Ongoing pinball work, Mattel Electronics led games preliminary support and now showing what is in store for MAME eventually. A variety of good updates for the masses to like for the next few months. There shall be no unhappy Gals Panic II fans complaining for next few weeks or they get sent to Conan O’ Brien’ s Naughty Land for punishment.
Conan O' Brien's Naughty Land: "Kids. You do not want to go to Naughty Land."
Conan's All Kids Audience Show - "Late Night With Conan O’Brien"
Original Air Date (8/8/97) Conan tapes a special episode of "Late Night with Conan O’Brien" for an audience made up entirely of children. -
Reminds me of the posts in 2009 when Aaron was displaying Cubequest gameplay images and the various sites were abuzz about laser disc coinop emulation finally happening in MAME.
Looks great!! Will be funny. I really appreciate all the hard work the volunteers that are the MAME team put in to this for the rest of us.
No negativity or sarcasm, but I do have a question. Isn't the Sega Holliseum that has already been in MAME for a while the same hardware? Wouldn't it not have been easy to add this in the past?
Again, I am not being negative, or sarcastic. God, knows I love, and have all the respect in the world for the MAME team. I started with MAME when Nicola Salmoria was making a Pac-Man emulator that many years ago.
> No negativity or sarcasm, but I do have a question. Isn't the Sega Holliseum that has > already been in MAME for a while the same hardware? Wouldn't it not have been easy to > add this in the past?
Holosseum is a stock System 32 board in the Time Traveller cabinet. The game hardware is completely different, the only thing it has in common is the same curved mirror projection setup to simulate the video appearing above the glass.
Also, there’s that tricky matter of capturing the LaserDisc video for Time Traveller, which isn’t applicable for Holosseum.
This is great news. Well done to all involved working hard to bring LD games into MAME sometime in the near future - Let the new era / chapter for arcade preservation begin!
Question: Will LD games that are preserved in MAME continue to be in CHD archive format, or will there be a new archive format solely for for LD games?
> Question: Will LD games that are preserved in MAME continue to be in CHD archive > format, or will there be a new archive format solely for for LD games?
They’re still using the same CHD video format for now.
> > Question: Will LD games that are preserved in MAME continue to be in CHD archive > > format, or will there be a new archive format solely for for LD games? > > They’re still using the same CHD video format for now.
> > Holosseum is a stock System 32 board in the Time Traveller cabinet. The game hardware > is completely different, the only thing it has in common is the same curved mirror > projection setup to simulate the video appearing above the glass. > > Also, there’s that tricky matter of capturing the LaserDisc video for Time Traveller, > which isn’t applicable for Holosseum.
Thank you for the clarification. I did not realize how different they really were.
While I am sure it will, can I assume you'll make sure the added quirks the arcade had will be added (Like the video speed up, game play in reverse, and slow down features)
> While I am sure it will, can I assume you'll make sure the added quirks the arcade > had will be added (Like the video speed up, game play in reverse, and slow down > features)
Updated WIP video. As best I can tell the game is now playable, and I've submitted a pull request. There's some ambiguity there since some of the deaths seem woefully unfair with razor-thin timing window, but I'm not sure how much of that is because it's 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday and I haven't slept more than a few hours since Thursday, how much of it is me just plain sucking at non-stop "quick time events", and if any of it is down to bugs.
More info in the video description.
Note that as I'm posting this, YouTube hasn't finished the HD processing yet, so the quality of the YT video itself might be a bit crap for an hour or two.
Machines promoted to working Time Traveler (set 1) [Ryan Holtz, Matt O, ld-decode Team]
-laserdsc: Added functionality to retrieve if a disc is CAV. [Ryan Holtz]
-ldv4200hle: HLE Pioneer LD-V4200 player. [Ryan Holtz] —
Time Traveler entry removed from the laser disc entry section in Non-MAME web site as shown in the update.
