whatsnew.txt

0.37 BETA 5


These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
-------------------------------------

- Fixed black blobs in Carrier Air Wing. [Nicola Salmoria]

- Fixed multiple beer trucks in Cops 'n Robbers [Colin Douglas Howell]


Other drivers changes:
----------------------

- Complete rewrite of the 34010 drivers. [Aaron Giles]

- Fixed protection in Slam Masters. [Nicola Salmoria]

- Lots of improvements to the Taito F2 driver. [David Graves]

- Fixed Terminator 2 crashes. [Ernesto Corvi]


Source:
-------

- New video flag VIDEO_NEEDS_6BITS_PER_GUN to indicate to the OS dependant
  layer that a 16-bit display is not enough to reproduce the whole game's
  palette and a 24-bit display is preferred.

- Support for compressed PCM playback in the C140 emulator. [CAB]

- YMZ280B sound emulation, used by the Cave games. [Aaron Giles]

- ADSP2105 cpu emulation, used by Mortal Kombat 2 sound. [Ernesto Corvi]

- New functions in cpuintrf.c: cpu_get/set_cycle_table(),
  cpu_set_irq_callback(). [Juergen Buchmueller]

- New cpu cores and fixes to old ones. [Juergen Buchmueller]

- New graphic primitive copyrozbitmap(). This replaces copybitmapzoom() which
  was a special case.
  A side effect is that, thanks to the better precision, the boxer on the
  Punch Out hall of fame looks much better. [Nicola Salmoria]

- Abstracted Taito F2 gfx chip emulation to vidhrdw/taitoic.c (there's also
  some non-gfx chips in there). There are many other Taito games using these
  chips. [Nicola Salmoria]


New games supported:
--------------------

Final StarForce [E. Watanabe]
Ganbare Ginkun [E. Watanabe]
Dodonpachi [Luca Elia]
Sengoku Ace [Luca Elia]
Gun Bird [Luca Elia]
Caliber 50 [Luca Elia]
Dragon Unit [Luca Elia]
Blandia [Luca Elia]
Shanghai 3 [Nicola Salmoria]
Hebereke no Popoon [Nicola Salmoria]
Blocken [Nicola Salmoria]
LSA Squad [Nicola Salmoria]
Oli-Boo-Chu [Nicola Salmoria]
TT Mahjong [Takahiro Nogi, PongKang]
Royal Mahjong [Zsolt Vasvari]
Gun Frontier [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Ah Eikou no Koshien [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Thunder Fox [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Ninja Kids [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Solitary Fighter [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Dino Rex [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Chikyu Bouei Gun [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Torimonochou [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz HQ [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Yuuyu no Quiz de GO!GO! [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Mahjong Quest [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Quest - Hime to Yuusha no Monogatari [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Don Doko Don [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
PuLiRuLa [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Dead Connection [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Football Champ [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Final Blow [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Drift Out [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Camel Try [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Yes/No Sinri Tokimeki Chart [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Jinsei Gekijoh [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Crayon Shinchan [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Quiz Crayon Shinchan Orato Asobo [David Graves, Nicola Salmoria]
Rambo III - Release 2 [Jarek Burczynski]
Space Invaders DX [Jarek Burczynski]
Violence Fight [Jarek Burczynski]
Master of Weapon [Jarek Burczynski]
Silent Dragon [Jarek Burczynski]
Toypop [Edgardo E. Contini Salvan]
Mortal Kombat 3 [Aaron Giles]
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 [Aaron Giles]
WWF: Wrestlemania [Aaron Giles]
2 On 2 Open Ice Challenge [Aaron Giles]
NBA Maximum Hangtime [Aaron Giles]
Rampage: World Tour [Aaron Giles]
Brute Force [Aaron Giles]


New clones supported:
---------------------

Blasteroids (with heads)
Cyberball (version 2)
Rack' em Up (= The Hustler)
Super Formula (= Tail to Nose)
Tokusyu Butai UAG (= Thundercade)
Double Dragon (original)
Tournament Arkanoid
TMNT (Oceania)
Legend of Kage (2 new bootlegs)
Sonic Wings (= Aero Fighters)


==========================================================================


0.37 BETA 4

PORTERS: THERE ARE A FEW API CHANGES, READ CAREFULLY THE SOURCE SECTION.


