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# MageX v0.8a Release Notes

Edward Massey - October 31, 1997... boo!

Welcome to MageX, the classic arcade game emulator for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. The latest information regarding this project is always available from MageX Headquarters.

Ackowledgements
Known Limitations

## What's New In This Version

- Pengo sprites are now correct
- Ms. Pac Man fruit is now fixed (Z80 bug; used to hop through some walls)
- Galaga captured ship now spins correctly (Z80 bug)
- French language support
- FPS indicator is now off by default (press 'O' to toggle it)

## What's New In Version 0.8

- Sound system is now much much better
- Mixer frequency is now 44.1 kHz; adjustable with options menu
- Sprite colors in Time Pilot are better
- Colors in Centipede are better
- Graphics performance improvements to Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Pengo, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Bros, Centipede (50% faster than previous versions)
- Games now use identity palettes; the menus are the correct colors in full screen mode now; windowed mode is now faster
- Credits are now displayed as "MageX Credits"

## What's New In Version 0.7

- Vector engine is now in place with support for Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, and Lunar Lander. More are on the way. Be sure to get the MAME sound samples for sound effects in Asteroids. Runs great on my 486/66!
- Clouds in Time Pilot are now correct; better colors for Time Pilot

## What's New In Version 0.6

- Support for Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Carnival (driver provided by Peter Clare), Pengo, Ladybug (sound for all except Carnival and GnG)
- Thanks to getting over a CPU timing hurdle, there's sound for Frogger, Gyruss, Time Pilot, Scramble, The End
- Game save (includes entire game state, hi-scores, CMOS settings, etc.) for Galaga, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust
- Saves settings (last game, video mode, various options) in the registry
- You can now play without the caption bar (use Options|Toggle Window Frame, or, double click in window to toggle menus/caption bar), FPS rate is now switchable (off by default), CPU speed is displayed (with FPS), drag window by dragging client area, skip frame option
- Space Invaders now works again! (broken in v0.5).
- Fixed mysterious Time Pilot slowdown from v0.5 (Z80 library bug).
- Added variants for Galaxian and Pacman
- Added Pacman speedup hack (press Ctrl)
- Graphics fixes and color improvements for Gyruss, Space Invaders
- Window frame is less annoying when running full screen
- The Galaxian game I used to support is now know as "Galaxian (Namco, modified)"
- Press ESC to pause and unpause
- No more Energizer-Frogger... now you only get 3 lives :-(

NOTE: To get the Williams games started, you'll need to use the advance and auto-up keys (6 and 5, respectively) to get past the bootup configuration screens. For example, in Defender, when the game settings menu is displayed, press 6, followed by 5 and 6 simultaneously. In Stargate and the others, press 6 when the game says "Factory Settings Restored". Once you get the games setup the way you like, choose File Save to save the game state. As long as "AutoLoad" is enabled (enabled by default), MageX will automatically load the game state.

## How To Get Started

Since this is an emulation of the classic arcade games, the actual ROMs from these great machines are required for MageX to play them (just like a record). Please be aware that the ROMs are copyrighted material which can not be distributed with MageX and that I cannot provide them. Also, please do not ask me for ROMs.

MageX expects to find the ROMs in specific folders inside the current working folder (by default, it's the folder the magex executable file is in). If the system is unable to find a ROM, it'll tell you what it's looking for so you can infer what needs to be done. I've tried to stay consistant with MAME's ROM filenames.

Some of the games are capable of saving their state in a MGX file. By default, autoload is enabled. This means that MageX will attempt to load a saved game when it starts. In order for this to work, you must first save a game. You are allowed one game per game driver. Simply select, File Save and the current game state is saved (see the list above for the games that currently support this feature). If you want to restore from a saved game (MageX will do this automatically, if "autoload" is enabled), choose File Open.

Press "Alt+F" to invoke the File menu!

Press "Alt-F4" to close MageX (useful if menus are unavailable)

You'll need to get the sound samples from MAME if you want to hear sound for the Williams games. You'll also need sound samples for Donkey Kong (effect*.sam, tune*.sam) and Space Invaders (*.raw).

### Controls

Most of the controls are common among all the games. Here's the basics...

- F10 - press this to access the menu while your running full screen
- Esc - pause
- 1 - start one player game
- 2 - start two player game
- 3 - insert coin
- arrow keys - move around, left is reverse button in Defender/Stargate
- ctrl - fire button, flap in Joust
- alt - second fire button (ex: drop bombs in Scramble, shield in Phoenix and Asteroids Deluxe, hyperspace in Asteroids)
- x - smart bomb in Stargate/Defender
- c - hyperspace in Stargate/Defender
- v - inviso in Stargate
- +/- on the numeric keypad - controls game speed (when throttle enabled)
- pgup/pgdown - controls scrolling when game is larger than display
- 5 - auto up (Williams games)
- 6 - advance (Williams games)
- 7 - high score reset (Williams games)
- O - that's "O" as in operator... toggles overlays

### Menus

#### Options

##### Throttle

Controls how the game is paced. Basically, it wastes time until the next frame need to be drawn.

##### Skip Frames

Displays every other frame.

##### Reset

Resets the machine.

##### Autoload

Automatically loads the game state when the game begins.

#### File

##### Open

Loads the last saved game for the current game driver.

##### Save

Saves the current game.

## SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Computer:
  486/100 or greater PC
Operating System:
  Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0
Other Software:
  DirectX (optional)

486/100 or greater running Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0. Most games run fine on a 486/66 (with VLB video). Gyruss, Time Pilot, and Ghosts 'n Goblins seem to be a bit more processor intensive (at the moment, optimizations are underway). Some games, such as Space Invaders, even run on a 486/33 with DirectX!

DirectX is recommended but not required. A decent video card (VLB or PCI) with fast video RAM is nice since it's really hard to push 3.84 MB/sec to your video card (256x256 resolution frames of animation for a raster game at 60 Hz) through the ISA bus. The vector games are a little less demanding of the bandwidth (~140KB/sec).

For vector games... these should be run full screen (DirectDraw enabled) since the vector code makes use of page flipping to do its thing. I've seen some cards (like the integrated video/motherboard from SiS) that apperently support page flipping by copying RAM, making MageX slower on these types of machines. It could be a DirectDraw driver problem on these systems, or the fact that they use system RAM for the video RAM could mean that they don't do page flipping like a normal video card would.

### DirectX

MageX was written to use DirectX if it is installed on your system. The best performance is obtained when DirectX is used. If it is not, or, if you prefer to run the games in a window, there is an option to allow this. My preference is to run full screen at either 400x300 or 320x240 with my ATI 3DXpression+.

DirectX is available for download from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/directx.

## Supported Games

Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Lunar Lander, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust, The End, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Pac Man (and variants), Ms. Pac Man, Time Pilot, Gyruss, Galaxian (and variants), Galaga, Scramble, Frogger, Space Invaders, Space Invaders Deluxe, Lunar Rescue, Phoenix, Pleaides, Mario Bros., Moon Patrol, Mr. Do!, Centipede

## Known Limitations

- Save game support is not implemented on all games. Currently, only Galaga, Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust support game saves
- 8048 code isn't quite ready for Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Mario Bros
- 8910 sound synthesis code (Frogger, Scramble, Time Pilot, Gyruss) is not very efficient
- Color cycling in non-DirectX mode requires that the video mode is set to 256 colors
- Colors aren't correct in Mr. Do!
- DIP switch settings are not available
- Two player game in Phoenix doesn't work properly
- Space Invaders Deluxe does not work properly
- Moon Patrol somehow got broken on this release.
- On some NT machines, Galaga, Pacman, Pengo and certain games have a very high pitched squeal.
- Pressing ALT and V in stargate causes the "View" menu to popup.
- Galaxian sound is not very good
- Sound support is missing from Phoenix
- There is no explosion sound in Galaga
- File|Open on a Williams game does not rebuild bitmap properly, and Autoload for games that have a blitter aren't quite correct
- Keys in Robotron prevent you from entering a high score, but you can still start another game
- There are some bugs in the blitter for Joust and Robotron
- Joust 2 player keys aren't correct (player one's keys are duplicated)
- Hitting Alt while hitting V in Stargate brings up the "View" menu!
- Ladybug colors are screwed up
- Background scrolling in Ghosts 'n Goblins (left side of screen) is slightly off
- Galaga frontmost chars aren't transparent (AVF on NT), ship spinning around looks funky (double width sprites)
- Lunar Lander blinks horribly
- My 6809 code still has a couple of bugs in it, so you'll see some junk on the screen in Stargate, Robotron, Joust, and the scores aren't correctly kept.
- 6808 emulation is not in place, so samples are still required for the Williams games
- Window position is reset to upper left corner once game is run full screen

## Acknowledgements

Although I am responsible for MageX development, numerous individuals have been indirectly involved. I would like to express my thanks here.

Edward Kauffmann - created the super cool MageX logo

Peter Clare - provided support for Carnival (sorry I haven't integrated your latest source yet!)

Marat Fayzullin, Marcel de Kogel, Alex Krasivsky - provided accurate Z80 and 6502 emulation source for the general public
Allard van der Bas - created the Repository
Robert Anschuetz - for his Arcade Emulator source, which started MageX going
Gary Shepherdson - Donkey Kong technical info
Ivan Mackintosh - Centipede hardware information, file menu code
Richard Davies - Phoenix emulator source code helped me with Phoenix
Ron Fries - Pokey sound emulation and Donkey Kong sound samples and algorithm
Michael Strutt - space invaders emu source code
Ville Laitinen - Congo Bongo hardware info (from Mame)

Nicola Salmoria - created MAME, a great source for concrete technical information

Mirko Buffoni - provided many MAME drivers in the past and now coordinates the project.

Marc Lafontaine, Steven Hugg, Mirko Buffoni - excellent work on the Williams games in MAME (my favorites!)

Ville Hallik - the sound chip (8910) code from the MSX emulator was very valuable in creating 8910 emulation in MageX. Thanks also to Mike Cuddy for his enhancements towards multi 8910 support.

Eric Smith - for the VECSIM code used in MAME, which served as my reference to the Atari vector generator.

Marc Lafontaine, Steven Hugg, Mirko Buffoni - for writing the Williams drivers in MAME

I apologize to anyone I may have neglected to mention.

Many thanks to everyone who's contributed to making the Repository great.

Many thanks to all the contributors to MAME. This is a wonderful project and has openned up the oppurtunity for me and other emulator developers to support many additional games thanks to the availability of the source code.

Copyright © 1997 Edward Massey. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Edward Kauffmann for the logo.
Send comments to edward@greenvillenc.com