0.33 BETA 2 Well, you know that I usually don't celebrate recurrences, but we have just hit the 500th ROM set supported (OK, OK, I know that many of them don't work) and by pure coincidence it happens to be a very special one: Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*Bert This is a sequel to Q*Bert which was never released to the public. You can find its story, as recalled by the author, Warren Davis, at http://www.coinop.org/coinop/features/qbstory.html Thanks to everyone who made this possible. New ROM sets supported (in no particular order): ------------------------------------------------ Heavy Barrel (new, complete set). The old one has been renamed & modified to include 4 ROMs which were missing. [Bryan McPhail] Magic Sword [Paul Leaman] Space Dungeon [Dan Boris] Slap Fight (preliminary) [Keith Wilkins] These drivers have improved GRAPHICS: ------------------------------------- - Fixed background layer colors in Trojan [Paul Leaman] - Fixed invisible ball in Champion Baseball. Some of the graphics are still broken. The reason is unknown. [Nicola Salmoria] - Adjusted the brightess of the background in Popeye, which should make it correct according to the schematics. Maybe now it's too dark? [Nicola Salmoria] These drivers have new or improved SOUND: ----------------------------------------- - Fixed fuel alert sound in Lunar Lander. [Keith Wilkins] - Added speech to Champion Baseball. [Nicola Salmoria] These drivers have HIGH SCORE support: -------------------------------------- - Swimmer, Pop Flamer [Brad Oliver] - Fixed Wonder Boy Deluxe [Chris Moore] Other drivers changes: ---------------------- - Heavy Barrel is playable to the end, but there are still some problems. [Bryan McPhail] - Improved speed in the CPS1 games. [Paul Leaman] - Fixed speed in Berzerk/Frenzy [Zsolt Vasvari] - Adjusted timing in the vector games. [Bernd Wiebelt] - Some game information is displayed in the introduction screen. [Nicola Salmoria] Source: ------- - Further changes to the palette handling code. - osd_create_display() no longer takes the total_colors, palette, pens arguments. They are handled by osd_allocate_colors(), which is called after osd_create_display(). - the convert_color_prom() functions now take a unsigned short *colortable parameter instead of unsigned char *. - Drivers for games which have a FIXED palette (i.e. they don't call osd_modify_pen()) of more than 256 colors are now allowed to declare it as such in the MachineDriver. The palette will be automatically shrinked to fit in 256 colors. Note: this assumes that the palette is actually composed of no more than 256 unique colors. This is currently the case in all the games. Examples: Kung Fu Master, Lode Runner, Arkanoid, Popeye. - instead of calling osd_modify_pen(Machine->pens[color],r,g,b), drivers should call palette_change_color(color,r,g,b). Note that the function does the Machine->pens[] mapping for you. - Added WatchPoint support to the debugger (i.e. check a RAM location and stop execution whe it is changed). [Ernesto Corvi] - Fixed a bug in 6502/dasm.c (this only applies if you compile it to get a standalone disassembler - it is not part of MAME) [Christophe Verre]