These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
-------------------------------------

- Background smoothing in Return of the Jedi. [Nicola Salmoria]

- Greatly improved Star Fire / Fire One. [Aaron Giles]

- Fixed final fireworks in Ajax. [Nicola Salmoria]


These drivers have improved SOUND:
----------------------------------

- Fixed sound in the Exidy games. [Aaron Giles]

- Improved YM2413 emulation. [Paul Leaman]


Source:
-------

- [DOS] The SEAL patch was bugged on mono sound cards, a new one is included.

- Fixed save_screen_snapshot() to save VIDEO_PIXEL_ASPECT_RATIO_1_2 games with
  the correct aspect ratio. Also introduced save_screen_snapshot_as(). Porters
  are STRONGLY ADVISED to use one of these functions to save screen shots,
  instead of providing their own. Note that osd_save_snapshot() now takes a
  bitmap argument, so it must not be hardwired to save Machine->scrbitmap
  (overlays wouldn't be saved otherwise). [nathan]

- A few changes were made to allow run time changes to the visible area, and
  to simplify the OS dependant code by moving some functionality to the core.
  - Added visible_area to struct RunningMachine. Drivers must now use
    Machine->visible_area instead of Machine->drv->visible_area. The field in
    struct MachineDriver has been renamed default_visible_area and it should
    normally be used by the core only.
  - New function set_visible_area() that can be used by drivers to change the
    active display area at run time.
  - New function osd_set_visible_area() used to tell the OS dependant code the
    portion of the bitmap that has to be drawn on screen. It is passed
    coordinates relative to the actual bitmap, so no further processing is
    required for rotated games. The OS dependant code is allowed to display a
    smaller portion of the bitmap if necessary, but it must not draw a larger
    portion (which might contain garbage).
    The function must call set_ui_visarea() to tell the core the portion of
    the bitmap which is actually visible (which might be smaller than
    requested), so the user interface can be drawn accordingly.
  - osd_update_video_and_audio() takes a bitmap parameter so must not be
    hardwired to draw Machine->scrbitmap.
  - New fields vector_width and vector_height in struct GameOptions. The OS
    dependant code must initialize them to force different resolutions for
    vector games. If left at 0, the default 640x480 is used.
  - osd_create_display() must no longer create the screen bitmap, this is done
    by the core. It must only create the display screen / window, and return 0
    on success.
    Note that the width and height parameters passed are now the dimensions of
    the visible area, not of the bitmap as they were before; therefore the
    function only has to create a screen / window of the requested size, without
    further processing, and without peeking into the drv->visible_area field.
    This applies to osd_set_display() as well.
  - Changed osd_new_bitmap() and renamed it osd_alloc_bitmap() to avoid
    confusion with old drivers. The function is the same as before but it must
    not swap width and height for vertical games - this is done by the core.
    osd_new_bitmap() and osd_free_bitmap() must not be called by drivers, they
    are reserved to the core. Drivers must call the equivalent bitmap_alloc()
    and bitmap_free() which take care of rotation for vertical games.
  [Nicola Salmoria]

