this at the Mecca, but its relevant here too.
I have been working away in the background to improve the emulator, both in terms of different tech support, and getting the tools stable / finalised.
I plan on doing a full release as soon as possible, hopefully within the next week. Here's a quick rundown of where things stand at the moment tech wise.
MPU4
is running nicely, all 4 sound chips are emulated and working. Its now as fast as VB will allow, topping out at around 11MHz when unthrottled on my machine. At present 7 seg support is limited to the standard (non extender) setups, though I hope that will change before release. Individual LEDs are now supported in the editor as well.
Dynamic sound sampling for the OKI chip has been emulated, and I can say that it is used on many many machines, despite MAME saying they only found a few which used it.
I've been making some progress making PCP's Sunday Sport work, and I can get it to attract mode now. Hopefully it wont be too long before the game is a runner.
Data protocol games are *mostly* supported, and EDC messages can be translated in some cases. This is very much experimental though.
Characteriser support is there for most games, only a small few are not supported, and those that do not run are being looked at.
No Video or Plasma support yet, it is being looked in to, but not as a priority.
MPU3
Is being a pain in the backside. I can run Hyper viper now, I've added the tech fully to the editor, meters and display port etc are all emulated. However some games just refuse to boot up without error. I have been looking into it, and I may have to give in and copy MFME in a few places to get things going. I don't like doing it but time is getting scarce again.
Sound is unsupported at present, though I will do that once I get the games booting as they should.
On the upside there are a couple of games which now run which didn't before - Details to follow shortly!
MPU3 is the worst tech at present, so, moving on...
Scorpion 1
Whilst MPU3 is the worst supported tech, Scorp1 is by far the least tested tech. Its worked for every game I have tried so far, but that amounts to about 4 ROM sets. Its there, its connected to the editor, it works as far as I know.
Sound is fully supported too.
I was asked by Ploggy to have a look at getting Crazy Crocs to run and I am pleased to say that it is now a runner, with sound. There is a bug which causes the machine to lock up after about 9 minutes, I am looking into it, and think I know what it is. It should fully work by release time. But for the most part it plays and works.
Speed wise this is a fast tech, very minimal. Reaching 13MHz when unthrottled.
Scorpion 2
This is again pretty much fully working. There are a few bugs to iron out but only minor ones. The standout bug would be the dodgy alpha on Easy Money, which has the same bug as MFME.
Sound is fully supported, including YMZ280B support for HBIYR and Spotted Dick.
Games with the DMD are noticably slower, only reaching 7-8Mhz when unthrottled, though it is a dual core emulation with the DMD. Otherwise this is a nice fast tech now.
There werent many games that did not run in MFME, only HBIYR springs to mind as a non runner, which works in Amber. The only other real difference is the extra DMD lines for Cops n Robbers, so you can collect on certain features now.
M1x
A complex tech this one, but apparently now working.
This benefits from a full OKI chip support, including the *stereo* sound (its not really, its a fake stereo, just like the real thing).
Synth sounds are supported too, as well as the NEC chip games.
Again, not much on M1 that didn't run in MFME. The only games I can think of is Gemini's Crazy Cobra's where the reels would spin endlessly in MFME, this seems to play fine in Amber. The other game is winners enclosure, which requires a DMD. This still doesn't run unfortunately.
I haven't done a huge amount of testing, but every rom so far has worked without fault.
Speed wise its pretty good now, faster than MPU4, but slower than Scorpion 1/2.
BFM System 83
At long last this seems to be running ok.
Sound is fixed and supported and the tech has finally been added to the editor and can be altered from game to game rather than being hard coded for Cops n Robbers.
Speed wise its nice and fast now.
Not many games use the tech, but at least what we do have can now be played.
So that's roughly where things stand at the moment for the techs.
In terms of the editor everything is much more stable now, I hope that the next release will finalise the layout format. I will re-release some of the previously released layouts after upgrading certain parts to fit the new format.
Disk reels are now basically supported, the only game I have tested so far is Big Breakfast on Scorp2, which doesn't need disk lamping. Once a game which requires disk lamping is found I will update the emulator to suit.
A new statistics screen has been added to replace the horrible looking meters screen that was previously there. This tracks your current win/loss per session, as well as per machine played.
Edit tools are now mostly stable, primarilly the graphics library needs an update to fix a deletion bug, I hope to have that fixed before release.
Online functions are still disabled for the forseeable, awaiting a through rewrite to make it work properly.
Documentation will follow the release fairly closely and is being prepared at the same time. As I said before, I hope to release within a week or so.
After that, I will be making a start on adding 2 new techs, and 1 existing tech to the emulator, hopefully for a October time release.
At this point I should add my thanks to DT, who has been very helpful to getting stuff going, specifically M1 and Sys83.
And also to Wizard, most of scorp 1/2 is pretty much a carbon copy of MFME, though converted to VB and altered to suit the emulator format. MFME code has been helpful in other areas too. So credit where credit is due and all that.
)
