MAME GP32 2.1 Released

Category: GP32

* Minor optimizations to 1943, Ghost and Goblins, Black Tiger, Gunsmoke (and clones). Skip over non-drawn characters and sprites.

* Minor optimizations to Xain'd Sleena / Solar Warrior. Also activated hi-score save/load. Use old GFX core for this game.

* Change in control to Defender. Activate "cheat" mode which means you get to use joystick control to reverse and thrust. (If any one doesn't like this, I'll create a new driver).

* Fixed bug in Millipede. X-Axis trackball control was not correct.

* Bug fix to existing sound core. Duplication of some code! Slightly faster.

* New Data East 16-bit games implemented (MAME 0.35b5). New fully working games:
- Baddudes vs Dragonninja US (baddudes), Dragonninja Japan (drgnninja), Slyspy revision 2 (slyspy2) and Slyspy revision 3 (slyspy), Robocop bootleg (robocopp), Heavy Barrel US (hbarrel), Heavy Barrel Japan (hbarrelj), Hippodrome (hippodrm), Fighting Fantasy Japan (ffantasy), Midnight Resistance US (midres), Midnight Resistance Japan (midresj). All are fully playable with all sounds. All these run really well with no sound at FS=1, ie 100% speed and 30FPS. They all run at a playable speed with sound=accurate, FS<=2, 100% speed and 12-15FPS.

Quick note on Heavy Barrel and Midnight Resistance: These games originally featured an analog controller to rotate the players gun. MAME's default method of simulating this control is the mouse. On the GP32, this is hardcoded to use the joystick. Since the joystick is generally used to move the player, I have disabled this analog control for these games and mapped it to buttons 9 and 10 instead. Trivia: These two games are approaching the largest (in terms of memory used) ROMs that will fit in the GP32's 8MB of RAM.

What this means is that you should redefine these controls to (for example) START and SELECT to rotate your weapon.

Some of the keys may change function in the next release: the shoulder buttons may be better suited for this secondary control and move the screen rotation button to something else.

I also patched Heavy Barrel to version MAME 0.36b5 so that sprite and gun positions are correct (i8751 controller).

* New Data East 8-bit games implmented (MAME 0.35b3): - Breywood (breywood), Captain Silver (csilver), Gondomania (gondo), Last Mission (Rev 5) (lastmss2), Last Mission (Rev 6) (lastmiss), Mekyo Sensi (mekyosen), Shackled (shackled), Super Real Darwin (srdarwin). Improvements to existing Data East 8-bit games.

* Improved Gradius driver now also includes: - Lifeforce US (lifefrce), Lifeforce Japan (lifefrcj) and Salamander (salamand). Total ROMs now 753.

* New YM3812 sound core as per GP2X MAME: Snow Bros, Hellfire, Gemini Wing, Bubble Bobble, etc.

* New CPU - Hu6280 core. This is used by the Data East 16-bit games. The GP2X version of MAME should be able to benefit from this too. ie. full sound for the above games and others (inc. Dark Seal). Trivia: This is the CPU used by the PC-Engine, a modified 6502.

* Removed splash screen for additional memory. May add this back in a later release to load dynamically.

:: MAME GP32 Official Site