- The meaning of the full_refresh parameter to vh_screenrefresh() has been
  slightly extend. It usually means "don't make incremental updates to the
  screen bitmap, redraw it completely", however if the driver wants it can also
  mean "redraw all temporary bitmaps". This happens when using the functions
  below. This way, drivers doing lots of memset(dirtybuffer,1) can be
  simplified and schedule it just at the beginning of vh_screenrefresh.
- Added some functions that make flip screen handling a little more eloquent:
  flip_screen_x_w(), flip_screen_y_w(), flip_screen_w() to set the flip_screen
  bits, and 3 variables flip_screen_x, flip_screen_y, flip_screen to read them
  back. If the flipscreen changes, the funtions automatically set full_refresh
  to true for the next call of vh_screenrefresh.
  The functions also call tilemap_set_flip(ALL_TILEMAPS), so no further
  operations are required when using TileMaps.
  Finally, the functions also adjust the visible area, mirroring it, in case
  it is asymmetrical. For example, rockola.c relies on this.
- Also added 2 helper functions:
  - void set_vh_global_attribute( data_t *addr, data_t data )    This takes a
  pointer to any variable and a value, and sets the variable to the value.  In
  addition, if the value has changed, it sets full_refresh to true by calling
  the next function.
  - void schedule_full_refresh(void)   This just sets full_refresh to true for
  the next screenrefresh.  See vidhrdw/galaxian.c for examples on this and
  set_vh_global_attribute.
  [Zsolt Vasvari]


New games supported:
--------------------

Victory [Aaron Giles]
Hana Awase [Zsolt Vasvari]
Hit the Ice [Jarek Burczynski]
Rambo III [Jarek Burczynski]
Quiz Sekai wa SHOW by shobai [Jarek Burczynski]


New clones supported:
---------------------

Rescue Raider (Stand-Alone)
Pang 3 (Euro)
Sangokushi II (= Warriors of Fate)
Ashura Blaster (US)
Exodus (= Defend the Terra Attack on the Red UFO)


==========================================================================


0.37 BETA 3


These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
-------------------------------------

- Fixed colors in Joyful Road. [Phil Stroffolino]


These drivers have improved SOUND:
----------------------------------

- Sound in Jumping. [Jarek Burczynski]


Other drivers changes:
----------------------

- Lots of fixes to the 8080bw games. [Zsolt Vasvari]

- Fixed dipswitches in many games. [Gerardo Oporto]

- Alternate control system in Assault, only available when cheats are enabled.
  [Maurizio Zanello]


Source:
-------

- Lots of changes to some CPU cores (mostly i86). I186 support. [Peter Trauner,
  Juergen Buchmueller, Aaron Giles]

- Preliminary MIPS CPU emulation. [smf]

- New makefile, easier to port, split into multiple files. [Juergen Buchmueller]

- New modes for drawgfx(): TRANSPARENCY_NONE_RAW, TRANSPARENCY_PEN_RAW,
  TRANSPARENCY_PENS_RAW, TRANSPARENCY_THROUGH_RAW. The purpose of these is to
  allow you to work in "raw" colorspace (that is, unremapped pens) and then
  perform the palette lookup at the end. This is useful for a number of games
  that do collision detection or foreground/background blends (e.g., the palette
  index is ((fgpen << 4) | bgpen)).
  When you use these modes, the "color" parameter doesn't refer to the palette
  any longer. Instead, it is just a value that is added to the raw pen value
  of the graphics you are drawing. That way, if your background layer uses
  pens 0-63 and your foreground layer uses pens 64-127, you can pass in a
  color of 0 when drawing the background layer and 64 when drawing the
  foreground.
  Also added copybitmap_remap() and copyscrollbitmap_remap(). These take the
  same parameters as the originals, but don't make the assumption that
  TRANSPARENCY_NONE means TRANSPARENCY_NONE_RAW (which, if you think about it,
  is the way they work).
  This means that you can do all your work with raw palette indexes until the
  very end, and then do a copybitmap_remap(TRANSPARENCY_NONE) to copy the
  result and do the remap step in the end.
  Finally, there's a new pair of modes that are only supported in
  copybitmap(): TRANSPARENCY_BLEND and TRANSPARENCY_BLEND_RAW. For these
  modes, the source bitmap is shifted left by the "color" parameter and then
  ORed into the destination bitmap. This lets you compute the palette indexes
  (and optionally do the lookup) for games that look up the palette by
  combining forground and background pen indices. [Aaron Giles]

- Moved logerror() from mame.c to the OS dependant code, and removed errorlog
  from the GameOptions structure.

