doxDev

After looong break i'm looking again at Wheels & Fire from TCH. Game is running on custom, blitter based hardware (sprites + framebuffer layer with linescroll feature, and sprite-to-framebuffer rendering mode ). I have made a lot of changes/improvements lately, but there's still a lot to do: - proper image scaling - quite weird (close to hardware, i think) way to draw scaled images. for more details pls scroll down to the end of this post. - framebuffer (various problems) - sound - not emulated yet (2nd 68k + samples) Here's few pics from the game: W&F video hardware supports image scaling. For each image(sprite) to draw, there's a couple of parameters sent to the blitter: - screen cooridnates of image rectangle ( top left ad bottom right corners) _after_ scale transform applied, - source image cooridnates (only the upper-left corner, no info about the source dimensions), - two sets (for x and y scale) of magic parameters : da...

I was wrong - there's no "type 3" sprite. It's just a background layer made of 16 different 32x32 pixel tiles. Tilemap (128x8 cells (4096x256 pixels), animated (flashing stars and texts) ) is hardcoded inside one of eproms used as a lookup. Here's a screenshot from game - shows only the most boring part of bg - stars: Game is not playable (yet) so i can't see other levels / backgrounds. These images are ripped directly from the tilemap (wrong colros, as usually ;) : There's also an interesting hw feature - background can be stretched horizontally (in fact - vertically (div scnaline clock by 2), because screen is rotated by 90 deg). It's probably used (only?) to display the planet surface:

The good news - i have got scans of vega schematics (big thanks to Kold666) The bad news - hardware is quite old (early 80s .. possibly 1982 or 1983) (read: unique and complicated) and schems are buggy as hell. The biggest problem so far - no reference images/screenshots/flyer pics. Nothing. I have no f***ing idea about the real game. So any info will be greatly appreciated. Schems are as mysterious as the pcb pics i got - no info about the major ICs. But looking at pinout i have identifed all of them as: - i8035 (mcu) - AY 3-8910 (sound) - PPI 8255 (i/o) - INS 8154 (i/o + ram) - DP 8350 (crt controller) AY is used only for generating sfx. Afaik there's no music. Sound chip is connected in unusual way - AY data lines are tied to address bus and AY address/data write selection is connected to mcu R/W line. So, writing any data to address NNN within range mapped to AY - results in setting AY address register to value NNN. Reading from address MMM store MMM ...

Tym razem na warsztacie VEGA (włoskiej produkcji - Olympia). Początki są obiecujące - na razie działa tylko Text Layer (prawdopodobnie na kontrolerze crt DP8350). Całością steruje CPU Intel 8035. Reszta hardware nieznana (na jednym z niewielu dostępnych zdjęć PCB większość istotnych IC ma starte oznaczenia ): Kilka wstępnych screenów:

Pachifever jest już grywalne. Kilka informacji o hardware: - CPU - TMS9995 - VIDEO - TMS9928 - AUDIO - SN76496 + MSM5205 (nie mam potwierdzenia co do powyższych informacji (oprócz MSM) więc to tylko przypuszczenia). Gra korzysta z tradycyjnego (mechanicznego) kontrolera Pachinko i trochę kłopotu sprawiło podpięcie sterowania. Brakujący ROM zawiera - prawdopodobnie - część efektów dźwiękowych oraz dane potrzebne do ich odtwarzania. Skutkiem tego jest - niestety - brak sfx :( Kilka nowych screenów:

Postępy w emulacji Pachinko Fever (a może Pachifever lub Fever 777 ?). Ciekawy hardware na bazie TMS9900 (jeden z pierwszych 16 bitowych CPU). Niestety, to prawdopodobnie zły dump - dwa obrazy ROM-ów są identyczne :(

Tym razem dump z zasobów Guru - koreańska przeróbka Play Girls (kopia Taito L-System hardware zrobiona na trzech układach TPC1020 (FPGA Texasa)) . Zmieniono tytuł i wsadzono nową grafikę tła - soft anime (dlaczego nie tentacles z 'La Blue Girl' ?). Grywalność bez zmian ...