UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Discuss emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom.

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NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

I already rejected your Mapper 281 assignment, as you only published the assignment after I did, and my M281 ROM had been available long before.

(And I certainly will not yield to the assignment of an emulator that cannot even by downloaded freely in binary form, let alone in source code form.)
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

All right, finished the bunch that I listed earlier. There's still a bunch of UNIF-only multicarts and unlicensed games with custom mappers around, so we'll hit the 300 mark soon enough. There are also several FDS-to-cartridge conversions by Kaiser, who apparently used a custom board for each single game.

The Mapper 296 description currently is a bit ugly for mixing bankswitching behavior with VT3x-console-specific behavior. Eventually, I would like to separate the two, once more about that particular revision of the VTxx Famiclones has been found out. Unfortunately, no data sheet for that one seems to be publicly available. For now, the current description will have to do.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

The next round of intended assignments:

Code: Select all

300     BMC-190in1
301     BMC-8157
302     UNL-KS7057
303     UNL-KS7017
304     UNL-SMB2J with PRG-ROM size less than 80 KiB (*1)
305     UNL-KS7031, KS7031
306     UNL-KS7016
307     UNL-KS7037
308     UNL-TH2131-1
309     UNL-LH51
310     UNL-LH32
311     UNL-SMB2JX (UNL-SMB2J with PRG-ROM size 80 KiB) (*1)
312     UNL-KS7013B
313     BMC-RESET-TXROM (128 KiB Outer Bank Size)
314     BMC-64in1NoRepeat
315     BMC-830118C
316     (BMC-JY104) (*2)
317     (BMC-810344-C, BMC-4350) (*2)
318     (BTL-UT-1245A/BTL-BJ-40) (*2)
319     BMC-HP898F
320     BMC-830425C-4391T
321     BMC-K-3088
322     BMC-K-3033
323     FARID_SLROM_8-IN-1
324     FARID_UNROM_8-IN-1
325     UNL-MALISB
326     BMC-G-146
327     BMC-10-24-C-A1
328     UNL-RT-01
329     UNL-EDU2000
330     3D-BLOCK
331     BMC-12-IN-1
332     BMC-WS
333     BMC-8-IN-1
521     DREAMTECH01
522     UNL-LH10
*1: Yes, somebody apparently assigned two different PCBs to the same UNIF board name simply because they are conversions of the same original disk system game.
*2: I know nothing about them, but saw their Mapper numbers mentioned here.

Another UNIF board name found among the NonGoodNES set is CHINA_ER_SAN2. This is just normal Mapper 19 but with VirtuaNES Plus apparently displaying Chinese characters on top of the emulated PPU output. There is a UNIF "FONT" chunk for that purpose. I am not sure if this should be added at all.

I will start adding them to the wiki from April 9th on, so please try to get your change requests in until then.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

Code: Select all

334     821202C: 5/20-in-1 (Space Fight of Gun, Fantasy of Gun, Abyss of Gloom, City Adventure, Elfland)
523     封神榜: 伏魔三太子, 晶科泰 version (Fēngshénbǎng: Fúmó Sān Tàizǐ, Jncota version)
Sour
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by Sour »

Is there anywhere on the wiki which lists these finalized and/or pending UNIF <-> NES 2.0 mappings?
Having all of them available in a single article that I could check to compare against my code would be very helpful.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

Not yet, but I can make one. In the meantime, this thread will give an (incomplete) overview.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

NewRisingSun wrote:Another UNIF board name found among the NonGoodNES set is CHINA_ER_SAN2. This is just normal Mapper 19 but with VirtuaNES Plus apparently displaying Chinese characters on top of the emulated PPU output. There is a UNIF "FONT" chunk for that purpose. I am not sure if this should be added at all.
Here is the source code to a VirtuaNES version that includes support for this UNIF board. As I suspected, CHINA_ER_SAN2 is just Mapper 19, except that the flag g_bSan2 also gets set. As the source file virtuanessrc097/DirectDraw.cpp shows, when this flag is set, during the rendering of the output picture, ViewChars(lpRdr) is called, located in the same source file. It superimposes translated Chinese text on top of the normal PPU output based on intimate knowledge of the memory locations that the game uses. I've seen game-specific hacks in emulators before, but this is truly a sight to behold. :shock:

The font that is included in the UNIF "FONT" chunk seems to be of a fixed size (0x74E0), so it could be considered a "Misc. ROM" for header byte 14.
lidnariq
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by lidnariq »

Do we have any reason to think that this thing ever had a hardware instantiation?
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

This thing could not possibly have a hardware instantiation. Unless you know a way for mapper hardware to access console CPU RAM, console NTRAM, and force the PPU to output specific pixels, all outside of the normal CPU execution and PPU rendering process.
lidnariq
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by lidnariq »

I was positing some weird famiclone ...

In any case, I'm a little skeptical of whether it makes sense to embed this conglomeration in NES2.0...
tepples
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by tepples »

An MMC5-class mapper can snoop all writes to RAM and inject values on PPU data bus at certain times. Beyond that, Doom is possible.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

I will make my decision of whether to propose a NES 2.0 mapper number for this dependent on whether I am able to provide a more succinct description of how this thing works than the source code snippet.
NewRisingSun
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by NewRisingSun »

Sour wrote:Is there anywhere on the wiki which lists these finalized and/or pending UNIF <-> NES 2.0 mappings?
Now there is. Whew.
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Artemio
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Re: UNIF>NES2 Conversion

Post by Artemio »

NewRisingSun wrote:
Sour wrote:Is there anywhere on the wiki which lists these finalized and/or pending UNIF <-> NES 2.0 mappings?
Now there is. Whew.

I am truly grateful for your work. I just dumped another UNL-EDU2000 game this week, called PC VIVAZ wich is fully localized to Mexico and in Spanish.
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