MAME/0.21 to 0.26

From GamerWiki

A warts and all look through the history of MAME as described by the MAME Dev team themselves through their releases.

Contents:	0.21 (P;S), 0.21.5 (S), 0.22 (P;S), 0.23 (P;S), 0.23.1, 0.24 (P;S), 0.25 (P;S), 0.26 (S), 0.26a, Other

MAME 0.21

Released: 1997-05-12

Program

• I'd like to say I'v finished, but Nicola is too fast as always! ;) So thanks to Nicola we have GALAGA!! And very special thanks to Martin Scragg that provided us crucial information on custon I/O chips.

• Thanks to Dark Schneider (DS wanted to be anonymous, so I'll call him this way) that provided 6809 support and the first driver working on this CPU: Super Pac Man. The driver is based on the super-detailed KEG file of Replay emulator by Kevin Brisley (kevin@isgtec.com). Thanks to everyone.

• Ville Laitinen provided a driver for Kangaroo, based on the Arabian hardware. I'v also adjusted the number of frames per second to 60 to the two drivers. Sync with sound should be better, though.

• Thank to Virtu-Al (Alan J McCormick (gonzothegreat@JUNO.COM)) Amidar and Turtles now have 100% correct colors.

• Arabian has correct colors now.

• Fixed a bug in all games with starbackground: using a frameskip > 0 introduced slowdowns. Now the speed remains unchanged.

• Fixed tempo speed in 1942. It was playing at half speed. Should be correct now. Also fixed a bug in noise volume of PSG. Noise was playing at half volume.

• Added support for Donkey Kong japanese version

• Minor adjustment to Space Invaders color strips

• Mad Planets doesn't crash anymore with the new samples (shorter!)

• Added colors to Warp Warp. Thanks again Chris.

• Fixed Dipswitch in Elevator Action. YOU'LL HAVE TO DELETE THE PREVIOUS DSW FILE IN "ELEVATOB" DIRECTORY IN ORDER TO GET IT RUN CORRECTLY.

Sources

• Added M6809 CPU support. Changes in CPUIntrf.c and Driver.h to accomodate the new CPU.

• Nicola introduced changes to the Z80 emulator code that intercept some sorts of tight loop used during an interrupt waitstate. Normal games should not be affected, while Galaga and 1942 are now very fast!!

• Added MasterVolume in MSDOS.C, and changed MAME.C to support this feature. You can change the volume thru various volume percentage [100,75,50,25,0] pressing F9.

• Sound is freezed now during GFXView, Pause and DipSwitch settings.[Ahhh! ;)]

• I'v added redefinable keys in MAME. A new structure cointains which input ports and bits have a certain meaning. The KEY settings will be saved in a .KEY file, in the game directory.

• Changes in COMMON.H for the sample structure. Now it has infos on replayrate, resolution and volume of the sample to be played.

BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD THE NEW SET OF SAMPLES, OR THE "MAMESAM" CONVERTER OR YOU WILL GET NO SOUND FOR SAMPLE BASED GAMES!!

MAME 0.21.5

Released: 1997-05-16

• Nicola fixed a bug in Memory addressing that caused Galaga to trash under DOS. Also, fixed colors in Elevator Action (100% correct colors) and Jungle King (I have some screenshots and colors doesn't match. BTW these are much better than previous). Finally Jungle King doesn't need to select the graphic bank, but still have some glitches on sprites.

• Fixed a bug in sound init of phoenix/pleiads that caused the game to crash under dos.

• Fixed a bug in keys redefinition routine: ALT, SHIFT, and CONTROL are now selectable.

• Fixed 224x288 noscanline video mode. It's centered again now.

