Raiden II Project Team
YOUR MISSIONS!

2010/06/11

Change Backporting

Filed under: Progress Update — trap15 @ 16:43

I have finally begun back-porting changes from newer versions of MAME into UberMAME. I am starting off with 136, which makes a bunch of changes for re-entrancy and some better game support. This process isn’t too difficult yet, since UberMAME is not significantly different from newer versions yet, but I can imagine back-porting from 137 and 138 will be a bit more difficult than 136.

In somewhat related news, Giles had been converting a bunch of code from macros to C++ templates in his terrible attempt to convert MAME to C++ (why do this, I have no idea) . This greatly slowed compile and link times. However, apparently Giles reverted a bunch of those changes, in reaction to complaints from other MAMEdev. I knew I was right :P

UPDATE: Changes from MAME 136 have been integrated into UberMAME, and are now available on the Git repository. Enjoy! Also, EEPROMs are no longer required, they are optional. I have also made it not require ROMs to load, but if it is missing, it will warn, but attempt to play anyways (good luck with that! :P )

2010/06/06

Welcoming Homebrew and Contributors

Filed under: Progress Update — trap15 @ 21:05

I’d like to make sure that it is clear that I welcome anyone who wishes to contribute any changes at all to UberMAME. Anything at all, from driver fixes, to core changes, or to just adding a new rom-set, we will review and possibly add to UberMAME if we feel it is helpful (simple changes like re-doing code-style without adding functionality, or senseless renaming of rom-sets [We will accept rom-set renaming if it has a reason though]). If you submit enough changes, we will consider adding you to the project on GitHub, so your patches don’t have to be screened (it means we trust you enough to handle our repository. If you do anything to cause us to lose our trust, such as sabotaging the code, you will promptly be removed.)

Another point I’d like to make clear is, we are allowing any entries for homebrew rom-sets. So if you just made a kick-ass game for PGM, and want to see it in UberMAME, go ahead and tell us, we’d be glad to add your rom-set. I felt that after adding my Seicop tester to UberMAME, I should allow any homebrew code, not just my own.

So yeah, if you want to contribute, or submit your own rom-sets, or really anything at all, go ahead and hit me up at trap15@raidenii.net, or on the BBS. :)

2010/06/03

PGM and DoDonPachi II

Filed under: PGM Updates, Progress Update — trap15 @ 06:17

The last 2 days or so I’ve been looking at the PGM emulation, specifically DoDonPachi II. If you currently run DDP2 in UberMAME it will die with an error “Unhandled Coprocessor 13″ or such. This is because the internal ROM for the DDP2 protection (ASIC27a) is currently undumped. I have written a small “replacement ROM” that goes in the file that would hold the dump. All it does is an infinite loop, so it’s not actually handling any protection, it just allows the game to be (somewhat) played.
According to comments in the pgm.c code, the internal ROM for the ASIC27a should be dumpable, but it hasn’t been yet. I’ve sent a question related to this to MAMEdev, so I’ll be sure to let you all know about any updates to that. Aside from that, there were a few bugs in the PGM code which I have fixed (fixes some graphical glitches), but there are still some mysterious graphics glitches that I need to investigate further.
The game does run currently, and at a playable speed, but the game is not really playable. I say this because all bullet handling is performed by the ASIC27a, so the only bullets that actually work are the players. I’d presume this is because they offloaded all the work from 68k in the PGM to the ASIC27a on-cart, so the 68k could be used for everything else (since from what I’ve seen, DDP2 has a good lot of bullets, and there would be significant slowdown if everything was handled 68k side)
I’m probably dropping off of PGM for a bit soon, as my friend almost has all the stuff we need for our supergun, so I can begin hardware tests for Raiden II.

UPDATE: Haze has said that it is indeed dumpable, but it being dumped isn’t “high priority” right now, and other PGM games that need their ASIC27a’s dumped will probably be done first. So, just give it a while :)

(Via BBS post at http://raidenii.net/bbs/kareha.pl/1275574528/l50)

2010/05/24

Domain is ready

Filed under: Uncategorized — austere @ 00:00

Our domain at http://www.raidenii.net/ is now functional, so please update your bookmarks if necessary.

2010/05/23

First non-Raiden-related pushes

Filed under: Progress Update — trap15 @ 02:23

Over the last few days I have been working on the UML and SH-2 cores, as outlined in this BBS post. I finally fixed the cores how I wanted them fixed, so they work all good now. Basically, I modified the basic include file for the UML to define which UML core to use (since before it relied on the build-system), and then fixed the SH-2 interpreter core (it had suffered some code rot since it hadn’t been used for a while) enough to run on it’s own. Then I modified the SH-2 header to check if UML was using the dynarec or the interpreter core, and if it found interpreter, it would drop back and use it’s own interpreter for extra speed. I plan on doing this to as-many-as-possible/all of the dynarec cores so that there is a bit of speed improvement on non-dynarec systems.

On a related note, a good friend of mine recently had his family give him their old PowerPC Mac Mini, so he decided to give it to me, since he knew I’d make better use of it than he would. This means I now have a (slow) PowerPC machine to test on, and may write a PPC dynarec UML core eventually. :)

I’ve also considered making full builds of UberMAME available for download every once in a while (when we feel we have made big enough changes that a build would be a good idea), since I single-handedly have all 3 major OSs.

