              *** DragoNes 0.20 by Jonathan Phnix aka Lone_Wolf***


*Introduction*

    DragoNes is a freeware DOS Nintendo emulator. With this program, you can
play your old NES games (but still very good according to me). I know there is
already good NES emulator (NESticle and iNES just to name them) but i wanted
to create my own. My first idea was to make a emulator that will be able to
run all the Dragon Warrior/Quest because any others emulator were able to run
Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 and Dragon Quest 4. This is why this emulator is called
DragoNes. Now, i don't want to emulate just those game, i want to make a near
perfect emulator with feature that others emulator dosen't have right now
(lightgun support, 4 player support... etc...). This emulator is written
completly in C++ (expect asm soon!). Except for the major part of the 6502
emulation taken from VICE and the 256x224 VGA tweak taken from NESA, the rest
is completly written from scratch.


*What's Included*

    dragones.exe  -  the .exe file (the emulator itself).
    readme.txt    -  this file
    cart.nes      -  this is a freeware test cart for the NES created by ?
    cart.asm      -  the source of the cart.nes
    nesticle.pal  -  the NES palette, taken from NESticle 0.40
    junkrom.nes   -  another freeware cart created by TYoung79@aol.com
    junkdemo.asm  -  the source of junkrom.nes

Now, just take a look, there is no commercial games comming with it and i will
never include one with because both of moral and legal reason, those game are
still copyrighted. Don't e-mail me to asks me to send you games or www/ftp/...
containing those game, i will ignore it. You can freely redistribute this
emulator as long as this file and dragones.exe are unmodified and it is not
packaged with commercial ROM.



*How does it work?*

    You will need some .NES games in order to make it run. You can launch the
emulator by typing: dragones <-options> [iNES file]. Type dragones without
argument to see the options (there is a frame skipping option that can boost
up the speed on slow computer like mine :( )

Those are the keys to play:

Keyboard      NES joystick

Alt           A
Ctrl          B
X             START
Z             SELECT
UP            UP
DOWN          DOWN
LEFT          LEFT
RIGHT         RIGHT
BACKSPACE     enter 6502 debugger (for those brave CPU warrior!)
F5            Realtime save, create a file called <name_rom>.nst in rom dir
F7            Realtime load, load the current saved state
F9            Snapshot, create a snapshot.pcx file in current directory


*What hardware do i need?*

-Minimal
 *386 IBM PC

-Required for decent play
 *Pentium 133 MHz and up

-The goal when all my code will be optimized
 *486 66MHz and up


*Things emulated*

-Complete 6502 opcode map 
-Sprites 
-Memory mapper #0,1(partial),2,3
-All the PPU registers
-Battery-Backed RAM



*Things not currently emulated*

-2,3,4 player support
-Lightgun
-Sound
-Many memory mappers


*Versions*

0.20 (97/09/14)
 -Fixed 6502 bugs (still buged???)
 -Fixed 6502 stack
 -Implemented mapper 1 (MMC1) partial
 -Implemented name table mirroring
 -Implemented all the PPU registers
 -Rewritten rendering engine, become scanline based instead of tile based
 -Scrolling implemented (may glitch with splitscreen, due to NES timing)
 -Realtime load/save (F5 and F7)
 -Battery Backed RAM load/save
 -Snapshot (Screen Capture) implemented (F9)
 -ALL the sprites problem fixed
 -Palette is now in nesticle.pal
 -Many little fix here and here that I dosen't remember...

0.10 (97/08/14)
 Initial realease



*Thanks*

-Y0SHi             (yoshi@parodius.com) for his excellent NES doc.
-Marat Fayzullin   (fms@freeflight.com) for his NES doc.
-Loopy             (loopy@itsnet.com) for his NES palette.
-Trunks            (ftrunks@microtec.net) for the DragoNes logo and HTML.
-Sardu             (bldlust@parodius.com) for the accurate NES palette and
                   defining quality in emulation.
-???               (TYoung79@aol.com) for realeasing a freeware ROM.
-Undernet #coders and #emu people for moral support and help.
-And finally you... for using DragoNes.


*How can i be reached?*

Before trying to contact me: NEVER asks me for NES ROMS, I will ignore you.
FOR NOW don't e-mail me about the bugs, they are so easy to spot right now :)
If you don't want to reach me for those reason my e-mail is
lone_wolf@videotron.ca and i'm on Undernet #emu and #coders channel.
You can always go to
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/3925/dragones.html
for the lastest info and version of DragoNes!
If you have any information how the NES joystick is really working, please
send me a e-mail, i don't know how it works when the game write $C0 or $FF to
$4017. You help will be appreciated.



*Legal stuff*

DragoNes is (C) 1997 by Jonathan Phnix. Use this software at your own risk, I
cannot be held responsible for any damages that might happens using it.
I do not advocate the piracy of NES games.
NES, Nintendo are trademark of Nintendo of America.
Dragon Warrior, Dragon Quest are (C) Enix of America/Japan.

