Rambo: And how it applies to programming

Secret Command is quite hard but it was fun playing it with my brother. Its one of the better 2 player games for the system and it was pretty cheap to. When will the next version be ready you think?

Yeah there isn't really that many good two player games on the SMS. The next version... who knows. Once the new GAME format is done I will probably release something with the SEGA-E and other changes done. Just need to get over the hump of finishing this new ROM format. Surprising (to me) how much effort it takes to build a set of tools and do all that is required.

Maybe you should just use what everyone else is doing if its too much work. I mean what is the point of making these good tools if only your emulator uses them? Maybe im just inpatient though

Well it needs to be done anyhow for the media display (covers, etc). Actually I should say something needs to be done for media display and this is just my solution to that. I probably don't have to go to all the trouble I am going to but it is my personality to try and solve problems so that they don't have to be fixed later on.

It has bugged me for years the issue of ROMs and no one doing anything about it. So if I can do something about it I should, even if it's only for RetroCopy. I am lucky that I have my GUI code to use because without it this database application would be a complete PITA. I'll post something later tonight on the tool, possibly showing some screenshots.

Im glad your doing it Ralph so here is one thankfull person! The emulation world has been stagnant for years and your emulator is at least trying to stir things up!

I don't know exactly what you have planned for the GAME-format, but some of the info I think should be in the GAME-files, which RetroCopy (and other emulators) can take use of:
1) Date of release. This will give the user the option to sort games by when the game was first released.
2) Regions/countries the game was released in. The user can for example chose to show all games that was released in Brazil - or games that was only released in Brazil...
3) Official release/pirate release/hack/translation/fan-game...
4) What is used to control the game? The user will for instance be able to show only Light Phaser-games. (Hmm... and perhaps also the media the game uses. For the SMS there is both cartridges and card-games.)
5) Categories. This will give the user the option to show for instance only platform-games, shooting games etc. And let there be MANY categories. "Tennis Ace" for SMS is both a Sports-game, and a Tennis-game (sub-catergory). "Krusty's Fun House" is both a Platform-game, a Puzzle-game and a Simpsons-game (perhaps "Games based on Animation-series/movies" would be the main category, and "The Simpsons" a sub-category). Instead of just sorting games by systems, also letting the user have the option to sort games by categories, across platforms, will make it easier to find the type of games one might be interes in playing. The user would be able to select to show all Tennis-games or all Simpsons-games for all systems. And also let it be easy to add new categories...
6) What other systems was the game released for? When viewing info about "Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars" for the SMS, the will be a note that says that there is also an Arcade-version of the game. And if RetroCopy is able to play the Arcade-version, there will be a link to it.
7) Companies and people who made the game. The user will both be able to see that "Bubble Bobble" was made by Taito, but also be able to click on the text that says Taito, in order to see all games made by Taito (for various systems). The same goes for Fukio Mitsuji - the designer of the game. By clicking on him, all games made by him will show.
Text with more info about the game.
9) Pictures - cover-scans, manuals etc. Music-files (VGM).

I'm sure there's plenty of other info that can be included, but here are at least a few ideas (I'm sure you've already thought of most of this). I see the advantage of adding this info to the GAME-files itself, but I also think there could be an advantage in adding the info to the emulator instead. If the info was in RetroCopy all Taito-games would show, even though the user doesn't have them installed. He wouldn't be able to play them, but at least he would know that they existed. In that case, RetroCopy would also be a game-index, in addition to being an emulator.

By the way - I'm now finished with all the SMS-covers.

A couple of typos in there... Sorry. Maybe we should be able to edit our own comments?

A couple of typos never hurt anyone! Actually I was allowing editing for comments at one stage but removed it, seemed more raw that way like a comment should be? If it becomes a bigger issue down the track I'll likely add it back for now it's not too much of a worry.

I am a bit torn about what to include in the GAME header, the old one had capability to show the year but I've got rid of it. Your idea of cross linking games though has given me a good idea about how to handle the media aspect. I think any "extra" info like the year released, company, should be in metadata somewhere else, not in the ROM. The reason for this is that it's more contentious and liable to change. The way I see these game headers is something which remains relatively static outside including new dumps when found/created.

The region it was released is also a contentious issue, because the SMS for instance was released in probably a hundred countries at least and a lot of them didn't get "native" releases. Yet the people in Greece will still want to be told that Sonic 2 hit their shelves. Some games are obviously released only in certain regions, japan, usa, brazil, "europe" that makes people believe it is some cut and dry operation when it comes to region.

The way I'll be handling regions is simply by the console itself. Now in RetroCopy you will select the console you want, japanese SMS, european SMS1, european SMS2, SMS1 USA, etc, and the games will try and run like it's a real system on that console. No more specific video/region choices. In the GAME header it will list what console versions the game *CAN* run on and warn if you don't have a system which will work with the game ( SMS1 can't run Micro Machines for instance ).

I'll leave it up to the meta data editors to describe information about where it was released if it's applicable and display that in RetroCopy. The way I'm seeing things at the moment is if it's not necessary to play the game then push it out to metadata, otherwise the ROM editors will have a very hard and tiring job.

Getting back to cross linking, originally I was only going to have metadata apply to specific consoles only. The way I'm doing it now is the GAME editor allows you to specify an english type name for metadata instead of a SHA256 checksum. So you can put "Sonic 2" for the metadata name and then it will look for something like "Sonic 2_cover0.jpg" in the SMS\scans directory. But perhaps some sort of global system would be better, such that Sonic 2 for Mega Drive realizes that there is a SMS version and vice versa. Thanks for that idea it has got me thinking.

I was not aware that a SMS1 can't run Micro Machines (without errors)! It's a bit strange since the box says that it is "licenced for play on the Sega Master System and Master System II". I guess people who bought the game and wanted to use it on their SMS1 must have felt a bit cheated! Makes you wonder if they didn't know about this/didn't test the game on a SMS1/VDP1 before they released it.

I'm not so sure Master System-Sonic 2 and Mega Drive-Sonic 2 should be cross linked. In my opinion, those are two totally different games (even though they have the same name).

Let me know how you want me to upload the SMS-covers. I have not done Japanese games, Korean games and any boxes for card-games yet, as they wouldn't fit in the 1248x800 format and would need a new model in RetroCopy. But they won't take long to add, since there's not too many of them.

Well not all SMS1 have the issue, towards the end of the SMS1 life cycle some of them were updated with a newer VDP that the SMS2 pretty much always got (though apparently some SMS2 also got the old VDP). So Codemasters probably did test it on a SMS1, just a newer model. The newer VDP added more graphics (256x224, 256x240) modes and a few other tweaks.

It is a bit odd that Codemasters were unaware of this issue though. Also a bit odd that someone somewhere (either Texas Instruments or Sega) were working on a newer VDP that just silently got put into the SMS batch for no particular reason. It would be good to have some finality on the issue with the VDP (who made it, why the switch) but I fear we will never find out.

Oh yes, in regards to cross linking, I just meant a little info which tells you "this game was also released on Genesis, GameGear with same name". Though the games are obviously different somewhat, same name, same inspiration.... kind of.

do you know what other games utilized the newer resolutions offered by the new chip?

Besides a few demos, just the CodeMasters games come to mind. Making games 256x224 on the SMS limited the amount of VRAM you had for tiles and just meant more screen to update. Considering the only way you could update VRAM is through slow ports (no direct VRAM access) it was a pretty bad trade off unless you were making a simple looking game.

The arcade Sega System E is how the SMS should have been done (without dual VDP) as it allowed direct write access to VRAM. If the SMS was capable of that it would have increased the technological gap over the NES significantly.