Chris Covell teaches us PC-Engine coding!
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In Episode 02 (first part), I analyze how some surprisingly rich PCE sounds were created by great game companies like Hudson, Compile, and Atlus.
News
PicoDrive for 3DS is a port of notaz’s PicoDrive emulator by bubble2k16 to the old 3DS / 2DS. Although PicoDrive is already highly optimized for ARM processors, if ported as is, it still doesn’t run full speed for all Mega Drive games on the old 3DS / 2DS, as it’s evident in the RetroArch’s version. So this port heavily relies on the 3DS’s 2nd core to emulate the FM synthesized music for the YM2612 FM chip to achieve 60 FPS. But the 2nd core on the old 3DS is unfortunately not fast enough to generate the FM synthesized music at a full 44100Hz, so sounds are generated at 30000Hz on an Old 3DS. It sounds ok for many games, except for those that use high-pitched notes or sound samples. The screen rendering is done completely using the original PicoDrive’s ARM processor-optimized renderer.
You can play Master System, Mega Drive games and Sega CD games, and 32X games. CD games run a little slower (you should enable 1-2 frameskips) on an old 3DS, but it runs very well on a new 3DS. 32X games can only played at a reasonable speed on a New 3DS using the .CIA version of the emulator. Some dynarec instructions for 32X games will crash the emulator (Virtual Fighter, Virtual Racing Deluxe have this issue).
Release notes:
I’m putting up v0.94b for testing for anyone who would like the latest. 🙂
Fixes include:
– Added support to save battery-backed RAM for CD games
– Fixed problems with games that show parts of the previous screens at the left/right edges
– Added support for cheats.No emulation-related fixes, so in terms of compatibility, it should remain the same as v0.93.
Some explanation on the cheat format:
The .CHX is a cheat file format that you can create with any text editor. Each line in the file corresponds to one cheat, and is of the following format:
[Y/N],[CheatCode],[Name]
1. [Y/N] represents whether the cheat is enabled. Whenever you enable/disable it in the emulator, the .CHX cheat file will be modified to save your changes.
2. [CheatCode] must be an Genesis / Mega Drive Game Genie or Pro Action Replay cheat code. The cheat code looks like one of the following:
– **RHVA-A6WR** (Game Genie)
– **FFFE0D:0099** (Pro Action Replay)
– **FFB933:00** (Pro Action Replay)
– **FFB9 3300** (Pro Action Replay)
3. [Name] is a short name that represents this cheat. Since this will appear in the emulator, keep it short (< 30 characters).The .CHX must have the same name as your ROM. This is an example of a .CHX file:
Filename: **Contra – Hard Corps (USA).chx**
“`
N,RHVA-A6WR,Invincible
N,NNCT-AAH4,Start with 99 lives
N,H9GA-AAE6,Start with all weapons
N,AM4A-AA8C,You don’t lose a weapon when you die
“`NOTE: Some games may not boot when cheat codes are enabled at the start. Disable the cheat codes when booting the games, and enable them only after the game has started.
Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.
bubble2k16 updated Exophase‘s TemperPCE for the Nintendo 3DS. It’s a TurboGrafx / PC-Engine emulator to the old 3DS and old 2DS. This port heavily relies on the 3DS’s 3D GPU hardware to achieve 60 FPS (or close to 60 with frame skips).
Release notes:
Hey people, just a very small release (v1.02) to fix the sound lag problem.
Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.
Michael Chiaramonte shows us once again how to do some NES Programming.
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I got a list control working! I was also distracted by our puppy, sorry about that. As I mentioned in the video, I’m thinking of working on the GUI controls off stream just so we can come back to the tool on Monday and just get stuff exporting to the NES (like I planned on for tonight, but it didn’t go to plan). Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks!
Prisonnier II is a single or two player game for the Sega Master System by Monos51. The goal of the game is to block the opponent by placing an obstacle after each move.
Mikael Tillander shows us more of his still unnamed Genesis game.
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Time to recharge the batteries and level up that Transmutational Attack! Gold makes all this possible. Alien capitalism. #megadrive #genesis #gamedev #pixelart
Michael Chiaramonte shows us once again how to do some NES Programming.
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In today’s episode we reorganized our code, and got the tree structure working with cached children so that we didn’t have to destroy and reallocate the controls each time. In addition, I implemented new controls include a frame control that creates a context for additional controls to “live” in. Let me know in the comments if you want to see me writing more code for the controls on-stream or if you’d like me to get back to NES related code. Thanks for watching!
Chris Covell teaches us PC-Engine coding!
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In Episode 01, I give a general explanation of the PCE hardware. Downloading assembly tools & coding tutorials should come in future videos.
Monos51 released Sokoban SMS for Sega Master System earlier this year. The source code is loacted within the .zip package as well! Thanks to sverx for the news.
The Ballz Are Lava is a PICO-8 game by LiquidreamUK. Nobody knows why – it’s just always been this way. Our chance of survival is to absorb all the Green Orbs floating around, while avoiding certain death by touching the Lava ballz… all before the time runs out!
