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October 10, 2014 Haze Categories: General News. 13 Comments on UME 0.154ex5

UME (logo by JackC)
UME is the complete/combined version of the MAME / MESS project.

0.154ex5 is built from SVN revision 32608

Some adjustments have been made to the Raiden II COP (protection) emulation that really need testing, so here is a new ‘ex’ build. I’ll discuss this more below.

UME 0.154ex5 Windows binaries – 32-bit, 64-bit and all tools
UME 0.154ex5 sources

Here is the 0.154ex4 to 0.154ex5 SVN log

Other Binaries (if you don’t know what these are you don’t need them)
MAME/MESS split 0.154ex5 Windows binaries – 32-bit, 64-bit and all tools

Points of Interest – Raiden II changes

One thing I didn’t realise about Raiden II is that your ship hitbox becomes larger when you reach a certain powerup level, making bullets more difficult to judge. Experts on the game are well aware of this however, and pointed out a situation in MAME where the hitboxes didn’t seem correct.

Sometimes large objects need to fit through small spaces, and it is known that even with a fully powered up ship it should be possible to pass through the 1st attack by the 2nd stage boss as long as you really are dead on center. This was possible in MAME on the r2dx_v33 sets (V33 hardware) where collisions were done in the game software, and in the Playstation port, it however wasn’t possible using the regular Raiden II / DX sets.

As a result of this feedback I’ve modified how the collision boxes are used slightly, allowing this manoeuvre to be performed.


Raiden II

This is of course a risky change, it could be the problem comes from elsewhere and the actual hitboxes were already fine, so I do ask people to test Raiden II and DX extensively with these builds to make sure nothing has regressed.

Another interesting find was a copy of Raiden 2 on a Raiden DX PCB – this strange version also has the difficulty turned up to 11, note the sheer number of tanks before the bridge in the 1st stage! This has been added as ‘raiden2dx’


Raiden II on DX hardware

A proper Japan set of Raiden DX is also now supported, this version does not have a 3rd button for Rapid Fire and displays various bits of text in Japanese. (thanks rtw)


Raiden DX Japan Raiden DX Japan Raiden DX Japan

Points of Interest – Other Changes

Gundam Wing: Endless Duel is a bootleg of the Japanese SNES game ‘Shin Kidou Senki Gundam W – Endless Duel’ adapted for arcade use. It seems that SNES games were a popular target for this kind of bootlegging as we already have several supported in MAME. Typically the bootleggers also encrypted the games, and added additional protection. As a result of these extra protections it took quite a long time, and a number of devs to finally figure this one out. (Peter Ferrie for protection, iq_132 for decryption, and stephh making a rare appearance for the inputs)

On the left you can see the title screen from ‘endless’ in MAME, on the right you can see the original SNES version (‘snes gndmwend’) running in UME/MESS


Arcade Endless Duel bootleg Arcade Endless Duel bootleg

The actual game is a Vs. fighter with some attractive graphics.

Arcade Endless Duel bootleg Arcade Endless Duel bootleg
Arcade Endless Duel bootleg

One long overdue change was merging the Data East ‘Bloody Wolf’ driver with the proper PC-Engine emulation code. Since it was added there was a bug with sprite masking on the submarine boss (it was visible even when underwater) using the proper code this is now fixed, however the driver is much slower. (also to handle the weird variety of PCE modes that can be mixed on a single screen the X resolution of the output has to be scaled to 1088 pixels wide, there is also a 16-pixel border on the left side now, but I assume this is correct) Getting this running with the PCE code required a little extra effort as they write the palette directly rather than through some ports.


Bloody Wolf Bloody Wolf

Another significant emulation improvement can be seen with the rewritten and bugfixed Konami sound chip emulation with several voice in ‘The Simpsons’ sounding much better now than they did in previous releases. That’s one to consider for people thinking that there are no devs improving the emulation of the classic / well known games, it makes using older versions for the game completely undesirable. (thanks Alex Jackson for that)

Some changes went in to make a couple of Atomiswave sets boot a bit further, but emulation is still too slow to use, still an important step in case one day we do run them at usable speeds. (thanks R.Belmont based on information from Metallic of Demul)

Continued work on the Pinball drivers has seen many more of those running their internal logic properly too, although likewise, probably not of great interest to people until they can be hooked up to actual table simulations. (mostly Robbbert)

In the MESS part several softlists saw new additions made, for example the Japanese FM-7 system. (I might make screenshots of some of these later) (AnnaWu, etabeta etc.)

Some 386 CPU core fixes were also made that benefit systems abusing that. (carl)

There have also been big reorganizations to the slot code for some drivers. (eta)

Timings were further tweaked for the Game Gear emulation, benefiting ‘Tarzan’ (Enik Land)

(more to come, about other systems)

13 Comments

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i tested raiden2/DX extensively and i found no problem..

btw, zeroteam need a additional bland/alpha table ‘0x38e’ for some shadows (ex. the first boss’s double-bladed spear)

// player selection
0x37e, 0x38e,
// scaffolding shadow
0x52e,
// road brightening
0x5de,

0xffff,

ok, added after verifying with video.

New zero team has a Dip switch that Bons life has no effect at all…

These SNES bootlegs are interesting – I wonder whether Super GNG was ever bootlegged…?

no idea, they tend to just show up randomly

there’s definitely a Final Fight 3 one, but the owner wanted Cave PCB prices for what is nothing more than a crappy bootleg, so we passed on that ;-)

back then I’ve seen a Final Fight 2 one as well in Japan…
also like ‘Bloody Wolf’, there’s a ‘Son Son II’ arcade version exist, this one was quite popular and perfect for arcade which reminded me of ‘Wonder Boy Monster Land’. like Dragonball, the story is based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West or 西遊記 さいゆうき in asia/japan)
i never played the game before and was (near) arcade quality, i though it’s an original arcade game not PCE…

as a side note, ‘gostop’ is now working and playble…

Hi, HAZE, the hit box of zeroteam is wrong in ex5.

In the end of stage 5-1, your character should knock the door to driver a ship.

But in ex5 when you knocked the door, it is not opened.

The same case is in the end of stage 5-4, you can’t hit the head of ghost on the wall.

Zerotm2k is worked fine however.

this is known and was the same in the previous version. The original Zero Team is not considered working, only New Zero Team and Zero Team 2000.

Thnx Haze. I love Emulators.

Thnx
Diego

This new Pengo game looks how a low quality bootleg, remember a Pengo running in a modified Pacman hardware and not have the demo screen (only the game demo, not the penguins in the map), too has a various different colors in Pengo (the penguin has a blue color instead to Red) and bad sounds

New Zero Team and Zero Team 2000 they trade levels.
The real one is on the streets.

Get this pad for rapid fire: _http://static1.troca-se.com/uploads/items/2013/02/24/14/196354/51512a2ad4d7383.png

right, as I said in an earlier post the ‘new’ versions have fucked up level orders, it’s very obvious in zero team – you ride off on a bike only to arrive on a helicopter, and vice versa later ;-)

that’s why ZT2000 is the preferred version until the original release is emulated.

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