SIN-Vaders
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A Space invaders arcade machine emulator written in C

How this program was brought to life:
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Well, I FINALLY did it! not without help, but its 99% my own work, with help :-)

I had been longing to write an emulator for quite some time, and after playing with the MAME source for quite a while, and understanding it, I decided it was time to do my worst at a stand alone emulator (and worst it certainly was)

I knew I had the right tools, the Z80 emulator from Marat, the arcade emulation how to document, the roms, a compiler, allegro, so i was all set to create a masterpiece!

My first attempt failed miserably, the z80 kept crashing, I found out i was actually loading the roms in the WRONG order! (DOH)

The second attempt failed, like most of my attempts at programming (apart from SASS), and didnt even get as far as attempt 1, so it was back to the drawing board again.

On the third attempt, I decided that I was going to do it right, and this time i hit the jackpot. I read the document written by Neil Bradley, explaining how he first wrote his space invaders emulator, and things started falling into place. 

I got hold of the source code to Michael Aldcocks Space invaders emulator and tried to see where i went wrong, and it seemed i was quite close the 2 previous occasions.

Much stress later and an 8hour sleep, it ran! The screen appeared, the title, everything except the invaders, so I decided to cheat and see what the DOIN function had to do, copied it over and voila! space invaders running at the wrong speed :-)

So, the moral of the story is, if *I* can do it, ANYBODY can! It doesnt take much brain, and if you know where to look, chances are the clues are all out there for you to find, sometimes you cant see the wood for the trees, but hey! thats part of the fun :-)


Ok, thats got the boring stuff out of the way, lets play some invaders!

You will need:

A PC
Some space invader roms
A Keyboard
A monitor

and other stuff, which you should have (like a brain, etc)

copy your space invader roms into the ROMS directory provided, the expected names are as follows:

invaders.e
invaders.f
invaders.g
invaders.h

the run the sinvader.exe and off you go!

Keys are:

1: 1 player start
2: 2 player start
3: Coin

Cursor keys: left, right
Spacebar: fire!

thats it

have fun



Mike Green

Official Space Invaders Lamer 1999