2022/04/02: Removed Time Traveler from Laserdisc-Based Hardware section as it is now supported by MAME, thanks primarily to the great efforts of MooglyGuy and the Domesday laserdisc preservation team
I appreciate the positivity, but I'd prefer if you didn't potentially mislead people with the subject line of your post as it was written. The pull request was submitted, but that doesn't mean the pull request has yet been merged in, nor that it'll necessarily make it in for 0.242.
> > Updated WIP video. As best I can tell the game is now playable, and I've submitted > a pull request. > > Assuming this gets in the source before the next srcclean update, .242 release will > be a darn good release. > > Good job from all the contributors including Simon and the Domesday project getting > this game and hardware emulated. > > > — > https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/9468 > > Machines promoted to working > Time Traveler (set 1) [Ryan Holtz, Matt O, ld-decode Team] > > -laserdsc: Added functionality to retrieve if a disc is CAV. [Ryan Holtz] > > -ldv4200hle: HLE Pioneer LD-V4200 player. [Ryan Holtz] > — > > > Time Traveler entry will be first entry that can be removed from the laser disc > entry section in Non-MAME web site since last update in that section was probably > done > about eleven years ago. > > > http://nonmame.retrogames.com > > Laserdisc-Based Hardware [Arcade] > > Software Not Supported in MAME: > > Time Traveler [Via SINGE]
> I appreciate the positivity, but I'd prefer if you didn't potentially mislead people > with the subject line of your post as it was written. The pull request was submitted, > but that doesn't mean the pull request has yet been merged in, nor that it'll > necessarily make it in for 0.242. > > > > Updated WIP video. As best I can tell the game is now playable, and I've > submitted > > a pull request. > > > > Assuming this gets in the source before the next srcclean update, .242 release will > > be a darn good release. > > > > Good job from all the contributors including Simon and the Domesday project getting > > this game and hardware emulated. > > > > > > — > > https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/9468 > > > > Machines promoted to working > > Time Traveler (set 1) [Ryan Holtz, Matt O, ld-decode Team] > > > > -laserdsc: Added functionality to retrieve if a disc is CAV. [Ryan Holtz] > > > > -ldv4200hle: HLE Pioneer LD-V4200 player. [Ryan Holtz] > > — > > > > > > Time Traveler entry will be first entry that can be removed from the laser disc > > entry section in Non-MAME web site since last update in that section was probably > > done > > about eleven years ago. > > > > > > http://nonmame.retrogames.com > > > > Laserdisc-Based Hardware [Arcade] > > > > Software Not Supported in MAME: > > > > Time Traveler [Via SINGE]
Really awesome to see this working, including the little LCD screen that occasionally has fun messages on it during gameplay. The only thing missing is the little sound effects based on joystick presses (also a little chime when you pass a time zone), but maybe that's handled through some other method inside the cabinet.
Sega went on tour back in the 90s, mainly to promote the Genesis (or was it Master System?). Anyway, they brought along a Time Traveler machine but set it up at kind of a distant corner of the mall food court - Southland Mall in Hayward if anyone's wondering. Anyway, about 5 or 6 kids hung out with the Sega rep and took turns playing free games. I actually got to appreciate the game and how to clear some of the levels - though none of us could get through the last stage. Anyway, it actually does vary the levels a fair amount each playthrough and has a lot of strange and quirky moments. But, at 75 cents, this game didn't get much play and was usually the rarely-touched novelty in arcades.
> Really awesome to see this working, including the little LCD screen that occasionally > has fun messages on it during gameplay. The only thing missing is the little sound > effects based on joystick presses (also a little chime when you pass a time zone), > but maybe that's handled through some other method inside the cabinet.
After recording the video - but unfortunately, after the cutoff for inclusion in 0.242 - I ended up tracking down where the various "beep" sounds come from and got it hooked up.
There are also a couple of bugs with the LaserDisc player handling that made it into 0.242, as I wasn't able to fix them until yesterday, which was a bit too late for inclusion in 0.242 as well. Once the pull request gets merged (I'm still waiting on a dev with commit access to do that), the game will be fully playable to the end.
