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dox: Future Flash
#361431 - 12/19/16 07:20 PM
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| gregf |
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Re: dox: Future Flash
[Re: Smitdogg]
#361436 - 12/19/16 08:26 PM
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*excerpt from dox's web page*
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I wrote a basic emulation driver, but found a blocker - protection device. There's a custom chip marked "Z1". Game wasn't playable at all. Was crashing soon after boot. Protection wasn't just a simple check at game start, like in some games from '80s. Z1 device was was mapped into memory range like a common RAM chip and accesses very often. I've removed Z1 fro the board and sent to someone for decapping. But it got lost... Nothing happened for a couple of years then..
Few weeks ago Morten Shearman Kirkegaard, Samuel Neves and Peter Wilhelmsen made an awesome step forward. They bought another (also broken...) board and cracked the Z1 protection - ended up with an algorithm that can be represented using a bunch of MUX2 gates taking entropy based on the past 4 read offsets (40-bits state). It took about a week. After that, i started to improve the emulation driver. Fixed controls, interrupts, added very preliminary audio (only the 8253 clocks are emulated). Here's a video from the MAME - attract mode (notice the special level - space tunnel made of dots) and start of gameplay. Emulation is far form perfection. There are gfx glitches, weird colors and lacks of most of the sound effects. There's no reference video - no one knows how the game should look like.
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Good to see further progress taking place. I wonder if the audio output is both a mix of digital (some audio data in roms) and remaining portion is analog/discrete based.
Too bad that a couple of the fanboy/users of Future Flash are probably no longer around. Maybe they could have helped recall game play, but if anything it would be great if the pcbs can be fully repaired if even possible.
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Re: dox: Future Flash
[Re: Smitdogg]
#361461 - 12/20/16 02:12 AM
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Holy shit. This game might be my holy grail. Laser Base.
Back in the early 80's, our car broke down in the middle of nowhere, so I had to spend 2 hours in a diner while we waited on a quick repair across the street. Like every other restaurant on the planet, they had 2-3 arcade games, but there was this one I'd never heard of.
I definitely remember text on a blue backgound, but the attract mode never showed any actual gameplay; it just explained it. Just text, maybe some enemies and point values, but never a demo. It sounded like a Missile Command ripoff, but controlled with a joystick, so there was no way I was wasting one of my quarters on it. Pretty sure I played a speed-hacked Pac-Man instead.
The car got fixed and we drove away, but I always wondered what that weird game was and for some reason it always stuck with me. Weird how memories work. 30+ years later, I've looked for this game again my whole life, having no idea what the name of the game was, but constantly checking MAME. I've never found anything matching my memories until now, but I think this is it.
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| Moose |
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Re: dox: Future Flash
[Re: Smitdogg]
#361487 - 12/20/16 12:31 PM
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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>Holy shit. This game might be my holy grail. Laser Base.
>Back in the early 80's, our car broke down in the middle of nowhere, so I had to spend 2
>hours in a diner while we waited on a quick repair across the street. Like every other
>restaurant on the planet, they had 2-3 arcade games, but there was this one I'd never
>heard of.
>I definitely remember text on a blue background, but the attract mode never showed any
>actual gameplay; it just explained it. Just text, maybe some enemies and point values,
>but never a demo. It sounded like a Missile Command ripoff, but controlled with a
>joystick, so there was no way I was wasting one of my quarters on it. Pretty sure I
>played a speed-hacked Pac-Man instead.
>The car got fixed and we drove away, but I always wondered what that weird game was and
>for some reason it always stuck with me. Weird how memories work. 30+ years later, I've
>looked for this game again my whole life, having no idea what the name of the game was,
>but constantly checking MAME. I've never found anything matching my memories until now,
>but I think this is it.
Most of the folks here on MW have had success trying to find or recall arcade games they saw or briefly played once and never saw the game again and forgot the name of the game. The two examples that come to mind.
One person had recalled a game, nearly 20 years earlier as young kid watching older boys play the game. He was certain the game involved driving a tank, but it turned out his game Borderline uses a jeep....not a tank. I teased him about that back at one of the soCal MAME meets in 2006.
Another person, bisboch, literally remembered one of the game melodies that Planet Probe would play when player enters initials on high score sequence. It was impressive that bisboch recalled the melody and almost had it memorized when he had posted his interpretation of the melody several years before Planet Probe was emulated in late 2012. Read the comments section for details.
https://youtu.be/9BredCLHtbs?t=137
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Re: Future Flash
[Re: gregf]
#361668 - 12/23/16 11:24 PM
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It's interesting when people recall the music well enough to hum or whistle it. I typically have.
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| gregf |
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Re: Future Flash
[Re: Traso]
#361736 - 12/25/16 01:38 AM
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>It's interesting when people recall the music well enough to hum or whistle it. I typically have.
For the Planet Probe fan, it was right up his alley since he was also learning to play piano as he described when he was a kid back in 1980s.
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