0.148u5 [f205v, Tirino73, David Haywood]
WIP:
- 0.150: Small PALETTE_INIT cleanup in Stunt Air [Oliver Stoeneberg].
- 0.149: Small update. Fixed discarded prom bit in PALETTE_INIT. Updated dipswitch DSWA/DSWB. 0xf003 reads are discarded immediately. Tweak music timing [hap]. Changed Z80 CPU1/2 clock speeds to 3072000 Hz. Fixed prom loading. Added dipswitches 'Difficulty', 4x 'Unused' and 'Unknown'.
- 0.148u5: f205v and Tirino73 added 'Stunt Air' (Nuova Videotron 1983).
- 18th May 2013: David Haywood - The MAME Italia guys dumped a game called 'Stunt Air'. I've added background scrolling, and sprites. The hardware can actually only reference 0x40 sprite tiles, so there are 2 bank registers to access everything, used for the space station graphic and a few others. Nothing too complex about this, although sometimes they do flicker / show bad graphics, might just be how the game is. I've also hooked up the inputs and dipswitches (which are read in a slightly scrambled order). The programming seems a little rough, and some of the terminology rough 'TIME' actually means stage, and CD is the amount of the stage remaining. It also becomes more obvious why the dumper claimed it is a clone of Star Jacker at this point, not because it is, but because it has a similar 'trailing ships = lives' mechanic. Haven't figured out the colours yet, as you can see, maybe it's just the proms, also sound needs doing, and some of that might be beyond my ability (readme mentions discrete sound hardware in addition to the AYs, so unless it's just filtering that could be nasty). Edit3: I've continued to work on Stunt Air, hooking up some preliminary sound, and attempted to decode the colour PROM too. As a result I've marked the game as WORKING at this stage, but some issues remain. Music tempo etc. is directly related to the interrupt frequency on the Sound CPU, this was not measured, and needs to be measured. Colour balance / decoding colour is wrong, this is likely determined by resistor values on the PCB in addition to the PROMs, these need to be noted down, and better reference shots provided. The text layer colour has been hardcoded to white, I don't know where that colour comes from (it's a 1bpp layer, and might well just be hardcoded on the PCB). CPU and sound chip frequencies are also were not measured, and shot be, I don't know what is the correct divide value to use from the OSC on the PCB. Refresh rate was also not measured (as is often the case) so is set to 60hz at the moment, that is rarely correct. There is mention in the readme of discrete sound circuits, these need to be documented. There is some graphical flicker at times (bad sprite graphics showing for a single frame every now and again) this could be a result of poor screen timing, a missing enable bit, or something else. I feel personally I've done as much as I can with this without resorting to blind guesses, accurate emulation is a two part process, and given how uncommon this game is I hope that proper measurements can be made from the PCB, and as well as any other information that we might need collected in order to further the actual emulation. Overall, it's a nice find, and another piece of arcade history (partially) preserved, fingers crossed we can bring it up to 100% soon.
Recommended Games (Star Force):
Zero Hour
Red Clash
Space Cruiser
Catacomb
Rougien
Vega
Espial
Night Star (DECO Cassette)
Nova 2001
Star Jacker
Stunt Air
Zodiack
Star Force
Alpha Mission / ASO
Alpha Mission II / ASO II
Astro Warrior (Mega-Tech)
Flower
Halley's Comet
Mission 660
Rafflesia
S.R.D. Mission
Sky Fox
Truxton / Tatsujin
Tatsujin (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Truxton II / Tatsujin Oh
Blast Off
Blazing Lazers
GunHed (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
The Next Space
Omega Fighter
Star Fighter
Super Star Soldier (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Lethal Thunder
Pollux
Strike Gunner S.T.G
Vimana
Explosive Breaker
Final Star Force
Galmedes
Gunlock
GunNail
Nebulas Ray
Super-X
Gekirindan
Viper Phase 1
Fever SOS
Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting
