Arcade - IREM

[tepid sail]

Latest MAME release

https://www.mamedev.org/?p=541

Dunno if this is relevant for you

[stuck hatch]

Thank you. Something I can add once I get around to doing some updates there.

[stuck hatch]

Currently supports Bomber Man, Bomber Man World and it's various regional variants.

dynablst.zip and bbmanw.zip are the merged mame rom zips you'll want

I haven't been able to test 3 or 4 players, so let me know if you test that.

[opaque flax]

Oh, nice, congrats!

Am I right in thinking with these files on your SD update all will grab the Mame ROMs?

[stuck hatch]

I think so, but I'm not sure with the current internet archive weirdness

[vague vessel]

that's not how the rom downloaders work. it isn't based on what's on your personal mister, only based on what is in jotego/mister distribution github

(and a few others)

[opaque flax]

Ah OK, good to know

[stuck hatch]

you will have to use your own backups

[tepid sail]

Congrats wicker! I’ll test and come back with feedback

[surreal garden]

Thanks Wickerwaka,

[lapis fable]

Another huge contribution. Thank you.

[lapis fable]

@stuck hatch A tiny thing, but I noticed when cycling through the dipswitch option for "lives" it's not in sequence, instead its in this order. 3,2,4,5. In Mame it cycles 2,3,4,5.

[cedar sundial]

Fantastic job, and thank god for the screen adjustment in these cores, the CRT loves them..😁

[stuck hatch]

This is how dipswitches work in mister. They follow the switch order.

[gloomy shore]

I tried with Dynablaster, couldn’t get the p2-p4 to coin up. However setting to free play I could play with 4 OK.

[stuck hatch]

So the coin buttons weren't working for those controllers?

I think you can also change the cabinet type to Type B, which is a shared coin slot

[warm stratus]

Get in here Mr. Bomber Man fan! @desert path We got ourselves some M90! #1089922738682089554 message

[ripe echo]

Sorry for the noob question but how can we set up the IREM90 core in order to play bomber man ? Thanks in advance

[cedar sundial]

Put the RBF file in cores, the MRA files in arcade, the roms zipped in game/mame

[desert path]

Oh I saw. I’m off for the weekend. I’ll get to it though 🙂

[lapis fable]

Ah, that's probably why I've noticed this on other arcade cores. Thanks.

[gloomy shore]

Yes, that's right

[icy narwhal]

Excellent work! Any thoughts on allowing Player 2 start to be on a separate controller? Same question for players 3 and 4.

[stuck hatch]

P2 start is mappable on any controller. I do that because accessing the service menu on irem hardware requires pressing p1 and p2 start.

Is that what you mean, or something else?

[vague vessel]

I think it's the typical mister-ism where having p2 as mappable on any controller means if you plug 2 of the same type of controller in you basically can't access p2 start

I believe some cores solve this by making the 'p1 start' mapped button function as p2/p3/p4 start when pressed on the corresponding input

obligatory semi-rant that main should be handling this bs

[stuck hatch]

Can’t you just press the start button on the second controller?

[vague vessel]

say you map a dualsense to the core

you're going to map start -> p1 start

where are you going to map p2 start?

probably going to skip it

now you plugged two dualsenses in

both of them now have p1 start mapped to their start button

[slim valve]

but shouldn't that make all other buttons fail the same way being specific p2(3,4) buttons?

[vague vessel]

the other buttons are common

so it's fine

[stuck hatch]

Start just maps to start for that player.

P2 Start specifically maps to player 2 start.

[vague vessel]

then porkchop's question is answered

(his mistercade is safe!)

[craggy condor]

I just tried direct video into the tink 4K and it flickers a lot. 1080p works great though. Just an FYI.

[tepid sail]

Didn’t know this 😬

[vague vessel]

I think most cores at least try to do a 'start' and 'p2 start' but there's probably some stragglers out there.

[stuck hatch]

Could you describe the flickering?

[undone gull]

@terse rune the ultimate 💣 ♂️ controller?

Spoiler alert ||it's not||

[warm stratus]

Just tested the new core, and it seems to be working great on my end!

Haven't tried multiplayer though.

[opaque flax]

Do you think it will take much work to get the other games that were on these boards to run?

[sturdy turret]

Managed to try the core... it's fantastic.... who doesn't love bomberman... thanks wickerwaka 🔥

[stuck hatch]

No, everything I've tried has booted but I haven't tried playing them.

Some of them use a higher resolution video mode that I haven't looked at yet.

[willow kelp]

can you try using the "video settings" submenu to increase the "analog video h-pos" and see if the flicker disappears?

[craggy condor]

Tried and it didn’t make a difference. Other Irem games like Hook for example are fine direct video to tink 4K.

[wispy merlin]

I'm seeing the same flickering issue on DV and T4K. Love the core and the games.

[stuck hatch]

Weird. I have no idea what would be causing that.

[polar wren]

I love the core, but it is not saving the high scores even though I select that option. Is this a known issue or am I doing something wrong? Thanks again!

[stuck hatch]

High score saving is not implemented yet.

@vague vessel is there a guide for adding that data?

Is there a debug overlay on the rt4k that can be turned off?

[polar wren]

Thanks for the information. Looking forward to when it is implented and thank you for your work.

[icy narwhal]

Most of your cores work great doing this. I’m not able to add coins to player 2 so it’s possible the P2-4 start logic is correct and I can’t get to it. I checked 3 players and credits all register to player 1.

[opaque flax]

Some of them look quite Japanese heavy, maybe games @karmic cove would be interested in checking out

[viscid beacon]

its got an info/debug type screen with loads of stats on it

[stuck hatch]

It would be great if someone could capture that while the core is running, it might have some info

[viscid beacon]

is this irem in general or specifically bomberman?

[stuck hatch]

Bomberman.

Setting up my morph4k right now so maybe that’ll tell me something.

[stuck hatch]

Thanks. Does any of that change when it flickers?

[viscid beacon]

is 15.7khz right?

for h-freq

[craggy condor]

CTS changed a little.

Some others too.

[stuck hatch]

I'm not seeing anything with the morph. It might be a rt4k specific issue.

Can I share your videos on the retrotink discord?

[stuck hatch]

Yeah, coins are messed up.

[craggy condor]

Yep. No problem.

[icy narwhal]

Ah, no problem, will standby until they’re working.

[unreal cipher]

Are those the only two for your Irem cores that don’t come in update_all?

[stuck hatch]

yes

[calm bane]

Oh man I hadn’t realized you posted the core.

[unreal cipher]

So to confirm placement/installation: put the M90 into arcade/cores, then the MRAs into the main arcade folder, and lastly the mame zips into games/mame. That right?

[dusk fog]

I think so, yes. It's rad that Irem is now next to completely covered from Moon Patrol (1983) to Dream Soccer (1994).

[cedar sundial]

Yes, just follow the same way other cores are placed, I did make a alternative/_bomberman folder and put the MRAS in there, only keeping what I wanted in the main menu Bomberman world fire example

[stuck hatch]

Curious if this fixes rt4k flicker issues @calm bane @craggy condor

[calm bane]

Nice! Doing morning drop offs and then I’ll give it a look

[craggy condor]

Just tried. Same issue.

[calm bane]

What kind of tv do you have?

[craggy condor]

LG CX.

[calm bane]

Ah ok, that was the other tv I was gonna test on

[desert path]

capturing now. Fun stuff

[stuck hatch]

oh, vacation is over? Sooooooo sorry to bother you!

[desert path]

lol who me?

[stuck hatch]

@icy narwhal coin buttons should be fixed in this too

[icy narwhal]

🙏🏻

[icy narwhal]

We’re in business!

The left cabinet is a single player so I was only able to test 3 players but the coin mech activated the fourth player coin.

[gloomy shore]

4 players coining up and playing ok here (Dynablaster) - thanks!

[desert path]

Bomberman World sure as hell just felt like Bomberman World to me

[warm stratus]

You were busy living it up over the "weekend"! Ya lazy bum! ||I'm kidding obviously, hope you got some rest!||

[desert path]

haha we mostly cleaned the house

took out air conditioners

the exciting shit

[tepid sail]

Issue happens to me as well

Btw, I tested the core.

• Plays great!
• 4p verified
• Setnames needs to be updated

[stuck hatch]

If you want to help me organize mras, please! https://github.com/wickerwaka/Arcade-IremM90_MiSTer/tree/main/releases

I don't know which should be alternatives

[icy narwhal]

The never ending debate!

[red moth]

whatever mame lists as parent sets is the main and everything else is an alt

[icy narwhal]

Please let that be Bomber Man.mra

Dynablaster will never be touched by the average player haha

[vague vessel]

guess what the parent is!

[opaque flax]

Are Hasamu and Risky Challenge the only non Bomberman games for these boards?

[stuck hatch]

There is also Match It 2, Quiz F1 and some others

I think the Japanese version of bomber man is different enough from the US/EU versions.

MAME parent decisions are based purely on when stuff is dumped and implemented

[vague vessel]

not entirely. they favor using 'world' versions as the parent when possible

with some random exceptions of course

like puckman is the parent because...legacy I guess. that or there's enough of a pacman purist mob they feared bodily harm

[icy narwhal]

What's "m90.mra"?

