Gyruss and Time Pilot, the way they were meant to be played

[leapinlew]

For those of you who didn't check out my Project Announcement - you can see it here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=80178.0


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10fPGXbAjRM[/youtube]
I did not hack Mame to do this, it had already been done. I spoke with the developer who made the modifications and he provided me a DIFF file. I modified Mame with the DIFF file and removed the nag screens.

The modifications are the reason I built my cabinet. I always wanted to play these 2 games with a spinner - feels more natural to me.

[spacies]

Holy crap, look how fast you turn!

Nice work.

[Donkey_Kong]

I was gonna ask in your other thread how that was playing gyruss. I'd like to try that sometime, but I'll have to wait until I buy another TT2.

[miles2912]

Bravo.  Just outstanding.  I thought that time pilot only shot in 8 directions.  Looks like there is more in your vid.

[Droler]

I hate to ask this since it's probably either common knowledge or already addressed but I missed it (I read both threads but skipped around a little) but can you tell me what one would need to do to get the spinner to work in Gyruss and Time Pilot? Oddly, I want to try that in Time Pilot 84.

[Loafmeister]

That's pretty interesting, I wouldn't mind trying this out as long as the default can also stay there.  Would work weird with Time Pilot, but makes sense, wherever you are shooting is where you are also flying.  Did your brain have to be "retrained" with both these games?

[ark_ader]

Wow night and day for all those game eh?

I love spinner games.  Maybe you can advise on how you did that, so I can do the same.

Nice vid BTW. 

[Minwah]

Any chance of the diff file?

[Twin-X]

Yes please share the diff with us.

[RetroBorg]

Whilst I'm a bit of stickler for original controls I have to agree those games should of been made with a spinner, can you do the same for Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Star Trek etc?

[nexus6]

awesome!!!

are these games made for a spinner in the early stage of development or makes the hack the ships rotate fast?

ps: i want a spinner-puzzle-bobble

[RayB]

Star Trek

Star Trek is already a spinner game.

[leapinlew]

Star Trek

Star Trek is already a spinner game.

SHH! I was going to tell him I could do it.

As a bonus, I will also make Tempest a spinner game! Attached is the diff file. Please rename it to diff.diff. I compiled it with .105 version of MAME. Have fun.

[Minwah]

can you do the same for Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe

In recent versions of Mame you can map mouse inputs to digital inputs so this is already possible - not sure when this ability was added.  Doesn't help for 'odd' games like Gyruss of course.

[Derrick Renaud]

Neat idea of mapping the dial to the player position address in RAM.

I imagine this could be easily expanded to cheat in other games.  Such as mapping the dial to the player's position in Space Invaders, Galaxian, etc.  These games might up being a lot easier though when using a spinner.

BTW, yes I did add the ability to map a spinner to buttons in the MAME source.  But hacking the games as has been done in this patch, bypasses the games routine that determines how fast you rotate.  So with the current MAME code, mapping the spinner to the buttons will only allow you to move as fast as the original game (eg Asteroids) allowed.  No matter how fast you spin.

Hacking the dial into the RAM location allows you to move as fast as you want.  Cheating, but what the heck. 

D.

[Ummon]

So with the current MAME code, mapping the spinner to the buttons will only allow you to move as fast as the original game (eg Asteroids) allowed.  No matter how fast you spin.

Hacking the dial into the RAM location allows you to move as fast as you want.

And as we know in the case of analog controls games, where an optical control is used instead is not satisfactory. Hence, being confined to the original 'pace' when using a spinner would be hell.

[tommyinajar]

How about Track and Field with a trackball finally ??

[Twin-X]

Is hiscore saving added to this diff or do i still have to use the other diff for that?

[TOK]

How about Track and Field with a trackball finally ??

There was an arcade version of Track and Field that used a trackball.
Not sure if its a different ROM or a toggle since I always play the button version.

[Minwah]

And as we know in the case of analog controls games, where an optical control is used instead is not satisfactory. Hence, being confined to the original 'pace' when using a spinner would be hell.

Point taken...might be OK for games with quick movement. Not so good with Space Invaders.

[brock.sampson]

I'm compiling mame 118 and adding this diff and hiscore diff.  I complied adding this diff and then the hiscore diff.  Hiscore is working but no analog controls in gyruss.  Is there a specific order you have to add the diffs in?

[Minwah]

I'm compiling mame 118 and adding this diff and hiscore diff.  I complied adding this diff and then the hiscore diff.  Hiscore is working but no analog controls in gyruss.  Is there a specific order you have to add the diffs in?

Did you get any errors when applying the diff? leapinlew said he compiled it with v0.105...things have probably changed since then causing the diff to fail.

[FrizzleFried]

Games that would be cool with a spinner:

Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
Sinistar
Time Pilot `84
...

[brock.sampson]

I wasn't paying real close attention I compiled this.  I compiled it again and it does produce errors.  Here is the output from the mame compiler that headkaze made.

Applying Diff Patch...
can't find file to patch at input line 4
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|diff -Nrc srco/drivers/asteroid.c src/drivers/asteroid.c
|*** srco/drivers/asteroid.c   Tue Feb 28 12:39:16 2006
|--- src/drivers/asteroid.c   Fri Jun  1 22:38:06 2007
--------------------------

Looking through the src directory for mame118 that driver folder has moved inside a folder named mame.  I'll try and edit that diff file and see if I can get it working.

[leapinlew]

The games supported are asteroid, pacman, galaxian, galaga, gyruss, and timepilot

Pac-man doesn't work so well.

Other games that need to support it:
Timepilot 84
Asteroid Deluxe
Star Castle
Puzzle Bobble

[brock.sampson]

I tried to replace drivers/asteroid.c with drivers/mame/asteroid.c in that diff file.  I'm still getting the can't find file to patch.  Is there something else I need to change?  Below is the original line from the diff and then the line I updated

Original
diff -Nrc srco/drivers/asteroid.c src/drivers/asteroid.c

Updated
diff -Nrc srco/drivers/mame/asteroid.c src/drivers/mame/asteroid.c

[Minwah]

You could always just patch v0.105 and use this version only for these few games...

Edit: Actually, using HeadKaze's Mame Compiled, I got stuck compiling v0.105:

Assembling src/windows/asmblit.asm...
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, nasmw -o obj/mame/windows/asmblit.o -f coff src/windows/asmblit.asm, ...) failed.
make (e=2): The system cannot find the file specified.
mingw32-make: *** [obj/mame/windows/asmblit.o] Error 2

To get around this, I downloaded NASM from:

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=6208&use_mirror=dfn&filename=nasm-2.03.01-win32.zip&7573627

Bung the downloaded files in your \mingw\bin folder, and rename 'nasm.exe' to nasmw.exe'.

...however I get some more errors at the end.  I had to disable the galaxian and pacman drivers for it to compile. So I only enabled drivers altered by the patch (and excluding these two):

in \src\mamedriv.c:

        DRIVER( asteroid )
   DRIVER( decocass ) - not sure what is altered
   DRIVER( galaga )
   DRIVER( gyruss )
   DRIVER( tempest ) - not sure what is altered
   DRIVER( timeplt )

[Twin-X]

isn't there a more easy way to patch for example the latest version?

[Minwah]

isn't there a more easy way to patch for example the latest version?

Someone would need to update the patch for the latest source code. I don't know, but this might not be straightforward since some very major things have changed since v0.105.

[Ummon]

How about Track and Field with a trackball finally ??

There was an arcade version of Track and Field that used a trackball.
Not sure if its a different ROM or a toggle since I always play the button version.

I don't get it....how would you use a trackball in TnF?


So Lew, are you getting acceptable scores now?

[Droler]

How about Track and Field with a trackball finally ??

There was an arcade version of Track and Field that used a trackball.
Not sure if its a different ROM or a toggle since I always play the button version.

I don't get it....how would you use a trackball in TnF?


So Lew, are you getting acceptable scores now?

