Writing a new game to run on emulated hardware. Anyone tried it?

[EightBySix]

Would be an interesting exercise. Would it have to be done in machine code, or maybe a more modern environment exists. I guess a mame driver would have to be written too. Thoughts?

[paigeoliver]

A few people have written new games to run on old arcade hardware and that is generally the sort of thing you test in a emulator right up until you are done.

Off the top of my head I can think of Clay Cowgill doing a breakout game on Tempest hardware. I don't know if Mike personally wrote them but Mike Doyle's 96 in 1 multipac kit has recreations of Space Invaders (very faithful) and Super Pac-Man (not as faithful) that run on Pac-Man hardware.

[paigeoliver]

By the way, if you are going to do this then I suggest targeting either Pac-Man hardware or the classic Williams hardware (Defender/Stargate/Joust/Robotron) as those platforms are super common and people make multigame kits for them, so perhaps you could get your game incorporated into one of them.

Oh just thought of another one, D2K a Donkey Kong sequel.

[SavannahLion]

The question is super broad and it's hard to really answer that question without getting into specifics.

The homebrew scene seems to be more prominent on the console scene. Something "simple" such as hacking a Japanese only game to display English text all the way to a full blown game written from scratch. I don't usually go out of my way to hunt down homebrew games unless it's an English translation of a Japanese game. One of my biggest pet peeves about many homebrews is that the author forgets they're writing a game on an emulator, rather than making effort to target real hardware. Quite often, you'll come across a homebrew that only works on a specific emulator and specific version because the idiot takes advantage of bugs in the emulator that often gets fixed later.

It really depends on the capabilities of the target hardware, the age of that hardware, and the available tools for that hardware.

Paigeoliver's advice is very sound. Existing hardware designs are an excellent starting point. I usually decide on the hardware first. What do you want to write for? 6809? Z80? x86? There are so many. Then decide on what the supporting hardware is.

Once you have the hardware, then you decide on what tools to use are available to you or write your own.

Keep this in mind though... write it for the hardware not the emulator. It is absurd that some emulators have reached a point that games are written specifically for them but cannot work on the real hardware. Some emulator authors are aware of this and actually won't patch their emulators because of this. Pretty scuzzy if you ask me.

Fabricating a virtual hardware system using an emulator for a hardware that never (or never will) existed in real life is a bit of a waste of time if you ask me. Why go through all that effort when you can go straight to the heart of the hardware you're developing on or use an existing framework for existing hardware anyways?

[ark_ader]

After coding a pong clone in C#, I always wanted to make a hybrid game like Asteroids and Arkanoid.  In this day and age your work would be more appreciated on modern hardware than z80 or 8609 Assembler.

I wouldn't bother with MAME drivers and just just code it for the PC in C++ or C#.  You can port it to Android later on if you want to.

My 2c

[Jumpman64]

Or you could write for http://belogic.com/uzebox/index.asp

[BadMouth]

I'm not sure how many (if any) completely original games it supports, but check out HBMAME (Home Brew MAME)
http://hbmame.the-chronicles.org/

I've never tried it.

[Generic Eric]

Seems to be a bit of ice skating uphill to me.  I think if you wanted a large audience you would lean towards to html5 or unity or something that runs on android.  I know there was a lot of poo-pooing of the OUYA, but each unit is supposed to be a DEV box.  So there is that.  Or even something like the raspberry pi.

*shrug*

If your goal is to write a dedicated program that runs on an old board, I always enjoyed the Capcom games from the late 80s. 

I think no matter what platform you choose, you need solid game play.  As an arcade enthusiast, I'd like to see old school games with modern art styles.  I'd prefer that they be hardware agnostic so that I could load it on my PC today, and on a different PC in 10 years.

I'd play the android & iOS game crumble zone on PC if I could.  By now, my promotion of Super Hexagon should precede me.  I'm really looking forward to Lovers in space-time.  But I digress.  None of this is what you asked for. 

Best of luck

[BadMouth]

A group released a few new games for NeoGeo, as well as Dreamcast ports of the same games.

http://www.ngdevteam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=29

There was also this dreamcast top down racing game:
http://www.rushrushrallyracing.com/

[Generic Eric]

A group released a few new games for NeoGeo, as well as Dreamcast ports of the same games.

http://www.ngdevteam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=29

There was also this dreamcast top down racing game:
http://www.rushrushrallyracing.com/

Under Defeat and Rardigy were released after the apparent demise of the Dreamcast.  I thought Trizeal was too.  Beats of Rage was release on multiple platforms

[Cynicaster]

I've always wondered why new homebrew games don't pop up for old arcade platforms like they do for retro consoles, but I guess I can just chalk that up to my oversimplified understanding of what is involved to make it happen. 

I think it would be awesome to see, personally. 

[Generic Eric]

If you could get updated sprites in Donkey Kong, that would be awesome.  But I don't think that is what you meant either. 