Sources

• Changed MSDOS.C to support 240x272 (video mode provided by V.Verrando)

• Changes in COMMON.C to copyscrollbitmap()

MAME 0.22

Released: 1997-05-25

[ Sorry to be late, but this is my birthday MAME release and I wanted it to be as good as possible. Enjoy, and send a postcard if you like ;) NdMix ]

Program

- Nicola added COMMANDO!! Another of my favourite games back to life ;) High score supported as well. Original Sound is done by YM2203 (FM synthesis) while now is done by 8910 (no FM). So music is not present.

• And here it is: thanks to Roberto Ventura's superdetailed documentation I'v added Ghost 'n Goblin support. I lost one week because of a bug in the new 6809 emulator, so I switch back to the previous one. Big thanks to Nicola that fixed some stupid bugs in color palette generation. ;) We need a skilled player. READ THE README.TXT FILE!

• Another one added: based on GnG hardware I'v added Diamond Run support. Don't know if the banks mode switch is right, it's too slow for me to go further the first level!

• Added Vulgus support. Colors are wrong unless I find the color proms. High score save supported. I played around with Dip Switches: they are almost right, though, but there should be also a sound toggle while in attract mode.

• Rick Wirch (wirch@execpc.com) proposed a better optimization to Cpu_readmem and Cpu_writemem. Speed results are good under DOS and Windows.

• Brad Oliver provided me a lot of suggestions to improve portability and fixed a lot of bugs.

• Paul Berberich fixed some colors of Congo Bongo. They are not right but a lot better of the previous. Screenshots could be useful.

• I have fixed colors in Centipede. Thanks to Ivan Mackintosh for sending me the info.

• Nicola added cars in radar update of RallyX and improved color palette emulation in bombjack which has now perfect colors.

• Fixed credit bugs in Elevator Action and Turtles. REMEMBER TO DELETE THE PREVIOUS .DSW FILES OTHERWISE THE GAMES WON'T WORK PROPERLY!

• Added preliminary sound support to Elevator Action and Jungle King. Tarzan yell scream sample missing.

• Time pilot has now 100% correct colors (thanks Virtu-Al!).

• Some fixes to sprite priority in Frogger.

• Added high score support to Amidar, Frogger.

• Added Phoenix Amstar (clone) support, Pac Man Plus (clone) and fixed all Invader's clones bugs. Also fixed charset of all Invader's clones.

Sources

• Changed CPUIntrf regarding readmem/writemem optimizations

• Minor fixes to some drivers

• Bernd Wiebelt provided modifications to MSDOS.C for Vesa 2.0 linear and banked extensions. Also inline assembly double pixeling provided a faster approach on slower videocards. Check the readme.txt file for new video options.

MAME 0.23

Released: 1997-06-02

Program

• "And there was MUSIC!". Thanks to Ishmair's FM engine, music is supported in Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Diamonds. Since the synthesis is based on FM generation via OPL, you must have a SoundBlaster, Adlib, or compatible to get the music. However I heavily dislike this approach and I'm looking for documentation on FM generation. If anyone want to join to the party forward me a mail!

• I'v also fixed GALAGA hiscore saving, which is now flawlessy supported! ;)

• I'v added Kung Fu Master driver to MAME. Credits fly to Ishmair for the hardware information and to Nicola for fixing my sprite bugs.

• Steven Hugg (hugg@pobox.com) provided a Williams games driver. Stargate, Robotron and Joust are currently supported and playable. However Robotron and Joust have some glitches yet.

• Tormod Tjaberg (tormod@sn.no) provided several modifications to Invaders Deluxe driver which has now Hi-score Name saving feature (the only one Space Invaders Emulator doing so at the moment!). All Invaders have now Tilt too. Keys and Dip Switch adjusted. REMEMBER TO DELETE PREVIOUS .DSW and .KEY FILES.

• John Butler and Ed. Muller provided a driver for QIX! High Score saving supported too.

• Thankx to Dock Cutlip (dockc@cyberplanet.net) Pacman Plus has now 100% arcade correct colors.

