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Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Tue May 04, 2021 9:18 pm
by macro
Games that run on the 'Cosmic' core in Mame

basically Space Panic, Cosmic Alien, No Mans Land, Magical Spot and Devil Zone

Also (but separate core) Cosmic Guerilla (as it uses a different CPU) but a lot of the remainder is in common.

I have the first game well underway, need to add support for a variety of additional video hardware to implement the other games

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Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Tue May 04, 2021 9:52 pm
by dazzer69
Great news. Space Panic is another true classic.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Tue May 04, 2021 10:04 pm
by LamerDeluxe
Space Panic, awesome! I mentioned that one somewhere in a topic about which cores you'd like to see. When I was a kid, they had the cabinet where we stayed on a school trip.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 9:33 am
by Minpin
Fantastic news. I love Space Panic.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 10:02 am
by Alkadian
Same here, looking forward to it!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Wed May 12, 2021 10:24 pm
by AndreasWachter
Fantastic !
Still remember playing it ... 40 years ago !

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 9:20 pm
by macro
Space panic is basically working, needs some more testing and possibly some tweaks here and there, but I just plugged in the next game for the core, Magical Spot, a few memory changes and that now fires up and runs, need to sort out controls, DIPs and sound (looks to be just a DAC)
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Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Wed May 26, 2021 9:38 am
by macro
Magical spot now done, despite the lack of information about the sound (since mame basically ignores it, fortunately someone posted a video of the real hardware playing on you tube) - I don't have a PCB for Magic Spot so couldn't refer to it (I have all the others except Devil Zone)

so next to be plugged into the core is Cosmic Alien - this needs the hardware for the star circuit adding in as well as the usual controls / sound / dips
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Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Sun May 30, 2021 8:41 pm
by macro
Cosmic alien pretty much sorted, so on to the next of the two (Z80 based) games left.

this will be Devil Zone, another for which Mame has no sound information.

The schematics show the sound board as being the same as used by Magical Spot, not sure if this is true, but easy enough to test.

(plus I was wrong earlier, I do have a Devil Zone PCB, so I can double check against that as well, although I will need to fix it first, along with the no mans land since neither seem to do much at the moment!)

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Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Sun May 30, 2021 8:50 pm
by Alkadian
Great, thanks for the heads up! Looking forward to the final product :mrgreen:

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:52 pm
by macro
Devil zone background video sorted (it uses RLE graphics, it was interesting getting it to draw upside down for cocktail screen flip)

I've not added sound yet (may need to fix the PCB first) , but until then, added the MRA for the final z80 based game, No Mans Land, which again has a background video circuit for the river and trees.
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There are video's on you tube for both games, but I think I may need the pcbs working to get samples of some of the sounds. Will see how it goes.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:08 pm
by LamerDeluxe
I'm really looking forward to this core. RLE graphics, interesting, just like the Atari Lynx can do with its sprites.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 11:56 pm
by Alarm
Space Panic is a classic, really looking forward to playing it again, and playing the other titles.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 11:57 am
by macro
I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 12:56 pm
by LamerDeluxe
macro wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 11:57 am I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?
RELEASE THE KRAKEN! I mean the core. I'd love to play Space Panic on MiSTer.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 1:22 pm
by Alkadian
macro wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 11:57 am I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?
Same here, I would love to play Space Panic. Thanks!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:21 pm
by dazzer69
+1 for Space Panic sooner rather than later!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 10:21 pm
by macro
Well it's now out there, will work on bug fixes, CPU timing and other two games when I get back from Holiday :D

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 10:41 pm
by Alkadian
Thanks a lot and enjoy your holidays :D

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 7:07 pm
by lamarax
Thank you @macro and congrats for the release!

Space Panic might have been the one arcade game which influenced my subconscious the most :mrgreen:

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:05 am
by LamerDeluxe
I just tried all three games, really cool. Space Panic is really fun and its sound effects are really odd. I like how these games have such a strong early eighties feel, like games on the VIC-20.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 9:29 pm
by macro
Minor update

Z80 CPU speed is now correct for all games
Magical Spot now has correct coinage from the dip file
Buttons are described in the MRA files

now onto the sound for Devil Zone and No Mans Land!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2021 8:47 pm
by lamarax
Thank you so much! \o/

You're one of the unsung heroes of MiSTer!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 11:44 pm
by macro
Updated SYS so that the screen mask feature is now available.

I also change how PAUSE works, since I managed to crash it whilst testing the masks, no guarantee it is fixed, but I couldn't get it to die after the change!

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2021 7:53 am
by LamerDeluxe
macro wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 11:44 pm Updated SYS so that the screen mask feature is now available.

I also change how PAUSE works, since I managed to crash it whilst testing the masks, no guarantee it is fixed, but I couldn't get it to die after the change!
Fantastic! If I'm not mistaking this is the first arcade core to support the official shadow masks. Looking forward to seeing other arcade cores receive support as well.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2021 8:16 am
by ConkerKing
[/quote]
Fantastic! If I'm not mistaking this is the first arcade core to support the official shadow masks. Looking forward to seeing other arcade cores receive support as well.
[/quote]

Wow Nice!!
Just a short question in general: Is it possible to make a "Global" Arcade Core setting for ALL Arcade Games to set the same Filter´s, Joystick Mapping and stuff like the Console, ao486 etc. Cores? Thx 8-)

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:35 pm
by LamerDeluxe
The update didn't get picked up by update_all here yet. Downloaded manually and it looks fantastic! Shadow mask patterns really help improve the look of these old games.

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:09 pm
by lamarax
Dear Macro,
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Please correct the typo in the last release. The downloader script is pulling the penultimate core each time, and it's-a-driving me crazy :mrgreen:

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:43 am
by rcade
Thanks for this. There was a Cosmic Alien in a laundromat near where I grew up. The marquee said "Cosmic Alien" so I always knew the game name wrong. Also, there is no title screen that mentions the name...

Re: Cosmic Core Under Development

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 3:37 pm
by macro
I updated the SYS again since the masking has changed and hopefully named the RBF correctly this time!