Uh… well, if there was no answer for that long, and he was looking to get it on ebay sometime during the week of 2004/7/11, I’d say the answer is pretty irrelevant 5+ years later 😛 .

DogP

Ah… okay, I was able to reproduce it on my computer. It had to do with the length of the file path. This one should fix it.

DogP

Attachments:

1. reality_boy_rommap-1.zip

Hmm… I’m not sure about that error… I assume you’re using some new version of Windows? I’ve only tested these on XP Pro.

BTW, there was a bug in the old _rommap version that caused the maps to be slightly wrong, which prevented you from creating a working ROM (up to about the point that you quit) by masking it with the map. Attached is a new version that should work properly.

Let me know if it works or doesn’t… and if it doesn’t, I’ll try it on my friend’s Windows 7 box. It’s very possible that I didn’t do some sort of cleanup that I should have when closing.

DogP

Attachments:

1. reality_boy_rommap.zip

Okay… attached are a couple utilities (with source) to go with the ROM maps.

The first is map_merge, which allows you to merge multiple maps. You can use this for combining several sessions of playing a game in Reality Boy.

The second is map_mask, which outputs the original ROM masked by the map file. This is useful for inspecting just the parts that are in the map, like the code for disassembling, or the data for finding specific values, level data, etc.

I threw these together very quickly, so as usual, there’s likely bugs… let me know if you come across any.

DogP

Attachments:

1. map_utils.zip

No news on that yet… I haven’t looked at that code in several years, though it’s something I’d really like to pick up again, and it seems that this might be the right time to do it.

DogP

Heheheh… wow, how much I forget in 8 years 😉 .

DogP

I guess I’ll be the first… first reading this thread, I expected this (image attached).

BTW, it seems that this was already known, or similarly experienced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Pinball . It says just breaking 100 mil locks up though. I suck at the game, so I’ve definitely never had it happen.

It would be pretty funny to email Nintendo about the bug to see what kind of response they give.

DogP

Attachments:

1. 

   gp_bigbug.jpg
   

You could probably make short work of it by using Red Dragon in cheat mode to find the memory location of the score, use a cheat to give you 120 million, save your state (so you can come right back), then get the jackpot, then save another state and post them here for others to play with.

IIRC Galactic Pinball is playable in RD.

DogP

Heh… I lost and won… I got the last $ and E landed on me… it said “you lost”, faded out, then said “you won” 😛

DogP

That looks pretty nice… I wonder how the performance is.

DogP

Are you trying to play in real time as it’s processing, or are you having it pre-process it all, then basically just play back the wav? I’m not sure whether it’ll keep up real time on all computers.

But feel free to work on whatever you find to be more interesting… I don’t really need a GUI, but in the long run I think there should be a GUI for it, to ease people into making VB sounds, rather then forcing them to jump into a text config file with strange names and values that don’t really mean anything.

And yeah… the official manual should have lots most of the info you need. Version 1 was basically just writing exactly what the official docs said… in v1.1, I actually tested some things on hardware to clarify what wasn’t clear in the manual.

DogP

Okay… attached is Version 1.1, which has a few minor changes in how values are processed, as well as a few other small changes. The source code is also included in the zip.

I have some other things I’d like to add, but I wanted to get this version out, along with the source. For the next version I’ll get the other additions made, as well as any fixes/changes/additions that you guys suggest.

DogP

Attachments:

1. vb_snd_gen-2.zip

Well, if anyone wants to take charge of it, I’d be glad to help however I can, but since I have almost no experience with VG sound formats for the PC (nor really much interest), I don’t think I should take charge of it. I can give you whatever info you’d need on the VB audio technical side though.

DogP

Yeah, that’s what I was talking about if you were to use the diode… you’d need a pull-up resistor, like shown.

For dip switch pull-ups, I’d probably use 10k… you could probably go higher, but I don’t really see any reason to.

DogP

I dunno if this helps any, but here’s a zip of my working VIDE directory.

DogP

Attachments:

1. vide-1.zip

Ugh… well good luck! The old version isn’t too bad anyway, and if you’re making a game in a hurry, you’re not likely to use the extra stuff the new compiler has to offer anyway.

DogP

e5frog wrote:
Best case scenario then is if I can have just a single resistor in series (any ideas about a range, 2k2, 3k3, 10k?).

DogP wrote:
The resistor value doesn’t matter too much… 1k to 10k should be good.

e5frog wrote:
Question then is if I need to do anything to the data bus as well…

I have written to Numonyx and asked about it, otherwise I guess I’ll have to go the safe way. Most other sources don’t worry about there being 5V on the databus, they just say that the output of a 3V system is usually enough for a 5V system.

If the chip isn’t 5V tolerant, and there’s 5V levels on the pins as is the case of the VB (even if it’s while the chip is disabled), you definitely need to protect the pins.

e5frog wrote:
Diodes on the databus then?

They’re only going to be used as outputs and the diodes will protect them from 5V levels on the databus…

Huh? You mean have the diode so the current can’t flow toward the chip, but can flow out of the chip into the VB? I don’t think that’d be good… one reason is that your levels will drop by the forward voltage (which may drop it below the threshold), and the other is how do you output a 0? If you output a 0, the diode wouldn’t conduct, or would be reverse biased, which would basically mean that the input pin was floating. I think that would also be a problem with the the two diodes method to bring 5V down to 3.3V. For that, you’d need an extra pulldown resistor, and it’d have to be a low enough value that the rise and fall times were acceptable.

If possible, I’d recommend the series resistor, using a resistor network/array (lots of resistors in a convenient package). If you can’t find out from the manufacturer whether the diodes are there, you can test by hooking up a chip, add a series resistor, put a multimeter or scope probe on the chip pin, then ramp up the voltage across the resistor. If the voltage goes up and tops out at ~3.6V when the input is driven above that, then the diodes are there and you’re probably fine. If the voltage keeps going up, then the diodes aren’t there and possibly ruined the chip 😛 .

DogP

I’m not sure about the problem you’re having… I’ve never seen that in the few times I’ve built it. You did make sure to install: make, gcc, flex, patch, tar, gzip, autoconfig, gperf, and bison with cygwin, right?

DogP

I’ve never heard of that event… that sounds pretty cool. And I think you could get away with an image overlaid in one eye… kinda like a helmet mounted HUD.

But I think you’d want to keep the focus about the same (I believe most real HUDs are focused at infinity), and just overlay the necessary stuff, maybe in a darkish shade, or maybe keep everything else dark and have that be the only thing in the brightest shade.

I guess you could probably do something similar to Silent Scope (arcade) where one eye looks through a high power scope and the other eye looks at the overall screen, but not with enough precision to actually hit the target without using the scope. Note to self – that’s actually a really cool idea 😉 .

DogP

Ah, well that could work, except for the other issues I’ve pointed out. I guess to me it’d make the most sense to just log them as they happen. If you want a 44100Hz timebase, just have a counter running in the background at 44100Hz and log the “time” w/ the change, though as I said, none of the timing in RB is particularly accurate.

Personally, I don’t think emulation is up to speed for this task yet, but if anyone would like to work towards it, that’d definitely be nice to see.

DogP