Any questions or comments should go on the BBS, which you can find a link to on your right-hand side. Happy hacking!

2010/05/16

BBS

Filed under: Uncategorized — trap15 @ 10:39

The Raiden II Project now has an official BBS! The BBS runs on Kareha, which is a robust BBS system written in Perl. You can discuss anything on there, just try to keep it related to UberMAME or Raiden II Project. You can get to it at http://www.raidenii.net/bbs/. Have fun! :)

2010/05/14

Trojan Update

Filed under: Progress Update, Raiden II Updates — trap15 @ 23:44

Lately I’ve been working on our trojan for the Raiden II board. Support for the trojan is in the latest UberMAME commits, under the name seicop. That name comes from what it does, it probes the SEIbu COPx-d2. It’s not specifically different from the Raiden II driver, the only change is how it handles the loading of the program ROMs (on Raiden II it has 2 interlaced ROMs. By interlaced, I mean, one ROM has the even bytes, the other has the odd bytes. The seicop driver merely changes this to be a single ROM with no modification.). Also, somewhat interesting to note, it appears MAME doesn’t fully reset the system, as the trojan currently keeps its state completely intact after hitting reset. Well, aside from the state of the sound CPU. Anyways, I’m a bit off topic, back to stuff about the trojan. The name of the trojan is COPper (interpret that either as the metal copper, or a policeman copper, but make sure you pronounce it like that!) and is written completely in V30 assembler (V30 is just NECs take on the 8086, nothing really of note there) and the code currently takes a mere 301 bytes! At present it contains a full setup for 12 different modes of operation, with 3 of them currently defined.

We have mode 1 for Memory Viewing. It allows you to view the first 0×20000 bytes in a nice easy format. Mode 2 is for Memory Writing. It will support writing an arbitrary amount of data in sequence, for things that require quick multiple modifications. As you could probably tell, mode 2 isn’t done yet. Mode 3 is a BGM music box (it’s actually mapped to the last mode, mode 12) that plays all the games background music (actually, if you replace the sound data, you can get your own music, but they have to have the same music indices).

This trojan should eventually be able to test most, if not all, the features of the Raiden II board. Specifically the COPX-D2, but it will probably test other parts too.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, etc., please post a comment, and we’ll get back to you ASAP :)

2010/05/11

Status Update

Filed under: Progress Update, Raiden II Updates — trap15 @ 22:25

I said I planned on giving a status update, and here I am delivering! First of all, look over to the sidebar, where you’ll notice there’s now a donate link. All the money for that will be split between austere and I, where it will be used for UberMAME related purposes ONLY. This means we’ll use it to buy EEPROMs for on-board testing, EEPROM programmers to write the EEPROMs, PCBs, supergun materials, etc. Your donation makes the bit of difference! But please note, these donations will not be going towards a decap of the COPX on Raiden II. The reason for this is that we (along with MAMEdev) have determined that it is most likely a Programmable Logic Device, and decapping would do nothing. The only thing similar that would be effective is a layer-by-layer stripping, which is extremely expensive (think 10000USD…) and just out of the question for us.

Ok, now onto driver developments so far! I’m sure we’ve all at least attempted to run Raiden II in MAME at least once, just to find it utterly broken and unplayable. Thanks to our hard work (and a little bit of assistance from good ol’ R. Belmont for the sound) we now have it looking prettier than ever, and with sound emulation! The now functioning portions that were broken before are:

  • Sound emulation (Thanks RB for finding the error!)
  • Background, Midground, Foreground, and Text layer scrolling
  • Layer disable
  • Several portions of the COPX-D2 instruction handling
  • Several other portions of the COPX-D2 emulation
  • Credits (although still slightly broken. You need to insert 2 credits for every 1)
  • Background, Midground, and Foreground banking are all slightly fixed (intro looks nice!)
  • Collision detection (barely noticeable, but it is there!)
  • Probably some other stuff I forgot :-)
  • Unfortunately, actual gameplay is not on this list. Enemies still don’t appear :-(

Some other stuff we’ve been working on is a trojaner for the COPX-D2 that needs to be loaded onto a real PCB for testing the real functionality of the COPX-D2 (it has been added to the UberMAME builds as seicop, it’s a child of Raiden II, only requiring a code.bin with the trojan placed there)

I think that’s all to say for now. Oh yeah, both austere and I have acquired PCBs for Raiden II, so we’ll both be able to do testing of our progress. So… Have a wonderful day! :-)

EDIT: austere says he’s rich enough already, and that I can take all of it. Still, it will be used exclusively for UberMAME purposes, nothing else!

2010/05/10

Welcome to the Raiden II Project Blog!

Filed under: Uncategorized — trap15 @ 22:28

Hello and welcome! This is the official blog for the Raiden II Project, a project dedicated to bringing Raiden II (and possibly Raiden DX by extension) to MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This blog will serve to update the public to our progress, as well as possible technical rants/ravings. This is only our introduction post, we plan on giving a progress update soon.

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