NeoGeo CD emulator testers needed

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:30 pm

As some of you may or may not know, I have been working for the past few months on an update/reworking of I.M.'s & co's port of NeoCD/SDL.

I had actually had a good release ready for thanksgiving, but one of my very few testers reported that it didnt work at all, so I ended up releasing Bhole instead.

Around that time Chui announced Neo4all to be released for christmas, and with that i pretty much decided not to continue too much work on it. Now that Christmas has passed and we are in a new year however, it comes to my attention that neo4all did not come out, and I cannot find any sort of news regarding why not.

This is where you all come in. I need testers. All changes I have made should make no negative impact on compatability, but i don't have the resources to test it myself. All I need are two NTSC and two PAL testers that are respected members of the community (no green stars) who can test for me within the next week 5 to 10 games.

Thanks for your time all.

EDIT: The new version has actually been released and is availible for download here : http://www.screamcast.net/boards/viewto ... =1282#1282

testing is still needed, but yea... its not beta anymore =P.

DCmad · Post by **DCmad** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 3:21 pm

Hey, it's quzar. Good to see you again after some weeks. You still can find me in MSN and count with me as ever

Fosters · Post by **Fosters** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 4:33 pm

I think ive got some time to help. (Im on PAL)
<shameless plug>
At least now Ive got my Pacifi3d release done.
http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/pacifi3d.html
</shameless plug>
Itd be interesting to see what youve done with my adopted baby.

PM me.

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:16 pm

for some reason the emulator will only work in elf form. once converted to scrambled or unscrambled bin it blue-screens the DC.

in light of this, ill simply make the download publicly available in the hopes that one of the scene's senior members or burning wiz' can figure it out.

here you go people.

[edit] took it down in advance of new release [/edit]

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:45 pm

3rd time you've made a botched beta now right?

Something you changed in the last 4 compiles from 9.3 has to be breaking something. Maybe you should let other people get a look at the source to see if they can pinpoint the problem.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:11 am

Scrambled binary that seems to work, at least it did for me when burnt via CDRecord.

Post by **Quzar** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:20 am

Metafox - what tools did you use to scramble it?

if you don't mind the slight bandwidth drain, id like it if i could get 3-4 accounts of it working right, then i'll repack it, move it to SC.net and make up a page for it.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:29 am

sh-elf-objcopy -O binary -R .stack myfile.elf myfile.bin

and Marcus Comstedt's scramble utility.

Bandwidth drain doesn't matter to me - I've got plenty of bandwidth to spare on the cyberdogcastle server.

Arqueiro · Post by **Arqueiro** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 2:26 pm

nice see you work in the neogeo emu !

good luck

Post by **Quzar** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:39 pm

MetaFox wrote:sh-elf-objcopy -O binary -R .stack myfile.elf myfile.bin

and Marcus Comstedt's scramble utility.

Bandwidth drain doesn't matter to me - I've got plenty of bandwidth to spare on the cyberdogcastle server.

::slaps head::

sh-elf-objcopy -R .stack -O binary myfile.elf myfile.bin

is what i was doing.

123soleil · Post by **123soleil** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:57 pm

so what changes did you actually make, can we have more details? is sfx implemented?
anyway, this is great news! thanks quzar!

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 8:25 pm

Nothing. It's just a more stable acurrate version based off of 9.3
So he doesnt have to revert back to 9.3 everytime something breaks.

Post by **Quzar** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 10:04 pm

crap, i thought i had posted the link... here we go:

http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewto ... =neocd+9+x

almost all the things mentioned in there are changed. the big things are the screen size (before you couldnt see the whole screen, and the odd stretching made it look blurry), the vmu crash fix, fixed CDDA loading (before there was a 2.5second gap), and automatic region selection via DC bios checking as well as accurate CPU timing based on the same. ill have what should be a working full beta ready in a few days or so (why do i waste my time with long posts like this....)

law56ker · Post by **law56ker** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:18 pm

I think i'd be great if you made some sort of menu system where you could load multiple games off one cd. The arguments that this will promote warez is pretty weak considering most every emulator in the dreamcast scene has menu systems to load multiple games. Since most neo cd games are quite small, it whould be nice to put multiple games on one cd so you whouldn't have to swap all the time and or take all your collection of games out.

gamedudex2 · Post by **gamedudex2** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:21 pm

ya that would be cool a multi game disc

ethoscapade · Post by **ethoscapade** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:18 pm

right said.. i know the warez implications are pretty strong.

after all, the mere concept that you're ripping stuff off a neo disc in the first place is pretty wrong, but let's be honest, nobody actually uses real neoCDs on this..

and more importantly, you aren't ian. ISO/MP3 support would be an asset no matter how you slice it.

OneThirty8 · Post by **OneThirty8** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:44 pm

Guys, this is starting to look like a warez topic. Let's not get it locked.

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:49 pm

iso/mp3 support will never happen. at least not supported by me. i doubt that it is barely possibly because the way that the emulator works would not allow it without massive modification. even then it probably would not be able to run fullspeed as it already can't run fullspeed with the z80. throw mp3 decoding on top of that and there is no way that you could get fullspeed (without a z80 core double the speed and a m68k core that is significantly faster than c68k, which has yet to materialize).

either way that has no bering whatsoever on this topic at all, as it is not a feature request topic nor a topic intended for general discussion of the emulator.

expect an informal release within a week that will have a few worthwhile changes as outlined above.

[edit]
turns out all the problem i have been having with it restarting DCs and such was only with multibooting programs. when selfbooted it works perfectly fine. now that i know this, i know that there is nothing really wrong with my dev setup (just some weird fluke with the emulator). there should therefore be an official release very very soon.

xenon · Post by **xenon** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:35 am

I have 12 neocd games

, yo I will test, as always the games. I'll post the test soon.

Yours,

xenon · Post by **xenon** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 5:09 pm

I'll post the tests next monday, because I am busy this weekend.

The games I have:

Cyber Lip, League Bowling, Metal Slug, Mutation Nation, Pulstar, Puzzle Bobble, Rally Chase, Soccer Brawl, Super Sidekicks, The King of Fighters 95, The Super Spy and View Point.

Yours,