I can answer that having done so in my distant youth.

You wail the hell out of it in the direction you want to run. If you've ever played or seen Atari Football played, it's essentially the same thing only you just roll the heck out of the ball instead of pounding the ever lovin' out of the buttons.

VERY different in feel ,but it worked fine.

[jasonbar]

I came across this thread a little while ago & finally got around to trying this out.

IT WORKS AND IT'S AWESOME!!!   


Thanks, Fry!

I simply downloaded the 105 source code, applied the diff included in this thread, & compiled with Headkaze's MAME Compiler 64.  I had v114 but saw that v115 supports MAME v105, so I downloaded the new v116 of MAME Compiler 64.  I didn't have to mess with the NASM stuff, MinWah.

For reference, my settings were: Optimize for Pentium 4 -SSE3, & I had only the Disable WError (<0.118u5) box checked.


For me, the usable games are Time Pilot, Gyruss, Galaga, Asteroids, & Galaxian.  I don't see the point of using a spinner/trackball for Pac-Man, & I didn't bother with Tempest & the DECO Cassette games, which were also listed in the patch code (I just tried Bump & Jump & Highway Chase, which I could see benefitting from spinner control, but cbnj & chwy didn't seem to work with a mouse...)


Thanks!  Can't wait to drop this MAME into my cab!

-Jason

[jasonbar]

Howdy-

Well, I got these 5 games set up.  They're awesome.  There were a few hiccups & one final detail that I can't iron out.

I'm using MaLa & I created 5 new dummy roms called spintime, spin aste, spingyru, spingalg, & spingalx.  This way, I can keep the original games & have the original & the hack next to each other in my game list & let the user select which version to play.

I have MaLa set to launch a .bat file instead of MAME, so I can incorporate multiple MAMEs in my list & Daphne games too.  See SGT's awesome thread in the MaLa forum for more info.


Hiccups: if you have this MAME executable to run the spin versions in the same folder & using the same ROMs as the MAME executable that runs the normal versions, they'll fight over the .ini file.  I ran the spinner version, set the analog control to Mouse 6 (my spinner of choice on my cab for these games...), played, then ran the non-spinner version.  When I went to re-run the spinner version of the game, the .ini file had been rewritten & the mouse had defaulted back to Mouse 1.

So, I put the new spinner MAME into another folder & made another set of ROMs there & folders for ini, config, & artwork.

Still, when I launched the files from the bat, it was using the "main" set of ROMs, not the alternate set.

I had to create 2 separate command line commands in my bat file to first change the directory to spinner MAME directory, and *then* launch the spinner MAME.

Something like this for each of the 5 games:
if "%1" == "spinaste" cd ..\mame105optspin
if "%1" == "spinaste" mame105optspin asteroid



But, there's 1 bit that I can't yet figure out: bezels.  No bezels are displaying for these games, even though they have a bezel file in the "artwork" folder in the spinner mame directory & the .ini file for spinner MAME has use_bezels 1.  I also copied all the non-zipped files in the artwork directory, thinking that those might be necessary masks or something, but no luck.

Any idea how to get my bezels back for the spinner MAME?

Also annoying is that 2 of these 5 games that run on my "normal" MAME no longer show their bezels when I launch them: Galaxian & Time Pilot.  What would cause the bezels to no longer show in MAME115?


Thanks,
-Jason

[leapinlew]

Howdy-

Well, I got these 5 games set up.  They're awesome.  There were a few hiccups & one final detail that I can't iron out.

I'm using MaLa & I created 5 new dummy roms called spintime, spin aste, spingyru, spingalg, & spingalx.  This way, I can keep the original games & have the original & the hack next to each other in my game list & let the user select which version to play.

I have MaLa set to launch a .bat file instead of MAME, so I can incorporate multiple MAMEs in my list & Daphne games too.  See SGT's awesome thread in the MaLa forum for more info.