- Major redesign of the artwork support. All the drivers need to do is call
  overlay_create() or overlay_load() and the rest is handled by the core.
  Opacity/translucency support in 16-bit mode.  Check out Space Invaders for
  example, the colored strips that make up the overlay is faintly visible
  under the black areas. [Mathis Rosenhauer, Zsolt Vasvari]

- Fixed YM2608 adpcm support. [Aaron Giles]


New games supported:
--------------------

Oh My God! [Nicola Salmoria]
Power Instinct [Luca Elia]
Magix [Luca Elia]
Hatris [Aaron Giles]
Cerberus [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Mayhem 2002 [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
World Series: The Season [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Alley Master [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Danger Zone [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Baseball The Season II [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Super Baseball Double Play Home Run Derby [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Strike Zone [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Redline Racer (2 players) [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Quarterback [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Viper [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
John Elway's Team Quarterback [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
All American Football (rev E) [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Ironman Stewart's Super Off-Road [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Ironman Stewart's Super Off-Road Track Pack [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Pigout [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Ataxx [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
World Soccer Finals [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat [Aaron Giles, Paul Leaman]
Nastar / Rastan Saga 2 [Jarek Burczynski]
Crime City [Jarek Burczynski]
Ashura Blaster [Jarek Burczynski]
Safari Rally [Zsolt Vasvari]


New clones supported:
---------------------

Pac & Pal (older)
Tetris (B-System)


==========================================================================


0.37 BETA 2

These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
-------------------------------------

- Accurate sprite drawing in MCR 1 & 2 games (see Satan's Hollow) [Aaron Giles]

- Fixed sprite / tile priority in Mad Gear and Garyo Retsuden. [Bryan McPhail]

- Fixed rowscroll in Ghostbusters. [Bryan McPhail]

- Correct colors in Lasso. [Phil Stroffolino]

- Fixed colors in Reactor. [Fabrice Frances]


These drivers have improved SOUND:
----------------------------------

- Fixed adpcm decoding in the K053260, this improves several Konami games.
  [Ernesto Corvi]

- Sound in Demon. [Zsolt Vasvari]

- Samples in Warrior. [Mathis Rosenhauer]

- Sound in Lasso. [Phil Stroffolino]


Other drivers changes:
----------------------

- Fixed Gang Wars original version, Super Baseball, Battlefield,
  Time Solders rev 1. [Bryan McPhail]


Changes to the main program:
----------------------------

- Massive rewrite of the cheat system user interface. This is still a work
  in progress. [Brad Oliver]

- First pass for multi language support with external translation files.
  [Brad Oliver]

- Extended the internal font to support characters 128-255 (ISO Latin-1).
  [Juergen Buchmueller]

- Fixed Hu6280 emulation bugs which caused missing levels in Trio the Punch.
  [Bryan McPhail]


Source:
-------

- Replaced instances of "if (errorlog) fprintf(errorlog," with a call to the
  new function logerror().

- New filetypes that must be supported by the OS dependant code:
  FILETYPE_HIGHSCORE_DB
  FILETYPE_HISTORY
  FILETYPE_CHEAT
  FILETYPE_LANGUAGE

  new functions:
  osd_readkey_unicode
  osd_fgetc
  osd_ungetc
  osd_fgets
  osd_feof
  osd_ftell

  new filed in struct Gameoptions: language_file. The OS dependant code must
  initialize it if it wants to use a translation file.
  [Brad Oliver]

- I added a new parameter to the end of the EEPROM interface to enable multiple
  reads to occur after a single read command. Added an EEPROM_set_data()
  routine that can be used to explicitly initialize the contents of the EEPROM
  if the NVRAM file isn't found. [Aaron Giles]


New games supported:
--------------------

Pipe Dreams [Bryan McPhail, Aaron Giles]
Tail to Nose [Nicola Salmoria]
Poly-Play [Martin Buchholz]
Kyros [Bryan McPhail]
Super Stingray [Bryan McPhail]
Battle Rangers / Bloody Wolf [Bryan McPhail]
Dangun Feveron [Luca Elia]
Esprade [Luca Elia]
Uo Poko [Luca Elia]
Insector (prototype) [Fabrice Frances]
Screw Loose (prototype) [Fabrice Frances]
Mermaid [Zsolt Vasvari]


New clones supported:
---------------------

Psycho-Nics Oscar (2 Japanese sets)
Astro Blaster (version 3)
Grind Stormer (= V-Five)
Sheriff (= Bandido)
Super Burger Time (World)
Vapor Trail (World)
In The Hunt (US)
Space Chaser (CV)
Space Attack (older)
800 Fathoms (= Mariner)
Spinal Breakers (US)
Bosconian (older)
Juno First (Gottlieb)


==========================================================================


0.37 BETA 1

These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
-------------------------------------

- Background in Exerion. [Aaron Giles]

- Artwork support in Space Encounters. [Zsolt Vasvari]

- Fixed sprite colors in the MCR2 games, however overlapping sprites are still
  wrong. [Aaron Giles]

- Fixed colors and stars in the Astrocade games (Gorf, Wizard of Wor, etc.).
  [Nicola Salmoria]

- Fixed front layer in Turbo Force. [Nicola Salmoria]

- Fixed colors in Lupin III. [Zsolt Vasvari]


These drivers have improved SOUND:
----------------------------------

- Emulated saucer sound in Space Invaders - sample no longer used (the other
  samples are still required). [Zsolt Vasvari]

- Completed sound in Splash. [Manuel Abadia]

- Samples support in Got-Ya. [Zsolt Vasvari]

- Sound in Berlin Wall. [Luca Elia]


Changes to the main program:
----------------------------

- Support for 24-bit artwork. [Mathis Rosenhauer]


Source:
-------

- Support for a priority buffer, updated by tilemap.c, which can be used to
  draw sprites using the new function pdrawgfx(). This allowed to fix many
  tile/sprite priority bugs e.g. in Ajax, Lightning Thunder, Simpsons,
  Vendetta, Punk Shot, Gradius III and others.
  [Phil Stroffolino, Nicola Salmoria]

- Change the API for tilemap_mark_tile_dirty() and the get_tile_info hooks,
  now a single parameter tile_index is used instead of (col,row). A function
  passed to tilemap_create() does the (col,row)->tile_index mapping, two
  standard functions are provided for the common cases.
  All drivers have been converted to the new API except for namcos2.c, which
  is therefore broken at the moment. [Phil Stroffolino]

- New GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION flag.

- 6803/63701 external port writes no longer set to 1 the bits that are set as
  inputs in the DDR register. Instead, they are set to the value returned by a
  read from the port. [Tatsuyuki Satoh]

- Updated all memory handlers to the new READ_HANDLER()/WRITE_HANDLER() macro
  declarations. The old "function(int offset,int data)" style must not be used
  anymore.


New games supported:
--------------------

Air Duel [Nicola Salmoria]
Pound for Pound [Nicola Salmoria]
Rabio Lepus / Rabbit Punch [Aaron Giles]
Super Volleyball [Aaron Giles]
Funky Fish [Zsolt Vasvari]
Mr. Jong / Crazy Blocks [Takahiro Nogi]
Karate Blazers [Nicola Salmoria]
Spinal Breakers [Nicola Salmoria]
Thundercade [Luca Elia]
Twin Eagle [Luca Elia]
DownTown [Luca Elia]
U.S. Classic [Luca Elia]
Arbalester [Luca Elia]
Meta Fox [Luca Elia]
Zing Zing Zip [Luca Elia]
War of Aero [Luca Elia]


New clones supported:
---------------------

Ninja Ryukenden (= Ninja Gaiden)
Spy Hunter 2 (revision 2)
R-Type (Japan)
Dyger (set 2)