• While talking of colors, Ghosts 'n Goblins has 100% correct colors too! Thanks to Gabrio Secco that provided us the complete colors LOG file ;)

• I'v fixed Seicross which is now playable and has music too. REMEMBER TO DELETE PREVIOUS .DSW FILE, AND SET "DEMO & DEBUG MODE" TO OFF.

• Also fixed Nibbler colors: I should say 100% correct colors, but I remember the Nibbler hairs were Green versus Purple. Maybe I played a bootleg version.

• Added Phoenix TPN clone ("phoenix3"). I'v also added hiscore support to all Phoenix and Pleiads as well.

• Fixed the "ape" bug in Kangaroo.

• Full rotation allowed in Mad Planets (Thanks to Andrew Scott).

• Some fix to Popeye and Burgertime sound pitch.

Sources

• Modifications were done to M6809 emulator to support FIRQ.

• Changes were done to MSDOS.C to fix OSD_READ_KEY for people having problems with keyboard.

• Dip Switches and Key Settings are now selectable thru a menu system. F8 key is no longer supported.

MAME 0.23.1

Released: 1997-06-03. Version 0.23.1 did not have any documented changes.

MAME 0.24

Released: 1997-06-13

Program

• Nicola added support for Jr. Pacman. Decryption method provided by David Caldwell (david@indigita.com). Colors should be 100% right too. Hiscore saving not supported yet. Nicola also thanks Lee Taylor for help.

• I'v found the decryption scheme for garbled chars of Lost Tomb which is now playable. Colors are still wrong.

• Also, I'v finally fixed my problems with ADPCM decoding, so now Kung Fu Master doesn't need separate samples anymore (I didn't distribuite them because of copyright on sounds). The samples are now calculated during bootstrap of the game.

• Again Nicola added Turpin (Another version of Turtles) support. Also colors are 100% correct the two games now.

• Fabrice Frences added support for Qbert Qubes. Only hitch with the driver: you have to reset (F3) the game at first time when the empty supreme noser table appears, then the table will be correctly filled. Alternatively, you can insert a coin before this empty table appears... Hiscore save not supported yet.

• New option in the setup menu: "CREDITS". It displays a list of the people who contributed to the current driver. I have surely left out many people, and apologize in advance for that. If you contributed to a driver and your name doesn't appear in the list, please let me know.

• Since many people asked for this and Bernd Wiebelt was so kind to do me this gift for my birthday, MAME has now -rotate option. You'll have to turn your monitor (or your head (!) ;)

• Nicola fixed definetively Kung Fu Master driver which has now 100% perfect colors and sprite positioning. Thanks to Paul Swan for color scheme. Original version (copyright Irem) is now supposed to be in 'kungfum' directory, while the bootleg (O.K.) is supposed to be in 'kungfub'. Test mode doesn't work for bootleg version (as is right to be).

Hi Score Support in each version as well.

• In Seicross now shots are enabled. REMEMBER TO DELETE PREVIOUS .DSW FILE, AND SET "DEMO & DEBUG MODE" TO OFF, AND "SW7B" to 1. Setting SW7B to 0 will cause to play the game without FIRE facility.

• Marc LaFontaine provided drivers for Robotron, Splat, Defender, Joust, Stargate, Bubbles, Blaster and Sinistar. Bubbles doesn't start, and Sinistar do weird things at startup. The other games work very well, though. For this version I provide a set of fonts that can be used to avoid jerkiness in williams games. If you use zipped roms remember to include them in the ZIP files.

• Added SpaceZap support. It is based mainly on WOW driver. Mike Coates provided a more stable driver too.

Sources

• Bernd Wiebelt provided new Vesamodes: 320x240 and 512x384. You can select a mode either by -X (e.g. -640) or -XxY (e.g. -640x480). Also fixed a bug that caused -vesaskip 0 not to run properly. Also added -rotate option. Also, any vesa mode in combination with -noscanlines option can be used to achieve correct aspect ratio on most monitors. This method is of course slower, and can work flawlessy on P166+ class.