Here's a video of me activating the two easter eggs that are in the game:
And here's a video of the ending, achieved after a painful number of save-state saves and loads:
> > Question: Will LD games that are preserved in MAME continue to be in CHD archive > > format, or will there be a new archive format solely for for LD games? > > They’re still using the same CHD video format for now.
what about the games that have the LD player overlay txt messages?
Amazing work to all involved especially you MooglyGuy, it sounds like you have been dedicating some hardcore time on this. It's great to see another completely unemulated LD game and player preserved in MAME. Here's to hoping this is just the beginning of seeing the inclusion and upgrading to working of more LD games!
> > > Question: Will LD games that are preserved in MAME continue to be in CHD archive > > > format, or will there be a new archive format solely for for LD games? > > > > They’re still using the same CHD video format for now. > > what about the games that have the LD player overlay txt messages?
Overlays are generated by the player, and work fine as long as they're implemented.
Time Traveler doesn't use the player's text overlay, so it's not implemented, but as soon as I have a test case it'll work fine.
Firing up any given LaserDisc CHD in one of the player-sim drivers (simldv1000 or simpr8210) gives emulated text overlay output from the players, and most pre-existing LaserDisc games (Firefox, Us vs. Them, Cliffhanger, Mach 3, Cobra Command, or Cube Quest) also support overlaying game video onto the LaserDisc output also works fine.
So while games like DL2 or Space Ace '91 used such features, and will further require simulation of the Sony LDP-1450 (since the current driver is leaning on the alternative Pioneer LD-V4200 sim), it's completely doable and will work fine with no troubles.
> Re: Southland Mall, Hayward CA > > Did you happen to see ID Quake Machines there? > There was one visit to the mall that I saw at least 3 machines no doubt hooked up for > deathmatch. > > TrevEB
Hm, going off kinda fuzzy memories, but I don't remember Quake machines at the arcade there. At Southland I played Solvalou a lot, I think they had Sonic Blast Man at one point, APB, Mad Dog McGree, Final Lap 4p... but Quake isn't ringing a bell.
> Just by the saying "cherry picked" . No biggie. Glad there is process being made and > the games being preserved.
No worries. To clarify, the term "cherry-picked" refers to the opposite: Hand-picking a change from one branch, and bringing it over into another.
In order to have a relatively stable release each month, around or about the last Wednesday of each month, the MAME codebase is forked into a separate release branch on the Saturday before that Wednesday. This is the point at which any new ROM sets will absolutely not be supported, but there's still a window of time where relatively innocuous fixes can still be hand-picked - "cherry-picked" - into the release branch.
In this case, a total of 3 fixes to the driver (one layout-related, one sound-related, and one video-playback-related) were made after the release branch had been forked off, but the changes were all low-impact enough that they were able to be individually brought into the release branch.
I'm really glad to see another new working LD game in MAME. I noticed when you go to the trader to buy time reversal cubes, even if you have the cube limit set in the dip switches, you can spam the coin button and get a ton of them. Is this just how the game is or maybe a bug?
Btw, if you look in the ROM with a hex editor, you'll find a ton of C compiler related strings.
>I appreciate the positivity, but I'd prefer if you didn't potentially mislead people with the subject line of your post >as it was written. The pull request was submitted, but that doesn't mean the pull request has yet been merged >in, nor that it'll necessarily make it in for 0.242.
I know I jumped offsides ( football penalty pun tribute to Mattel Football now supported)
My guess was that update was too good to leave hanging around to the side and supported later even though it would be in the source code. Great to have following fixes be added as well.
> I'm really glad to see another new working LD game in MAME. I noticed when you go to > the trader to buy time reversal cubes, even if you have the cube limit set in the dip > switches, you can spam the coin button and get a ton of them. Is this just how the > game is or maybe a bug? > > Btw, if you look in the ROM with a hex editor, you'll find a ton of C compiler > related strings.
