First Q*Bert Release

[Xbytez]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/QBert_MiSTer

[kubbie]

It's pretty awesome for a first release. I just have to get used to the gamepad. Keep up the great work!

[MiSTer_Kirk]

Very Nice.
But is Q*Bert the same without the Votrax chip ?

[shertz]

I more excited about this then anything else

[LamerDeluxe]

This is fantastic news, it is one of the main classic games. I've just tried it and it plays really well. Only thing was that the aspect ratio was off. I've calculated a custom aspect ratio of 8:9 for it, at vscale_mode=0 and video_mode=8 (1080p), this also gives you perfect vertical scanlines.

[aberu]

Looks like the aspect ratio got fixed already!

[kamshaft]

Awesome!

[jca]

I am having problems with this core. Upon loading nothing happens, the screen stays black. If I go in the OSD and switch the settings from Horizontal to Vertical and vice-versa there is some activity on the screen:
- When switching to horizontal a band of pixels appears briefly at the bottom of the screen, its height is about 1cm and its width corresponds to the height of what would be normally displayed.
- When switching to vertical a different band of pixels appears briefly at the bottom of the screen, its height is about 3cm and its width corresponds to the width of what would be normally displayed.
- If I wait 2 minutes the portion of the screen where the action should happen fills with some uniform color like a flash, the screen goes dark and after some time the fill usually becomes filled with the windows teal color, sometimes the teal color switches to lime. In the end nothing else happens.
I have 32MB memory if it helps as there is no memory requirements listed in the readme.

[Morfious]

First of all thanks for the core. I hope that there will be a solution to flip the output so I don't have to play it upside down. Keep up the good work!!

[LamerDeluxe]

Looks like the aspect ratio got fixed already!

Somehow the new aspect ratio looks a bit too slim, I wonder what it is based on. The 8:9 ratio I calculated to get integer horizontal scaling is a little bit wider and IMO better looking.

[jca]

Out of this world
Today I had to try something with the Vertex core with MISTer running only from the SD card; my previous test with QBert was when using a USB drive.
After my Vertex test and for no particular reason I tried QBert. As you can guess: no problem loading.
Ticket opened on GitHub.

[aberu]

Looks like the aspect ratio got fixed already!

Somehow the new aspect ratio looks a bit too slim, I wonder what it is based on. The 8:9 ratio I calculated to get integer horizontal scaling is a little bit wider and IMO better looking.

The aspect ratio of games like this are 8:7 and 4:3 typically (now rotating that 90 degrees would mean they are actually 3:4 and 7:8 respectively). So if it looks better at 8:9, that's probably more of a subjective preference.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2o7t4dQEZTw/maxresdefault.jpg

Here's a picture of what it should look like for the high scores. If yours is more stretched horizontally, then it's probably inaccurate.

However it looks like the core is doing 4:3 over HDMI, which personally is wrong, it should be 8:7.

[LamerDeluxe]

Looks like the aspect ratio got fixed already!

Somehow the new aspect ratio looks a bit too slim, I wonder what it is based on. The 8:9 ratio I calculated to get integer horizontal scaling is a little bit wider and IMO better looking.

The aspect ratio of games like this are 8:7 and 4:3 typically (now rotating that 90 degrees would mean they are actually 3:4 and 7:8 respectively). So if it looks better at 8:9, that's probably more of a subjective preference.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2o7t4dQEZTw/maxresdefault.jpg

Here's a picture of what it should look like for the high scores. If yours is more stretched horizontally, then it's probably inaccurate.

However it looks like the core is doing 4:3 over HDMI, which personally is wrong, it should be 8:7.

I've watched a few videos of the original arcade machine and I realize what threw me off. The cubes on the original game are just a bit too slim to be proper cubes. So 7:8 would probably be correct then, thanks for the information! I could calculate a vertical border size to get that and still have integer horizontal scaling for clean vertical scan lines.

[Pierco]

We tried 8:7 with Alan yesterday and I added the diagonal joystick option. We will push another release soon.

[aberu]

Yeah, 8:7 looks perfect to me, I did a custom aspect ratio for the qbert core personally by adding something like this to the MiSTer.ini (can't remember and not being bothered to check atm):

Code: Select all

[qbert]
custom_aspect_ratio=8:7

And it looked exactly like the arcade picture I posted above.

For reference, many many classic games that were displayed on CRT's were actually being displayed in 8:7 instead of 4:3, just the output signal is 4:3 which is then stretched to 8:7. Some games were designed around this, some weren't, it's kind of a crapshoot so no rule of thumb applies. Where the different aspect ratio applies is often game-dependent.