• Modifications to support Driver Description and Credits.

• Nicola added a new mode in drawgfx: TRANSPARENCY_THROUGH. When background has a higher priority of sprites, it's a lot faster using this option than draw sprites and then apply a bitmap with TRASPARENT_COLOR.

• Fabrice Frances submitted a new faster I86 emulator. The entire I86 directory is changed, and most of Gottlieb games are now faster.

• Mike Coates provided a modification to COMMON.C to support multi bank characters. It uses bits 8-15 of the charset array (short int - so hopefully at least 16 bits on all implementations) to signify bank number.

• Changed the PAUSE key to Scrl-Lock key. This permits to redefinite the P key for playing.

• TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS: Please do not make use of C++ // comments in your sources. I loose a lot of time every release to adjust them. Then use official source release as a base for your next updates. Use a comment style like in Williams.c sources (this is actually my comment style and almost clear to read). Thanks.

MAME 0.25

Released: 1997-06-28

Program

• We have added Starforce! Another one that rocks!! Sound is not supported yet.

• Finally I've added Tutankham. (Hi Moose!! ;) Moose provided me a good bunch of information and I lost much time on a stupid bug in bank selection. Thanks to David Dahl (techt@juno.com) that provided me a driver too, and I found the light!! Also thanks to Rob Jarrett for the exaustive memory map (I've included it in sources, it's better than mine).

• I've decrypted the garbled graphics of AntEater and Rescue which are now fully playable. And Fabio Buffoni improved the decode routines with thrilling code. Colors are wrong, unless someone provides me a good set of screenshots to study. Hunchback doesn't work yet.

• Nicola added a driver for Mysterious Stone.

• Sal and John Bugliarisi provided us technical information about the game Naughty Boy. (Remember that code area is 64k long and not 32k). We have implemented a driver and for this game which is now supported.

• I took the time to add some high score saving. So, now Junior Pacman, Naughty Boy, Tutankham, Kangaroo, have high score saving support. (So Dave will stop bothering me about that ;) heheh!!! Joking ;)

• Nicola fixed Commando driver, so now intermissions have the correct tiles positioned.

• Added JrPacman speed cheat. It works in the same way of Pacman. (thanks to Hugo Pi for let me notice this).

• Chris Hardy added support for Space Firebird. Thanks to Chris and to all Sage Staff.

• Nicola did some fixes to Taito Games (Jungle King and Elevator Action) about background placement and coins per credit dipswitch. Plus vertical scroll support in Jungle King (used in ground shake), correct sprite priority, and no more rubbish is present during change of stage.

Finally, he also added preliminar support for WildWestern and FrontLine, which are not yet playable.

DELETE ELEVATOB\ELEVATOB.DSW, JUNGLEK\JUNGLEK.DSW, JHUNT\JHUNT.DSW, OTHERWISE THE GAME WILL NOT WORK CORRECTLY.

• Eric Anschuetz proposed me to implement a different button layout for joysticks. I replyed with a configurable joystick setup (like the keyboard one). So Eric finished the work providing us a useful joystick setup menu. Thanks Eric and Robert! ;)

• Refixed the galaga hiscore bug (it happened when syncing my sources with Nicola's ones)

• Maurizio Zanello provided a better interface between MAME and frontends. And now you can select frameskip rate even while playing, without have to exit. Volume can be controlled with keypad PLUS and MINUS keys.

• Robert Anschuetz provided me info about how to enable a shot sample with moonquasar, mooncresta, galaxian and clones.

• Valerio Verrando fixed the Williams driver to support joystick in Blaster, Defender, Joust, Robotron, Splat, Stargate. Also fixed the Space Invaders driver to include high score saving and 100% arcade-perfect colors for Lunar Rescue; since some bootleg machines did not use this colorful overlay, Destination Earth retains the Space Invaders color scheme.

