Action 53 multicart engine

B00daW · Post by **B00daW** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 12:16 pm

I believe Mouser needs to be on this multicart to maintain the expected lack of quality.

Hamtaro126 · Post by **Hamtaro126** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:27 pm

B00daW wrote:I believe Mouser needs to be on this multicart to maintain the expected lack of quality.

I do not think Mouser works on NES without redoing everything, Because NBASIC programs are totally incompatible with a real NES,

One of the reasons is the Init code for these programs are wrong. But there are other reasons like bad interpretation of BASIC code to NES.

Post by **tepples** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:43 pm

If people want an updated Mouser, they can download the Super NeSnake 2 demo.

Nothing special to show yet, but I have come up with a few deliverables:

LJ65+Concentration Room multicart on NROM-256 with CHR RAM
Thwaite+Lawn Mower multicart on CNROM
iNES file parser in Python (which caused conjectures on #nesdev that I was writing an NES emulator in Python)
Tool to checksum CHR ROM banks in an iNES file, extract banks to PNG, and insert PNG to banks (download here)
PB53, a mostly-RLE tile codec that I described in the last paragraph of this post, with Python compressor and decompressor and 6502 decompressor
Parser for an INI-like configuration file language that allows multi-line values

EDIT (Friday 4:35 PM US EST):

ROM builder and extractor appear working

Now I can continue work on the menu program.

Tempy · Post by **Tempy** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 3:10 pm

Definitely interested in this project!

Post by **tepples** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:29 pm

Welcome to the BBS, Tempy from #nesdev. And thank you for your support.

Anyway, I've got the menu program displaying the titles of pages and games inserted through the builder.

Tempy's first post's body text sounds like something certain automated posting processes would write in order to build reputation, but I recognize the nick. AGF for now plz.

Tempy · Post by **Tempy** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:11 pm

tepples wrote:Welcome to the BBS, Tempy from #nesdev. And thank you for your support.

Anyway, I've got the menu program displaying the titles of pages and games inserted through the builder.

Tempy's first post's body text sounds like something certain automated posting processes would write in order to build reputation, but I recognize the nick. AGF for now plz.

Oh, I registered a while ago to PM someone about multicarts. My first post wasn't that interesting I guess

Don't know much about NES programming yet; done 2 repros (Hyaku Monogatari, Recca), built a SNES USB controller with internal flash drive, started a Road Fighter hack which would fit better on the badderhacks forum than here.

Post by **tepples** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:43 pm

It's alive and kicking on my PowerPak. I can choose from 9 games and play all of them.

Post by **tepples** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:39 pm

Both the ROM builder and ROM extractor appear to be working. I plan to release them very soon, but first I have to write a manual for the builder and work on my requirements checklist.

NESHomebrew · Post by **NESHomebrew** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:48 am

Is that font visible on a LCD tv? Just wondering if you tried it. This is a pretty cool project

Would be nice to see it filled with 53 unique homebrews.

Post by **tepples** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 3:18 pm

I just tried it on both a Vizio LCD and a Magnavox CRT. (The TV depicted in the menu is a Sharp CRT.) But then my camera is a cheap piece of Chinese cr█p. Let's just say that the text is easier to read than the text in Mario Is Missing for Super NES.

Now you get to try it too:

EDIT (Sat 02-04): I've just realized something. Sometimes it's hard to MAKE YOUR SELECTION NOW! if the menu doesn't support the specialized controller that the game uses. For example, Thwaite with two mice or ZapPing with two Zappers. Should I put Zapper support and mouse support into the menu program so that someone can choose a game with the same controller used to play it?

EDIT (Sun 02-05): Mouse and Zapper are working in my source tree. I also got LAN Master to build in ca65 by writing a noddy Python script to translate NESASM syntax to ca65 syntax. I hope to shrink its CHR enough that I can stick it in a submulti with Munchie Attack.

EDIT (Mon 02-06): I've successfully stuffed both Munchie Attack and LAN Master's compressed CHR into LAN Master's PRG bank.

EDIT (Wed 02-08): I made a tool to combine any NROM-128 game at $8000 with an NROM-128 game at $C000. This let me turn Slappin' Bitches, FHBG, MineShaft, and Zap Ruder (ZapPing + Axe + Zapper Calibration) from four PRG banks into two. This effort also uncovered a couple bugs in my builder, which I fixed.

Post by **tepples** » Fri Feb 10, 2012 6:22 am

I've released version 0.02 of the menu source and builder and updated the collection.

0.02 (2012-02-10)

Menu: easier to see which tab is selected
Menu: select an activity with Super NES Mouse in port 1
Menu: select an activity with Zapper in port 2
Menu: controller reading is DPCM-unsafe for mouse compatibility
Menu is 7.5 KiB
FFD: allocating end of slice no longer invalidates entire slice
Reset patch: made the relocatable patch actually work
Collection: added Munchie Attack to unused space in LAN Master
Collection: moved FHBG into unused space in Slappin'
Collection: moved MineShaft into unused space in Zap Ruder
Collection is 11 games and 2 toys in 256 KiB

I made a tool to translate just enough NESASM syntax into ca65 syntax to get LAN Master assembling in the ca65 environment. I used this to fit LAN Master's CHR and Munchie Attack into unused parts of LAN Master's PRG bank.

The tool to combine two NROM-128 games works by patching each game's reset to set or clear bit 7 of a memory location (e.g. $07FF) and patching the NMI handler to switch on this location, at the cost of about 10 CPU cycles of vblank time.

Any ideas for other NROM games to include or other things that'd be nice to have in the menu?

FARID · Post by **FARID** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:09 am

@ tepples

I am working on a 32 in 1 for 128/128 TLROM by using two M27C322

The total size of two M27C322 is 8192KB so that It can hold
32 TLROM which are 128/128KB or
128 NROM-128 which are 16/8KB or
256 NROM-256 which are 32/8KB

Do you think you can expand the menu list to other pages by pushing select button?

Post by **tepples** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:06 am

A collection can have up to five pages, and each page can have up to 20 games. This covers your 32-in-1.

Ordinarily, you switch pages with left and right on the Control Pad, by shooting the tab bar with the Zapper, or by moving the mouse straight to the left or right. The current collection has four pages: games developed by myself and NovaYoshi, page 2 with games developed by Shiru, page 3 with games developed by others, and page 4 with things that aren't games. The pages are listed in the tab bar at the top of the screen. Did you want to add completely separate sets of pages? How many pages do you want to have? Or did you just want to add Select as an alias for right on the Control Pad?

FARID · Post by **FARID** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 10:20 am

For now my goal is 32 in 1 and I want to have two pages with 16 games in each page.

If I can get it work, I am sure I can design the necessary hardware for 128/256 in 1 too. They also need some more pages.

What is the logic behind 20 games in a page? Isn't It possible to add more games to one page?

Post by **tepples** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 10:27 am

FARID wrote:What is the logic behind 20 games in a page?

The area for displaying titles of games is 128 pixels wide and 160 pixels tall, and the text display engine assumes 8 pixels per line.