[red moth]

the sequel to m89.mra. M90/mra is the 90s version

[vague vessel]

I assume he has that there for signaltap debugging

[red moth]

its like Fifa every year we get a new Mxx.MRA

[vague vessel]

if you load an RBF directly/via signaltap it uses the 'DEFMRA' value in the confstring to load an mra

[icy narwhal]

Ah, makes sense.

[stuck hatch]

Yup

[icy narwhal]

If I were to do a pull request on the repository, where should that be? Outside of the release folder?

[stuck hatch]

What do you want to change?

[icy narwhal]

Just organizing the files for you

To make sure dynablaster isn’t chosen as the main MRA

[stuck hatch]

Yeah, you can make the changes in the releases folder

[opaque flax]

Do these ones just need MRAs or there still work to do?

[tepid sail]

Yes let me fork and send a pull request

It is better to have the parent top and others in _alternatives

[stuck hatch]

It should be possible to get them all to boot with just mra changes.

But some of them have different video timing and resolution which would need a core change.

[trim cedar]

Copying @craggy condor's message here so it doesn't get lost.

[cedar sundial]

Probably better to link it.

[polar wren]

I noticed that Risky Challenge video is off on analog output) haven't tried HDMI yet) during gameplay. It's doing a weird half video thing where it makes the game unplayable. Hopefully this can be fixed.

[trim cedar]

#1193667333319819304 message

[dusk fog]

Never heard about that game. But it looks interesting. Some lost gems unearthed by wickerwaka 😉

[cosmic warren]

I don't agree, dynablaster should be the parent

[tepid sail]

The parent mra in my Pull request follows MAME standard

Also @stuck hatch , I did remove the "title changed" mras since the title screen can be changed in the dipswitches.

[stuck hatch]

Oh my. Two gentleman vying for my attention.

[red moth]

my pull request names them Mortal Kombat 1 -4. Just for the lols

[icy narwhal]

I don’t agree with your disagreement haha.

Honestly, if you want people to not play Bomber Man, name it Dynablaster.

[stuck hatch]

@tepid sail named the mra "Bomber Man - Dynablaster", that's a good compromise.

[icy narwhal]

Sounds good

Also note the MRA button name changes in my pull request.

[red moth]

thats the Mame name

[icy narwhal]

MAME knew better than to name the parent “Dynablaster.”

[stuck hatch]

mame names it "Dynablaster / Bomberman"

[icy narwhal]

Sweet

I’m all about accessibility

Not everyone knows the Japanese lore

Including me

[slim valve]

typical americans!

[red moth]

isnt Japan near New York ?

[slim valve]

no, tokyo tower was in paris (france)

[red moth]

ah

[slim valve]

it is a complicated teleportation device...

[icy narwhal]

Haha

[silk drum]

This new core is awesome. Bomberman awesome.

[polar wren]

actually Waikiki is the 24th ku of Tokyo.

[lyric flare]

For any fellow noobs out there, I was able to clear up the intermittent flicker on the RT4K with direct video by going to RT4K -> Advanced Settings -> HDMI Receiver -> MiSTer DV1 and disabling Auto-Crop

[calm bane]

Hopefully waka can get to the bottom of what’s going on there

But yeah, disabling auto crop will fix it for now. Not a big deal especially if you have dv1 profiles

[acoustic harbor]

I've setup the rbf and mras correctly, then went to test after shutdown PC. *Forgets putting the roms. Lmao
I'll try the M90 core later.

[terse rune]

I am excitedly waiting for this to be part of update_all

[terse rune]

I impatiently just downloaded latest lol

[dusk fog]

I wonder if wickerwaka will look for new cores to focus on. Psikyo would be in dire need of a developer.

[tepid sail]

I vote for Taito F system 🙂

[dusk fog]

And if I can dream: PGM should be doable on MiSTer guessing from its spec. Kind of a Neo Geo 2 with about 30 games on it.

[deep ocean]

Taito F3 ? I throught that Raki wanted to tackle it after the Bubble Memory one.

[terse rune]

lol poor waka

[warm stratus]

PGM is probably my most wanted "realistic" arcade core at this point. So many bangers!

[red moth]

Jotego had it on his list. Didnt it lose to CPS3 in his patreon vote

Anyway heres the secret Scoop. waka is working on Model 3. Hes got it working and us tier 99 patreons are beta testing it

you can trust me !

[calm bane]

Dural here I come

[opaque flax]

Wika mentioned awhile back that there is complexities with I think antipiracy chips, or something like that, with PGM boards rather than the actual hardware. Maybe he can explain again.

[red moth]

Mame has defeated all the protection in PGM

[opaque flax]

Do we have a list of what IREM boards we all now have, and what ones we don't yet? Can't be many we don't, save maybe some early ones and the Kickle one

[red moth]

system16 lists them all

http://system16.com/museum.php?id=4

[opaque flax]

Yeah but need a list of the ones we have now on MiSTer to cross reference

[red moth]

well you like spreadsheets ....

clearly the one we all need is Hsamu. Everybody loves Japanese Mahjong Games

[opaque flax]

I do like spreadsheets, next time I am on my computer I will make one up for IREM

Hisamu should be on the new M90

I think it has an mra

[tepid sail]

There are F1 and F2.

[red moth]

http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=662

http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=661

[tepid sail]

Raki is really talented in decapping chips. Would be nice if they could focus on that

[red moth]

Most important one is Rainbow Islands !!!

[opaque flax]

Do we not have F1?

[red moth]

no

[opaque flax]

Hmm, there something complex about that tile generator? We have all the other chips

[red moth]

Again Mame has it all but maybe not accurate enough or in enough detail for FPGA

oh interesting Jotego has Rastan which is the same board set as Rainbow Islands

[opaque flax]

Seems weird he hasn't done Rainbow Island then, that is a big hitter if it is low hanging fruit

Must be something more to it

[red moth]

well Op Wolf is also on that set

Main CPU : MC68000 @ 8MHz
Sound CPU : Z80 @ 4MHz
Sound Chip : YM2151 & ADPCM

Rastan

and

Main CPU : MC68000 @ 8MHz
Sound CPU : Z80 @ 4MHz
Sound Chip : YM2151

Rainbow Islands and Extra

[stuck hatch]

F1 and F2 are the same

The system is actually the Taito F2, which is a two board system. Standard main board and then a "ROM" board that often has some extra components on it.

One unique-ish thing, is the ROM board is where the JAMMA-edge is and is where all the input and output hardware is.

They also made a lot of single board versions of games. I have single board versions of Final Blow and Drift Out

[uneven yacht]

Wait are we voting on how Wickerwaka spends his free time? I nominate candle making

[red moth]

yep

He has become our toy

[uneven yacht]

The candles could be shaped like your favorite nintendo characters until Miyamoto shows up to break hands

[red moth]

or Adult Candles ?

[uneven yacht]

Mario could be fire flower mario where the wicks come out of his hands

All the mushroom molds can be re-used to make phallus, yes

[terse rune]

😂🤣

[reef nova]

I been wanting rainbow islands arcade since I got a mister. I love the nes games. Yeah I said games. There are 2 versons the US version which is its own game with its own unique levels and The european version which is basically a port of the arcade with arcade levels.

[tepid sail]

Rainbow island uses different taito custom chips

[lapis fable]

https://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=944

Got some crackers on this board

[stuck hatch]

Amazing to me how bad the art is on some of these games

[vague vessel]

again I'm going to encourage caution when looking at system16 and going 'oh X is implemented so that means Y is possible!'

[stuck hatch]

@vague vessel how do I debug hiscores saving but not restoring correctly?

[vague vessel]

in many cases it is not 'a board' it is 'a board for every one of those games, that can contain random custom chips not listed'

[stuck hatch]

does system16 get updated anymore?

[vague vessel]

my first look at that would be something related to the timings it uses to check the initial HS table? let me try to recall how that all works

I don't know if it does. I don't even remember who ran it

ah yeah. it looks for known values at start. so if it isn't restoring either 1) the start_wait parameter needs to be tweaked or 2) the data does.

which core did you grab the HS stuff from? I remember in one of them I had to tweak the header a bit because the timers were too small for the clock speed of the cpu

although that usually manifested as perma core pause

[stuck hatch]

gunforce I think

[lapis fable]

Atari system 2 - Paperboy is a classic

Knuckle Joe is an old one

[stuck hatch]

@craggy condor @calm bane

[sudden flint]

I did IREM awhile ago; dumped it into sheets just now https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MOGuqXaBNlELFQeTfOvVCfomxK9T2Cei3ORxbbabGqE/edit?usp=sharing

[dusk fog]

He recently has obtained a Rainbow Island board. Thus I guess, we will see it soon.

[opaque flax]

Well, maybe not "soon", he has had some boards for years now and no code. Good he has one though, hopefully he does look at it in the not too distant future

[opaque flax]

Nice one. Looks like the latest ones can be moved over from Missing

Hmm, do we not have World PK Soccer on M107 core? Something special for that game the core is missing?

[sudden flint]

I'm not sure. When I open up each MiSTer Core collection I wrote down what appeared; it's possible there's an organization error and World PK is showing up somewhere else?

10 Yard Fight was missing from M52 as well IIRC

[opaque flax]

Hmm, I was sure we got 10 Yard Fight...

Does this list include JT cores?

[sudden flint]

I believe the way I did it was open Arcade > Organized > Collections > By mister core

then looked at IREM, which had vigilante, which I know jotego did

it's possible there's another naming convention for the collection that holds 10 yard fight

[dusk fog]

Well that was a game that you physically had to hit a physical ball. Just google for the actual arcade machine. I guess that there is no way to simulate that experience.

[opaque flax]

Ah OK, that makes sense

[sudden flint]

https://tenor.com/view/sterling-archer-not-with-that-attitude-phrasing-danger-zone-you-wont-gif-15030190

SNAC World PK Soccer Ball; I'll bug Mister-AddOns 😂

[opaque flax]

I thought we had Pound for Pound as well, by must not

M85

[sudden flint]

I mean, maybe I missed it if jotego prefixed it with 'jt'

I'll take a look later

[stuck hatch]

Wonder why I don't have World PK Soccer

There are a few M72-ish games missing.

[dusk fog]

https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/113992-world-pk-soccer

A Jaleco game BTW

[uneven yacht]

Was hoping it involved Player Killing

[dusk fog]

More of a penalty simulation than a soccer game. But I guess it had a strange fascination at the arcades.

[uneven yacht]

Wonder how often it broke from the abuse

[stuck hatch]

Maybe that's why I didn't include it?

[uneven yacht]

You aren’t done until you recreate the kicking mechanism at great effort and expense

Mister Kicky (available soon on Tindie)

[fossil bridge]

Toby pops in now and then to fix some stuff but no, he's largely left the scene. He used to be a regular in my IRC orbit.

[craggy condor]

Works great. No flickering. Thanks.

[stuck hatch]

Awesome

[calm bane]

Sorry waka, I have a sick pup over here. I’ll test tomorrow but it seems like it works

On the flip side, I’ll probably just end up disabling composite_sync since it defaults to zero and I just use hdmi

[tepid sail]

What did you change to make it not flicker?

If I remember correctly, flicker happens on m72/m92? @calm bane @craggy condor can you confirm?

[dusk fog]

@sudden flint Kung Fu can be removed from your coverage list in my opinion. The arcade version is called Kung Fu Master and is covered already (but not by a wickerwaka core - thanks Zakk). What you see in your list is the NES version that runs on the Nintendo playchoice arcade. Which is essentially a NES for arcades.

[vague vessel]

do be clear, that core is not wickerwaka's

[dusk fog]

Yes, you are right

[craggy condor]

I think Air Assault was the other game with flickering.

[calm bane]

Yes. Air assault. But I haven’t tested everything.

[dusk fog]

An interesting observation is that Irem obviously loved to "backport" successful computer games (even US ones) to the arcades even if there were already home console versions available back then. Lode Runner, Spelunker, Bomberman, ... All made from other companies for 8 bit computers and NES ports were available.

[uneven yacht]

WTF happened to their logo. The original was excellent

It’s like there was an earthquake

“We suffered serious structural and cosmetic damage, sadly it’s a total loss”

[red moth]

they hired a consultant who charged them alot so it must be better

[stuck hatch]

There is an arcade_video module in sys that I was using because...well, probably because it's called "arcade video". It does some messing with the sync signals for purposes I don't understand.

[stuck hatch]

It was forcing the vsync signal to perfectly align with the hsync signal. The composite sync code inside of sys also modifies sync signals and the way it works it was causing the hsync signal to get dropped during the first line of vsync

[calm bane]

Great sleuthing waka

[uneven yacht]

Wonder if it causes issues elsewhere as well

[calm bane]

I still think you should buy a tink4k just in case

[stuck hatch]

it's probably causing issues in my other cores, definitely m107

Did anyone try Risky Challenge?

[calm bane]

I can when I get home

[craggy condor]

Is there an mra for Risky Challenge? I’m missing it.

Never mind. It’s in the GitHub.

It works. No flickering. I wasn’t able to map the up button and it locks up controls. Resetting and just using default controls works fine.

[polar wren]

I have tried Risky Challenge. It has a weird video glitch during gameplay. The attract screens seem fine.

[stuck hatch]

Yeah, it's got some issues. I'm not going to include it in the initial release.

[cedar sundial]

Loving the core so far, using a consumer TV CRT I find the top and bottom missing, I use the in core settings to set it half way , the Squish mode is a bit too much. Obviously it could be the TV as well, it does seem right on some cores and off on others.

[sudden flint]

I'll probably remove it then

[tepid sail]

Interesting. I swear I saw another core using that

Which was not irem

But anyway, great that you managed to find out

[stuck hatch]

It's available in update_all now.

[stuck hatch]

It's an arcade game and they designed it to use all of the display area. Consumer CRTs usually hide around 10% of the screen, called overscan. Home game consoles don't typically use that area of the screen.

[cedar sundial]

Yes I'm aware, and it's not an issue, I'm grateful it has the H/Vertical adjustment.. 😁

[opaque flax]

Yay, a News post that isn't some dunce in the forum asking for help in the News channel. Congrats Wika!

[viscid beacon]

so is this now the definitive way to play bomberman?

[tepid sail]

Indeed

[stuck hatch]

Only way

Burn your saturns

[calm bane]

Finally.

[shut crescent]

Had an absolute blast playing Bomberman tonight. Thanks @stuck hatch! ❤️

[lyric flare]

Same! Seems to work perfectly now. No more flickering even with Auto Crop enabled on the RT4K

[shut crescent]

Although I absolutely cannot play the game with an arcade stick. Will take some getting used to!

[acoustic valve]

For real. I miss when core releases and updates were announced there. When "news" lit up it meant something exciting was happening.

[terse rune]

I tried to enjoy Bomberman but it’s no Wario Blast

[cosmic warren]

Thank you for your hard work, Martin !

[dusk fog]

Can anybody compare those Irem Bombermans to the 5 Super Bomberman games on SNES? I guess that those should be superior?

[tepid sail]

We came for Arcade!!

[lapis fable]

What about neo bomberman

[tepid sail]

Thats not 4 players

[lapis fable]

is it not

[silk drum]

Well done wickerwaka! I really appreciate all the hard work you have done and time spent to enable these cores to exist on the MiSTer and be shared with everyone.

Dream Soccer is my favourite 😍

We need more arcade soccer games!

[acoustic valve]

Damn, arcade Bomberman fun. Cool seeing how every 2D Bomberman is slightly different. Great job, Wickerwaka!

[slim night]

Seibu soccer is my favourite, so many different ways to score

[slim night]

Great work @stuck hatch 👏 👍 👌 💪 🙌 having a blast playing this

[dawn heron]

https://tenor.com/view/bomberman-dance-gif-4508080905550135649

[verbal wagon]

Loving the new IREM M90 core! Does anyone else have an issue when defining keyboard/controller after loading up Risky Challenge? The demo screen is on in the background but my OSD freezes when I try to define 'up' and requires me to hard reboot my MiSTer.

[cedar sundial]

Same here, in the public release it might be removed, due to issues, I read on here.

[verbal wagon]

gotcha. thanks for confirming. I always worry it's just me lol. Again, great work by @stuck hatch and love playing Bomberman with the title screen as Dynablaster!

[calm bane]

Risky challenge has issues atm #1089922738682089554 message

[stuck hatch]

I guess if button names are too long it crashes Main!

[verbal wagon]

gotcha ^_^

are there any plans for the m90 core to eventually support Hasamu?

just curious ^_^

[stuck hatch]

Yes, everything on the m90, m97 and m99 boards will be supported

[acoustic valve]

Can't wait for Hasamu! ;P

Never knew of M99. It's not on System16, but I've discovered there's quite a bit that isn't there.

What games are on M99?

[stuck hatch]

M99 is just a slight variation on the M97, which is a slight variation on the M90. Nothing major.

    Hasamu                                                  1991 M90-C-B
    Bomberman / Atomic Punk / Dynablaster                   1992 M90-C-B
    Bomberman World / New Atomic Punk / New Dyna Blaster    1992 M97-A-B
    Bomberman World / New Atomic Punk / New Dyna Blaster    1992 M99-A-A (m97 with pound 4 pound sound chip)
    Quiz F1 1-2 Finish                                      1992 M97-A-B
    Risky Challenge / Gussun Oyoyo                          1993 M97-A-B
    Match It II / Shisensho II                              1993 M97-A-B```

From MAME

[stuck hatch]

Very dusty.

[uneven yacht]

Jeeves, get in here!

[vague vessel]

NO

if you remove the dust it'll stop working

[warm stratus]

Each spec of dust is a vital component to the workings of that bad boi.

[acoustic valve]

It’s like old collectible coins. Don’t clean them or they’ll lose value.

[opaque flax]

Oh, what board is that?

[slim valve]

Bomberman world I guess

[shut crescent]

“I wish my wife was as dirty as this arcade board”

[lapis fable]

Steady on sunshine.

[shut crescent]

You haven’t seen that written on the back of cars and vans? 😅

Maybe it’s just a UK thing

[lapis fable]

I'm a Londoner mate

Maybe what you wrote needed more context lol

[shut crescent]

shrug I thought it was sufficiently common that people might have heard of it. Oh well

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take 😉

[lapis fable]

I'm just kidding mate.

I'm sure there on women on this discord too, so was like...steady on

[shut crescent]

There definitely are, and I almost de-gendered it, but felt it would have lost its original meaning. I doubt anyone will really be offended 😅

[lapis fable]

We need a mister 2 channel now. Rumours are flying around and Replay 2 is also approaching, Need some new shit to jazz the place up.

[stuck hatch]

Got a cheapish bomberman world on eBay.

Wanted to check out the sound chip.

In doing so I noticed that the swirly pattern on the title screen is bugged in both my core and mame.

[shut crescent]

We have #fpga-platforms. I feel like a MiSTer 2 channel would kinda “fan the flames” and adds to the speculation. What if the DE25 nano comes out and Sorg decides it’s not worth it? It could be several years, or never, until MiSTer 2 comes out

But that also has nothing to do with the IREM cores… 😅

[uneven yacht]

I refuse to play bomberman until mister 2 because the explosions will be more vibrant

IREM has a few cool arcade flyers, I’m gathering them for TapTo cards.

But bomberman it gets interesting

There’s this one you’d expect

And the helpful how to play for Wickerwaka

But then there’s this

Atomic Punk??

And their child faces, lol

Who’s kids are these 😂

[stuck hatch]

Do you know where your kids are?

[uneven yacht]

Hey pal it’s not 10pm yet get off my back

[uneven yacht]

Perfect 🤣

[stuck hatch]

Neat, I found a mame bug

[warm stratus]

Now get out there and maim that bug.

[stuck hatch]

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/12961

Never submitted a mame change before

[shut crescent]

lgtm. Merge

[cedar sundial]

I sent a Mame testers bug into them in 2021 and yesterday I got an email saying it's been fixed 😂

[stuck hatch]

https://bsky.app/profile/wickerwaka.bsky.social/post/3larcpaohe22v

[cedar sundial]

Looks nice and smooth and much better.

[red moth]

didnt yor change get accepted ?

I thought I saw it being merged to mame

[stuck hatch]

It did

[tepid sail]

Great post! Nicely described and easy to follow 🙂

[red moth]

what is Bsky an X knockoff ?

[tepid sail]

Yes

[red moth]

what i didnt get in the write up is the 37 ? Its the same for both your change and the before

why doesnt that change ?

[stuck hatch]

0x37 is the encrypted value, what changes is what value it gets decrypted to.

[red moth]

ah

Silly me thought that was a result col

of the Assembler on the Left

[stuck hatch]

You probably haven't memorized all the NEC V20/V30 opcode values, that's okay.

[red moth]

I skipped that day

so now you can add Mamedev to yuor CV

[lapis fable]

Just read all of that, not understanding a thing, but great work. I would have never known it was broken 😄

Its also great MAME is getting the love it deserves too.

[tepid sail]

Not only that but the Irem M92 (M90?) are mdfourier certified

Should probably be mentioned in the README.

[stuck hatch]

M92 and M107. Now that I have a board with socketed audio roms I'm going to try M90 too. Which should apply to M72 also.

[lapis fable]

What does "mdfourier certified" mean in layman's terms?

[uneven yacht]

It’s a reference to tools built by Artemio (the 240p test suite guy) for capturing and analyzing audio between real hardware and other sources like mister to see if they are the same / how close they are via fourier analysis

If you’re wondering why they would be different if the hardware implementation is correct, my understanding is the digital audio output could be correct but there might be analog audio circuitry / filtering that effects the actual analog audio output causing it to vary but I might be wrong

[lapis fable]

Very interesting. Is this one of the first certified cores using this tool?

[uneven yacht]

No, a bunch have done it, not sure if there’s a list

Artemio talked about mdfourier in one of the stage chats. The most surprising fact I got out of that was md isn’t Megadrive but “my doorbell” because he wrote the first version to analyze that sound for reasons I can’t recall

[karmic cove]

New MCU dumped for IREM72
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/943cae6e0a697227a33061c2558c8d4f5e069f0d

[opaque flax]

What does this mean in practice?

[stuck hatch]

Probably nothing. Just the fake simulation of that cpu can be removed.

[lapis fable]

@stuck hatch Hey, any new projects on the horizon or are you taking a well deserved break for a while?

[warm stratus]

(brings out whip) Back to work in the FPGA mines!

[tepid sail]

Did you add Ninja spirit (world)?

[stuck hatch]

No, not since that was dump a few months ago

[lapis fable]

Taking a break then lol

[stuck hatch]

Right now I am hacking up some picorom firmware so I can have it act as a cycle counter and I'm going to use that to improve the V35 cpu timing.

I could have just used the timers on the cpu itself but I wanted something that I could also use on my bootleg r-type board to measure v30 timing there.

[lapis fable]

Cool. What's wrong with the timings? I thought you sorted that.

[stuck hatch]

The V35 implementation is currently using V33 cycle counts, so that needs to be fixed. It really doesn't impact any of the games since none of them seem to be CPU bound to begin with.

[opaque flax]

Is this to get the last few games on the Bomberman boards to run on the core?

[stuck hatch]

no, it's so I can sleep at night knowing it's right

[stuck hatch]

The V30, V35 and V33 cpus are very similar, but their execution model differs. V33, though it's the most advanced version, is easier to understand. V30 is less powerful, but more complex.

So I'm progressing backwards from the V33, to the V35 and eventually the V30

[lapis fable]

Youre a perfectionist, I like it. Most people would be happy it works the way it is.

[uneven yacht]

I played my 5 minutes of bomberman, give me more things

I earned it

[pale plinth]

@stuck hatch cool if you reach the v30, it can be mount in pcxt i think

[dawn heron]

You like bomberman eh? Name all the bombermen?

[uneven yacht]

Blinky, Clyde, Pinky, and uh Bomberman

Bomberperson

Don’t bother checking, you know I’m right

[vague vessel]

according to the lore, it is Bomberman and Bomberman-II

[stuck hatch]

This is an IREM town. It’s Bomber SPACE Man.

[tepid sail]

Dynablaster

[dawn heron]

Atomic Punk enters the chat

[warm stratus]

Wario

[mossy pebble]

Sorry if this has been discussed, but is the missing water in Gunforce a known issue?

I'm playing now, but haven't been keeping track, so I think it is level 4, where you briefly take an inflatable boat across to a ladder, the water layer is not present.

Yep, the "Enemy Fortress" battleship level.

[acoustic valve]

Gun force 1 or 2?

[mossy pebble]

1

[acoustic valve]

whew 😮‍💨

Gonna go hug Gunforce 2.

[mossy pebble]

LOL fair,

I find it crazy that, dspite having been deep into gaming and emulation since the late 90s, I wasn't aware of these two titles until last year. Considering they are both basically the inception of what became Metal Slug, no one was ever discussing them. It was all about how In the Hunt was the immediate predecessor to Nazca leaving Irem.

Still, anyone have a link to where I should be reporting/reviewing issues with the M92 core?

[acoustic valve]

Reporting here for Wickerwaka (the author) to see as well as GitHub are probably adequate.

I low-key like Gunforce 2 more than Metal Slug (Don’t hit me!!)

[lapis fable]

I'd upload a screen shot compared to original

[mossy pebble]

ty

[mossy pebble]

Playing through now, having just finished GF1. Also reset my gitHub password and filed an issue ticket on that water.

[acoustic valve]

The bosses are so cool in GF2. Great spritework.

[mossy pebble]

Totally agree. I understand why the team was frustrated with Irem corporate and jumped ship. Some real Treasure-level devs.

Certainly doesn't hurt that the core has a Turbo CPU option to deal with the moments of lag. game absolutely rips with that enabled!

[stuck hatch]

Do you have any screenshots of the issue or can you find the same moment in a youtube video?

[mossy pebble]

I don't but I can try to capture it with my phone. Let me see if I can find the particular moment on YT.

10:25 in this video is the spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE32-HJZFjA

[heavy veldt]

Here's my run on the core from last year. Water looks wrong on that longplay, but I'm no expert on the game. Timestamped link https://youtu.be/jB6OlhtQo24?si=WQ9yM-W0DjNoJWtv&t=315

[bleak thicket]

Dude, there's been a huge drought, that's why the fires are out of control in LA!

😛 Good catch, the water is def missing.

[stuck hatch]

Did you see it in the core@bleak thicket ? It's missing in the long play video (mame?) but present in @heavy veldt's core video. It's possible it is a regression.

[heavy veldt]

While we're talking about graphics, I was curious about this @stuck hatch. I noticed this misaligned background tile mistake in R-Type II when I was running it. I was wondering if it is present on actual hardware, would be an interesting mistake they missed. You can see it right away in the demo. Same pic, I just drew on the second to show.

[bleak thicket]

No I just watched the videos. I can try playing it soon.

[bleak thicket]

I just ran update all and played through the Japanese version. It’s definitely missing the water.

Although it does appear in the ending

I missed it as he was riding the boat over but trust me it’s there and here it is and the final sequence

[stuck hatch]

Thank you for taking a look. I will take a look.

[vague vessel]

we're all looking

[bleak thicket]

Zakk, did you have a different result?

[bleak thicket]

bump, any updates? Zakk, did you check it out?

[stuck hatch]

@calm bane direct video sync fixes, maybe

[ancient otter]

Tried Risky Challenge. But at the input mapping it always stops at "joy up" and block all other inputs then (keyboard included). Only a reset helps.

[calm bane]

Everything looks good, went through the list and played everything. Thunder Blaster and Perfect Soldier are not implemented, right (just want to make sure I’m not misssing them)

[stuck hatch]

Lethal Thunder is the world name for Thunder Blaster

Superior Soldiers same for Perfect Soldiers. Don't have an alternative for that for some reason.

[calm bane]

so lethal thunder has some weird occasional artifacting, but I would bet that’s because I’m tate-ing it. Let me revert that

yeah, that’s what it is. Lethal Thunder is good too

[stuck hatch]

Same treatment for M107

[calm bane]

No joy on Air Assault. She still is jumping

Dream Soccer too

[stuck hatch]

Hmmmmmm

You sure it's picking up the right rbf? Check the version in the About screen

[calm bane]

Yeah, v250208. Trying to capture a video but it’s hard to see on video

[uneven yacht]

Just beat box some sick beats for it to dance to

[calm bane]

I do that anyway. Modus Operandi

[stuck hatch]

Does the current core behave the same way?

[calm bane]

I can check in a sec

[calm bane]

On the 240519 core

[stuck hatch]

Interestingly, the gunforce water isn't always missing

I knew that sounded familiar

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/e3833f7b682b11ef51848e55b8f8bc5d7fccdb6a/src/mame/irem/m92.cpp#L60

[lapis fable]

I'd imagine you've fixed a lot of the mame bugs

[bleak thicket]

Interesting that it's a MAME bug, I thought your cores were built reversing the PCBs, I take it some of the core is MAME based?

[stuck hatch]

Yeah. It’s a mix, mame is very often a guide telling you what the general shape of things are. I confirm the mame information on the real hardware and then try to work out what mame doesn’t know.

This behavior, sometimes works and something’s doesn’t, suggests CPU issue but I might be wrong.

Mame and the core are based on the same cpu documentation

[bleak thicket]

OK, well I have the real PCB, a DMM, a cheap O-scope, and no skills, so let me know if I can help in any way

[stuck hatch]

Looks like gunforce is depending on undefined behavior (according to the documentation) of the divide instructions.

mame and the mister core handle it the same way, i suspect the cpu differs but I'll have to write something to test it on a real cpu.

The water will be correct the first 6144 frames, then the division will start overflowing and it'll be broken for the next 60000~ish frames. Then the counter will wrap round to 0 and it'll be good again.

That's why if you skip straight to the level it's likely fine. (but if you sit there it'll eventually break)

Wouldn't be surprised if this was causing issues in some other games.

[dusk fog]

One fix to rule them all

Good luck in figuring it out!

[bleak thicket]

Awesome find! Once you figure out the fix, your core will be more accurate than MAME!

[stuck hatch]

Well, I'll fix both:)

[slim valve]

boooo

[terse rune]

yeah but the MiSTer core will be more cycle accurate, right?

[calm bane]

fukkin better be or I'm suing

[bleak thicket]

Well, nobody's perfect! (kidding of course!)

[stuck hatch]

Anyone have any real hardware playthroughs of gunforce recorded? I think this water is broken on real hardware too, but in a different way. The water is there but probably doesn't animate.

[lapis fable]

If its broken on real hardware, can it be fixed? Not a request, but just curious if that's doable understanding the logic / code. Call it fixing other devs bugs!😆

[stuck hatch]

I could change how the CPU operates so that this piece of code functioned in the way the programmer likely indented it to function. It would fix this issue, but could cause other ones.

I'm just going to ensure mame and the core match what the cpu would do in this case. Which is different than what they are currently doing.

[bleak thicket]

No, but I could do a janky version with my phone this weekend if needed

[tepid sail]

Do you have the PCB?

[tepid sail]

Yes you do 🙂

[stuck hatch]

I have one too

[tepid sail]

That is great. Cause I checked youtube, not a single video telling if it is real hardware recording or not

[bleak thicket]

well, what do you prefer?

I don't mind doing it, to save you time

is janky phone recording good enough?

maybe I can order a cheap HDMI dongle for my macbook

https://www.amazon.com/Capture-Adapter-Streaming-Aluminum-Compatible/dp/B0DDC4VP67/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1LD3QDBMICLNP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.vBXNbESwm3b5jhXRHbLZKIh-LcSZtTLAkwXjKwf2diuiZh99ibCcrmNf_7xW06xLMhmQTwdPqz14ixBdZHP1eosujjR_eLpZeSrzE0du0ow3ES4suxNI5aORuZxx87dbqBE9W8O68GRZwC5-QkrpqVqvL3RY2vbR3DjbkLo0LwSpoclvVDRc9rkKu63r0c4v-xpfwBFkxeQRgTVuSi7U1e4rEA8q8Xb12VeK7zlTfSs.ETOZG4ZWsyE2A9UlZn-8eDvmZ25mjn9Neqo6mNt7wtQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=macbook%2Bhdmi%2Bcapture%2Bcard&qid=1739376458&sprefix=macbook%2Bhdmi%2Bcapture%2Bcard%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-5&th=1

I don't know anything about recording equipment, but under $20 and I think it would work

[stuck hatch]

Just a description is fine.

My hypothesis is that 3 1/2 minutes after powering on the system, the water will stop animating and it will stay that way for ~15 minutes.

And that pattern repeats. So most likely when you get there the water will be present but not animating.

[stuck hatch]

My gunforce board needs to be gently touched and talked sweatly to before it posts.

[uneven yacht]

Maybe stop sweating on it

[bleak thicket]

I did a recording and yes the water is frozen

stand by I'll upload to YT

but it does activate, then stops again

[bleak thicket]

You're a master!

Is there a way to jump to the water baord via a code or something? I could go there an time the water better.

[stuck hatch]

That's great! Thank you.

No codes that I'm aware of on the board unfortunately.

[bleak thicket]

OK, YT has been stuck on 99% for 10 min, as soon as it finishes, I'll link

https://youtu.be/BrAnz72s4sM

hmm, maybe one day it will finish?

finally! OK, check around 9:55

It moves for a second at 10:03 then again at 10:37

[stuck hatch]

Yeah, I should have mentioned that there would be some brief moments of animation too.

[bleak thicket]

no worries! I hope this helps and please don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything else

I've got a ton of M92 boards as well, if you need me to check another game

[stuck hatch]

Hung out long enough for it to start working.

[bleak thicket]

was it the timing you thought?

15min?

[stuck hatch]

Didn't time it exactly, but it was about 3 minutes before it stopped again

Now I have to write some tests to see if there is some pattern to the data the operation is producing so I can replicate it.

I’m worried it is a quirk of how the hardware does division that will be difficult to replicate.

[vague vessel]

"undefined" behavior that did the same thing every time the dev used it because of some quirk of how they had various peripherials attached and/or temperature and/or timing

[dawn heron]

70% of the time it happens 100% of the time.

[stuck hatch]

it doesn't seem random, but I need to spit out all the possible values and see if I can work it out.

[stuck hatch]

Only V33 behaves this way. V30 and V35 behave in the way the core and mame is implemented. I assume V20 and V25 do too. It makes sense since the V30 and V35 are the microcode architecture internally, while the V33 is a completely different implementation.

[calm bane]

Mister forums are trying to contact Waka via ouija board I think (unless he saw the post)

[uneven yacht]

Mister forums aren’t real

There is only discord

And the comically misinformed Reddit / Facebook groups.

[calm bane]

ARE YOU THERE WAKA? IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, FLICKER TWO SPRITES

[stuck hatch]

post?

[calm bane]

Oh, the ouija didn't work? https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=94850#p94850

[terse rune]

Yeah, it’s a cool forum but I wonder why there isn’t more of a connection between the two. It’s the official site after all.

But we’re like where the action is? It’s disjointed.

[calm bane]

We have to keep sorg and kit separate. Their powers combined are too much for reality

[stuck hatch]

People should @ me or something. Does that work on the forums?

[dawn heron]

Please @ me bro!

[tepid sail]

I’m confused. Are they using retrotink 4k? In that case why are they enabling vrr in mister when sending DV1?

[calm bane]

No idea. I should test it real quick

[tepid sail]

Keep you mister ini stock, only enable direct_video and set an exception for
[menu]

[calm bane]

Oh wait, they are using vrr in the ini

Not on the tink

On the tink the vrr is fine

[tepid sail]

Yeah they are not supposed to use VRR on mister

[calm bane]

Does that even work in dv1?

[tepid sail]

If they are using tink4k

[vague vessel]

they aren't

the original poster was going to a TV

I think someone just posted a tink shot to show the video info or something

also setting the vrr flags probably doesn't do anything on a tink, likely just ignores it

actually it doesn't matter. mister doesn't even send those with DV, I think at least freesync occupies the same hdmi infoframe anyways

[tepid sail]

Just wanted to rule out any potential causes

But maybe they can try other vrr setting

[vague vessel]

I really doubt it is a core bug, setting vrr with vsync_adjust>0 only sends a hdmi infoframe, it doesn't make the core do anything different

and that's all handled by main

[stuck hatch]

Guys, I’m trying to fix a bug that is causing a game to function incorrectly incorrectly.

[viscid beacon]

thats the exact spirit that makes mister great

[calm bane]

https://tenor.com/yHGu.gif

[slim valve]

In the name of preservation I demand you to stop

[terse rune]

It’s not preservation it’s preservatives

[bleak thicket]

What are the V numbers? The PCB number or the code on the EPROMs?

[stuck hatch]

The CPU used. M72 boards use the NEC V30 for the main cpu and z80 for sound. M92/M107 uses the NEC V33 for the main CPU, NEC V35 for sound. M90 used V35 for main cpu and Z80 for sound.

[stuck hatch]

I calculated the result of every possible 16bit / 8bit division on the hardware. 32MBytes of data pulled over the pretty slow picorom comms link.

[dusk fog]

You are a brave man. Thanks for tackling this.

[red moth]

what was 6 / 7 ?

[stuck hatch]

0

[slim valve]

So you are planing to do a 'hardware' fix?

[slim night]

Thanks for all your hard work on all these cores. It is greatly appreciated 🙏

[bleak thicket]

Hell yeah he is! He's going to make the MiSTer and MAME core work like the current PCBs (which is wrong), THEN he's going to see if he can fix it all around via a patch, like a DLC for the OG PCB!!!!

But even if he is unable to do it, it's not a big deal, the key is to match the core with the proper PCB behavior, even if that's goofy in the end. The point is accuracy, not fixing 30 year old problems.

[slim valve]

Ok, I thought it was already hw equivalent.
Makes sense then.

[bleak thicket]

yeah, right now the core doesn't work correctly for this behaivor, but it's different than the incorrect PCB behavior. So, first he'll sync them up, then hopefully find a real world solution for the PCB!

either way, it's like 10 seconds on one level, I've never even noticed before to be honest

the real question is, what other real-world issues are there b/c of this error in the PCB?

[lapis fable]

True say, but if Wicka the wacka did code as it should have been intended, what a leg-end! I'm sure there are other projects up those long sleeves of his too! Also a lot of work developing hardware takes time, which no one really mentions. I still have no idea what a pico does, but there are plenty of people that must love it 😄

[calm bane]

I told you not to bother me while I wicka the wacka

[lapis fable]

Holy Wacka Moly

[stuck hatch]

I’ll probably do a core release before I fix this water properly. I don’t want to rabbit hole too deeply (maybe already too late) on what is probably a pretty minor issue.

[bleak thicket]

Awesome, but I thought this was the only update (the water), what else the core release have in store?

[stuck hatch]

Cheats.

[lapis fable]

Do arcade devs hide cheat code in their work? like never die or infinite time. I'm intrigued.

[slim valve]

some, like the metal slugs

[lapis fable]

I remember the game genie codes for snes street fighter 2 fireballs in the air. That was sick. Made it like the arcade hacks.

[mossy pebble]

Can’t believe all the work just bc I mentioned the water… what a legend❤️

[stuck hatch]

Really appreciate you trusting me with this. I'll send you an invoice once the fixes are in.

[calm bane]

send me your wallet code. I can send you a bunch of hawk tuah

[surreal garden]

Is this only for @stuck hatch cores or all arcade games?

#unstable-nightlies message

I never use cheats, so don't if this is a new thing.

[stuck hatch]

Support needs to be added to cores, none support it right now but I am adding it to M92

[vague vessel]

my arcade board doesn't let me cheat why is this in the core!?!?!

[stuck hatch]

if your mister has more than a single rom and a single core on it then you are already cheating

[surreal garden]

Thanks

[calm bane]

Why must you always kinkshame me

[vague vessel]

I have one mister per game I play, sir

[terse rune]

Will we now consider adding infinite credits as cheating? 🤔

[opaque flax]

Are there many arcade games that we have, where cheats also exist, that could be updated to support this feature?

[vague vessel]

mame has cheats for almost everything out there. updating the cores is another matter entirely

[opaque flax]

I take it every single .mra would need to be manually updated. How long does it take to update one?

Where are all these Mame cheats going to live?

[tepid sail]

Not only mra, but cores as well

[stuck hatch]

The cheats will exist in the mra

[opaque flax]

Ah, so if new cheats are released they will need to be manually added to the .mra?

[vague vessel]

yeah

[stuck hatch]

The cheats need to be interpreted/ported, the mame data can't be used directly.

[opaque flax]

Ah OK, so a case by case basis, not really going to be something that can ever be automated like console cheats, or feasibly be added retrospectively to everything. I imagine there probably isn't an easy way monitor for new cheats being added to games that have cheats, and then have things be updated.

Very cool the feature exists though, so cheats can be added. I imagine for all new arcade cores it will be easy to support the existing cheats out of the box too

[bleak thicket]

So much for "cycle accuracy"

[stuck hatch]

If anyone wants to try cheats out.

Required the latest unstable main.

[deep ocean]

Works correctly at least on Blade Master and the two GunForce.

Thanks.

[ancient otter]

Yep, tried R-Type Leo, Blade Master, In the Hunt, Hook and GunForce. All cheats are working fine so far.

[calm bane]

ninja baseball bat man working great

[stuck hatch]

Thank you go taking a look, everyone.

[vague vessel]

you're all flagged as cheaters now

[stuck hatch]

gotem

[calm bane]

fuck. i knew it

[terse rune]

[ancient otter]

30 years of cheating. And i like it.

[uneven yacht]

The cheaters can just apply a real life cheat and pay wicker and zakk for their silence

[calm bane]

Pay to win

[warm stratus]

Stay away from game-challenge you cheaters!

[calm bane]

I’m just using the settings available to me!

[ancient otter]

Couldn't care less about game challenges. I want to enjoy the technical marvel of some old arcade classics, not doing "work". Some games are easy to complete without cheats. But there are tons with a ridiculous level of difficulty.

[warm stratus]

But game-challenge is fun...

We're currently seeing who is bad enough to save the president!

[calm bane]

I am not. I can barely clear 200k

[surreal garden]

I tried saving him. My second run was worse than my first 😂

[surreal garden]

I'v updated to lataest main and copied the MRA files to arcade. I cannot see a cheats option.

Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

[cedar sundial]

Yes the option 😂😂

[calm bane]

I bet you have two irem92 RBFs in the core folder (coming from someone who had 2 Irem92 RBFs in the core folder)

[surreal garden]

let me check

only 1 x M92

[calm bane]

ahh, but that’s not the right one. there is one in the MRA zip file (that was the other gotcha I fell into)

[surreal garden]

I've added these MRA files

#1089922738682089554 message

whoops, understood lol

Let me update the core

Lol, I can't believe I missed that lol

[calm bane]

I missed it too ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[surreal garden]

I filmed a whole tutorial going through it and it did not work.

Time to reshoot

I like doing the tutorial first so I know it works when others watch it.

But on this occasion I will try it first.

[deep ocean]

You cheater.

[surreal garden]

We are alive #TheJesusFishRocks

[surreal garden]

I will only use them for high score challanges.

[scenic topaz]

@deep ocean cheat function will get added as a standard?

i'm not saying - I - would ever cheat. i'm asking for a friend

get real. pfff

[deep ocean]

To the discretion of the developer as it needs an unstable Main at the moment and adding them on the MRAs + updating the cores.

[scenic topaz]

i mean in time. like in six months to a year or whatever. "eventually". who wouldn't want cheats? (not me)

so either way it's enough work then

it's not like you can flip a switch.

i don't know if you can tell or not but you probably don't want to hire me for coding work

[stuck hatch]

It's about as difficult as adding high scores

[tepid sail]

You want me to notify Jotego to add cheat functionality? Or you want to do it?

[stuck hatch]

JTFRAME has always had cheat functionality but no cores used it because Jose didn't feel there was enough interest.

He has a lot of cores to maintain, so he would need to build an system to translate mame cheats to his system.

[scenic topaz]

tell him i want cheats. he'll go right ahead.

[vague vessel]

did he keep adding the pico cpu to his newer stuff?

I'm not sure if the readme is just outdated

[stuck hatch]

I don't know if it needs to be hooked up specially or if it is automatic

[tepid sail]

Is your way of implementing cheats similar to his?

I remember he had documentation but it is gone

[terse rune]

All arcade games already support cheats, it's called being a rich kid!

[stuck hatch]

No, he uses a mini processor that updates memory each frame. This is similar to what MAME does. My implementation is similar to game genie and it's based off of @winged jacinth's code. It intercepts memory reads.

[terse rune]

Oh, that's awesome. I love that approach.

[calm bane]

you should make us print out a sheet of codes and have us enter them on boot

[terse rune]

I remember kids bringing MK move lists to the arcade lol

[uneven yacht]

We did this, printed the fatalities out

[calm bane]

Being in the chicago burbs, one of the arcades near my childhood home was a MK2 test arcade. So every few weeks, they’d update the build with new fatalities and moves, and then we would have to wait for folks to figure them out, just writing them down in a notebook. That got photocopied, and eventually someone playing would have a copy to show new folks who came in.

I miss arcades…

[terse rune]

Damn that's serioisly cool as hell

[calm bane]

contrary to popular belief, there was never a build where you could attack the baby after doing a babality. there may have been a bug that allowed you to unlock the character, but I never saw that, and I don't think the babies had "collision" anyway

[surreal garden]

Not all. Some have check point respawns like R-Type, Shadow Dancer and Toki.
No matter how many coins, you need skills.

Fighters is another one, where you can repeatedly get your but handed to you.

[surreal garden]

7EOC B200
was special moves mid air for SF2 SNES action replay.

7EOE B200
for player 2

I still remember the codes.

What's amazing about @stuck hatch's cheats, they work in real time, no reset required. I did not expect that.

[calm bane]

Cheat Engine? In my MiSTer?

[surreal garden]

I got kicked out of a news agents/convenient store for not buying a magazine, but writing the fatalities down 😂

[stuck hatch]

In fact, your can’t reset after setting cheats because the game will fail memory tests.

I added a “Skip Tests” cheat to gunforce, but haven’t added it to other cores.

[mystic chasm]

Oh so it is actually modifying the memory after it starts. I was wondering if your sys folder adjustments would do an auto-reset. Haven't tested yet, I should have...

[lapis fable]

I take it the cheats will eventually hit update all?

[stuck hatch]

Yes. When a new Main is released.

[unreal cipher]

So, aside from just plunking in more virtual quarters, how are the cheats for this different? 😅

[unreal cipher]

(I wasn't trolling, was serious, I really don't know how it's different or better)

[dusk fog]

Depends on the cheat. EG. not showing the memory tests etc is not possible by credit feeding.

[ancient otter]

Cheats enables a lot things that "plunking in more virtual quarters" couldn't do. Be invincible, unlimited time, makes game characters move faster/slower, level select etc.

[lapis fable]

Pcn did a vid of the irem cheats

[reef nova]

There are also some games that limit how many times you can continue so quarter feeding doesn't work

[cold knoll]

222222

[dusk fog]

That's too much. My brain cannot process such big numbers

[terse rune]

333333

damn u jus got one upped, son

[warm stratus]

∞∞∞∞∞∞

Boom.

[undone gull]

That'd be 111111'd up

333334, now you've been one up'd

[calm bane]

Cheats + tink4k direct video fixes are live for M92 games. Update all will grab em

ooo and water fixes!

[wise basalt]

Wait, so m92 cores not displaying on the RT4K in direct video weren't because of my setup?

[calm bane]

Maybe not?

[wise basalt]

Aww

[calm bane]

I'm curious if it works 🙂

[terse rune]

Update is live!

[ancient otter]

Just played through "In the Hunt". Had no issues at all. Great work!

[calm bane]

@wise basalt Does irem92 stuff work for you now?

[wise basalt]

Haven't tried it yet, was too busy playing with the x68000 core with mt32pi 😆

[calm bane]

lol fair enough

[analog harness]

currently the best version of Bonanza Bros on MiSTer

[terse rune]

Do we need pins here? Feels like this core is pretty self explanatory and everything works perfectly.

[stuck hatch]

We do not need them for the core zips, no. But keep the todo list

[terse rune]

Oh sorry, I meant fancy pins.

I do want to highlight you though, if you’re cool with it. Have a link to your patreon?

[stuck hatch]

what are fancy pins?

I have no patreon

[terse rune]

Core Developer

Patreon - [CLICK HERE]

(this core’s developer is @srg320; please consider joining his Patreon to help support development)

Something like that

It’s whatever you want. I’m here to serve your thread.

[stuck hatch]

No need for that I think

[copper belfry]

"Just tell Martin you love him"

[calm bane]

Anyone seeing crashing in Risky Challenge? I just loaded it up to test the profile I made in the tink and, on first load, I got the IREM logo but then a black scren (OSD still worked). Then on reset, I got the attract mode, but it black screened half way through.

[stuck hatch]

It doesn't work.

[calm bane]

ahh right, we talked about this in november. I should search more...

[lapis fable]

For the first time I played blade master and was fiddling with cheats etc. There is a stage walking across these wooden bridges and while walking across them I noticed, if you try to walk forward aligned to the top 3rd of the bridge you can't walk forward, but if you move downward more towards the middle and bottom 3rd it walks no problem. Is that how the original game is ? I'll get a pic of the stage and position I'm referring to to help in a while.

[bleak thicket]

Yeah, provide the section and I'll try it out on the real hardware...

[lapis fable]

Stage 2

It's probably by design on the real hardware. Mister and mame are the same. Before walking to the bridge you can't walk off the edge and that probably overlaps the bridge graphics.

[calm bane]

@stuck hatch Futzing around with rotating cores again on the tink. I dunno if this was something you already knew, but I realized that those jumps in Air Assault were related to the tink’s auto crop. If I disable that and crop manually, the image is completely stable. I believe it gets that info from the DV info frame, but the interworkings of that is above my pay grade.

[vague vessel]

going to blame that on the dv info frame delay

[stuck hatch]

That would mean that the dv info is changing frequently though, right?

[vague vessel]

yeah, finding the original video that's too fast for it to be the info frame changing

[warm stratus]

Whoa, didn't know you were working on Taito's Final Blow! @stuck hatch

Created a thread to discuss. https://discord.com/channels/647909397477195803/1358555491546169354

[blissful sand]

https://x.com/akio_1963/status/1914150439186235681

akio (@akio_1963) on X

【『R・TYPEⅡ』を無かった事にしたい件②】

紙と色鉛筆でドット絵を描くことから卒業し、ドット絵エディター『鉄人』で『最後の忍道』のキャラを描き始めると、今まで勘で描いていたドット絵が誰でも簡単に描けるモノになっていて、驚きました。

X · Apr 21, 2025, 2:53 AM

[calm bane]

#share-media message

[modern flax]

that r type link is incredible

i always thought that game looked like shit but i cant believe its the boards fault lol

wild

[stuck hatch]

I think it’s just a gamma adjustment.

[fallen tulip]

Do you always have project to improve M72 slowdown ?

[stuck hatch]

I do.

[fallen tulip]

when do you think you'll be able to make a M72 update ?

[calm bane]

https://tenor.com/bRj16.gif

[stuck hatch]

I don't know. It's going to be a research project for a while I think. I'm thinking of building a system where I can throw billions of combinations of instructions at it and measure the results. And from that data infer a model of how the CPU behaves.

[uneven yacht]

Imagine the praise you’ll receive from AI

[analog harness]

https://bsky.app/profile/kino503.bsky.social/post/3lbmdp43u6k2f

K.N.O. Industries (@kino503.bsky.social)

Who Did What At Irem: A (Semi-)Comprehensive Thread

Today, we're going to be doing a deepdive on one of the premier arcade giants of the 1980's. We're all familiar with enduring classics such as R-Type and In The Hunt, but who were the talented men & women that created them?

Bluesky · Nov 23, 2024, 11:00 AM

a little something i thought y’all might enjoy

[reef nova]

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with this lately. I noticed the normal cores have a turbo settings now. Does that mean turbo versions are phased out?

[warm stratus]

Yes

No need to use the old turbo specific versions.

[stuck hatch]

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/1e87c4e268a709317a7bbb197406a630491cd43f

neat

[calm bane]

look at this fukkin celebrity

[copper belfry]

Martin is basically a modern Bono

[ancient otter]

@stuck hatch quick question about the big space ship in R-Type level 3: It uses a very slow 1-pixel multi-directional scrolling as it seems. And it moves not smooth. Is this a limitation on how the game was designed (tons of sprites put together to a big object) ? I'd imagine it could move smoother with a faster scrolling speed. But could it be also smooth in this very slow scrolling speed?

[stuck hatch]

Large objects like this are often done with tile maps instead of sprites and just use sprites for more dynamic parts like turrets.

Slow scrolling of anything generally looks unsmooth because you are limited to moving a pixel at a time and pixels are pretty large. So there isn’t really any option for making it smoother.

The tilemaps on the F2 system do support sub pixel accuracy for its scrolling layers. You could potentially emulate those games at a higher resolution and get smoother scrolling.

[ancient otter]

You mean objects scrolling? Because 1-pixel general game scrolling can be very smooth, like Apidya on the Amiga. It has a 1-pixel slow horizontal scrolling in constant 25fps.

[stuck hatch]

If you are moving an integer number of pixels each frame it looks smooth. If you are moving at less than a pixel per frame (or some non-integer value) if will start to look jerky because some frames you'll move and some frames you won't.

[ancient otter]

So it was intended that the big space ship moves in non-integer values?

Thanks for the explanations btw.

[stuck hatch]

That's what the game does. I assume that had to make a compromise between visuals and gameplay.

[ancient otter]

Ah, ok. So, only a higher resolution wouldn't have lead to such a compromise then. Good to know.

[calm bane]

Waka, I am going through games for a project for the morph and I'm noticing that the M92 games are reporting a resolution of 319x240. I assume that it's intended, but i can file it if not

I point it out because zakk's italian arcade site says they are 320

[stuck hatch]

It should be 320, there is a bug there

[calm bane]

kk, I'll file it

[vague vessel]

just submit a bunch of scaler profiles for it

[calm bane]

https://tenor.com/54a6.gif

[mystic chasm]

@vague vessel why did you make the arcade Italia site and can I interview you about it live k thx??