Maybe it's limited by a coin lockout mechanism, that would be unconventional (usually they're just to lock out during boot and at the game's credit limit) but it limit how many credits you can put in if they've decided to do it this way.
> > I'm really glad to see another new working LD game in MAME. I noticed when you go > to > > the trader to buy time reversal cubes, even if you have the cube limit set in the > dip > > switches, you can spam the coin button and get a ton of them. Is this just how the > > game is or maybe a bug? > > > > Btw, if you look in the ROM with a hex editor, you'll find a ton of C compiler > > related strings. > > Maybe it's limited by a coin lockout mechanism, that would be unconventional (usually > they're just to lock out during boot and at the game's credit limit) but it limit how > many credits you can put in if they've decided to do it this way.
I have a strong suspicion that Time Traveler didn't have any enforced lockout, and simply didn't expect the user to be able to ram coins into the machine that fast.
Part of my suspicion is because even with the DIP switch set to a limit of 6 rather than 36, the default value of 1 coin / 2 cubes lets you exceed that limit (having a total of 7 cubes) if you don't use your one cube in 1873, and then put 3 coins in at the Trader.
The other part is that the hardware just plain doesn't have that much I/O to sling around.
There are 2 i8255 port expanders, with 3 8-bit ports each. The first group has nothing but inputs on Port A and B, and uses Port C for outputs.
It never writes anything to bits 0..2 or 7 of Port C. Bits 3 through 5 are known.
On the second i8255, all three ports are occupied by DIP switches.
On the 80188 CPU, Timer 0 Out is used for the 1-bit beeper.
If there's a lockout, then as far as options for I/O goes, that leaves bit 6 of Port C on the first i8255, and Timer 1 Out.
Timer 1 Out seems to ride high the entire time, so that rules that out.
Bit 6 of Port C does get twiddled when the user puts coins in during attract mode: It idles high, then the game bounces it low and back to high for each coin. During the Trader sequence, it remains idle until after the sequence is over, at which point it pulses it low->high for each coin that the user put in.
As best I can figure, bit 6 probably advances some sort of mechanical counter in the coin door for book-keeping purposes (even though the game tracks it internally as well), but there are absolutely no outbound signals that flip when the Trader sequence hits the cube limit. When the user is below the limit, the game resets the countdown timer to 14 seconds for each coin that's inserted, and once the limit is hit, it is forced down to 2 seconds. With that in mind, I expect the developers simply figured the user wouldn't be able to get another coin in within that remaining 2 seconds.
Time Traveler is absolutely riddled with this sort of jank, to to be honest: There's a sequence in the 1998 "Era" where you have to repeatedly shoot a zombie-type enemy about 10 times before it goes down. After each shot, both the video and the audio seem to jump backwards a little, making the whole thing look horrendously glitchy. My guess is that due to the width of the playfield and the fact that the actor was holding a revolver, the actor (Stephen Wilber) couldn't mime the 10 or so shots fast enough if the zombie's actor was closing the distance fast enough to look threatening.
I've looked at the footage on the disc itself, and the sort of jumping-back of the footage was mastered directly onto the disc, it's not a glitch. It can't be a read-out issue, because the frame indices in the VBI lines are consistently sequential across the entire thing. Not only that, I actually managed to track down footage of YouTube where someone was lucky enough to hit that scene on a real machine, and it looks exactly as awful and glitchy as it does in MAME.
To all involved thanks for all the hard work. I can't wait to see what's next to be ran through the Domesday encoder but I do hope it's Space Ace & I hope it will work in M.A.M.E. soon.
Is there some videos of the process of it being done in the Domesday encoder Time Traveler ? Also a comparison of LD footage before & after it being done in the Domesday encoder.
> I do hope it's Space Ace & I hope it will work > in M.A.M.E. soon.
It isn't.
> Is there some videos of the process of it being done in the Domesday encoder Time > Traveler ? Also a comparison of LD footage before & after it being done in the > Domesday encoder.