But maybe you could randomly insert a 1 up mushroom that would help defend against a hit from a barrel, chomper or fireball.  Add a fire flower so you could burn barrels, but make the floor destructible so you would have to jump over the hole it creates and so you couldn't grind points. 

Some where on the internet, there is a very in depth analysis of PAC MAN.  It reminds me of a research paper.  I won't pretend to know how to do this, but it seems super hard.

[404]

Would be an interesting exercise. Would it have to be done in machine code, or maybe a more modern environment exists. I guess a mame driver would have to be written too. Thoughts?

Your comment and subsequent question is a little too vague.

It all really depends on the game you plan on creating, colors and sounds(and channels) used etc. Arcade game developers depending on their ingenuity would generally work under the constraint of common hardware or develop their own custom hardware for the game.

This time around you are doing things a little differently so depending on your game idea you would need to find an appropriate target arcade hardware.

Or you could write for http://belogic.com/uzebox/index.asp

There is a Jamma version of the uzebox as well
http://basementhobbies.wordpress.com/uzebox-jamma/

personally, this may be the way to go. I've always wanted one of these units. Did quite a bit of research on it and on the standard uzebox.

Unfortunately it seems nobody has ever made a fully completed, polished game with the platform.

[SavannahLion]

I've always wondered why new homebrew games don't pop up for old arcade platforms like they do for retro consoles, but I guess I can just chalk that up to my oversimplified understanding of what is involved to make it happen. 

I think it would be awesome to see, personally.

To simplify things a bit. Generally speaking consoles are made to have their games swapped out as often as the owner wishes. As such, you can expect the hardware to be capable of handling hundreds of games. With few exceptions, changing games on arcade hardware is somewhat more involved and the hardware is usually a littlebit more specialized.

This is not to say that making homebrew games for existing arcade hardware is impossible. You just have to decide if it's worth it to create a homebrew game for a piece of arcade hardware that potentially has a very small market or interest or for a specific console with a better homebrew community or for the PC segment.

I mean if you feel you can write a homebrew game will rock on Pac Man or Donkey Kong hardware go ahead and make it. You won't be the first to do so.

[ark_ader]

I've always wondered why new homebrew games don't pop up for old arcade platforms like they do for retro consoles, but I guess I can just chalk that up to my oversimplified understanding of what is involved to make it happen. 

I think it would be awesome to see, personally.

To simplify things a bit. Generally speaking consoles are made to have their games swapped out as often as the owner wishes. As such, you can expect the hardware to be capable of handling hundreds of games. With few exceptions, changing games on arcade hardware is somewhat more involved and the hardware is usually a littlebit more specialized.

This is not to say that making homebrew games for existing arcade hardware is impossible. You just have to decide if it's worth it to create a homebrew game for a piece of arcade hardware that potentially has a very small market or interest or for a specific console with a better homebrew community or for the PC segment.

I mean if you feel you can write a homebrew game will rock on Pac Man or Donkey Kong hardware go ahead and make it. You won't be the first to do so.

I can see reboot or re imagined games like DK+ or the 2600 version of Halo if you are the said developer of the board in question.  It sounds redundant to go out and make a game for a boardset that is emulated in MAME (which might not be 100% accurate) unless it is to be used in a research paper or dissertation.  Then to comment about accessibility with regards to proprietary hardware that is (gulp) 35 years old is pointless versus re imagined or reboot game genre on a more modern platform without resorting to time wasting and mind numbing assembler.   

It is almost a pre-emptive  argument that MAME is a promising development platform than an application to play old arcade games.   Hmm.   

[eds1275]

I would love to know what you hope to achieve with this idea. If you hope to just make an arcade style game, the next version of Unity3d is going to have a 2d toolkit that looks amazing.

[mike_bike_kite]

Do you mean writing a game to run in an arcade cab via MAME?

All you have to do is write the game (the difficult bit) and then make sure the controls are the standard MAME controls (the easy bit). This can be done in any language but I happened to use Java. I wrote a fun game that plays via the keyboard on your PC or via MAME in a cabinet. Feel free to try it out - the thread is here.

Mike

[EightBySix]

I guess my reason for asking is out of curiosity about what could be involved and whether I could do it. Mucking around with LEDs and microcontrollers on my coffee table project has got me interested in tinkering at a low level.

I'd be happy initially with a 'Hello world' on , say, Pacman hardware. I've no interest in it being commercial, its just for interest and a better insight into the achievements of the game developers.

I did wonder about the possibility of a game as a front end - imagine shooting the game you want to play, etc. Of course that wouldn't work though because each ROM is unaware of the others - it would have to be done at a higher level.

I would love to play a game I had on my Vic20 on emulated arcade hardware called snakepit - I considered writing a version of it. When I googled it though, the author has recently died - he spent his last days recoding it for Unity player, so I don't think that's an appropriate avenue.

Some good links to read about - thanks!