[calm bane]

🤌🤌🤌

[tough turret]

"Good night IREM"

[hoary oriole]

Fishing for a few tips... One of my many RGB modded TV's (one in particular though) is quite fussy about handling the Irem72 cores non-standard (non 60 hertz) frequency... I've dabbled around (having multiple sets hooked up so I can see the menu without scrolling non stop) and I've cycled thru the frequency settings it offers (57 being the slowest rolling screen lol)

I've also been attempting to force the min & max refresh rates via code in my .ini file (I might not have it right though) to no attempt

maybe someone might have an idea or even can clarify the right blurp to add to my INI to maybe get it to jive

I have in the past been able to fix another core (I cant remember which one off hand) by switching the frequency in the menu to 60, so I know it's just this TV not liking non standard frequency

appreciate any suggestions...

[stuck hatch]

The min and max frequencies in the ini only control hdmi output, the analog output from the core is not impact. The only options you have for controlling the frequency is the options the core provides. You could enable the VGA scaler for these cores and manually set a video mode that works.

[hoary oriole]

Does this look right? or am I goofing up the code?

"[Irem72]
vga_scaler=1
refresh_min=59
refresh_max=60"

[stuck hatch]

You will need to set a video_mode that works for your display also

[hoary oriole]

Hmm... Not sure it's reading my blurp correctly. "[Irem72]" is the correct tag to use?

[calm bane]

no, you need to use the set name for the games iirc. there may be an all-encompassing tag for the games in the core (like arcade-vertical) but I don't know for sure

[vague vessel]

Try "[M72]"

[hoary oriole]

Good timing... I just caught that by looking in the "about" section of the core. Tryin now

Sweeeeeeet!!! Finally got it fixed. No more scrolling for that core!.. I appreciate all you guys suggestions - EDIT: Ended up reverting using that option since VGA scaler did not seem to play well with my CRT in question. Got pretty flickery and seemed to add a touch of lag. Just going to use some of my other sets going forward (as I have been), if I ever find any games that just don't play well with anything less than 60 hertz. It's just this RGB modded set (my 32V16 Trinitron). My other 4 or 5 play fine with it... wdyd

[brazen light]

Based on memory and a few PCB playthrough videos I think the pcm volume on dragon breed is low (also way too loud with the debug audio filtering off) Thoughts?

[mystic chasm]

How did the PCB playthrough videos do their recording? That's not really a good reference to compare to.

[brazen light]

I understand that. Microphones in rooms recording small 5" paper cone speakers isn't a reference but you can extrapolate from that basic volume levels and my memory of playing this daily and knowing that the pcm orch hit style explosion sounds cutting through the mix is telling me it's low, that's all.

[stuck hatch]

Unlike, M92 and F2, I've never had an M72 board to get precise measurements from. However someone did capture Dragon Breed audio for me and I used that to tune the relative levels and filtering.

I need to see if I can find a cheap M82 or similar board.

[bleak thicket]

Do you want me to mail you a Dragon Breed? I can also include the M72 multi.

[bleak thicket]

I just mailed our good man a Dragon Breed PCB, so he can analyze it and get the audio corrected. Good ear, thanks for reporting!

[brazen light]

Great, hoping it'll just be a small change

[stuck hatch]

I have other M72 work I want to do beyond audio so I’ll be writing a few different tests to try things out

I think, eventually, most of the core will get rewritten.

[scenic topaz]

not if i rewrite you first

[arctic geyser]

A lot of graphic glitches here with Irem M62 Kungfu Master, anyone has same expereince?

[cosmic warren]

it's working correctly here

maybe try to rebuild your _Arcade folder with update_all

[calm bane]

yeah, looks ok here too

[acoustic valve]

Mmm that's a good reminder for me to nuke my _Arcade folder. Been quite some time.

[warm stratus]

RIP _Arcade folder.

[arctic geyser]

update_all doing it. Thank You

[cosmic warren]

easy fix

[arctic geyser]

yes , i'm using Mister Pi, unfortunately games like Toaplan's Outzone don't have audio and that's why I didn't update

[fossil bridge]

@stuck hatch - Is it a known thing that adjusting the CPU speed mid-game causes a lot of grief? I can reliably kill In The Hunt if I forget to enable turbo and do it after starting a game.

[warm stratus]

Why not just enable turbo and save the setting in the OSD then?

[stuck hatch]

I can understand people wanting to enable/disable depending on the part of the game they are playing. It should be able to switch between them reliably, it was something I tested when I built it. Something I'll look at next time I take a look at the core.

[fossil bridge]

You overlooked the part where I said I forgot, I guess?

[warm stratus]

No, I saw it. Just saying that saving the setting would mean you don't need to worry about forgetting about it! Just trying to help!

[fossil bridge]

Your solution would probably work, thanky ou for the suggestion. I'm just reporting what might be a bug.

[bright ocean]

@stuck hatch is ken-go in the pipeline at all? i think it's the only game not yet playable on the irem M cores iirc?

[stuck hatch]

Yes, eventually. I want to do a love of M72 rework work

[bright ocean]

that's great to hear! good luck with the rework 🙂

[balmy pawn]

Thank you for all the hard work Wickerwaka!!!

[stuck hatch]

I got a partially working Hammerin' Harry M84 board. Seems fixable. Layout is kind of a pain to work with since most of the roms are on the main board underneath another board.

[calm bane]

I don’t know enough about IREM but was that typical? Having a game run across different board types?

[stuck hatch]

The M72 has a bunch of different hardware variations, with games often ported to two of them. But it seems that it was a cost saving thing for IREM rather than something that operators benefitted from.

M92 was much more standardized, so you could conceivably buy a game board and attach it to an existing main board. Not sure how common that was.

In this case the graphics roms are all solder to the board, it's just audio and CPU roms that are socketed.

Bought some small ribbon cables so hopefully I can work with the boards separated a little.

[uneven yacht]

Yeah some are monstrosities for compactness. Ikari is a 3 board sandwich

You’d have to make or buy a bunch of cables to work on it if it’s broken like wicker

Not mine, just stolen image, mine stays in its bubble wrap because Ikari sucks 😜

So how about that Chase H.Q. core?

[stuck hatch]

Don't want to release it until high scores are done

[dusk fog]

That sounds like very close to the finishing line

[stuck hatch]

Hammering harry works now. It just needed a loving home.

It's failing some ram tests and I think it sometimes fails in ways that causes issues with the tilemaps.

[uneven yacht]

Adrian would be proud of you

[vague vessel]

now drill a hole for a video output mod

[calm bane]

run memtest, obviously

[uneven yacht]

Make sure it’s a march test

[silk drum]

This is very exciting!!!

!!!!!

Chase hq??!!?

Hammerin Harry??!!

These are big ones

!!!!!

[vague vessel]

don't we already have hammerin harry

?

[silk drum]

https://tenor.com/view/bobawooyo-dog-confused-dog-huh-dog-meme-shocked-dog-gif-16491396616893958961

[calm bane]

we have several flavors of it even

[silk drum]

Oh I see he was fixing a board

Wait I think i remember

A good while ago

Jotego was it?

[silk drum]

https://tenor.com/view/goodfellas-laugh-liotta-gif-13856770980338154376

Chase hq tho???

That's a big one

[calm bane]

no one gets anything until this off by one crop is fixed

and don't even get me started about the auto crop in air assault

[silk drum]

Look at this cool poster 😎

[calm bane]

thought said "Wak-a" and was like "oh, well now he has to do it"

[uneven yacht]

It’s not quite a Lethal Weapon poster rip-off but they tried their best

[heavy veldt]

I actually got the WR for Hammerin' Harry on the core just a month ago, fun game, quite easy for an IREM game once you know where the gotchas are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nATQJNRprI

[uneven yacht]

Awesome job! I like the moral at the end. Wickerwaka has never seen the ending or he wouldn’t have fixed that board

[stuck hatch]

Neat!

I follow you on the youtubes, but I don't know why!

[heavy veldt]

Haha, I have done speedruns on quite a few of your cores, R-Type Leo, R-Type II, X-Multiply, Mystic Riders, Gunforce, fun stuff

[stuck hatch]

Didn't realize my little 8" PVM had a vertical hold adjustment at the back

[silk drum]

That was a cool run 😎

[stuck hatch]

Noice. Ali express ribbon cable worked.

Had to do a little bit of surgery to remove a tab

[bleak thicket]

Awesome. That doesn't help with the Dragon Breed at all?

[stuck hatch]

No, the dragon breed issue is that the IC that plays samples is also the IC that handles the copy protection for the main cpu and it won’t play sound until it has gone through the copy protection exchange.

This hammering harry board I just physically couldn’t access the roms.

I need to 3d print some kind of stand.

[slim night]

Those dual and triple layer PCBs are a pain to work on, massive things 😂

[stuck hatch]

I should probably put it on its side

[fossil bridge]

Nice!

Is that a 1200xl down there? No, 800xl. Also nice. 🙂

[vague vessel]

clean your desk, jeez

[stuck hatch]

It's really clean right now!

[opaque flax]

Has someone let Ataris sneak into their house? Kitrinx is going to be livid.

[ancient otter]

I couldn't see shit on this hobbit size monitor.

[stuck hatch]

Being small is the reason it is there.

[ancient otter]

I know. But i would have to put my nose on the glass, probably.