There is no "footage" being run through the ld-decode pipeline. It's not called the "Domesday encoder". The Domesday Duplicator is a hardware data-acquisition device. You seem to think it's some kind of super-special video capture card. It's not. It was never claimed to be. There is no "footage". Raw data is captured by the Domesday Duplicator flying out of the laser pickup at 50 megabytes a second, and the ld-decode toolchain turns that raw data into a final image.
For the most part, there are no images to be seen until about 8 hours of processing later, when you get a video out that's ready to turn into a CHD. And I'm not going to screen-record 8 hours of text scrolling by in a terminal window that you wouldn't be able to understand.
If you're as happy and grateful as you say you are, take the time to actually learn about the toolchain, which has been written about extensively, before asking any further questions.
Thanks for the info, I was close with encoder. I'm not very technical when reading it but I think it means it captures a few images from various LD's then puts them together to make the best end result.
I'd love to read more about how your progressing on the LD emulation.
I'm tired of the level of entitlement that I continually see out of people on r/emulation.
I'm tired of the constant defense I see of a toxic project like RetroArch that more or less only exists to acquire donations from people who wrongly - fraudulently, even - come to the impression that the RetroArch people do a single thing to help emulation rather than just take advantage of it.
Rest of the post removed; suffice to say I need a break and will take one for a bit.
I don't know what happened, this is the only emulation site/community I visit but I am well aware of all the shit that has been going on forever with people using the work of others for their own personal profit. I don't think that is ever going to change sadly.
I've been following MAME since the beginning, not to get and have all the l33t fr33 g4m3z but because there were a handful of games from my childhood that if I could afford to own and had the space to keep them I would!
I have contributed to MAME in every way that I've ever been able, from buying multiple board sets and donating them for dumping to being a typing monkey to get the chips I donated converted and accepted.
I even dabbled in trying to learn to code enough to understand how MAME drivers worked and did actually manage to get a few drivers to show life, two all by myself and a couple others by updating old drivers written by someone that never submitted them. Not to mention just adding clones with alternate CHD images that I personally used chdman to dump.
One of those drivers was the LD game Cobra Command that can still be seen here:
I even had a geocities page that showed all the LD games that were in MAME at the time and a couple that weren't but were running under MAME with screenshots showing what signs of life they showed. From memory the games on that page were Euro Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, smf's Firefox driver before it was committed (Because I was talking to and trying to help him thru another DEV by providing captures of other LD games) and my Cobra Command driver. There may have been others but that was ages ago and I don't remember.
The reason that the Geocities page was dedicated to LD games in MAME was because one of the handful of games that I would own if I could is OBVIOUS and I was just trying to get more people interested in adding LD games.
Sadly at that time there was a HUGE controversy about what was considered an acceptable capture of a LD that it could be allowed in MAME. IMHO, this arrogance not only delayed the development of LD drivers in MAME but gave Laser Rot a decade to do it's thing before enough or the right people cared!
OK, to the point of this post, I don't know what it was that pissed you off but I want you to know that after all these years your "A Little Something Something" post was the best NEWS I've seen while visiting this site in years! I honestly thought (Well Fuck, I might actually see it in MAME before I die!)
And then you posted that and to me that just makes the April Fools joke all too real!!!
> Sadly at that time there was a HUGE controversy about what was considered an acceptable capture of a LD that it could be allowed in MAME. > IMHO, this arrogance not only delayed the development of LD drivers in MAME but gave Laser Rot a decade to do it's thing before enough or the right people cared!
These was no arrogance. The standards being pushed elsewhere were awful, didn't properly capture a lot of the required data, rather just a video, and were all about saving space with lossy compressions etc.
Accepting them, and allowing that to become the standard, would have been just as problematic; taking the path of least resistance usually causes problems later.
Using things like MPEG would have also caused significant issues for MAME due to patents, which would have likely found it being booted out of Linux distros and the like. It would have split the userbase, and made MAME less visible to a lot of potential developers, and made it more questionable from a legal perspective.