• Bernd has cleaned up VESA command line options.

No longer supported:

'-vesascan' --> use '-vesa' or (faster, if it works) '-vesa2l'

'-vesaskip N' --> use '-640x480 -skiplines N' instead

'-rotate' --> use '-rol' or '-ror' instead

New:

'-ror'

'-rol' Rotate the display (anti)clockwise. Since this uses the standard VESA scanline mode, you'll get *vertical* scanlines on rotated games (authentic?).

'-nodouble'

prevents pixel doubling, if you like miniaturised arcade emulation. It's also faster than the standard pixel-doubling VESA modes.

'-skiplines N'

does what '-vesaskip N' used to do, except it does not select 640x480 VESA mode.

• Minor modifications to Arabian palette. Ville Laitinen also provided some modifications to Kangaroo driver.

• Pause key back to 'P'. Sorry, you cannot use it for your redefinitions, but, hey, you have 101 keys left!!! ;)

• Found the meaning of SW1 in Moon Cresta (Thanks to Mikiya Yadohisa)

• Added Crazy Kong bootleg version by Jeutel and Ms Pac Man Attacks clones

Sources

• Added an alternate 224x288 video mode (on my Matrox this produce correct aspect ratio with this tweaked mode). To select it simply add -224 or -224x288 parameter.

• Nigel T. Barber (Nigel.Barber@sgcs.co.uk) added mouse support. We need some feedback, because each mouse device has its own sensitivity. Enable mouse support with -mouse parameter.

• Time to use proper MAME fonts. I draw a good looking complete set of chars to be used for messages and menu system in MAME. Nicola changed the entire set of drivers and implemented a user interface sublevel (file is USRINTRF.C).

• Modifications done by Eric Anschuetz to add joystick reconfiguration menu.

• I'v changed the system configuration of each game. Now a game saves all vital informations (DSW, KEY, and JOY settings) in a unique file with .CFG extension. A backward compatibility is provided, so the first time MAME read previous settings and saves them in the .CFG file at exit/reset.

• Bernd changed the VESA code to provide '-rol' and '-ror' replacing '-rotate'. Rotation modes are now supported in all VESA resolutions. The '-nodouble' option prevents pixel doubling in VESA modes, resulting in more speed and a smaller display.

MAME 0.26

Released: 1997-07-14

• After so much time of hard work the policy of "back to quality" is starting to bring back the efforts. I'm proud to announce I'v beated Mr Do's Castle.

Done one, done all. So now we have also Mr Do! RunRun and Mr Do's Wild Ride.

Thanks to the invaluable help of Nicola, they are also arcade colors perfect, very fast (!) and each game has audio support and hiscore saving! :D

• Me and Aaron Giles (agiles@mail1.sirius.com) have added support for MAPPY!!

One of the most requested games. It was a pleasure working with Aaron! He also added sound support and very close arcade colors (I think to have found the color_prom... if it's the correct prom it will be added in the next release). Hiscore saving is supported as well.

• Thanks to the outstanding combined efforts of Brad Oliver, Bernd Wiebelt and Allard Van Der Bas, MAME entered in vectorial emulation world! (YEAH!!!)

All in a time, we have support for Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Black Widow, Battlezone, Gravitar, Lunar Lander, Red Baron, Spaceduel, Tempest!!!

• Again Aaron Giles added sound support to Super Pac Man!

• Patrick Lawrence (pjl@ns.net) did a great work adding trackball support to the main core system. Trackball is enable with -trak parameter. Trackball support has been added to Centipede and Reactor. Also, Patrick provided a driver for Crystal Castles. Great Work! ;)

• And three... Aaron added support for Dig Dug!! Hey man, you'r at a step to become a God of Arcade emulation ;)

• Mike Coates has joined to the "back to quality" team. He added support for SeaWolf ][, and improved Space Zap and Gorf (which is still unplayable).

Also Robby Roto is now fully playable (you'll need a bug free rom set).