[netbeui]

We tried 8:7 with Alan yesterday and I added the diagonal joystick option. We will push another release soon.

Hi Pierco, I noticed vertical flip was added to Q*Bert and the option is there after updating my MiSTer but for some reason it doesn't work on my CRT, it does work on HDMI though. I checked another core (Moon Cresta) and vertical flip still works on that one. Any idea if I'm doing something wrong or missing a setting somewhere? Here's 2 videos if it helps, 1 of Q*Bert and 1 of Moon Cresta.

Q*Bert: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rsS-lE ... sp=sharing
Moon Cresta: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aVl0-g ... sp=sharing

[alanswx]

This will be fixed in the next release.

[netbeui]

This will be fixed in the next release.

Great - thanks for the quick reply!

[mhartman]

I am having problems with this core. Upon loading nothing happens, the screen stays black. If I go in the OSD and switch the settings from Horizontal to Vertical and vice-versa there is some activity on the screen:
- When switching to horizontal a band of pixels appears briefly at the bottom of the screen, its height is about 1cm and its width corresponds to the height of what would be normally displayed.
- When switching to vertical a different band of pixels appears briefly at the bottom of the screen, its height is about 3cm and its width corresponds to the width of what would be normally displayed.
- If I wait 2 minutes the portion of the screen where the action should happen fills with some uniform color like a flash, the screen goes dark and after some time the fill usually becomes filled with the windows teal color, sometimes the teal color switches to lime. In the end nothing else happens.
I have 32MB memory if it helps as there is no memory requirements listed in the readme.

I’ve got the same issue. Everything just boots to a black screen and no activity (MISTER menu works though). I’m using a CRT arcade monitor that works great for most arcade cores. Any ideas? Thanks!

[jca]

I’ve got the same issue. Everything just boots to a black screen and no activity (MISTER menu works though). I’m using a CRT arcade monitor that works great for most arcade cores. Any ideas? Thanks!

Are you using a USB drive?

[mapf]

Hello,

thank you for adding the "vflip" option. In my case, it only works in the "vertical" orientation on hdmi. I use my hdmi output with a TFT that is turned 90° clockwise, so I would need the option also in "horizontal" orientation.

[mhartman]

I’ve got the same issue. Everything just boots to a black screen and no activity (MISTER menu works though). I’m using a CRT arcade monitor that works great for most arcade cores. Any ideas? Thanks!

Are you using a USB drive?

No, just the SD card.

[Pierco]

I would remove the rbf & mra files from the sdcard and run update all again. I had a similar issue but the update all fixed it.

[jca]

I would remove the rbf & mra files from the sdcard and run update all again. I had a similar issue but the update all fixed it.

Thanks, I removed both, ran the update all script and now QBert is loading. This is with the games directory on a USB drive.
In the end the problem had nothing to do with the USB drive.

[thorr]

Hello, I tried flipping the screen using direct video and it did not have any effect. Is this only for the scaler?
Also, how do you program the joystick for the second player? I want to use cocktail mode since player 2 is oriented correctly, but I don't know how to assign the joystick for player 2. Thanks!

[retrodroid]

I'm having similar issues with the Q*bert core as described above, with subtle differences.

Using a multi-sync arcade monitor, if I try to boot using vga_scaler=0, I get absolutely nothing on the monitor. Black screen, no indications that it ever switched frequencies, no "Out of Range" display, and also the MiSTer menus are not visible. I *can* use the keyboard to reboot the MiSTer, but that's about it.

If I set vga_scaler=1, video_mode=6 (640x480@60), then when I launch it for a split second I see Q*bert being displayed with the selected scaler configs, etc. but then it once again goes to a completely black screen, can't see the MiSTer menus, etc. as above.

I tried manually removing the qbert.mra and qbert.rbf files, and reset my update all and re-ran it, but no difference. FYI it downloaded the QBert_20210215.rbf file.

Any suggestions?

[zachcollier]

Sorry I’m late to the topic.

Thanks for all of the discussion around this amazing release! This is one of my all-tine favorites, and the experience with this core is just awesome.

[netbeui]

This will be fixed in the next release.

Hi alanswx, I ran update_all but Q*Bert still doesn't rotate on my CRT. Do I need to do anything special to make it work other than choosing the option in the menu?

[alanswx]

I need to recompile it.

[retrodroid]

I’ve got the same issue. Everything just boots to a black screen and no activity (MISTER menu works though). I’m using a CRT arcade monitor that works great for most arcade cores. Any ideas? Thanks!

Are you using a USB drive?

No, just the SD card.

Same issue here with my arcade monitor. I opened a new issue for this on the github site.