Nobody was coming up with an genuinely acceptable standard for either the capture or encoding. Even when MAME did come up with a solution that at least avoided the MPEG / legal issues, people shat all over it because it required bigger files, or didn't offer the same quality as DVD rips hacked to work with the original code.
There are still rips people did of CD games with MP3 audio floating about, because somebody felt it better to save a few hundred MB and dump things that way, because the current emulators accepted that, rather than doing it properly. Some of those discs have never been found again.
The irony of your reply here is that this 'path of least resistance / incredibly low standards' solution that RA is offering, where end users don't have to care code working together or being license compatible, or use cases outside of the most common, is exactly what RA etc. build their popularity on. Meanwhile they really don't have to care about the consequences, because for the most part they're no actually contributing to emulation development and don't care if the emulators die as long as they can make money out of pushing zombie versions of emulators as 'cores' with their native frontends hacked off.
It's incredibly damaging in the long run as fewer and fewer people are even trying to do things properly and projects are end up dying / being shit talked (and called things like 'arrogant') just for trying to have standards.
We also rejected offers at one point to integrate closed source DRM libraries into MAME so that a company could sell these video files for use with MAME; again not captures, so not suitable for MAME in the first place, and again, locked to one platform. We could have gone that route, it would have been easy for us, but I guess we were too 'arrogant' to do that too.
LOL, WOW You took that totally wrong! Funny being you when you and I have history! I'm sure you have no clue, but I'm the same guy that asked you to try and write a driver for an obscure game ninjakun. For some reason you did (I Believe it was youre first MAME driver) and that just made me MORE obsessed with this addiction!
I'm with you regarding RetroArch. I totally agree with you, however, why punish the MAME community for something out of our hands? We can't control what happens with RetroArch and to fight the cause only results in frustrations and does nothing to help MAME (which is what you are seeing). Maybe it's happening on the MAME side and I just don't see it? I guess it's different from a developer perspective, and I get why you and others would be upset.
Perhaps walking away and coming back later will clear your head and give you peace of mind? Sadly, RetroArch doesn't seem to be going anywhere (although I personally wish it would go away forever).
From a mental perspective, walk away and enjoy real life for a bit and come back later? Here's hoping ...
In any event, thank you for the great work that you have already done. I'm sure I can speak for quite a few people when I say that your work is very much appreciated.
> Hey Moogly, > > I'm with you regarding RetroArch. I totally agree with you, however, why punish the > MAME community for something out of our hands? We can't control what happens with > RetroArch and to fight the cause only results in frustrations and does nothing to > help MAME (which is what you are seeing). Maybe it's happening on the MAME side and I > just don't see it? I guess it's different from a developer perspective, and I get why > you and others would be upset. > > Perhaps walking away and coming back later will clear your head and give you peace of > mind? Sadly, RetroArch doesn't seem to be going anywhere (although I personally wish > it would go away forever). > > From a mental perspective, walk away and enjoy real life for a bit and come back > later? Here's hoping ... > > In any event, thank you for the great work that you have already done. I'm sure I can > speak for quite a few people when I say that your work is very much appreciated. > > Take it easy and be well
Yeah, you're not wrong. Life in general sucks right now, and RA is the same as it ever was. I've edited my post to be more to the point. Time for a short station break.
> LOL, WOW > You took that totally wrong! > Funny being you when you and I have history! > I'm sure you have no clue, but I'm the same guy that asked you to try and write a > driver for an obscure game ninjakun. > For some reason you did (I Believe it was youre first MAME driver) and that just made > me MORE obsessed with this addiction!
No no, I do remember that, you used to use the name Ninjakid or something like that too. Admittedly I didn't do a great job of that driver, as at the time I didn't really know what I was doing and it took Phil S. to fix it up, but yes it's a game I still enjoy today due to my experience in working on the driver back then.