• Ray Giarratana (ray@loop.com) added support for Missile Command. I didn't include modifications for trackball for now. The code needs to be cleaned a bit, but the game is still playable.

• Enrique Sanchez provided me documentation for Yie Air Kung Fu. Also, Philip Stroffolino (phil@maya.com) sent me a more complete driver than mine for this game which is now playable.

• Eric Anschuetz fixed a bug in joystick redefinition menu. Also added the selection support for Any Button ("A" key), and None ("N" key).

• Fabrice Frances added a driver for 3 Stooges.

• Andrew Scott provided a better sound support for Phoenix. Melody is still missing, because Shaun's board doesn't have it.

• Nicola fixed Jump Bug driver which is now perfect. Colors are still wrong without proms.

• Morten Eriksen (Morten.Eriksen@due.unit.no) added hiscore saving to Ghosts 'n Goblins.

• Valerio Verrando provided a new tweaked mode 256x232 for Crystal Castles.

He also provided a new tweaked video mode to get vsynced 60Hz (perfect speed) with 256x256 games. It has horizontal clock recover (thus video is less mashed vertically, without having to modify monitor settings, and it doesn't be confused with 224x288 by monitors that remember settings. Really nice on scrolling games: try it with "-noscanlines -vsync -vgafreq 1"

• Fixed Commando dip switch bonus settings. Also fixed a setting in Ant Eater dipswitch.

• Fixed a bug that locked your PC if BLASTER variable was not found (thanks to James Oliver for the suggestion).

• Tatsuyuki Satoh fixed sound tempo speed in Elevator Action (tempo speed is 37.5Khz).

• Added support for two versions of Pengo (one with the music of Popcorn and a clone).

Sources

• Me, Nicola, Bernd and Patrick have heavily changed the main core set of sources. Improvements to speed, memory access, drivers structure were done. We strongly suggest to developers to start their code on a clean 0.26 version.

• Opcode decode and graphic decode are now done by a single function in one step.

• Tatsuyuki Satoh (tatuyuki@tky.threewebnet.or.jp) optimized DrawGfx() function in case TRANSPARENCY_PEN and TRANSPARENCY_COLOR without remap, producing a speed increment of 22-25% (try yourself with Elevator Action!)

• Mauro Minenna introduced a new option (-dir4) that simplify the use of the joysticks to be connected on the keyboard. This modify resolves the problem of diagonal direction in games such as PacMan, Popeye, and Kung Fu Master.

MAME 0.26a

Released: 1997-07-18

• This is a bug fix version. I did a mess with the famous heavy modifications I mentioned before. Well, I was the first to try the feeling of working on wrong sources ;) Funny!! BTW, now everything is back to normality, Pacman, Galaxians, Centipede, and others. I have learned a thing: never work until 4.30am in the morning :>

• Thanks to Gary Walton, Nicola added 100% correct colors in Mr Do's Castle

Fixed also a bug in Ghosts 'n Goblins hiscore saving. Now GnG does the self test too.

• Some credits that were left out in this file only, last time: Thanks to Al Kossow, Hedley Rainnie and Eric Smith for the code to their vecsim emulator which had emulated these games previously on the unix and the mac, and thanks to Neil Bradley for pointing out the critical bug in the vector generator engine which prevented Tempest from working.

• Super Pac Man and Mappy have correct pitch now (thanks Aaron and Satoh). Also, SuperPac has speed cheat control again.

• Frogger doesn't have garbled chars anymore, and Galaga has correct stars speed now.

• Added support for KickRaider. It's a rom swap, same hardware of Mr. Do Wild Ride.

• Patrick Lawrence added trackball sensitivity setting menu

• Morten Eriksen added hiscore save support to Arabian and AntEater

• Sound is back on williams games too

• Changed Dig Dug Atari rom dir into "digdugat", indicating the correct roms archive name.

Other Versions