Hiccups: if you have this MAME executable to run the spin versions in the same folder & using the same ROMs as the MAME executable that runs the normal versions, they'll fight over the .ini file.  I ran the spinner version, set the analog control to Mouse 6 (my spinner of choice on my cab for these games...), played, then ran the non-spinner version.  When I went to re-run the spinner version of the game, the .ini file had been rewritten & the mouse had defaulted back to Mouse 1.

So, I put the new spinner MAME into another folder & made another set of ROMs there & folders for ini, config, & artwork.

Still, when I launched the files from the bat, it was using the "main" set of ROMs, not the alternate set.

I had to create 2 separate command line commands in my bat file to first change the directory to spinner MAME directory, and *then* launch the spinner MAME.

Something like this for each of the 5 games:
if "%1" == "spinaste" cd ..\mame105optspin
if "%1" == "spinaste" mame105optspin asteroid



But, there's 1 bit that I can't yet figure out: bezels.  No bezels are displaying for these games, even though they have a bezel file in the "artwork" folder in the spinner mame directory & the .ini file for spinner MAME has use_bezels 1.  I also copied all the non-zipped files in the artwork directory, thinking that those might be necessary masks or something, but no luck.

Any idea how to get my bezels back for the spinner MAME?

Also annoying is that 2 of these 5 games that run on my "normal" MAME no longer show their bezels when I launch them: Galaxian & Time Pilot.  What would cause the bezels to no longer show in MAME115?


Thanks,
-Jason

Damn dude... I don't really have an answer for you, but you sure are tinkering away! It might just be easier to build another cab with a spinner only.  Thats what I did.

[jasonbar]

Damn dude... I don't really have an answer for you, but you sure are tinkering away! It might just be easier to build another cab with a spinner only.  Thats what I did.

Ack, no more cabs for me!!!  It's already been 1.5 years & counting on my current end-all-be-all of cabs!

Thanks for sharing the cool hack--Gyruss & Time Pilot certainly are keen w/ a spinner.  :]

-J

[TheBrokentoken]

Awesome thread and thanks a lot for posting up all of this info (and the hack)!!  This just solved one nagging problem I've had w/ Gyruss for a long time... playing it with an 8-way joystick worked, but the game lost quite a bit of it's 'fluidity' and it wasn't nearly as enjoyable. 

I was just getting ready to start a thread on Gyruss and the Ultimarc U360 joystick, but I'm glad I searched first and I totally agree the spinner is the best (i.e. should have been the original) control for Gyruss...

[erictrumpet]

This is a real dilemma for the purist in me....................
Gyruss with a spinner is obviously the way God intended it, but, IT IS NOT "CORRECT."
So, I am torn whether or not to set it up this way on my cab.
Of course, it's my cab and I can do whatever the heck I want with it etc, but like I said I am a purist at heart and this presents a dilemma.
FYI, I have already resolved to accept playing SW/ESB with an analog flight stick. So exceptions can be made

Eric.

[Loafmeister]

Why not just run both?  That way, on your "weak" days, you can play it as god intended, and on your "purist" days, you can play it as the cheap-bastard-companies-who-didn't-want-to-invest-in-a-spinner-on-every-arcade-cab intended 

[Ummon]

Why not just run both?  That way, on your "weak" days, you can play it as god intended, and on your "purist" days, you can play it as the cheap-bastard-companies-who-didn't-want-to-invest-in-a-spinner-on-every-arcade-cab intended 

A weak day for me on these is not getting past stage 16 or stage 5, respectively.... although I am waiting for these to be in Misfitmame, and then I'll check 'em out.

[TheBrokentoken]

Why not just run both?  That way, on your "weak" days, you can play it as god intended, and on your "purist" days, you can play it as the cheap-bastard-companies-who-didn't-want-to-invest-in-a-spinner-on-every-arcade-cab intended 

A weak day for me on these is not getting past stage 16 or stage 5, respectively.... although I am waiting for these to be in Misfitmame, and then I'll check 'em out.

speaking of misfitMAME - what is the release schedule like on that project?  The website I found (misfitmame.mameworld.net) shows a release about every 6 months (at best).  Is that the norm for updates?