1) Got the 3 errors everyone else is with PacNPal, Galaga2K and GalagaEF -- 3 files missing. Had a complete MAME circa .128 that was rom checked. Wonder where these 3 files are?
I'll investigate P-n-P. We're looking for checksums, so what happened on one other one was that there was apparently a MAME redump that changed a couple bytes (probably inconsequential to actual operation) but was enough to throw off the checksum. The 2K and EF variations were graphics hacks ("2000" and "Terrorist Fighter"-- they might be in the Misfit Mame stuff?)
2) Switched to the folder with roms from MenuSys from the AS board thinking I could find them there. Changed folder using browse then reselected show all then show avaialble. Then things started going funky. Each time I hit Validate, a random game was claimed to be missing. Yet all the files were already written as G3R's on the card. Then when I stepped through to the final screen, it claimed it couldn't write anything to the SD card for game settings. Closed and reopened and this time didn't change the folder and things worked just fine.
Curious-- there probably wasn't a lot of testing when it comes to changing directories on the fly. It does try to keep track of some stuff from the directory scan so that it doesn't have to do it every time-- maybe switching directories confused it. If it works OK with a restart of the app, I'd say to do that as a workaround for now. (I don't think it occurred to us that people would have more than one ROMs directory.)
3) Sound is off/missing in Burgertime (horizontal mode). Most notably the bonus pepper 'fruit' appearing sound is only 1 or 2 notes instead of the 5 to 6 that I recall from my real board.
I'll throw it on the buglist. That's one of those games that's been implemented for years, so if people don't complain we tend to think we have it right. I have an original machine for that to check if need be.
4) Vertical overscan is significant in some games. I had optimized my monitor for an original Robotron PCB, and had been running the AS board in it. While Robotron fully fills the screen vertically, a few other games, notably the Universal verticals (MrDo/Do Castle) in horizontal mode have text clipped off screen. If I adjust that in, it will make the williams games an inch or two smaller diagonally. Not a big deal, since I don't believe you mess around with changing the H/V refresh rates, just try to pixel map in the available space.
Vertical timing is pretty close to the AS board. We did have to tighten things up to be compatible with VGA monitors though. There will be a certain amount of compromise necessary however since most games back in the day had wildly different pixelclocks, blanking, etc.-- most people don't have multisync monitors in their machines so the hardware is designed with one scanrate/pixel clock and we don't switch or do anything that'd cause problems with slightly different scan rates on fixed frequency monitors.
5) Horizontal underscan is significant in some games. Moon Patrol, Mario Bros had large black borders on the left/right that I was not expecting. Again, I guess we can't be expecting a AdvanceMame with all the optimized resolution/refresh tweaks.
Again, this is actually the same implementation as the Arcadeshop board-- screen position and whatnot might not be exactly the same as the AS board (and the pixel clock is slightly different-- closer to VGA spec), but it is consistent once it's set. Our video system is 'square pixels'-- so games that used slow pixel clocks to stretch pixels (Moon Patrol, Liberator, Mario Bros., etc.) will have borders just like on the AS board. On the upside, this is also what allows a lot of the otherwise 'horizontal' games to run in 'vertical' mode without losing any pixels.
It is worth noting, however, that a lot of the the original games had really, really horrible centering and blanking intervals. We actually clean those up and position things nicely at least. In horizontal mode, I think Wizard of Wor is the worst-case scenario for screen utilization. Williams games are a close 2nd, but we actually blank their active video area early. (The original Williams hardware showed scratch RAM in the screen raster and you actually had to adjust the h-width and centering to place part of the active scanlines off screen or else you'd have a bar of garbage visible on the right. ;-)
Suggestion:
When pressing the P1 button 1 in the menu, it jumps into the demo of the game. However it starts at the initial boot/title. It would be nice if the "demo" mode started at the point the game is actually starting the attract of the game screen instead of the same entry point of the title.
I'll add this to the feature request list. (that's one of those things that some people like it the way it is and others might not-- probably have to be an option like our "long/short" demo mode settings.)
Anyway, thanks for all the feedback. Hope I'm not coming across as argumentative-- on some topics there's just reasons why it is the way it is and we're not likely to change things. When it comes to bugs and feature requests though we'd always rather hear them than not. Worst case we can't do something or hit the "as close as we can get" wall with it.
We also need to balance time spent fixing bugs vs. time spent on new titles, so there will be occasions where we shuffle some things off to the low priority bug list and work on new stuff instead.
-Clay