I just felt your comments were misplaced when it came to the LD stuff; there would be almost no momentum towards doing things properly right now in MAME had we gone with poor solutions in the past. You talk about rot, but I think more discs would have been discarded and replaced with emulation solutions than we've already seen, potentially throwing away even the opportunity to recapture them now.
RA is all about poor short term solutions that have mass appeal rather than a longer term vision.
MAME is more about being patient.
I know these days you're looking forward to seeing Star Rider in MAME, as am I, it looks like one of the more interesting uses of LD tech. Not on a Cube Quest level, or GP World level, but interesting nonetheless. Not being familiar with it, I don't know if I'm correct in feeling that way however.
What I do know is that when it does finally come to MAME, thanks to the capture methods we waited so patiently for, it's going to be the absolute best possible experience we could have hoped for.
Idiots on the internet have been a constant since as long as it's been around, and centralized cesspools like reddit only give these idiots a false sense of superiority. I've spent most of my life being needled by idiots who don't like me or don't like what I'm doing, and if there's one thing that keeps me going it's running on sheer spite. Fuck them, fuck everything, do what you want and what you think is right. These parasites aren't going away anytime soon but if it weren't for those of us who give instead of take there wouldn't be much of a world left. I hope you can pull yourself out of this slump.
> I just felt your comments were misplaced when it came to the LD stuff; there would be > almost no momentum towards doing things properly right now in MAME had we gone with > poor solutions in the past. You talk about rot, but I think more discs would have > been discarded and replaced with emulation solutions than we've already seen, > potentially throwing away even the opportunity to recapture them now.
> What I do know is that when it does finally come to MAME, thanks to the capture > methods we waited so patiently for, it's going to be the absolute best possible > experience we could have hoped for.
Yeah, I understand why you took it like you did and I probably shouldn't have used the word arrogance. I was just recalling all of those that had the adamant opinion that LD's were Analog as opposed to Digital and so could never be supported in MAME!
I also see your point that if captures were accepted it may have been counter productive and you are probably right. I was thinking more if they had been accepted then that would have encouraged people to try and improve on the captures. After thinking about it that's pretty naive and it most likely would have worked out the way you said.
Anyway, We both agree the process being used now is nothing short of a miracle! I have nothing put praise for everyone involved, the Domesday guys, Warren, Matt, Ryan and any I missed. I only wish I had a fraction of the intelligence that you and they have so that I could contribute more!
"They don't care if the emulators die as long as they can make money out of pushing zombie versions of emulators as 'cores' with their native frontends hacked off."
> I know these days you're looking forward to seeing Star Rider in MAME, as am I, it > looks like one of the more interesting uses of LD tech. Not on a Cube Quest level, or > GP World level, but interesting nonetheless. Not being familiar with it, I don't know > if I'm correct in feeling that way however.
Yes, I am familiar with it but like you I am unfamiliar with the tech involved. As far as I know it is the only LD game at the time (or ever) that actually uses the Manchester Data in the video signal in real time as a type of programing.
I may be TOTALLY wrong about that but that is what I have come to believe about it.
Imo Star Rider is far more impressive than GP World. GP World doesn't have any of the screen panning functionality that Star Rider does, and the 2D sprites don't blend well with the live action video at all.
For me, the top 3 most advanced LD games are Cube Quest, Star Rider, and Freedom Fighter (which one version uses similar hardware to Star Rider but doesn't use any Manchester data and basically combines the tech of Firefox's instant video switching and Star Rider's screen panning).
I'd guess the reason why Star Rider uses Manchester data encoded in the LD video instead of putting that information into the ROMs was space reasons?
> I'd guess the reason why Star Rider uses Manchester data encoded in the LD video > instead of putting that information into the ROMs was space reasons?
Again, I may be totally wrong but from what I understand the original plan was that the game would be able to be updated to have completely different tracks with a new LD and swapping out some ROM's. If that was the case it probably had something to do with that and it's too bad that that never happened!
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